Planning and Housing in the Rapidly Urbanising World

Presently, informal settlements exist as part of the urban fabric and a major constituent of the residential geographies of most Cities in Sub-Saharan Africa. The growth of informal settlements in cities of the global south has been widely discussed in existing literature as a critical concern. Urban development literature in Zambia in particular has focused on the rapid urbanization and poverty growth, but barely explains how this affects settlement sustainability. Studies have focused on measures put in place by government and supporting organisations to help find solutions to the problem. But this has been done without providing specifics as relates to interventions for settlement sustainability and user perceptions of their living environments. The article provides a conceptual analysis of the local dynamics influencing informal settlement development and sustainability. The historical perspective and modern day realities of informal urban settlement settings in Lusaka in Zambia are also reviewed. The case study findings indicate a need to refocus development interventions in informal settlements by considering informal dwellers concerns and requirements when formulating settlements development strategies. The article offers an insight into sustainability challenges that the settlement population faces despite a variety of development interventions by the State and private agencies. The article shows the potential success and sustainability of interventions when informal settlement residents are empowered and take responsibility of their own development agenda. The paper points out the need for collaborative approach to informal settlement improvement where all stakeholders including the local residents, participate in all stages of settlement development.

Rapid and unplanned urbanization of cities has been a cause of great concern world over. Increased urbanization has immensely altered the Land Use pattern of several Indian cities, thereby altering the physical properties of the land surface. The pronounced effect of urban heat island (UHI) apart from the acute stress on limited natural resources are consequences of this rapid urbanization. UHI effect manifests as unexpected rise in city temperatures when compared to their surrounding areas, thus making them unfriendly for habitation over time. The present work analyses the effect of UHI on Bhubaneswar, an Indian city undergoing rapid urbanization in recent times, utilizing land use and land cover (LULC) change data from Landsat over a 25 km radius about the city and MODIS land surface temperatures (LST) at 1 km2 spatial resolution for a period of 15 years (2000–2014). From the study, significant changes in LULC through over-exploitation of natural resources and the related spatio-temporal variations in LST has been identified as one major factor responsible for changes in the UHI effect over Bhubaneswar. Owing to rapid urbanization (83% increase in 15 years), the city has undergone major changes in LULC aggregating to a massive ~ 89% decrease in dense vegetation and ~ 83% decrease in crop fields over this time period. Analyses of the changes in the urban energy balance and resulting UHI effect across many such Indian cities undergoing rapid urban growth is quite essential for mitigating the negative impacts of urbanization for a long-term sustainability.

Africa continues to experience serious signs of multiple crises in the context of sustainability. These crises include vulnerability to climate change, rapid urbanization, food insecurity, and many others. One crisis, that defines Africa today, is the unprecedented rapid urbanization which continues to pose a big challenge to the diminishing available resources, environmental quality and human well-being. Cities in Africa continue to experience a fast horizontal growth of settlements due to influx of people from rural areas who often settle in the economically lowest segments in urban areas. This horizontal rapid growth has eaten up land set for agriculture around cities and promoted the rapid growth of informal settlements exacerbating the impacts of climate change leading to a negative impact on agricultural production. Policies linking rapid urbanization and climate change with agricultural productivity are need. This paper explores and documents the impact of rapid urbanization on climate change policies and subsequent impact on agriculture in Africa.

Africa continues to experience serious signs of multiple crises in the context of sustainability. These crises include vulnerability to climate change, rapid urbanization, food insecurity, and many others. One crisis, that defines Africa today, is the unprecedented rapid urbanization which continues to pose a big challenge to the diminishing available resources, environmental quality and human well-being. Cities in Africa continue to experience a fast horizontal growth of settlements due to influx of people from rural areas who often settle in the economically lowest segments in urban areas. This horizontal rapid growth has eaten up land set for agriculture around cities and promoted the rapid growth of informal settlements exacerbating the impacts of climate change leading to a negative impact on agricultural production. Policies linking rapid urbanization and climate change with agricultural productivity are need. This paper explores and documents the impact of rapid urbanization on climate change policies and subsequent impact on agriculture in Africa.

