GLOBAL: Tomorrow's Crises Today: The Humanitarian Impact of Urbanisation - Overview

Photo: Victoria Hazou/IRIN

A young girl carries a bag of recyclable items she has found while rummaging through piles of rubbish in the neighborhood of Manchiat Nasser, Cairo, Egypt, March 2007.

NAIROBI, 5 September 2007 (IRIN In-Depth) - Somewhere, some time this year, a baby will be born on the 25th floor of a city hospital or the dirt floor of a dark slum shack; a first-year college graduate will rent a cramped apartment in lower Manhattan or a family of five will finally concede their plot of farm land to an encroaching desert - or sea - and turn towards Jakarta or La Paz or Lagos in search of a new livelihood and a new home. The arrival of this family or graduate or baby will tip the world’s demographic scale and, for the first time in history, more than half the human population will live in cities.Full Report

Other Feature Articles
• Drowning in Disaster
• The growth of cities : a thousand
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• Hostages to Governance: life for the city-bound poor

FRONTLINE REPORTS

Water and Health in the City • SENEGAL: Dakar water channel poses potential health hazard • PAKISTAN: Contaminated water a threat to millions in Punjab • KENYA: Kibera, The Forgotten City • AFGHANISTAN: Traditional ecological sanitation system under pressure [ read more]

Employment and Food Security • ZIMBABWE: Necessity spurs urban farming • KENYA: Slum women struggle to put food on the table • NIGERIA: Lagos, the mega-city of slums • EGYPT: Urban poor turn to the street to make a living [ read more]

Sex in the City • ASIA: Opening eyes of migrants to dangers of big cities' embrace • SOUTH AFRICA: Reaching out to women caught in sex industry • KENYA: Too drunk to think - alcohol abuse and HIV • NEPAL: Impoverished Nepalese girls tricked into prostitution [ read more]

Housing, Land and Governance • SYRIA: Squatters in capital struggle for basic services • ZIMBABWE: A year after urban purge conditions for displaced still grim • UGANDA: Gov't relocates 'beggar' pastoralists • LEBANON: Government could do more to tackle child labour [read more]

Natural Disasters and the Environment •  PAKISTAN: Floods kill 40, creating havoc in cities •  AFGHANISTAN: More than 80 killed and thousands displaced by floods and avalanches • MAURITANIA: Urban poor scraping by with little aid • Miraj, Dhaka, “Our house floods every year, but this year was worse” [ read more]

Violence in the City • NIGERIA: Guns, gangs, drugs feed growing delta violence • IRAQ: Baghdad taxi drivers devise new survival tactics • Yves Habonimana, 25: "My legs were sore, my whole body swollen" • KENYA: Security crisis in slum as sect and police clash [ read more]

Latest Reports : Urban Risk