UN warns of urban instability

Saturday 24 June 2006, 5:36 Makka Time, 2:36 GMT

The poorest parts of the world's cities could become centres of deprivation and instability, the UN World Urban Forum has said.

The State of the World Cities report, presented at the end of the conference in the Canadian city of Vancouver on Friday, also said that 38% of urban growth will be in slums.

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Urban security threats are "having an increasing impact on cities, and all projections suggest urban political violence will continue to escalate".

Speakers at the conference called on governments and organisations to involve populations in the answers to solve the problems.

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http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1FAB7CF6-641C-4E7A-97C7-73F0F26714E2.htm

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This conference sounded like it would have been great for local-level activists and community organizers to attend.

starvation caused by the misallocation of resources, will take care of those teeming masses before they have a chance to revolt.

When the rich steal it all, the rest of us are weakened by poverty and stress and unable to fight off these diseases.

The good news is that the rich are ultimately susceptible to them, too, especially since they require having a few of us around to do all their daily shitwork.

are on street corners looking tough and brazen and locking them up.

I don't know what to say. But something has to be done and I can't think of anything better.

or read about in your local paper . . . if we didn't follow things here on DU, we probably wouldn't know about this report . . .

It just goes with the territory- the next step in gang related violence.

Let me tell you something about economics and physical reality. People require material reosurces to live, there is a finitie amount of material resources in the world, and the world's population is increasing. The only way for the rich to stay rich is for the poor to become increasingly poor. That means increased poverty, increased crime rates, and decreased social stability.

No amount of media coverage or lack of media coverage is going to change the laws of physics, but at least if the media did cover things like this people could try to figure out what to do about it. If they just keep everyone in the dark, things are going to keep going more and more wrong for more and more people, and none of them will ever know why or what to do about it.

Almost every large city I have even been in has sections that are deplorable...and as the ones who can, escape the tax base only shrinks..

Perhaps our "leaders" are expecting a pandemic to clear out the "riff-raff"..they seem to like the way Mother Nature took care of NOLA :(