Abstract
This chapter provides more details of environmental issues in Third World cities, concentrating on women’s living conditions. With some 1400 million people living in abject poverty, more and more are migrating to urban areas, attracted by the projects of employment and a better standard of living. Rapid urbanization is not caused only by migration from the countryside: Third World cities have high rates of natural population increase. Half the inhabitants of some cities in the South live on vacant lots in the urban centre or as squatters in the slums and “popular settlements” at their margins. Here, people provide their own shelter, often illegally, and frequently on land that is unfit for housing and prone to severe environmental damage. Many popular settlements are located in environmentally vulnerable or dangerous places, thus increasing the chance of catastrophe. And, as the industrial accidents of the last decade show, the danger is ever present and profound.
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