Louise Chawla (2002), Growing up in an Urbanizing World

As the world continues to urbanize, Growing up in an Urbanizing World still remains an extremely relevant text almost a decade after it was first published. Recent reports from the United Nations ' Population Division (2009) show that 3.4bn or half of the world's population now reside in urban areas and 50% of these populations are made up of children. A majority of these children live at the intersections of poverty, rapid urban change, lack of basic services, traditional values, and global trends. The authors in this book embark on engaging children in deeply participatory processes to understand their complex relationships to the places where they live and to improve urban conditions by bringing children's voices to the adult centric arena of urban planning and development.