This is the flagship report of the UNFPA. 'In 2008, the world reaches an invisible but momentous milestone: For the first time in history, more than half its human population, 3.3 billion people, will be living in urban areas. By 2030, this is expected to swell to almost 5 billion. Many of the new urbanites will be poor. Their future, the future of cities in developing countries, the future of humanity itself, all depend very much on decisions made now in preparation for this growth.

While th more...

New York, 21-23 January 2008, the Expert Group Meeting will bring together the specialists in various aspects of the urbanization process to present and discuss recent research on the following topics in different regions and countries: the planning and governance of Asia’s mega-urban regions; peri-urban growth in Latin America; spatial distribution and internal migration in Latin America; cities in transition and its effect on development; changing nature of urban and rural areas in the UK a more...

After nearly two decades, the Urban Management Programme, which was operational from 1986 to 2006, has handed over to its partners at the regional, national and local levels. During those years, UMP was one of the largest global technical assistance programmes in the urban sector. A joint undertaking of UN-HABITAT, UNDP, the World Bank, and many bilateral donor agencies, its goal was to strengthen the contribution that cities and towns in developing countries make towards economic growth, social more...

Over the past decade, Africa has recorded an average growth rate of 5.4 percent. It appears to have learned to trade more effectively with the rest of the world, to rely more on the private sector, and to avoid the very serious collapses in economic growth that characterized the 1970s, 1980s and even the early 1990s. Increasing oil prices have helped Africa's seven biggest oil economies, which are home to 27.7 percent of the continent's population. Rising prices of precious metals and other comm more...

The fourth Global Environment Outlook: environment for development (GEO-4) assessment is a comprehensive and authoritative UN report on environment, development and human well-being, providing incisive analysis and information for decision making. It has found that water, land, air, plants, animals and fish are all in "inexorable decline". More than 2 million people are possibly dying prematurely of air pollution, and close to 2 billion are likely to suffer absolute water scarcity by 2025. Put b more...

"Population ageing and urbanization are two global trends that together comprise major forces shaping the 21st century. At the same time as cities are growing, their share of residents aged 60 years and more is increasing. Older people are a resource for their families, communities and economies in supportive and enabling living environments. WHO regards active ageing as a lifelong process shaped by several factors that, alone and acting together, favour health, participation and security in old more...

Full-title: Characteristics of Urban Regions and All-Cause Mortality in Working-Age Population: Effects of Social Environment and Interactions with Individual Unemployment. "Using Finnish register data on individuals linked to information on urban regions, this study aimed to estimate the effects of some regional characteristics on all-cause mortality among working-age population in 1995-2001, and to find out whether these effects are different among those long-term unemployed than among others. more...

The human population has lived a rural lifestyle through most of history. The world's population, however, is quickly becoming urbanized as people migrate to the cities. In 1950, less than 30% of the world's population lived in cities. This number grew to 47% in the year 2000 (2.8 billion people), and it is expected to grow to 60% by the year 2025...
[University of Michigan, Global Change Program]

This gallery of 40 winning entries from the 2007 international photo and video contest showcases the intricate link between the environment and public health. This year the focus of the annual contest was on health and environment, as part of WHO's efforts to raise awareness about the importance of healthier environments.

The 2007 entries include positive images that highlight the beneficial effects of safe and healthy environments: children playing in healthy, supportive and enabling environ more...

With ever greater numbers of people on the move in search of jobs and opportunities in the Mekong River region, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has unveiled a series animated videos to inform and warn migrant workers about the risk of HIV/AIDS. The videos - developed especially for use in Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos - target young people from rural villages, who usually have scant knowledge of HIV as they set out in search of a better life in booming industri more...