Tous les articles et traductions

Situated in western Nigeria, some 70 kilometers (113 miles) east of Nigeria’s commercial city of Lagos, Oluwa Forest Reserve is facing severe pressure from smallholder farmers and big plantations.

Face aux politiques néolibérales, quel rôle les Communs peuvent-ils jouer ? Des citoyens en Grèce d’abord puis à Istanbul ont décidé d’explorer cette question en cartographiant les Communs. Les cartes en ligne et les vidéos rendent visibles les expériences qui soutiennent la vie quotidienne des (…)

An innovative new approach to Mumbai’s open spaces is an extensive mapping survey. The same approach can be used in other cities too. Darryl D’Monte reports.
The preoccupation with providing residential and commercial real estate in this country’s cities has led to the severe neglect of open (…)

Dhaka’s latest slum demolition shows the full scale of the Bangladeshi government’s callousness and ineptitude.
The summer heat is scorching but it does not impede the regular bustle of Korail, one of the largest slums of Dhaka, a city where an estimated quarter of the 16 million inhabitants (…)

By M. Ramachandran, OUP, New Delhi, November 2011, 195 pages, £ 19.99
The metro rail system introduced in major Indian cities in recent years has resulted in significant improvements in the country’s transportation infrastructure and intra-city connectivity. This first-of-its-kind study maps (…)

As the most significant region yet to be urbanised, India presents a unique opportunity for capturing impacts of urbanisation on the spatial dimension, writes Madhav Pai.
India will be the one of the last major countries in the world to experience the urbanization of its population. In 2001, (…)

Census 2011, which reports a higher growth of urban population than rural as millions give up farming, does not record footloose migration, which drives desperate people to search for work in multiple directions with no clear destination. This is a giant drama that we have not even begun to (…)

This article is part of a special issue on water and water privatisation in Africa produced as a joint initiative of the Transnational Institute, Ritimo and Pambazuka News. This special issue is also being published in French.
Access to running water remains in a state of crisis for a huge (…)

In Greater Noida, farmers resist fiercely attempts to take over their land for the Yamuna expressway and a hi-tech city.
IT is a tale of two worlds, one in the present and the other in the future; one living and breathing and toiling away in parts of the National Capital Region and the other (…)

Ask Chennai’s (Madras’) fisherfolk and they will tell you that the road to hell is built on stilts. Various Central and state government agencies plan to construct three controversial expressways on stilts in the coastal city. These roads will displace more than 1 lakh people — mostly urban poor (…)

Creating a new kind of economy is crucial if we want to tackle climate change and avoid the mounting social problems associated with the rise of economic inequality. The Great Transition provides the first comprehensive blueprint for building an economy based on stability, sustainability and (…)

“WE are only ‘pinching’ the Sabarmati over a 10-kilometre stretch as it passes through the centre of Ahmedabad,” explains Bimal Patel, consultant to the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), which has conceived and initiated the controversial Sabarmati Riverfront Development Project. “We (…)

Few South Africans realise the power of Co-operatives in the global economy. Canada, Norway, Italy, India, China and Brazil each have a significant amount of their GDP generated by Co-operative organisations. One in four citizens in the USA and Germany are members of Co-ops. Even though our (…)

"China has made remarkable economic and social progress over the past three decades, lifting several hundred millions out of poverty, and food security benefited significantly from this overall progress. However, the shrinking of arable land and the massive land degradation threatens the ability (…)

This report speaks to the heart of what local government is about: supporting a better life for people and helping to build resilient communities, now and over the longer term. This report presents the findings of a project commissioned Local Government Improvement and Development and the (…)

Access to cheap energy made us rich, wrecked our climate and left us lonely, explains Bill McKibben. Read more

Across the U.S., independent business groups that have been urging people to "buy local" are now making "bank local" an increasingly prominent part of their message, bringing new grassroots visibility and organizational infrastructure to the Move Your Money movement. Read more

Inder Sidhu travels to a remote Rajasthan village where rural African women are learning new skills to transform their lives back home. The Barefoot College NGO’s ‘solar engineer’ programme teaches semi-literate and illiterate women from the continent’s rural communities how to build and (…)

The world’s public health policy-makers should focus on urban health problems, since for the last three years the majority of the planet’s population is living in cities, World Health Organisation (WHO) experts say. Read more

Metro projects can ease congestion. But lack of integrated planning is undoing the benefits of this mass transport system. Nidhi Jamwal and Ankur Paliwal report. Read more