Sustainable development goals (SDGs)
placed access to basic services at the center of
international development in 2016-2030. Out of 17 goals,
five address the access of poor people to basic services: to
health in SDG3, to education in SDG4, and SDG5, to water and
sanitation in SDG6, to energy in SDG7, and to urban services
in SDG11. The mutually reinforcing relationship between
electricity access, economic development, and poverty

This report summarizes the motivation,
objectives, methodology, results and lessons learned from
the design and implementation of the Demonstration Program
on Inclusive Heritage-based City Development in India. The
development objective of this program is to test an
inclusive heritage-based approach to city development
planning in three pilot cities with a focus on learning and
future expansion. The pilot cities include a metropolis

This study estimates the impact of
Kenya’s post-election violence on individual risk
preferences. Because the crisis interrupted a longitudinal
survey of more than five thousand Kenyan youth, this timing
creates plausibly exogenous variation in exposure to civil
conflict by the time of the survey. The study measures
individual risk preferences using hypothetical lottery
choice questions, which are validated by showing that they

The report is organized into three
chapters: chapter two looks at the pace and patterns of
India's urbanization, providing a 100-year perspective
on demographic shifts and a 20-year perspective on the
spatial distribution of jobs across India's portfolio
of settlements. The review is based on a careful, spatially
detailed analysis of data from economic and demographic
censuses, annual surveys of industry, national sample

This note explores issues within the
urban logistics and port-cities thematic pillar. It is one
of three focus areas, or thematic pillars, for the
multi-donor trust fund for sustainable logistics (MDTF-SL).
The goal of this pillar is to finance activities that will
assist developing countries in two areas; addressing urban
congestion resulting from retail distribution of goods, and
improving the sustainable design and operation of

As Vietnam enters a crucial period of
urbanization corresponding to its present stage of economic
development, the Government of Vietnam has placed strong
emphasis on developing its system of cities. In accordance
with this objective this Urbanization Review is dedicated to
understanding the key dimensions and aspects of
Vietnam's urbanization process and to identifying
trends, opportunities, challenges and core policy priorities

Given the broad array of issues and
the complexity faced by the water sector as a whole (from
irrigation to flood protection, to water conservation and
hydropower), there is great demand for future exploring the
potential of RBF and tackling the questions still unanswered
about many of its operational dimensions. This document
takes a closer look at some of the practical aspects of
implementing various RBF water schemes. Chapter 2 provides

Across the world, the housing sector
plays a key role in local and national economies, and
expanding access to housing can encourage more equitably
shared economic growth. This report surveys current policy
interventions designed to encourage affordable housing in
East Asia and the Pacific (EAP). The purpose of this report
is to provide a general overview of the recent trends in
urbanization and development in EAP and to consider

Cities are hubs of global change, and
their global influence continues to grow. Cities contribute
significantly to global challenges like climate change and
biodiversity loss. At the same time, cities experience
impacts like climate change first and with greatest
intensity. Further, cities are becoming leaders worldwide in
efforts to address global environmental and social problems.
Some of the most important smaller-scale agreements and

The current report is part of the work
on integrating poor areas and marginalized communities in
Romania. Specifically, the Bank's technical assistance
provided through this project focuses on three primary
components: (1) a methodology for defining different types
of urban disadvantaged communities based on a set of key
criteria and indicators; (2) detailed maps that present the
spatial distribution of these indicators and the

Housing matters to the livability of
cities and to the productivity of their economies. The
failure of cities to accommodate the housing needs of
growing urban populations can be seen in the proliferation
of poorly serviced, high-density informal settlements. Such
settlements are not new in the history of rapidly growing
cities, their persistence results as much from policies as
from economics and demographic transition. Slums have

Urbanization deserves urgent attention
from policy makers, academics, entrepreneurs, and social
reformers of all stripes. Nothing else will create as many
opportunities for social and economic progress. The
urbanization project began roughly 1,000 years after the
transition from the Pleistocene to the milder and more
stable Holocene interglacial. In 2010, the urban population
in developing countries stood at 2.5 billion. The developing