therefore the policies that emerge must be implementable universal sensitive and relevant to the local context they must be participatory and collaborative they must be inclusive and recognize the rights of minorities and vulnerable groups above all the policies must be sustainable this trend is not new but relentless and has been marked by a remarkable increase in the absolute numbers of urban dwellers from a yearly average of million between to million between in per cent billion of the world s population lived in urban areas by this had grown to per cent billion