Coping in their own way: Asian cities and the problem of fires

Urban History ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lionel Frost
Keyword(s):  
Population Growth ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Third World ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Rapid Population Growth ◽  
World Cities ◽  
Economic Significance ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Asian Cities ◽  
The Future

The debate about the ability of Third World cities today and in the future to cope with rapid population growth has taken place with virtually no reference to urban history. This article seeks to remedy that, examining how three of Asia's largest cities during the pre-modern period coped with the problem of major fires. It examines the nature of the problem, its causes and its economic significance. The article concludes by considering the implications of this history for the current debate.

New Urban Agenda challenges developing cities

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Rapid Population Growth ◽  
World Cities ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Civil Society Organisations ◽  
Developing Cities ◽  
Armed Violence ◽  
New Urban Agenda

Subject The UN's New Urban Agenda. Significance The New Urban Agenda, a set of urban development guidelines, was agreed by official representatives from 167 countries at the UN’s Habitat III conference in Quito, Ecuador, on October 20. Although not legally binding, the new document was unanimously agreed not only by governments but also by civil society organisations and international bodies. It sets out ambitious aims for global urbanisation during the next two decades, amid rapid population growth in developing-world cities. Impacts Habitat III wants city halls to improve incentives for PPPs, but also for businesses to share the costs of investments that benefit them. The focus on security and armed violence may increase the urgency to develop municipal crime and terrorism policies. Rapidly urbanising countries will face pressure to address the guidelines in emerging urbanisation plans.

An International Environmental Regime for Population?: From Bucharest to Cairo

Politics ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-101
Author(s):  
Richard Dodgson ◽  
Tim Gray
Keyword(s):  
Population Growth ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
International Community ◽  
International Regime ◽  
Rapid Population Growth ◽  
Environmental Regime ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Sense Of Urgency

The problem of over population has been the subject of much debate since Malthus's ‘Essay on the Principle of Population’ in 1798. This debate has taken on a new sense of urgency, however, during the last 25 years, as the global implications of rapid population growth have became apparent. Attempts by the international community to establish a regime to deal with the problem have led to the convening of three conferences, Bucharest (1974), Mexico City (1984) and Cairo (1994). But despite propitious signs of consensus during the run up periods to each of these conferences, no international regime has been created This article examines the reasons for both the initial consensus and the eventual dissensus in each case, and concludes that several pre-conditions must be met if a regime is to be established in the future.

Alkohol im Tank – Bio-Kraftstoffe und die Grenzen moderner Mobilität

2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (136) ◽  
pp. 455-468
Author(s):  
Hartwig Berger
Keyword(s):  
Third World ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Energy Resources ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
The Future ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Food Market ◽  
The One ◽  
The Third World

The article discusses the future of mobility in the light of energy resources. Fossil fuel will not be available for a long time - not to mention its growing environmental and political conflicts. In analysing the potential of biofuel it is argued that the high demands of modern mobility can hardly be fulfilled in the future. Furthermore, the change into using biofuel will probably lead to increasing conflicts between the fuel market and the food market, as well as to conflicts with regional agricultural networks in the third world. Petrol imperialism might be replaced by bio imperialism. Therefore, mobility on a solar base pursues a double strategy of raising efficiency on the one hand and strongly reducing mobility itself on the other.

Catholicism and Cosmopolitanism: the Confluence of Three Catholic Scholars and the Cosmopolitan Democrats on State Sovereignty and the Future of Global Governance

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-51
Author(s):  
Matthew Bagot
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Jacques Maritain ◽  
The Past ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The Future ◽  
Cosmopolitan Democracy ◽  
Catholic Tradition

One of the central questions in international relations today is how we should conceive of state sovereignty. The notion of sovereignty—’supreme authority within a territory’, as Daniel Philpott defines it—emerged after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 as a result of which the late medieval crisis of pluralism was settled. But recent changes in the international order, such as technological advances that have spurred globalization and the emerging norm of the Responsibility to Protect, have cast the notion of sovereignty into an unclear light. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the current debate regarding sovereignty by exploring two schools of thought on the matter: first, three Catholic scholars from the past century—Luigi Sturzo, Jacques Maritain, and John Courtney Murray, S.J.—taken as representative of Catholic tradition; second, a number of contemporary political theorists of cosmopolitan democracy. The paper argues that there is a confluence between the Catholic thinkers and the cosmopolitan democrats regarding their understanding of state sovereignty and that, taken together, the two schools have much to contribute not only to our current understanding of sovereignty, but also to the future of global governance.

The Issue of Sustainability in Third World Food Production (The Distinguishedl Lecture)

1992 ◽  
Vol 31 (4I) ◽  
pp. 511-534
Author(s):  
Winfried Von Urff
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Third World ◽  
Total Population ◽  
Absolute Number ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
World Food ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Difference

In spite of the fact that food production in developing countries doubled over the last 25 years undernutrition is still widely spread. At the beginning of the eighties, according to FAO, 335 to 494 million people in developing countries suffered from serious undernutrition the difference being due to different concepts to determine undernutrition on which scientist were unable to find a consensus.) Unfortunately there is no recent comprehensive analysis of the food situation comparable to those of previous World Food Surveys but it can be taken for sure that the absolute number of undernourished has increased. According to unofficial FAO sources a figure of 870 million was estimated for 1990 (22 percent of the total population in developing countries) using the same concept that led to the figure of 494 million in 1979-81 (23 percent of the total population in developing countries) which means that most probably the number of undernourished increased at a rate slightly less than population growth.

Reflections into the Spirit of the Islamic Corpus of Knowledge and the Rise of the New Science

1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-164
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Dhaouadi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Third World ◽  
New Physics ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Western Science ◽  
New Science ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Primary Reference

There is no question that contemporary western civilization has beendominant in the field of science since the Renaissance. Western scientificsuperiority is not limited to specific scientific disciplines, but is rather anovetall scientific domination covering both the so-called exact and thehuman-social sciences. Western science is the primary reference for specialistsin such ateas as physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, economics,psychology, and sociology. It is in this sense that Third World underdevelopmentis not only economic, social, and industrial; it also suffersfrom scientific-cultutal underdevelopment, or what we call "The OtherUnderdevelopment" (Dhaouadi 1988).The imptessive progress of western science since Newton and Descartesdoes not meari, however, that it has everything tight or perfect. Infact, its flaws ate becoming mote visible. In the last few decades, westernscience has begun to experience a shift from what is called classical scienceto new science. Classical science was associated with the celestialmechanics of Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, the new physics of Galileo,and the philosophy of Descartes. Descartes introduced a radical divisionbetween mind and matter, while Newton and his fellows presented a newscience that looked at the world as a kind of giant clock The laws of thisworld were time-reversible, for it was held that there was no differencebetween past and future. As the laws were deterministic, both the pastand the future could be predicted once the present was known.The vision of the emerging new science tends to heal the division betweenmatter and spirit and to do away with the mechanical dimension ...

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