City Governance and Citizen Action II

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The April 2009 issue of Environment and Urbanization is on the theme of City Governance and Citizen Action. It includes an editorial and several papers discussing the roles of mayors and civil servants in addressing urban poverty. This includes interviews with Mayor Liftchitz, now in his second term in Rosario in Argentina and with four mayors in Colombia. Two papers look at current forms of citizen protest - the bloggers street movement in Cairo and the work of the Combined Harare Residents’ Association in Zimbabwe. Two papers describe and discuss partnerships between federations formed by the urban poor and local governments – in Dar es Salaam and in Kathmandu. There is also a paper on the current status of Dharavi’s redevelopment, following up on papers in previous issues. There are also papers on social movements’ engagement with housing in Buenos Aires, evictions and the right to the city in Delhi, the slowing of sub-Saharan Africa’s urbanization and participatory governance in a town in Turkey.

The journal’s Climate Change Section has an analysis of city greenhouse gas emissions inventories (showing that many cities have lower emissions per person than the average for their nation), the links between urban poverty and vulnerability to climate change in Latin America and the limitations of current international funding mechanisms to support urban adaptation in low- and middle-income nations.