Abstract
I. MISSION STATEMENT
II. THEMES FOR FUTURE ISSUES
III. DISCOUNTED PRICES AND ELECTRONIC ACCESS TO E&U
IV. SISTER JOURNALS
V. BLOGS
VI. SOCIAL MEDIA
VII. EMAIL NEWSLETTER
VIII. ENGAGING READERS IN BOOK NOTES
IX. E&U BRIEFS
I. Mission Statement
Environment and Urbanization (E&U) seeks to advance a more socially just and environmentally sustainable urban world through the provision of knowledge. Our focus is the global South, where an estimated one in three of the urban population live in informal settlements and where more than half work within the informal economy. UN projections suggest that almost all the world’s growth in population in the next few decades will be in urban centres in the global South.
Contributors to E&U include those engaging with critical social science to add theoretical and conceptual insights, those reporting innovative empirical findings that augment our understanding of context and solutions (and their significance for theories and concepts), and those able to share the voices of activist representative groups and movements that are rarely seen in the scholarly literature. In other words, our journal aims both to advance social justice and be the change we strive for by encouraging contributions that share the perspectives of disadvantaged and marginalized groups.
E&U particularly encourages researchers, NGO staff, professionals and activists in Africa, Asia and Latin America to write about their work, present their ideas and debate issues. We promote the work of French-, Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking authors by arranging for the translation of their work into English.
Papers commonly deal with poverty, inequality, and the power relations underpinning both disadvantage and transformation. Papers also report on trends, policies, programmes and practices related to urbanization, urban development and urban environments. We are concerned with processes of progressive change, while recognizing that these are contested, and that change is neither uni-linear nor necessarily progressive. Urbanization processes are often poorly understood, and papers that contribute insights supporting an accurate understanding of grounded realities are important to us. We recognize that sustainable development, including needed responses to climate change, is critical to both current and future populations, and that ecosystems have a critical role in the wellbeing of urban populations and the resilience of their cities. We encourage contributions related to such themes.
II. Themes For Future Issues
The need for citizen participation in local planning processes has long been recognized. Such involvement is essential both for equitable democratic citizenship and for effective interventions that recognize and respond to everyday lived realities. This is true of very localized efforts to replan and redevelop neighbourhoods, as well as larger-scale efforts such as in Epworth, Zimbabwe (Chitekwe-Biti et al., 2012). While there have been multiple efforts across towns and cities of the global North and global South, there have been too few initiatives that have expanded or grown upwards and outwards to address the scale and depth of need of those at the city scale, be it through citizen-generated engagements (Boonyabancha et al., 2012) or participatory budgeting (Cabannes, 2014).
Participatory planning and development for informal settlements is particularly important. The significance of informal settlements as a home for many of the lowest-income and most disadvantaged urban citizens is already substantive and is expected to increase. The construction, upgrading and transformation of dwelling and infrastructural solutions in deprived and marginalized settlements is a critical challenge for government agencies.
Faced with considerable state neglect, neighbourhood organizations, social movements and NGOs are consolidating alliances and federations to reclaim the capacity to modify their living environments as a collective right.
The organization of these collectives has led – in at least some contexts – to the reconsideration of the ways in which both the state and residents engage in the production, arrangement and distribution of infrastructural networks and service provision (Watson, 2014). Beyond expansive forms of participation and decentralization strategies, emerging practices have captured the emergence of “deeper forms of democracy” (Appadurai, 2001), where urban alliances and federations mobilize their collective power to co-produce or co-construct infrastructural and dwelling solutions with greater degrees of autonomy (Mitlin, 2008). Through the dissemination of different technologies for self-enumeration and collective mappings, many organizations are democratizing access to technical knowledge and consolidating their bargaining position, while questioning the monopoly held by state agencies and private developers over the use of planning and regulatory frameworks (Patel, 2013). At the same time, the “bottom-up” co-production of informal settlement upgrading is problematizing the role of design and planning professionals (Frediani and Boano, 2012). New professional roles and practices have emerged through their active engagement – as equals – with organized communities, although this requires that new challenges are recognized (Mitlin et al., 2019).
However, considerable challenges remain. What do recent experiences add to our understanding about how and in what form participation can be scaling upwards and outwards? Specifically, what are the bottom-up processes that can be catalysed at the community level and grow in scale? What is the relationship of participation to democracy and political inclusion? What are the key challenges that remain in terms of participatory practices? How can both academics and professionals address past deficiencies and secure more accountable processes and knowledge democracy? What are the lessons from the experiences of the slum/ shack dweller federations in widening the space for their participation? (An example is the importance of resident organizations, and of making local governments see them as valuable partners and of showing the viability of alternative approaches to bulldozing.)
This issue of Environment and Urbanization is looking for papers that address these and other relevant issues. For example, can we explore, through practical examinations, the relation between popular participation and the process of scaling? A second example is how we can understand the construction, provision and administration of infrastructures for informal settlements as a critical political terrain and a domain from where to explore new forms of popular participation.
