Posts tagged with 'inequality'
As the world reels from the COVID-19 pandemic, investment packages are taking shape to provide relief and recovery. Cities from New York to Nairobi are not only on the frontlines of the health and economic impacts, but they provide immense ...
Inequality is shaping how people are experiencing COVID-19 in cities to a startling degree. The vulnerability of the urban poor is striking everywhere, but the divide is more visible in some places than others. This is where I live on ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a disruptive new normal for everyone through shelter-in-place orders and social distancing guidelines. But for the billions of urban poor, these guidelines aren’t just burdensome; they’re essentially impossible. Social distancing is a critically important response ...
As the coronavirus crisis spreads throughout the world, it is increasingly clear that people with the least access to essential services like water will feel the most dramatic effects. Major health organizations advise washing hands more frequently – for at least ...
“Acknowledgement, voice and the right to negotiate” – that’s what’s needed to bring the world’s urban poor back into the system and begin creating cities that work for everyone, said Sheela Patel, chair of Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI), at the 10th ...
As thousands of urban leaders gather in Abu Dhabi for the World Urban Forum, the impacts of the climate crisis on cities have become more visible than ever. Severe floods tore through Jakarta last month. Heatwaves scorched cities from India to Europe last year. ...
California is home to 7 of the 10 most polluted metropolitan areas in the United States, with transportation being the state’s leading source of greenhouse gases. While pollution from the transport sector is bad for everyone, it disproportionately impacts people ...
In the 21st century, a seemingly global prosperity masks an unequal distribution of benefits. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the world’s cities, where extreme wealth can exist next door to concentrated poverty. In some cities, like those in South Africa, ...
The world was not kind to the environment over the past decade, the warmest in recorded history. Superstorm Sandy caused more than $70 billion of damages in the United States. Cities like Cape Town, South Africa, nearly ran out of water. Record floods killed ...
Chile withdrew as host of this year’s UN climate conference amid widespread unrest, but that doesn’t mean that fighting climate change should be pushed into second place behind addressing social inequality. On the contrary, the situation in Chile shows all countries that the social and climate ...
At least 17 people have been killed, hundreds more injured, and thousands arrested in what is Chile’s most severe period of civil unrest in years. While President Sebastian Piñera reversed the Santiago Metro fare hikes that initially triggered outcry, protests ...
The narrative about global inequality and poverty often focuses on rural areas in the global south, with a heavy emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. But the reality is that poverty is becoming more concentrated in cities across the ...
In Mexico City, someone living in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods has 28 times better access to jobs in a 30-minute trip by public transit and walking than someone living in the poorest areas. Twenty-eight times. And this says nothing ...
Imagine Lagos, Nigeria, a city of 22 million. What was once a small coastal town just a few decades ago has exploded into a sprawling megacity spanning 452 square miles. Its rapid growth has stretched the city’s services impossibly thin: ...
While most cities around the world struggle with inequality, in Johannesburg, South Africa, the challenge is compounded by the legacy of apartheid. In the apartheid era, black populations were relocated to the poorly serviced areas far away from job opportunities. ...