The editor's page

Abstract

As a documentation and communication vehicle - part of a broader effort of the Athens Center of Ekistics (ACE) to contribute to the development of a sound approach to the field of Human Settlements - Ekistics makes itself available as a free forum for the exposure of ideas and experiences from anywhere to everywhere, provided they are relevant and transferable. In this effort, writings of members of the World Society for Ekistics (WSE) have quite frequently been considered and published in Ekistics. How could our attitude be different in cases of collective efforts of the WSE such as its meetings last year in Berlin (24-28 October, 2001) with the title "Defining Success of the City in the 21st Century"? Actually, we have reported on such events on various occasions in the past, the most recent being in vol. 64, no. 385/386/387, July/August-Sept./Oct.-Nov./Dec.1997 and vol. 65, no. 388/389/390, Jan./Feb.-Mar./Apr.-May/June 1998 on "Mega-Cities ...and Mega-City Regions", a conference of which the WSE was a co-sponsor together with Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and the University of British Columbia, Canada. We are happy that the World Society for Ekistics welcomed our proposal to consider the large number of documents made available at its meetings in Berlin and select some of the papers presented for publication in Ekistics. However, the amount of material available far exceeded the capacity even of one triple issue. Hence the following two triple issues:

1. Defining Success of the City in the 21st Century - 1 of 2 (Ekistics, vol. 69, no. 412/413/414,January/February-March/April-May/June 2002); and,
2. Defining Success of the City in the 21 st Century - 2 of 2 (Ekistics, vol. 69, no. 415/416/417, July/August-September/October-November/December 2002).