Voices from Urban Africa: The Impact of Urban Growth on Children

Urban poverty -- and its impact on children -- is often overlooked and misunderstood. More than half of the world's population now lives in cities. Each year the number of urban residents increases by nearly 60 million.1 By 2050, it is projected that two thirds of the global population will be living in urban areas.2 It is estimated that 94 percent of urban growth will take place in less developed countries.3Africa, though it is the least urbanized continent today, is predicted to have one billion urban dwellers by 2040, with a substantial youth majority. Over the next 40 years, 75 percent of urban population growth in Africa will take place in Africa's secondary cities.4 Currently, over half of the African urban population lives in slum conditions. These figures alone demonstrate the growing importance of prioritizing the urban context in development work.Coupled with this growing urban population, the development community's reliance on aggregate data, which generally compares development indicators for urban and rural areas within a country, means that children and adults living in urban areas appear to be better off than those living in rural areas.Citywide statistics and the 'urban advantage' allow the wealth of some urban individuals to obscure the hardships faced by those living in urban poverty and the vast inequalities present within urban communities. The absence of detailed data means that the depths of urban poverty are often missed and children living in urban poverty are at risk of not being reached by development efforts

Cities and population health.

A majority of the world's population will live in urban areas by 2007 and cities are exerting growing influence on the health of both urban and non-urban residents. Although there long has been substantial interest in the associations between city living and health, relatively little work has tried to understand how and why cities affect population health. This reflects both the number and complexity of determinants and of the absence of a unified framework that integrates the multiple factors that influence the health of urban populations. This paper presents a conceptual framework for studying how urban living affects population health. The framework rests on the assumption that urban populations are defined by size, density, diversity, and complexity, and that health in urban populations is a function of living conditions that are in turn shaped by municipal determinants and global and national trends. The framework builds on previous urban health research and incorporates multiple determinants at different levels. It is intended to serve as a model to guide public health research and intervention

Geospatial analysis and living urban geometry

This essay outlines how to incorporate morphological rules within the exigencies of our technological age. We propose using the current evolution of GIS (Geographical Information Systems) technologies beyond their original representational domain, towards predictive and dynamic spatial models that help in constructing the new discipline of "urban seeding". We condemn the high-rise tower block as an unsuitable typology for a living city, and propose to re-establish human-scale urban fabric that resembles the traditional city. Pedestrian presence, density, and movement all reveal that open space between modernist buildings is not urban at all, but neither is the open space found in today's sprawling suburbs. True urban space contains and encourages pedestrian interactions, and has to be designed and built according to specific rules. The opposition between traditional self-organized versus modernist planned cities challenges the very core of the urban planning discipline. Planning has to be re-framed from being a tool creating a fixed future to become a visionary adaptive tool of dynamic states in evolution

'We got needs too': Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in urban areas (Speaker's notes)

Despite over 70 % of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia now living in urban or regional urban areas (ABS 2008), there is limited research which highlights their issues or the issues that impact on their education outcomes. The statistics demonstrate that living in urban centres is as much part of reality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as living in a remote discrete community. This paper will explore some of the issues for urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples against a backdrop of statistics and some of the current literature. Examples will be highlighted from the South-East Queensland region to expose the need for specific education strategies and programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in this region and in other urbanised regions in Queensland and Australia

Women\u27s Postponement of Marriage

This study examines factors that explain the rising median age of women at first marriage from 1960 to 2011. We estimate the median age of women at first marriage as a function of women’s income relative to men’s, women’s education relative to men’s, and the percentage of the population living in urban areas. Increases in relative income and education are hypothesized to increase the opportunity cost women face when considering marriage. The percentage of the population living in urban areas represents the search cost of finding a potential partner. We find that relative income and the percentage of the population living in urban areas have affected marriage decisions

