Packing conditions in metric spaces with curvature bounded above and applications

General metric spaces satisfying weak and synthetic notions of upper and lower curvature bounds will be studied. The relations between upper and lower bounds will be pointed out, especially the interactions between a packing condition and different forms of convexity of the metric. The main tools will be a new and flexible definition of entropy on metric spaces and a version of the Tits Alternative for groups of isometries of the metric spaces under consideration. The applications can be divided into classical and new results: the former consist in generalizations to a wider context of the theory of negatively curved Riemannian manifolds, while the latter include several compactness and continuity results.