Urban Jungles
What do Beihai (China), Ghaziabad (India) and Saana (Yemen) have in common? According to Foreign Policy, they’re three of the top fastest growing cities in the world. With the usual suspects nowhere to be found, the list features cities ranging from Kabul (Afghanistan) to Lagos (Nigeria). International development folks now have new places to set their sights on as the world races past the seven billion mark.
Poverty
We think pausing for reflection is essential to a successful advocacy campaign. This week, anti-poverty advocates got a little help doing just that from the Brookings Institution, which released an analysis of trends in concentrated poverty since 2000. The study shows that poverty has increased significantly across urban and suburban areas in the US. In fact, suburban poverty outpaced urban poverty at a rate of 2 to 1. Now comes the hard part: taking these stats and compelling policymakers to act – differently.
The Art of College Admissions
Jiang Xueqin, principal at Peking University High School in Beijing, wrote an op-ed for the Chronicle of Higher Education on how American universities should recruit students in China. Calling for a process that looks beyond the usual test scores, Xueqin offers admissions counselors a few tips on how to get at the intangibles—empathy, imagination, resilience. While numbers are a good starting point, they can only get you so far.
