An Urbanizing World: Global Report on Human Settlements 1996

Taken as a whole, An Urbanizing World offers us an overview of the harsh conditions
in our human settlements that urgently demand creative innovation and
action. And here it provides us with invaluable insights into the new partnerships
being forged in the human settlements sector and the increasing importance of civic
engagement and community initiatives being undertaken to help meet the growing
challenges and needs of today for achieving sustainable human settlements. They
offer encouragement and evidence of an untapped, latent capacity.

In the final analysis, the task before us is as much about doing something to cure
the malaise of inadequate housing and decaying infrastructures, dangerous streets
and environmental neglect, as it is about the willingness of society to meet the needs
of humanity, the needs we all share with our neighbours in the `global village' that is
now our world. One of the problems we face here is that so many of us know so very
little about the forces that are shaping our cities and towns–indeed, some of us may
know more about the distant planets of outer space than about the cities of our own
Planet Earth. We have to shift our focus, and do it now.