<p>Typhoon and windstorm induced extreme winds (e.g., daily maximum wind speed, DMWS) cause enormous economic losses and deaths in China every year, and rapid urbanization increased surface roughness might play a key role in extreme wind speed variability. Here, observed near-surface (at 10 m height) DMWS from 115 meteorological stations and combined DMSP/OLS (Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Linescan System) and NPP/VIIRS (Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership/Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) nighttime light data from 1992-2016 in Yangtze River Delta, a rapidly urbanized area of China, were used to analyze the impact of urbanization on DMWS variability. Raw wind speed observations were subject to a robust quality control and homogenization protocol using the Climatol package. The stations were firstly classified into six urbanized groups by the difference of nighttime light indices of each station between 1992 and 2016. The results show that DMWS in Yangtze River Delta has significantly (p < 0.05) declined by -0.209m s<sup>-1 </sup>decade<sup>-1</sup> annually, with negative trends in most seasons, particularly in winter (-0.470 m s<sup>-1 </sup>decade<sup>-1</sup>, p < 0.05) and autumn (-0.300 m s<sup>-1 </sup>decade<sup>-1</sup>, p < 0.05), followed by spring (-0.178 m s<sup>-1 </sup>decade<sup>-1</sup>, p > 0.10), while a weak increase in summer DMWS was found (+0.002 m s<sup>-1 </sup>decade<sup>-1</sup>, p > 0.10). The stations in the highly urbanized group show a higher magnitude in the decline of annual DMWS, indicating the key role of urbanization in weakening DMWS. Further, this is confirmed by the regional climate model (RegCM4) sensitive experiments conducted with different land use and cover data, that is, DMWS in 1992 was higher in the experiment using the real land use and cover data than in the experiment using the land use and cover data in 2016.</p>

Vulnerability and everyday health risks of urban informal settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa

The impact of rapid urbanization in cities on their microclimate is at present a great cause of global concern. One of the major consequences is the unexpected rise in temperatures in the cities compared to their surrounding areas, termed as the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Over the past many years, several Indian cities are under severe stress owing to such extreme anomalous changes in their micro-meteorological conditions making them unfriendly for habitation. Presented here is a case study on Bhubaneswar - one such city on the east coast of India undergoing rapid urbanization in recent times. In this study, Land Surface Temperatures (LST) from MODIS Terra and Aqua instruments at 1 km2 spatial resolution along with the Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) change data from Landsat was used over a 25 km radius about the city for a 15 years' period from 2000 to 2014. Preliminary analyses indicate spatio-temporal changes in LULC to be one of the primary and significant factors responsible for changes in the UHI effect over the city. Investigations on the spatio-temporal variations in LST across the city and its relationship with vegetation cover indicate that overexploitation of various resources demanded by a fast growing population has led to significant changes in LULC patterns in the last few years. Analysis of the changes in the urban energy balance and resulting UHI effect across the city under various urban growth scenarios and different proportions of green urban area are in progress.

This study examines urban internal displacement in Colombia and analyses the humanitarian response to the needs of internally displaced people (IDPs) and their host communities in informal settlements. Research was undertaken in Altos de la Florida, an informal settlement in Soacha on the outskirts of Bogotá, between 2016 and 2019. Colombia has the second-highest number of internally displaced people in the world, with 5.6 million. Nearly 90 per cent of the country’s IDPs have been displaced from rural to urban areas by conflict and violence, and informal urban settlements have become a refuge of last resort for many. Internal displacement has played a significant role in the country’s rapid urbanisation. Around a quarter of the built areas of Colombian cities are informal settlements, as such urban areas have been at the forefront of the response to internal displacement.

