Abstract
I. Themes for Future Issues
Preparations are underway for the 6th Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For this issue of Environment and Urbanization we encourage the submission of papers on all relevant aspects of climate change and cities, especially those that bring new insights or analyses in relation to the Fifth Assessment. Papers are encouraged on both adaptation and mitigation – and the possibilities of integrating them. Authors who presented papers at the IPCC Cities and Climate Change Science Conference, held in Edmonton in March 2018, are encouraged to submit to this special issue.
Food security and nutrition policy debates have shifted in the past decade or so, with growing attention to food consumption and especially to food access, affordability and utilization. This recognizes the importance of two transitions: the urban transition, with the majority of the world’s population now living and working in urban centres; and the nutrition transition, with a growing proportion of overweight and obese adults, sometimes living in the same household as under-nourished children.
There are clear links between malnutrition and food insecurity on the one hand, and urban poverty in both its income and non-income dimensions on the other. There are also links between urban expansion and urbanization and the changing extent and nature of food systems. Changing gender relations, changes in urban form, and the impacts of climate change also affect urban households’ food consumption.
Understanding the factors that shape access and utilization of food in urban contexts is still patchy; so too is knowledge that supports policies that explicitly benefit the urban poor.
We are calling for papers that examine food and nutrition related issues in urban areas, including:
How local environmental hazards in low-income settlements affect food safety – often as the result of inadequate provision of basic services and infrastructure and safe food storage.
How low, irregular incomes, lack of time and lack of storage space within the home affect how low-income groups access, prepare and consume food. How is this changing? What are the impacts of increasing built-up areas and densities?
The role of informal food vendors and formal and informal markets in food access and distribution; and the role of local governments and urban planning in supporting – or undermining – food security and healthy nutrition for the urban poor.
Innovations in data collection methods on food and nutrition, and assessments of what data are needed and by whom.
Examining how urbanization dynamics affect local food production and availability, including the role of small urban centres in processing and distributing food.
Housing seems to be in crisis in most urban centres around the world. In prosperous cities, house prices rise faster than incomes – forcing low-income (and even a proportion of middle-income) households into more cramped, poor-quality housing in more peripheral locations. In much of the global South, high proportions of city populations live in informal settlements because they cannot afford to buy, rent or build formal good-quality housing. The proportion of individuals who live in informal settlements – often 30–60 per cent of city populations – is a measure of the failure of formal systems. The irony is that this is marginalizing the workforce on which city prosperity depends – and on which its wealthier households depend for goods and services. We welcome papers that offer original analyses of the causes of the housing crisis.
We also welcome papers that give us insights into how low-income urban dwellers buy, build or rent (or otherwise acquire) accommodation and their priorities with respect to shelter. And how this can be supported by national and local government policies and programmes that increase the supply and reduce the costs of housing. This includes:
Expanding supplies of serviced plots for housing with good access to employment and integrated into high-quality public transport
Reducing costly, slow and often corrupt procedures for land purchase
Changing inappropriate regulations – for instance unnecessarily large minimum plot sizes
Housing finance systems that are inclusive and that support land purchase and incremental housing
We encourage papers that go beyond descriptions of the problems to offer conceptual and analytical insights into inclusive and scalable solutions – including examples of good practice. This includes housing initiatives that draw on resources from individuals/households and community organizations (including their savings and their capacities to contribute to upgrading) and private sector enterprises (for instance for building materials, small loans and rental housing), as well as drawing resources and support from ward, municipal and higher levels of government. We also welcome papers on housing initiatives, which include building resilience to the changes that climate change will or may bring and that contribute to low-carbon cities.
II. Discounted Prices and Electronic Access To Environment and Urbanization
All papers published in Environment and Urbanization since its first issue in 1989 are available at http://journals.sagepub.com/home/eau, and all but those published during the last two years are open access and so available electronically free of charge. Printed subscriptions to the journal are also available at no charge to libraries or resource centres of universities or teaching or training institutions in low- and middle-income nations.
In addition, the publisher of Environment and Urbanization, SAGE Publications, offers large discounts on subscription prices to charities and students and to all subscribers from low- and middle-income nations − see http://journals.sagepub.com/home/eau and click on “Subscribe”. With regard to electronic access, there are schemes that allow access to Environment and Urbanization for universities and research centres in low- and middle-income nations − see Research4Life (http://www.research4life.org). This includes Online Access to Research on the Environment (OARE), which has research journals on the environment, including Environment and Urbanization (http://www.unep.org/oare/).
III. Medio Ambiente Y Urbanización (MAyU)
The last 27 issues of our sister journal are accessible at no charge at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iieal/meda. The latest issue is 88, June 2018, on Reinforcing climate resilience in cities in Latin America (“Fortaleciendo la resiliencia al clima en ciudades de America Latina”.)
IV. Urbanisation
Our sister journal Urbanisation is co-published by SAGE and the Indian Institute for Human Settlements. It is edited by Aromar Revi, and available for free on registration. For more details, see http://urbanisationjournal.com.
V. Environment and Urbanization/Medio Ambiente Y Urbanización Pen Drive
Our pen drive has all papers from Environment and Urbanization from 1989 to 2013 and all papers from Medio Ambiente y Urbanización from 2008 to 2015. Do contact us if you would like one of these (also providing your postal address); these are available at no charge. All the items on this pen drive are available open access online – but this pen drive will be useful for those with difficult, limited or slow internet access.
VI. Blogs
Recent Urban Matters blogs (http://www.iied.org/urban-matters):
Kampala sets example for how cities can help refugees – Diane Archer
How Bus Rapid Transit can make housing affordable to low-income households – David Satterthwaite
Is urban development too complicated for us? – David Satterthwaite
Global to local: supporting cities to meet the New Urban Agenda – Alexandra Norodom
Moving past the token ‘woman’ word – Caroline Moser
Can one billion people in informal settlements be protected from climate change? – David Satterthwaite
Providing shelter in East African cities: what works? – Diane Archer
Getting Lebanon’s water flowing: using new SDG data in an urban crisis – Anna Walnycki
VII. Twitter
To receive news about Environment and Urbanization and urban issues in general, including updates when new Book Notes are available, please follow editor David Satterthwaite on Twitter:
The journal’s Twitter handle is
VIII. Facebook
You can visit us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/EnvironmentandUrbanization.
IX. Email Newsletters
The urban newsletter of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) is e-mailed to subscribers every two months and provides updates on the Human Settlements Group’s activities and publications. To sign up to receive the newsletter, please visit http://www.iied.org/sign-up.
You can sign up to receive announcements about new Environment and Urbanization articles at http://journals.sagepub.com/home/eau.
X. Special Issue on China
In November 2017, Environment and Urbanization produced a virtual special issue on Chinese urbanization. This collects key past papers on China, and includes a new editorial on “Governance reforms to address environmental and urbanization challenges in China”, authored by Bingqin Li.
All of these papers can be accessed at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/eau/collections/china.
XI. Papers on Climate Change
A compilation of the abstracts and details of more than 90 papers published in Environment and Urbanization on climate change and cities, or on issues of risk that have relevance to climate change, is available at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/eau/collections/climate-change-papers.
XII. Engaging Readers in Book Notes
Our Book Notes section has short summaries of new publications (including working papers and books) that we prepare. We invite you to send us short summaries of new publications you have read that you found interesting – and relevant to urban issues. This includes summaries in English of works published in Spanish, French or Portuguese. Authors may submit summaries too, but not promotional material. You can send these summaries to
For more details, including guidance on preparing book notes, see https://www.environmentandurbanization.org/browse-book-notes.