Approaches to sustainable development in cities of the South have focused too exclusively on narrow technical aspects of environmental protection, with no benefit to most residents in cities and peri-urban areas. However, in many countries of the South the disengagement of government along with budgetary constraints, a reliance on cost-recovery mechanisms within structural adjustment packages and increasing disparity between poor and rich, further reduces access by the poor to even the most rudimentary services. Development and Cities focuses on the political, social and economic viability of new or alternative approaches to urban management in the South that aim to increase access to adequate levels of basic services and healthy living and working conditions for all. Case-studies include cities in Argentina, Cuba, India, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

1) Urban sustainability under threat: the restructuring of the fishing industry in Mar del Plata, Argentina - Adriana Allen;
2) International cooperation in pursuit of sustainable cities - Adrian Atkinson;
3) Learning from informal markets: innovative approaches to land and housing provision - Erhard Berner;
4) Cities for the urban poor in Zimbabwe: urban space as a resource for sustainable development - Alison Brown;
5) Democracy and social participation in Latin American cities - Diego Carrion M.;
6) Urban crisis in India: new initiatives for sustainable cities - P. G. Dhar Chakrabarti;
7) Unsustainable development: the Philippine experience - Karina Constantino-David;
8) Innovations for sustainable development in cities of the South: the Habitat-Cuba approach - Carlos Garcia Pleyan;
9) Sustainable development and democracy in the megacities - Jaime Joseph;
10) Institutionalising the concept of environmental planning and management (EPM): successes and challenges in Dar es Salaam - Wilbard K. Kombe;
11) Institutional innovations for urban infrastructural development: the Indian scenario - Amitabh Kundu;
12) Monitoring megacities: the Murbandy/Moland approach - Carlo Lavalle, Luca Demicheli, Maddalena Turchini, Pilar Casals-Carrasco, and Monika Niederhuber;
13) Sustainable urban development in India: an inclusive perspective - Darshini Mahadevia;
14) Private-public partnership, the compact city, and social housing: best practice for whom? - Fernando Murillo;
15) Residents' associations and information communication technologies: a suggested approach to international action-research - Cesare Ottolini;
16) Lowering the ladder: regulatory frameworks for sustainable development - Geoffrey Payne;
17) Technical versus popular language: some reflections on the vocabulary of urban management in Mexico and Brazil - Helene Riviere d'Arc

Deborah Eade
Deborah Eade was Editor-in-Chief of Development in Practice from 1991 to 2010, prior to which she worked for 10 years in Latin America. She is now an independent writer on development and humanitarian issues, based near Geneva.