Sustainable Human Settlements: The Asian Experience

Sustainability of human settlements has become a matter of global concern. Accordingly, in the two international, conferences (habitat I in 1976 and habitat II in 1996), the issues and problems being faced by the world community were duly underlined for consideration of various governments, professionals, researchers and other partners. Despite various efforts made so far, desired respite to human settlements could not be made available and this fact is more pronounced in the case of Asian segment of the world. The present volume comprises papers presented by researchers, academicians, city planners, administrators, politicians and NGOs from countries like Australia, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Japan, The Netherlands and India at the International Conference on habitat agenda and human settlements in South and Southeast Asia in the 21 century. It consists of five sections dealing with planning for sustainable urban settlements, urban poverty, social segregation, gender in human settlements and the migration and human settlements. All these sections together present a varied picture of the problems and issues related with the functioning and performance of human settlements. The analysis so presented shall go a long way to facilitate the custodians of human settlements for preparing themselves to face the challenges of the new millennium.