Third World Cities: Sustainable Urban Development III-Basic Needs and Human Rights

Abstract

This article is part of a series on the relationship between sustainability and urbanization. The literature on this debate is reviewed in Houghton and Hunter 1994; Girardet 1996; Pugh 1996; and Burgess et al. 1997. The focus of the debate should be on dynamics and processes and on the people who live in cities and their needs. The major processes affecting sustainable development are dynamic in the pace of growth and the form it is taking. Socialist transitional economies mega cities with neoliberal development policies and small and intermediate African cities have fundamentally different processes. Studies of the components of sustainable urbanization must continue but must be understood as an integration within and an impact upon a dynamic evolving relationship. This article in contrast to the two prior articles focuses on the need for housing food and human rights. The literature tends to focus on shelter provision as the most important basic need. However most poor people put food before shelter in level of importance. During the 1960s and 1970s the literature concentrated on the debate about the place of shelter provision within the development process practical policies for housing and the merits of self-help housing. This review focuses more on current debates on policies for urban housing provision strategic changes at the macrolevel and the urban agricultural system. The components of sustainable urbanization should be basic rights. People have a right to civil liberties socioeconomic rights womens and childrens rights and the right to a clean environment.