Summary
Contents
Subject index
It took New York City (the world's largest metropolis in 1950) nearly a century and a half to expand by eight million residents. Mexico City and Sao Paulo will match this growth in less than fifteen years. Asia's mega-cities, too, are exploding in number and size. This kind of unprecedented growth is being echoed in the urban centers of developing nations around the globe. The essays in this volume address the wide array of problematic issues–as well as the opportunities and advantages–that are the natural outgrowth of such rapid urbanization. Third World Cities examines three sets of vital issues. Drawing on the experience and evidence of the past two decades, the book's initial chapters assess theoretical frameworks upon which urban and migration policies are based. The authors of the middle section press for fresh approaches to the increasing demands placed on institutions and individuals in the largest cities of the developing world. The final chapters examine the complex demographic, social, and economic processes of urban growth. Students, professionals, and policymakers in development and urban studies, public administration, sociology, political science and comparative politics, geography, and ethnic studies will find Third World Cities to be a refreshing and innovative look at this growing concern. “Third World Cities offers a range of new ideas on the demographic, social spatial, and environmental changes that are ‘occurring so quickly that up-to-date evidence is elusive’ … Third World Cities is both thought-provoking and highly readable.” –The Economic Times
Urbanization and the Environmental Risk Transition
Urbanization and the Environmental Risk Transition
Cities have two general categories of human environmental risks: Those that directly affect health, such as pollution, and those that may be no less damaging, but operate indirectly by impairing ecosystems (e.g., estuaries) that humanity depends on. Although we focus here on environmental health, we recognize that cities often pose important indirect environmental risks as well.
In 1971, Abdel Omran proposed that patterns of disease and death could be more explicitly incorporated into population theory by adopting a framework he called the Epidemiologic Transition. The Risk Transition we discuss here is an extension of Omran's concept to help explain the dynamics of environmental health risks in cities in the developing world (Smith 1990b). The two ...
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