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
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
The great 21st-century migration into
cities will present both a great challenge for humanity and
a significant opportunity for global economic growth. This
paper describes the diverse patterns that define this
metropolitan migration. It then lays out a framework for
Urbanization is undoubtedly a key driver
of development - cities provide the national platform for
prosperity, job creation, and poverty reduction. But
urbanization also poses enormous challenges that one is
familiar with: congestion, air pollution, social divisions,
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,
Indonesia's Program Nasional
Pemberdayaan Masyarakat (PNPM) is the largest Community
Driven Development (CDD) program in the world covering all
urban wards (PNPM-Urban) and rural villages (PNPM-Rural) in
Indonesia. This policy note summarizes a comprehensive
As the use of payments for environmental
services (PES) programs for conservation has grown in
developing countries, the use of stated preference methods,
particularly contingent valuation (CV) surveys, to estimate
the maximum amount that users of environmental services
This paper uses data from Guatemala to
map areas that are important for the provision of indirect
ecosystem services, services whose benefits are enjoyed at
some distance from the ecosystem that provides them, such as
watershed services (enjoyed downstream) or biodiversity
The present report was prepared on the
basis of the findings of an international workshop held from
September 12-14, 2005, in Salvador da Bahia, and was
attended by delegations of three to five practitioners from
12 cities in Latin America, Africa and Asia. It had two main
As the world is urbanizing, many cities
are grappling with a population that is growing rapidly,
thereby increasing demand for land and housing. This
pressure on land and housing markets often is exacerbated by
inappropriate or inadequate policies. The result is a supply
The aim of the scoping study was to gain
an understanding of the productive activities slum dwellers
engage in that rely on energy services and the potentials
and challenges of slums in Ghana regarding access to modern
energy services and income generation from productive
The case studies documented in this
report aim to inform the energy access community (including
practitioners, civil society groups, project planners, end
users) about best practices of successful energy access
initiatives targeted at slum dwellers. Eight case studies