As the global population heads toward 9 billion by 2050, decisions made today will lock countries into growth patterns that may or may not be sustainable in the future. Care must be taken to ensure that cities and roads, factories and farms are designed, managed, and regulated as efficiently as possible to wisely use natural resources while supporting the robust growth developing countries still need.

Urban agriculture contributes to local
economic development, poverty alleviation, the social
inclusion of the urban poor and women, as well as to the
greening of the city and the productive reuse of urban
wastes. Urban agriculture encompasses a wide variety of
production systems in both urban as well as peri-urban
areas. This study examines the contribution of urban
agriculture to livelihoods, food security, health, and the

A fundamental challenge for Vietnam is
to improve the affordability and efficiency of
infrastructure investment. The fragmentation of public
infrastructure investment results in duplication and waste,
and is a major underlying cause of investment inefficiency.
Bond issuance has been the most prominent form of debt
financing at the sub-national level. At the provincial
level, significant disconnects exist between total planned

Cities are vulnerable to many types of
shocks and stresses, including natural hazards like storms
and sea level rise, but also man-made ones like economic
transformation and rapid urbanization. These shocks and
stresses have the potential to bring city systems to a halt
and reverse years of socio-economic development gains.
Cities that are to grow and thrive in the future must take
steps to address these shocks and stresses. Simply put, a

Poor people living in slums are at
particularly high risk from the impacts of climate change
and natural hazards. They live on the most vulnerable land
within cities, typically areas deemed undesirable by others
and thus affordable. This study analyzes the key challenges
facing the urban poor, given the risks associated with
climate change and disasters, particularly with regard to
the delivery of basic services, and identifies strategies

This report provides Mayors and other policymakers with a policy framework and diagnostic tools to anticipate and implement strategies that can avoid their cities from locking into irreversible physical and social structures. At the core of the policy framework are the three main dimensions of urban development.
· Planning— where the focus is on making land transactions easier, and making land use regulations more responsive to emerging needs especially to coordinate land use planning with infrastructure, natural resource management, and risks from hazards;

The accumulation of decent housing
matters both because of the difference it makes to living
standards and because of its centrality to economic
development. The consequences for living standards are
far-reaching. In addition to directly conferring utility,
decent housing improves health and enables children to do
homework. It frees up women's time and enables them to
participate in the labor market. More subtly, a home and its

The proposed Results-Based National
Urban Development Program in the Northern Mountains Region
(RBNUDP-NM or the Program ) will assist the Government of
Vietnam in developing the implementation framework for its
national urban program. It will do this by piloting a
performance-based transfer system that will provide
participating cities with a combination of much needed
resources along with a clarification of implementation

Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) have
been introduced in Romania as a prerequisite for accessing
EU funds under the Regional Operational Program (ROP). The
IDPs designed for growth poles represent a specific category
of strategic planning documents as: 1) they need to be
considered within the frame of the national policy to whose
implementation they contribute; and 2) they represent a
first endeavor to think of development across functional

The report's main objective is to
provide policy makers, regulators, and the private sector,
primarily in emerging economies and developing countries,
with a tool for enforcing international best practice and
for developing strategies for successful reforms in the area
of construction regulation. This paper is divided into the
following eight chapters: 1) the importance of construction
regulation reform. The first chapter defines three

This review analyzes the profile, trends
and challenges of Georgia's changing urban landscape
since independence in 1991 and provides policy suggestions
to facilitate the economic transition of the country through
its cities. In its analysis and subsequent recommendations
on policy interventions, this report draws on a program of
diagnostics called the 'Urbanization Review' (UR).
The UR diagnostic is based on three main pillars of urban

Development and humanitarian actors
currently engaged in Somalia face the challenge of
delivering assistance in such a way that it is supportive of
peace and state building, addresses the acute vulnerability,
and dependence of large shares of the population while
operating in a still insecure and changing environment.
Forced displacement is a key feature of the current
political economy context of Somalia. The necessity of