Durban is unusual among cities worldwide in having a municipal government that has developed a locally rooted climate change adaptation strategy.

The proposal by the West Bengal government to permit multi-storeyed buildings on

Parisian pollution is nothing compared with that of Beijing or Mexico City. Yet Paris, with 11 million people crammed into a region just 20 kilometres across, is to take centre stage in a new research project on the impact of megacities on air pollution. The MEGAPOLI project, which starts next month, will focus on building regional air-pollution models for every city in the world with a population of more than five million. It encompasses 23 research organizations from 11 European countries, along with 24 collaborating partners outside Europe.

As we become an ever more urban species, cities will be a crucial front in the fight against climate change. Scientists, architects and planners must join forces to make our metropolitan future clean and sustainable. (Editorial)

The way cities are created determines our quality of life and forges our behaviour, our values for centuries. If land is saved for a great park it will provide joy to millions for hundreds of years. If park land is not saved but built upon, there will be much less joy in society. Latin American urbanisation is the most recent the world has seen.

The redevelopment and beautification of the capital for the making of a "world-class city' have entailed a heavy cost in terms of slum demolitions. A survey documenting the change of land use that has taken place on the sites of demolished slum clusters highlights the emerging processes and trends. Some of its findings question the stated principle of the Delhi slum policy, namely, the removal and relocation of squatter settlements only when the land is required to implement projects in the "larger public interest'.