A Portal on Sustainability

General Information

04.05.2005 · Research Group on the Global Future

Grades of urban population in the UN Human Development Report.

The world's cities are growing by one million people each week. The majority of this growth has occurred in cities in the developing countries of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. On issues of urbanization in Asia the IISD offers a wide range of information and reports on what APEC is doing to find sustainable solutions to urbanization-related problems.

If cities are to continue to be engines of economic growth, as they have been throughout large parts of human history, their future development has to be based on considerations that are environmentally sound.

Read Klaus Töpfer's explanations and suggestions for making cities sustainable in his article "Cities: our common future", published in a special edition of Our planet magazine on human settlement.

To get an image of issues for a sustainable human settlement development read chapter 7 of Agenda21.

Urban Age
A worldwide series of conferences on the future of cities.

City development strategies from the Cities Alliance.
A city development strategy supports cities in critical decision making processes and is focused on implementation. It is an action-plan for equitable growth in cities and their surrounding regions, developed and sustained through participation, to improve the quality of life for all citizens.

European Rural Development (ERD)
Rural areas account for more than 80% of the territory of the European Union and are home to some 25% of the population. While urban people often believe rural areas would be just farms and forests, the reality is quite different. Rural areas in Europe are characterized by extremely diverse physical environments, a broad range of economic activities, unique social networks and century-old cultural traditions.
Read a detailed Project Description.