Word: urbaneness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...city was a flourishing, elegant entrepôt for centuries, but in recent times civic planning has been more haphazard as the population has boomed. Lambert Ramirez, executive director of the National Institute for Policy Studies, a Manila-based think tank, says much of the blame for poor urban management ought to be leveled at the government. "There's no coordinated policy for cleaning up garbage. There's no political will to get even simple things done," he says. Ramirez spoke to TIME while salvaging appliances and valuables from his own flooded home. (See pictures of the recent floods...
...regime succeeded in providing the world's largest population with food to eat, housing and basic services. Social vices were eliminated, literacy was expanded, life expectancy increased and infant mortality decreased. These were no small achievements. But Mao's efforts to impose socialism had a deadening effect on urban and rural society alike, as political movements repeatedly harassed different groups of people...
...With economic growth have come demographic shifts and life improvements. Live expectancy has shot up while infant mortality has plummeted. In 1949 more than 90% of the population lived in rural areas; given the expansion of urban areas, slightly more than half (721 million) do today, according to official statistics. But China's increasing urbanization and spreading industrialization have resulted in a considerable loss of arable land and forcible evictions, sparking much resentment against local officials...
...getting harder to enjoy the show. The rains dramatically illustrate how vulnerable Asia's densely populated coastal cities are to climate change. Breakneck growth and dilapidated infrastructure have already made flooding a fact of life in many cities. Now urban Asia must brace for sea-level rises, tidal surges, extreme weather and other climatic horrors. From ports in China and India to delta populations in Vietnam and Burma, this fast-developing region has most of our planet's urban dwellers - and its most vulnerable cities. Asia is not alone, however. From Mombasa to Miami, climate change imperils 3,351 cities...
...repeat of what happened in center cities in the 1950s and '60s, when abandoned homes helped set off blight. What we really need to do, Leinberger says, is reinvent entire communities as the sorts of places where people want to live. That means building mass transit and urban-style city centers away from the metropolitan core. Finding new, creative uses for McMansions is a start, but the ultimate goal may be to design neighborhoods in which such large houses wouldn't make sense in the first place...