This book presents an overview of the challenges that cities in Latin America and Asia are facing regarding the preservation of their tangible and intangible heritage. It argues that urban heritage has a value that transcends the mere object’s value, constituting a crucial source of identity for urban inhabitants. The same is true for the urban intangible values and practices that are often associated with places or buildings. The empirical research is based on case studies of Kathmandu in Nepal, Yogyakarta in Indonesia and Recife in Brazil; three cities that still comprise core areas with a high percentage of historic fabric and distinctive cultural expressions. The comparative study of the three areas reveals the similarities and differences of urban conservation policies, past and present upgrading strategies in the core areas, and the importance of tangible and intangible heritage. All three cities demonstrate that urban heritage, habits and beliefs are still of importance to the population. While there are significant differences in the kind and level of protection the respective legal system provides, partly uncontrolled urban dynamics pose a threat to all of them. The text is based on a PhD thesis submitted to the Institute of Geography, University of Innsbruck, Austria.

By the dawn of the 21st century, more than half of the world's population was living in urban areas. This volume explores the implications of this unprecedented expansion in the world's most urbanized region, Latin America, exploring the new urban reality, and the consequences for both Latin America and the rest of the developing world.

"With 80% of its population living in cities, Latin America and the Caribbean is the most urbanized region on the planet. Located here are some of the largest and bes-known cities, like Mexico City, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Bogota, Lima and Santiago. The region also boasts hundreds of smaller cities that stand out because of their dynamism and creativity. This edition of State of Latin American and Caribbean cities presents teh current situation of the region's urban world, including the demographic, economic, social, environmental, urban and institutional conditions in which cities are developing." -- p.4 of cover.

The number of people in South Asia's cities rose by 130 million between 2000 and 2011--more than the entire population of Japan. This was linked to an improvement in productivity and a reduction in the incidence of extreme poverty. But the region's cities have struggled to cope with the pressure of population growth on land, housing, infrastructure, basic services, and the environment. As a result, urbanization in South Asia remains underleveraged in its ability to deliver widespread improvements in both prosperity and livability. Leveraging Urbanization in South Asia is about the state of South Asia's urbanization and the market and policy failures that have taken the region’s urban areas to where they are today--and the hard policy actions needed if the region’s cities are to leverage urbanization better. This publication provides original empirical and diagnostic analysis of urbanization and related economic trends in the region. It also discusses in detail the key policy areas, the most fundamental being urban governance and finance, where actions must be taken to make cities more prosperous and livable.

Latin American cities have always been characterized by a strong tension between what is vaguely described as their formal and informal dimensions. However, the terms formal and informal refer not only to the physical aspect of cities but also to their entire socio-political fabric. Informal cities and settlements exceed the structures of order, control and homogeneity that one expects to find in a formal city; therefore the contributors to this volume - from such disciplines as architecture, urban planning, anthropology, urban design, cultural and urban studies and sociology - focus on alternative methods of analysis in order to study the phenomenon of urban informality. This book provides a thorough review of the work that is currently being carried out by scholars, practitioners and governmental institutions, in and outside Latin America, on the question of informal cities.

In this book, an interdisciplinary research group of faculty members, researchers, professionals, and planners contributed to an understanding of the dynamics and dimensions of emerging challenges and risks in megacities in the rapidly changing urban environments in Asia and examined emerging resilience themes from the point of view of sustainability and public policy. The world’s urban population in 2009 was approximately 3.4 billion and Asia’s urban population was about 1.72 billion. Between 2010 and 2020, 411 million people will be added to Asian cities (60 % of the growth in the world’s urban population). By 2020, of the world’s urban population of 4.2 billion, approximately 2.2 billion will be in Asia. China and India will contribute 31.3 % of the total world urban population by 2025. Developing Asia’s projected global share of CO2 emissions for energy consumption will increase from 30 % in 2006 to 43 % by 2030. City regions serve as magnets for people, enterprise, and culture, but with urbanisation , the worst form of visible poverty becomes prominent. The Asian region, with a slum population of an estimated 505.5 million people, remains host to over half of the world’s slum population . The book provides information on a comprehensive range of environmental threats faced by the inhabitants of megacities. It also offers a wide and multidisciplinary group of case studies from rapidly growing megacities (with populations of more than 5 million) from developed and developing countries of Asia.

This book deepens the understanding of the broader processes that shape and mediate the responses to climate change of poor urban households and communities in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Representing an important contribution to the evolution of more effective pro-poor climate change policies in urban areas by local governments, national governments and international organisations, this book is invaluable reading to students and scholars of environment and development studies.