Lecture

Urbanization and Poverty: Challenges and Interventions

Graph Chat

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.

Description

This lecture discusses the rapid urban growth in Africa, the high levels of urban poverty, and the challenges faced in informal settlements. It covers factors contributing to urban development, such as demographic changes, urban planning issues, and socio-economic factors. The lecture also explores complex intervention contexts in precarious neighborhoods, emphasizing the need for spatially concentrated, sector-specific, and participatory interventions. It highlights the importance of adapting interventions to residents' capacities, using appropriate techniques, and ensuring land security. The session concludes with key lessons learned from interventions in African cities.

Official source

Related concepts (32)

Urban planning

Urban planning, also known as town planning, city planning, regional planning, or rural planning, is a technical and political process that is focused on the development and design of land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportation, communications, and distribution networks and their accessibility.

Urban sprawl

Urban sprawl (also known as suburban sprawl or urban encroachment) is defined as "the spreading of urban developments (such as houses and shopping centers) on undeveloped land near a city". Urban sprawl has been described as the unrestricted growth in many urban areas of housing, commercial development, and roads over large expanses of land, with little concern for urban planning. In addition to describing a special form of urbanization, the term also relates to the social and environmental consequences associated with this development.

Smart growth

Smart growth is an urban planning and transportation theory that concentrates growth in compact walkable urban centers to avoid sprawl. It also advocates compact, transit-oriented, walkable, bicycle-friendly land use, including neighborhood schools, complete streets, and mixed-use development with a range of housing choices. The term "smart growth" is particularly used in North America.

Urbanization

Urbanization (or urbanisation) is the population shift from rural to urban areas, the corresponding decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. It can also mean population growth in urban areas instead of rural ones. It is predominantly the process by which towns and cities are formed and become larger as more people begin living and working in central areas. Urbanization is often responsible for the myriad of modern problems facing humanity.

Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both aspects. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surface area. With billion people as of , it accounts for about of the world's human population. Africa's population is the youngest amongst all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4.

Related lectures (64)

Urban Restructuring in African Cities

Explores the consensus, objectives, challenges, and key issues in restructuring African urban areas.

African Urbanization: Informal Settlements Restructuring

Delves into the genesis and extent of informal settlements restructuring in African cities, discussing demographic transition, urban attractiveness, and governance weaknesses.

Urbanization Tools and Methods in Africa

Explores sustainable urbanization in Africa through the reconstruction of a major market in Bouaké, focusing on stakeholder involvement and functional programming.

Urban Planning in African Cities MOOC: African cities I, An introduction to urban planning

Introduces urban planning in African cities, covering global urbanization, challenges, and the importance of sustainable development.

Urban Development in Africa MOOC: African Cities III, urban planning and management