In-depth: Tomorrow’s Crises Today: The Humanitarian Impact of Urbanisation
GLOBAL: Introduction
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) - 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 monsters stir
Hostages to Governance: life for the city-bound poor
Urban Conflict - fighting for resources in the slums
FRONTLINE REPORTS 
| Water and Health in the City |
more |
NEPAL: Impoverished urban squatters face high risk of poor health
ZIMBABWE: Greater centralisation threatens city's water supplies
IRAQ: Insecurity and lack of funds prevent cleansing of polluted sites
GLOBAL: Health, environment threatened by future urban growth
| Employment and Food Security |
more |
SIERRA LEONE: “An idle mind is a devil’s workshop”
NIGER: Teacher strikes and student protests “jeopardising”education
Ancilla Riziki: “We live on rich people’s garbage”
ZIMBABWE: Poor quality garbage tells a tale
SWAZILAND: Hard times raise levels of abuse
Alaa al-Bouz, Beirut, “I was taken to an orphanage when I was too young to even remember"
UGANDA: Glum HIV/AIDS outlook for Kampala's slum dwellers
ETHIOPIA: Urban farming boosts families affected by HIV
| Housing, Land and Governance |
more |
PAKISTAN: Cities teem with homeless, vulnerable people
EGYPT: Locals help transform their shanty town
SOUTH AFRICA:Winter freeze highlights homeless crisis
IRAQ: Drug abuse among children on the rise
| Natural Disasters and the Environment |
more |
IRAQ: River Tigris becoming a graveyard of bodies
KENYA: Earthquake scare highlights emergency response weaknesses
NEPAL: Densely-populated Kathmandu facing increased earthquake risk
NIGERIA: Chlorine gas from water plant kills three in southeast
| Violence in the City |
more |
OPT: Gaza violence hampering aid deliveries, say humanitarian workers
GUINEA: Soldiers continue looting after president concedes to demands
MOZAMBIQUE: Lynchings symptom of state failure
PAKISTAN: Karachi violence stokes renewed ethnic tension
| Latest Urban Risk reports |
more |
cj/cmh/mw