Despite growing numbers of international development organisations focused at the municipal level, donors are still reluctant to provide ODA (official development assistance) directly to local governments, a situation which Rowan Fraser argues needs to change.
Drew Reed reports on plans to demolish informal areas in the Argentine capital and replace them with mixed housing and green space projects, and the life of one man at the centre of the struggle against these plans.
In what appears to be a conventional story of resistance to a mall, Yorim Spoelder reaches the conclusion that the middle classes are listened to far more readily than slum residents.
With investment capital scarce after the global financial crisis, the UK's localism agenda is starting to look unaffordable, with campaigns to make all sorts of projects look like NSIPs to attract funding.
The UK Government wants to make it easier to convert offices to residential use, but it runs the risk of turning valuable commercial space into more empty houses.
The planning failures that led to the breakdown of the slum redevelopment program in Bangalore.
Manila's urban landscape is characterised by ineffective government planning alongside strong, ambitious private sector developers. Arguably, the city will only develop economically if the private sector takes over the role of planning the whole metropolis.
Rowan Fraser is an urban development and management specialist, focusing on urban resilience. He works in countries across Asia.
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The Global Urbanist is an online magazine reviewing urban affairs and urban development issues in cities throughout the developed and developing world.
Its readers are drawn from the urban policy and international development sectors, and include urban planners, officers in local, national or international government agencies, civil society leaders, and researchers.
