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Rapid urbanization in the global South is adding epidemiological and nutritional challenges and increasing disease and health burdens for citizens. Greater movement of people, animals, food and trade often provides favourable grounds for the emergence of infectious diseases, including zoonoses. We conduct a rapid evidence scan to explore what is known and hypothesized about the links between urbanization and zoonosis emergence. This points to rapid demographic growth, migration and density, increased movement of people and animals, and changes in land uses as the main processes linked to the prevalence of zoonosis in the urban global South. We argue that this emerging global health challenge is also deeply connected with the urbanization of poverty and inequalities within cities. Tackling the micro-level causal relationships between urbanization and zoonosis requires urgent attention to living conditions, as well as the wider socioenvironmental transitions and structural drivers that produce and reproduce risk accumulation in urban settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the consolidation of democratic governments in the 1980s and 1990s, wholesale evictions of entire neighbourhoods ceased to be a solution to urban problems in Latin America. This paper discusses an example of a new generation of municipal programmes aimed at physically upgrading informal settlements while integrating them both physically and socially into the fabric of the city. In Medellín, a city with a recent history of violence and social inequality, the audacious use of well-established ski-slope aerial cable-car technology in dense and hilly low-income informal settlements was followed by major neighbourhood upgrading comprising new social housing, schools and other social infrastructure, as well as support to micro-enterprises. Although lack of mobility contributes to social inequality and poverty, the paper argues that the introduction of quick-fix highly visible transport technology on its own is unlikely to help reduce poverty. Although urban upgrading programmes and the symbolic value of cable-car systems have instilled among the local population a feeling of inclusion and integration into the ‘modern’ city, they can also be understood as mechanisms for the ‘normalisation’ of informal sectors of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper presents preliminary results from an on-going research project on the governance of water and sanitation services in the PUI of five metropolitan areas in three continents. It explores differences and similarities in the formal and informal practices in the delivery and consumption of these services. It deals with issues of access to decision-making, exploring the role that different actors, including state institutions, play in the political process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past decade, the political culture of Bogota's citizens has undergone a major transformation. Whilst during decades the inhabitants of the Colombian capital could barely hope to be taken into account by the city's mayors in their administration, today most citizens will expect to see the effect of their vote and at least some of their aspirations in the actions of the head of the local government. In this article we review the work of the city's mayors in the four decades between 1961 and 2000. Our aim is to reflect on the main factors that helped shape the administration of the 21 mayors who held office during that period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on an analysis of the improvement of health outcomes through modification of the physical design of towns and cities by the commission of University College London, England. It discusses the role of urban planning in the delivering of health improvements. The Commission started off from the premise that cities are complex systems hence urban health outcomes depend on many interplays.