2021 is a significant year for advancing global action on key environmental issues with three major COPs: on biodiversity (CBD), climate (UNFCCC) and desertification (UNCCD). These international moments are highly relevant for cities, which all – irrespective of population size, income levels or cultural characteristics – ultimately depend on ecosystem services for human survival.
Although urbanization offers opportunities to use land, energy and materials more efficiently, the higher densities and rising incomes associated with urbanization too often drive environmental degradation. Sometimes the impacts are felt within metropolitan boundaries; sometimes they fall on far-flung habitats and communities. Cities are consequently associated with a wide range of environmental challenges including air pollution; pollution of inland and coastal waters; depletion of natural resources; land-use change; loss of species and ecosystems; ocean acidification; and impacts on global climate change. These create major negative impacts on the health of urban residents, ecosystems in and around cities, and global systems.
We hope that 2021 will also be a year in which governments are able to move beyond the immediate health and economic emergencies associated with COVID-19. One question to consider is whether the pandemic has enabled the resetting of trends that are damaging ecosystems on which urban centres depend. Equally there are questions about the implications for the dynamics of urbanization and hence the environmental costs of agglomeration.
Drawing on an anticipated wealth of substantive evidence and informed debate, we intend that the first issue of 2022 will enable Environment and Urbanization to share relevant papers with our readers. We are interested in papers that have sought to contribute to these debates, as well as those that reflect on the quality of policy debates and the result of transnational governance processes.
*We recognize that the latest (2019) Global Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) uses the term “Nature’s Contributions to People” (NCP) rather than “ecosystem services”, as the former is more encompassing of the role of culture in linking people to nature. However, we believe that “ecosystem services” remains more widely recognized and therefore we use this term.
The challenges of urban inequality have long been recognized. Growing concern about national and global inequalities has been accompanied by an acknowledgement of the multidimensional aspects of inequality that are particularly severe in urban areas. Spatial, political, economic and social disadvantage combines to deny individuals their right to safe and meaningful lives. The Sustainable Development Goals and UN-Habitat’s New Urban Agenda recognize that addressing growing inequality has to be a priority for local and national governments, and these global agendas are working alongside local efforts to support urban transformation.
This issue will include papers that advance our understanding of inequality and how it can be addressed. We will draw on the research programme “Knowledge in Action for Urban Inequality” (KNOW), funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).
III. 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 E&U 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 E&U (http://www.unep.org/oare).
IV. Sister Journals
The last 30 issues of Medio Ambiente y Urbanización (MAyU), published by IIEDAmérica Latina, are accessible at no charge at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iieal/meda. Urbanisation, co-published by SAGE and the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, is available at http://urbanisationjournal.com.
V. Blogs
Recent Urban Matters blogs (http://www.iied.org/urban-matters):
Bridging the gap: how women-led federations are strengthening communities in Patna’s informal settlements – Smriti Singh
City residents and urban refugees: from shared living to shared futures – Lucy Earle
Rubbish dump turned lush urban farm – Supawut Boonmahathanakorn
Outside the large cities – David Satterthwaite
Urban flooding: the case of Karachi – Arif Hasan
Call to international funders: address grassroots organisations’ priorities, not yours – Sheela Patel
Getting housing back on the development agenda in the time of COVID-19 – David Satterthwaite
Disability, inclusion and cities: can COVID-19 trigger change? – Ignacia Ossul-Vermehren
How regional and national capital cities influence urban change – David Satterthwaite
COVID-19 highlights three pathways to achieve urban health and environmental justice – Isabelle Anguelovski
Lima’s community-organised soup kitchens are a lifeline during COVID-19 – Pamela Hartley Pinto
Alada Ghor: working with low-income communities to design a rapid response to COVID-19 – Emerald Upoma Baidya
Bringing urban refugees into local planning – Lucy Earle
VI. Social Media
To receive news about Environment and Urbanization and urban issues in general, including updates when new Book Notes are available, please follow the journal on Twitter at @EandUjournal. Also on Twitter are editor-in-chief Diana Mitlin @DianaMitlin and editor David Satterthwaite @Dsatterthwaite.
You can visit and follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/EnvironmentandUrbanization.
Our LinkedIn page is https://www.linkedin.com/company/environment-and-urbanization.
VII. Email Newsletter
The urban newsletter of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) is emailed to subscribers several times a year 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 email alerts about new Environment and Urbanization articles at http://journals.sagepub.com/home/eau.
VIII. 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 other languages. Authors may submit summaries too, but not promotional material. You can send these summaries to
IX. E&U Briefs
An Environment and Urbanization Brief is a five-page summary of the editorial from each issue. During the COVID-19 pandemic we are not mailing out printed copies of the Briefs; we invite you to access them online at https://www.environmentandurbanization.org/eu-briefs.