STWR - Share The World's Resources

Conventional thinking on development issues is often characterised by many assumptions, clichés and rationalisations about the residents of slums. In challenging some of these core myths, we can focus on the structural causes of urban poverty that result in the rapid growth of informal settlements, writes Adam Parsons.

It may seem that the goal of universal primary health care - in which state capacities are strengthened to ensure the rapid expansion of free publicly-provided health services - is further away than ever before. But there are many signs that the ideal of 'health for all' is making a second resurgence, writes Adam Parsons.

While the United Nations recently claimed victory for the Millennium Development Goal on slums, the global population of slum-dwellers continues to grow. It is time for governments and civil society to give the problem of urban poverty the attention it deserves, writes Adam Parsons.

The emergence of a significant middle class – who demand increasing space for their accommodation – means that the urban poor are everywhere being constricted to a decreasing proportion of land. In these city spaces they exist as a ‘fugitive humanity’, writes Jeremy Seabrook.

While the healthcare debate rages in the US, a broader discussion has been renewed on the international stage that envisions the universal goal of "health for all". The time is ripe for a global civil society movement to turn this vision into an international priority, writes Adam Parsons.

A densely populated civilisation is not possible to sustain without greatly reducing the waste generation, overcoming the commercial exploitation of urban land, and addressing the grotesque discontinuities we observe in our urban centres today, writes Mahbubur Rahman.

Michael Moore’s film, 'Sicko', dramatically illustrated how problems in access to health care in the United States have escalated to the point of a crisis for all but the richest Americans.