Global urbanization, is it sustainable? The challenge to the UN World Urban Forum in Vancouver, 2006

Abstract

H. Peter OberlanderThe author is Professor Emeritus and founding Director of the Universityof British Columbia's School of Community and Regional Planning. Healso founded the UBC Centre for Human Settlements, Canada's legacyof HABITA T 1 976 Conference. He is currently the Senior Advisor tothe Commissioner General of WUF2006 and was a key organizer ofHABITAT 1976, the UN's first conference on Human Settlements.Professor Obertander was inducted into the Order of Canada in 1995and promoted to Officer in 2001, with the following Citation: * He is an im-portant advocate of sustainable urbanization - the process of improvingthe quality of our cities while promoting their sustainable growth. Widelyrespected by governments and international organizations, he served inthe mid-1990s as a Senior Advisor for the United Nations Commissionon Human Settlements. " The text that follows is a slightly revised andedited version of a paper presented at the international symposion on"The Natural City, " Toronto, 23-25 June, 2004, sponsored by the Univer-sity of Toronto's Division of the Environment, Institute for Environmental Studies, and the World Society for Ekistics.