Through the study of the daily heavy rainfall observation records of 659 meteorological stations in China from 1951 to 2010, we find that rapid urbanization may trigger the significant increase of large-scale heavy rainfall in China. The main conclusions are as follows: Decadal heavy rainfall amounts (HRA), heavy rainfall days (HRD) and heavy rainfall intensity (HRI) in China have increased significantly, with an increase of 68.71%, 60.15% and 11.52% respectively, and the increase of station number is 84.22%, 84.22% and 54.48% respectively, showing a time change process of “rapid slow re rapid increase” and a spatial change from Southeast Coast to Central, Southwest, North and Northeast China. The rapid urbanization factors, including the output value of the second industry (GDP2), the proportion of urban population (UP) and the annual average haze days (HD), are likely to be the main reasons for the increase of heavy rainfall in China. Their variance explanations for the HRA, HRD and HRI in China are 61.54%, 58.48% and 65.54% respectively, of which the variance explanations for the heavy rainfall rainfall, rainy day and rain intensity are respectively high only by haze 25.93%, 22.98% and 26.64% respectively, while the variance interpretation of climate factors, including WPSH, ENSO, AMO and AAO, is only 24.30%, 26.23% and 21.92% respectively. Compared with the forcing factors of rapid urbanization, the impact of these climate factors is only 1/3 of the former. The panel data of the annual mean of the total population and visibility days at the county level in China are significantly related to the HRA, HRD and HRI in China. The spatial correlation coefficient gradually increased from 1950s to 2000s, that is, the total population at the county level increased from 0.35, 0.36 and 0.40 to 0.54, 0.55 and 0.58 respectively, and the annual mean of visibility days increased from 0.36, 0.38 and 0.48 to 0.55, 0.57 and 0.58. It is further indicated that the rapid urbanization triggered the significant increase of heavy rainfall in China.

Exploring the similarities between informal and medieval settlements: A methodology and an application

The world is becoming increasingly urban. For the first time in history, more than 50% of human beings live in cities (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, ed. (2015)). Rapid urbanization is often chaotic and unstructured, leading to the formation of informal settlements or slums. Informal settlements are frequently located in environmentally hazardous areas and typically lack adequate sanitation and clean water, leading to poor health outcomes for residents. In these difficult circumstances women and children fair the worst, and reproductive outcomes for women living in informal settlements are grim. Insufficient uptake of antenatal care, lack of skilled birth attendants and poor-quality care contribute to maternal mortality rates in informal settlements that far outpace wealthier urban neighborhoods (Chant and McIlwaine (2016)). In response, a birth center model of maternity care is proposed for informal settlements. Birth centers have been shown to provide high quality, respectful, culturally appropriate care in high resource settings (Stapleton et al. J Midwifery Women's Health 58(1):3-14, 2013; Hodnett et al. Cochrane Database Syst Rev CD000012, 2012; Brocklehurst et al. BMJ 343:d7400, 2011). In this paper, three case studies are described that support the use of this model in low resource, urban settings.

The World Health Organization (WHO) Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH) has posed a provocative question for public health: “Why do we keep treating people for illnesses only to send them back to the conditions that created illness in the first place?”1 For the WHO Centre for Health Development (WHO Kobe Centre), hub of the Commission’s Knowledge Network on Urban Settings (KNUS), this represents a challenge to the public health sector not only to acknowledge the pervasiveness of urban poverty as a critical pathway to ill health and health inequities, but to address this as an urgent public health issue affecting a billion people living in informal settlements, or “slums.”1 People who live in informal settlements are often systematically excluded from opportunities, decent employment, security, capacity, and empowerment3 that would enable them to gain better control over their health and lives. As noted in the Interim Report by the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Task Force, which focuses on improving the lives of urban slum dwellers: Much of urban poverty is not because of distance from infrastructure and services but from exclusion. They are excluded from the attributes of urban life that remain a monopoly of a privileged minority—political voice, secure good-quality housing, safety and the rule of law, good education, health services, decent transport, adequate incomes, access to goods and services, credit—in short, the attributes of full citizenship.4 The issue of urban poverty is not new, but it is often narrowly viewed as an economic issue that is best addressed by economic policies and interventions. Urban poverty today, as driven by globalization and rapid uncontrolled urbanization, also needs to be recognized as a social, political, and cultural process that has profound impacts on public health. Exclusion of the urban poor from the benefits of urban life fosters discontent and political unrest. Within the broader context of health and human development, rapid urbanization of poverty and ill health have been characterized as a new human security threat.5 Rapid uncontrolled urbanization results from the interaction between global and local forces. The interconnectedness of cities through trade, business, industry, tourism, international travel, information technology, and media is reshaping social determinants of health that are manifest at the city level. On the other hand, local and national governance capacity in relation to health systems, housing, transport, property rights, migration, land use policy, working conditions, and employment may be unable to cope with the speed of change brought about by global economic restructuring. Inequity in cities that leads to urban poverty, and poor health, therefore, are also products of global and local forces in the urban setting. Public health can play an important role in ameliorating urban poverty through social processes (participation, social capital, social accountability, and social inclusion) that influence urban governance at multiple nodes6 of power. Addressing urban poverty as an urgent public health issue opens a policy space for fairer health opportunities and healthier and more equitable cities.

