Human settlements: the places where people live and work Make-shift dwellings of the poor near Garva, Cameroon

One of the purposes of the UN Conference-Exposition on Human Settlements held in Vancouver, Canada, in June 1976, was to bring the world's attention the nature and relative important of the problems of human settlements against a background of widespread concern for the whole of our earthly environment -- natural and man-made. Two of the most critical problems of society today -- made increasingly urgent by the rapid rise in the world's population -- are the shortage of adequate housing and the deterioration of the conditions under which people live and work. Many cities, particularly in the poorer countries of the world, are unable to provide adequate housing, food sanitation, work and other essential services for all the people flocking to them in search of a better life. Rural settlements are being abandoned and neglected. Urbanization is not an evil in itself. The process can be guided and converted into a positive factor in development. Economic development and an improvement in the quality of human life need not be competing alternatives. They are both vital and in the common interest of all mankind. Credit United Nations/A. Rozberg.