Backed by sound economic policies and until the global crisis, a buoyant global economy, many developing countries made significant movement toward achieving the 2015millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly those for poverty reduction, gender parity in education, and reliable access to safe water. But even before the global economic crisis, progress in achieving some MDGs, especially those on child and maternal mortality, primary school completion, hunger, and sanitation, was lagging. The global food, fuel and economic crises have set back progress to the MDGs.

Con el propósito de contribuir al conocimiento de las lógicas y tendencias de la expansión residencial en áreas periurbanas y su impronta en la organización futura de las ciudades medias, tendiente al logro de una relación armónica entre la actividad residencial y las otras actividades socioeconómicas que se presentan en dichas áreas, en la presente Tesis doctoral se aborda el estudio del proceso de expansión residencial que se han venido desarrollando en el espacio periurbano del Partido de La Plata desde principios de los años '90 hasta nuestros días.

Los authores del documento intentan reflexionar sobre la importancia de la ciudad intermedia en el Chile de hoy, las tensiones que vive en el contexto de treinta años de transformaciones neoliberales en el país, y los efectos del reciente terremoto del 27 de febrero. Indaga en la relación entre ciudad y política, y en la capacidad actual de esta última para construir proyectos alternativos de desarrollo.

Se analiza la relevancia de los servicios ambientales de los corredores fluviales en el ámbito de la planificación urbana sustentable, al tenor de la realidad y falencias de los instrumentos territoriales vigentes en esta temática.

This document, written by Josette Cole of the Mandlovu Development Trust, explores the intended and unintended consequences of home ownership for poor citizens living in formal settlements in post-apartheid South Africa. It focuses on New Crossroads in Cape Town, a relatively small, urban community of 20 000 people.

Recognising that the Managed Land Settlement (MLS) approach is not new to the South African housing and service delivery environment, the purpose of this report is to explore the lessons that can be learnt from programmes and projects which have adopted an MLS-like approach to greenfields development. The report contains five case studies from across South Africa, focusing on programmes that have been successfully implemented over the past 15 years. With funding from Urban LandMark, the report was commissioned by

Continuing population and consumption growth will mean that the global demand for food will increase for at least another 40 years. Growing competition for land, water, and energy, in addition to the overexploitation of fisheries, will affect our ability to produce food, as will the urgent requirement to reduce the impact of the food system on the environment. The effects of climate change are a further threat. But the world can produce more food and can ensure that it is used more efficiently and equitably.

This Handbook introduces key economic and related concepts explaining the functioning of urban land markets. You will find in this Handbook tools for engaging in a critical analysis of conventional economics, particularly in the understanding of how African urban land markets work. Of great importance is the understanding of how land use, supply and demand unfold in African context. It provides a basis for strengthening urban policy in ways that enable poorer people in African cities to access well-located living and work spaces.

In 2007 Urban LandMark undertook a series of consultations as part of the Voices of the Poor project. Four workshops were held in the centres listed above. The workshops were attended mostly by civil society organisations as well as NGOs. In all, 105 participants from more than 30 different civil society organisations participated. This case study presents the perspectives and experiences of civil society organisations with regard to access to urban land by the poor as derived from the consultations. These perspectives are fairly representative of urban community organisations as a whole.

Due to urban growth, some agricultural lands have been replaced by residential, municipal, and industrial areas. In some cases the remaining agricultural land will not have enough water because of transfers from agriculture to M''I (municipal and industrial) users. Therefore, in many places, especially in arid and semi-arid regions, the use of treated wastewater as a reliable source of irrigation water has already been, or will be, considered in the future.

In order to achieve sustainable development, it is necessary to obtain and adopt planning procedures on the basis of Multi Criteria Evaluation of natural environment. Since biophysical (natural) environment has limited ecological capabilities for human use, ecological capability assessment, as an essence for environmental studies and with the aim of preventing existing crises, yields proper grounds for environmental planning. The analysis of land capability and sufficiency for urban development is one of the main categories with which urban planners deal.

This paper discusses the agrarian problem in Brazilian rural areas from the environmental point of view. The objective is to examine how the private appropriation of the Brazilian rural space came about, attributing to the environmental factor a role whose logic was relevant in the inherited agricultural context. According to this hypothesis, the specificity of the private appropriation process of public land, after 1850, is the origin of agricultural and environmental problems in the Brazilian rural space.