In the northern hemisphere, bird counts have been fundamental in gathering data to understand population trends. Due to the seasonality of the northern hemisphere, counts take place during two clearly defined moments in time: the breeding season (resident birds) and winter (after migration). Depending on location, Neotropical birds may breed at any time of year, may or may not migrate, and those patterns are not necessarily synchronous among species. Also in contrast to the northern hemisphere, population trends and the impact of rapid urbanization and deforestation are unknown and unmonitored. Throughout one year, we used point counts to better understand temporal patterns of bird species richness and relative abundance in the state of São Paulo, southeastern Brazil, to examine how to implement similar bird counts in tropical America. We counted birds twice each day on 10 point transects (20 points day‑1), separated by 200 m, with a 100 m limited detection radius in a semideciduous tropical forest. Both species richness and bird abundance were greater in the morning, but accumulation curves suggest that longer-duration afternoon counts would reach the same total species as in morning counts. Species richness and bird abundance did not vary seasonally and unique species were counted every month; relatively few species (20%) were present in all months. Most (84%) known forest species in the area were encountered. We suggest that point counts can work here as they do in the northern hemisphere. We recommend that transects include at least 20 points and that the simplest timing of bird counts would also be seasonal, using timing of migration of austral migrants (and six months later) to coordinate counts. We propose that bird counts in Brazil, and elsewhere in Latin America, would provide data to help understand population trends, but would require greater effort than in temperate latitudes due to greater species richness and different dynamics of reproduction and migration. With collaboration among ornithologists and coordinated bird surveys, we may develop a technique for the tropics that would yield information for population trends and conservation of birds, similar to counts in temperate latitudes.

Rapid urbanization comes after push and pull factors of urbanization. These factors are considered as employment, greater opportunities and better facilities. It consequently brings high demand on built facilities which consequently bring several problems comprising reduction of forest and agricultural lands, lack of transportation and infrastructure, and mental health issues. In addition rapid urbanization has often led to unplanned urbanization and unconscious decisions of urban planners. These kinds of development is facing with dramatic changes on urban morphology. This study through typomorphological analysis tries to find out the outcomes of rapid urbanization in coastal city of Alanya. Also the study tries to provide an opportunity for its planned transformation for the future development.

Global warming and rapid urbanization have great impacts on local temperature and urban heat island (UHI) effects. However, most of the previous research paid very little attention to the impact of natural terrain on UHI effects. This work reported the effects of complex terrain on UHI characteristics. As the second largest city in Northwest China, Lanzhou was selected as the research region since it is a typical valley city with rapid urbanization processes. We analyzed the variation characteristics of UHI effects at annual, seasonal and daily scales, in order to explore the differences and similarities of UHI effects between plain cities, coastal cities and valley cities. Then we evaluated the contribution of urbanization effect to urban surface temperature change. Finally, we examined the link between urbanization and UHI effects. The results of this study will be useful to urban planners and environmentalists in ecological environment construction, urban architectural design and urban planning.