URBLOG

Urban Population Trends

URBAN POPULATION GRAPH

Orginal Guardian data blog

Urbanization is, to be sure, still manifested in the continues massive expansion of cities, city-regions, and mega-city-regions,   it equally entails the ongoing socio-spatial transformation of  diverse, less densely agglomerated settlement spaces that are, through constantly thickening inter-urban and inter-metropolitan infrastructural networks, being even more interlinked to the major urban centres. We are witnessing, in short, nothing less than the intensification  and extension of  the urbanization process at all spatial scales and across the entire surface of planetary space.

Neil Brenner     ‘What is critical urban theory’ in CITY 13/2-3 June- September2009 p. 205

 

In Britain's dockland mirror, China is sailing into view

Tristram Hunt in The Guardian

Emblems first of empire, then post-industrial drift and rampant capitalism, London's docks are now in hock to a new power. [...] This unbecoming location on the Isle of Dogs has always told us a broader truth about the condition of Britain. In the Victorian era, the docks symbolised the prosperity and progress of empire.

Canary Wharf, an icon of modern capitalism, is now a totem of state-funded corporatism. The docks that once played host to the British empire and housed the finance titans of US imperialism are now in hock to a new power rising in the east.

LSE Autumn Public Lectures

Events open to the LSE community and the public

 

Tuesday 6 October, 6.30-8pm

Bringing the Penal State Back In

SPEAKER: Professor Loïc Wacquant

 

Monday 19 October, 6.30-8pm

Beijing Inside Out: Caochangdi

SPEAKERS: Robert Mangurian, Mary-Ann Ray

 

Tuesday 10 November, 6.30-8pm

 The First Legacy Games: the physical and

socio-economic transformation of East London

SPEAKERS: Andrew Altman, Councillor Paul Brickell,  Ricky Burdett

 

Tuesday 17 November, 6.30-8pmC

Cities, Design and Climate Change

SPEAKERS: Professor Saskia Sassen, Professor Richard Sennett

Politics, recession and China in Africa

Will the gains of Africa's economic revival be completely lost?

Will the world recession return African economies to their knees? Not if China has anything to do with it. This is one friendship that stands to flourish through the hard times.

Most Africans play no part in their country's politics, apart from (if they are lucky) voting once every few years. But there is one group that governments have to take into account - the urban poor. These people are vulnerable to the smallest shifts in the cost of living and can take to the streets and cause headaches for those in power. When politics breaks down, they provide the foot soldiers for Africa's wars. When prices of food and fuel shot up last year, riots broke out in several African cities.

Jenkins on Dubai (and Detroit)

As they did Ozymandias, the dunes will reclaim the soaring folly of Dubai

Hovering over Dubai is a cloud called nemesis.

"I can only imagine that Dubai will one day be seen as a punctuation mark on the architectural follies of the past half century. This off-the-shelf city state has been built on laundering the profits of oil, drugs, arms and western aid."

Digital divide persists but decreasing slightly

ITU’s new ICT Development Index (IDI) compares developments in information and communication technologies (ICT) in 154 countries over a five-year period from 2002 to 2007. The Index combines 11 indicators into a single measure that can be used as a benchmarking tool globally, regionally and at the country level. These are related to ICT access, use and skills, such as households with a computer the number of Internet users; and literacy levels.

Developing countries drive explosion in global mobile phone use The Guardian

Revolving buildings: the new shape of things

Darmstadt and Dubai present the extreme possibilities of contemporary living. In the first, a small town south of Frankfurt, you find the Passivhaus Institut. Since 1996, it has been experimenting with the ultimate in environmentally intelligent building design. [...] Architecture, they used to say, is frozen music. In Darmstadt and Dubai, the extreme possibilities seem to be a solemn fugue or a drunken samba. Maybe the real future will have a different soundtrack.

In the Dubai the losers are the invisible majority.

Dubai's six-year building boom grinds to halt as financial crisis takes hold

"I sold our land and took loans in the village to come here," said   a 20-year-old Bangladeshi farmer. "I paid the agent £2,000 to bring me. He said I would earn 1,500 dirham [£287] a month, but we are paid 572 dirham. When I return people in the village will want their money but I have none."

A  construction site manager said he had protested to his boss about the treatment of labourers. "We tell them to bring their clothes to work one day and then we send them home. It makes me feel sick. I asked why it had to be done so quickly and I was told a lot of them commit suicide and we don't want that on our hands."

UN focus on Africa, India and China

 UNHabitat's  The State of African Cities 2008 proviudes a state of the art guide to issue facing urban communities across the continent.

'A worrying trend with the African urbanization process is that it is a process rooted in poverty rather than an industrialization-induced socio-economic transition as in other major world urban regions. Africa’s escalating urban problems have received less attention than warranted and now, at the dawn of Africa’s urban age, these need to be addressed.'

 

UNHabitat have also launched URBAN WORLD  The inaugural edition covers urban development in India and China, the Olympic impact on the environment

BREAKING NEWS

Live updates: Mumbai crisis

Mumbai profile  Mumbai: city of dreams and extreme poverty