The twenty first century has seen a rapid rise of urbanization and consumption, bringing many challenges to cities, including one of the most difficult challenges of our time - climate change. Climate change has exacerbated many natural hazards including storm surges, extreme precipitation, flooding, and sea level rise causing the loss of thousands of lives each year in addition to billions of dollars in damage. Coastal cities are especially at risk due to their vulnerable geographical location and rapid population growth. Cities also face other environmental challenges including earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes; which are often difficult to predict and can test a city’s resilience. This research analyzes the environmental hazards a coastal city may face and discuss the tools planners can use to increase a region’s resilience. Case studies of New Zealand and Vancouver Island, Canada are used to analyze disaster management and resilience strategies.

Dr Debra Roberts of eThekwini Municipality, Durban, South Africa, gives the 2016 Barbara Ward Lecture. She called for more to be done to join the dots between the 'New Urban Agenda', being prepared for Habitat III, and the realities of implementation at the local level.

This profile of the local government system in Antigua and Barbuda is structured to enable easy comparison across the countries of the Commonwealth. The profile includes an overview of the government system, the legal basis for and structure of local government, elections and women’s representation, intergovernmental relations, systems for community involvement, organised local government, intergovernmental relations, monitoring systems, finance, staffing and resources, and distribution of service delivery responsibility. 

This resource guide provides practical guidance for designing, implementing and evaluating decentralisation reforms and local government practices to ensure they are as effective as possible. It also synthesises and presents current debates on the impact of decentralisation and local government on poverty reduction, service delivery and conflict as well as providing links to cutting-edge research and recent case studies.

Although it is now over two decades since the Brundtland Commission report (1987) put sustainable development on the political map, concern continues in Canada that the federal government is failing to adequately implement its own commitments to tackling the ecological challenges posed by rapid urban expansion. Our analysis identifies a number of road blocks, missed opportunities and mistakes that have limited progress and many of these are traced back to the failure of national government to empower local municipal governments, as advocated by Brundtland and subsequent international initiatives, in particular ‘Agenda 21’ which we revisit in some detail as a basis for analysis. As well as reviewing the federal government’s role in Canada, the paper explores the potential for more sustainable urban growth in the context of broader reforms