Cost of living differences between urban and rural areas in Indonesia

It is commonly assumed that the cost of living is much higher in cities than in the country because housing rents are higher in urban areas and food staples cost more. This assumption has important implications for sectoral comparisons of welfare levels and distributions. The authors suspect that comparisons of housing rent and food prices overstate the cost-of-living differential. For one thing, the quality of dwelling stock is better on the whole in urban areas, reflecting income differences. For another, the urban consumer is able to substitute in favor of other goods and services which do not cost any more in urban areas. This paper finds that the true cost of living in cities is substantially overestimated by conventional methods. This is more pronounced at low incomes, since the marginal cost of utility is larger (relative to expenditures) in urban areas - implying that the relative cost of urban living increases with income. In a neighborhood on the poverty line, the results suggest that an urban-rural cost-of-living difference of about 10 percent is closer to the truth than the values (as high as 66 percent) used in past work on Indonesia.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Housing&Human Habitats,Poverty Lines,National Urban Development Policies&Strategies

The role of urban living labs in a smart city

In a rapidly changing socio-technical environment cities are increasingly seen as main drivers for change. Against this backdrop, this paper studies the emerging Urban Living Lab and Smart City concepts from a project based perspective, by assessing a series of five Smart City initiatives within one local city ecosystem. A conceptual and analytical framework is used to analyse the architecture, nature and outcomes of the Smart City Ghent and the role of Urban Living Labs. The results of our analysis highlight the potential for social value creation and urban transition. However, current Smart City initiatives face the challenge of evolving from demonstrators towards real sustainable value. Furthermore, Smart Cities often have a technological deterministic, project-based approach, which forecloses a sustainable, permanent and growing future for the project outcomes. ‘City-governed’ Urban Living Labs have an interesting potential to overcome some of the identified challenges

Multidimensions of Urban Poverty - Evidence from India

Content of abstract This paper provides a robust multidimensional evaluation of intra -urban differences. The hypothesis that joint consumption of public goods of individuals in non slum urban India dominates those of individuals living in slums is accepted while the hypothesis that consumption of private goods of individuals in non slum urban India dominates those of individuals living in slums is rejected.Urban, poverty, Slums, India, Intra Urban Differences, Multidimensional, Dominance

'Big mobs in the city now' : the increasing number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in urban areas

The locations and settings in which Australian Indigenous people live varies, however over 70 % of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia now live in urban or regional urban areas (ABS 2008). Over half of the total population lives in the two states Queensland and New South Wales. The 2006 Census data indicates that 146, 400 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples or 28.3% lives in Queensland. The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in schools in the greater Brisbane area is approximately 29% of the Queensland population. There are other sizeable urban Indigenous populations along the Queensland coast and larger rural towns. The statistics demonstrate that living in urban centres is as much part of reality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as living in a remote discrete Aboriginal community. Historically, discrete rural and remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have been the focus of most of the research conducted with Indigenous populations. These locations have provided researchers with an easily identifiable study population. However, unlike rural and remote communities, identifying and accessing urban Indigenous communities can be much more difficult despite the growing number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in urban areas. Limited research has been undertaken on the issues that impact on urban Indigenous communities or have explored methods of undertaking research with urban Indigenous communities. This paper will explore the some of the issues and needs of urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in South East Queensland and highlight some of the emerging policy, program and research responses

Urban Poverty and Health in Developing Countries: Household and Neighborhood Effects

In the U.S. and other high-income countries, where most of the population lives in urban areas, there is intense scholarly and program interest in the effects of household and neighborhood living standards on health. Yet very few studies of developing-country cities have examined these issues. This paper investigates whether in these cities, the health of women and young children is influenced by both household and neighborhood standards of living. Using data from the urban samples of some 85 Demographic and Health surveys, and modelling living standards using factor-analytic MIMIC methods, we find, first, that the neighborhoods of poor households are more heterogeneous than is often asserted. To judge from our results, it appears that as a rule, poor urban households do not tend to live in uniformly poor communities; indeed, about 1 in 10 of a poor household's neighbors is relatively affluent, belonging to the upper quartile of the urban distribution of living standards. Do household and neighborhood living standards influence health? Applying multivariate models with controls for other socioeconomic variables, we discover that household living standards have a substantial influence on three measures of health: unmet need for modern contraception; birth attendance by doctors, nurses, or trained midwives; and children's height for age. Neighborhood living standards exert significant additional influence on health in many of the surveys we examine, especially in birth attendance. There is considerable evidence, then, indicating that both household and neighborhood living standards can make a substantively important difference to health.poverty, health, developing countries, urban, factor analysis, neighborhood