How Durban set the global standard for providing water and sanitation for the poor
Arguably the most elegant aspect of an inelegant subject is how this city of 3.2 million residents, South Africa’s second largest, is solving monumental water and waste challenges in its … Continue reading
Balancing the Burden? Women’s Time Poverty and Infrastructure in Asia
Around the world, women do more work than men because of gender divisions of labor that cause most of the burden of housework and care work to fall on women … Continue reading
Making the invisible visible: generating data on ‘slums’ at local, city and global scales
The largest and most detailed set of data about what are termed ‘slums’ or ‘informal settlements’ has been built from enumerations undertaken by the residents of these settlements and their … Continue reading
This is What We Die For: Human rights abuses in the DRC power the global trade in cobalt
This report documents the hazardous conditions in which artisanal miners, including thousands of children, mine cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It goes on to trace how this … Continue reading
The transformation of Indonesian housing policies
Indonesia, with a population of over 250 million, has been experiencing rapid urbanization in the last few decades. This rapid urbanization has caused many problems in Indonesian cities. The issue … Continue reading
The challenge and potential of informal settlements
The United Nations estimates that more than 860 million people are currently living in urban slums! On the one hand, the proportion of people in slums today is lower than … Continue reading
Nourishing livelihoods: the food vendors sustaining Nairobi’s slums
Food vendors play a key role in nourishing their fellow residents in informal settlements, offering ready access to fruit, vegetables, snacks, and cooked foods. But unlike food vendors in markets … Continue reading
The New Urban Agenda must prompt planners to recognize informal labour
If urban poverty, inequality and unemployment are to be reduced, urban informal workers, especially the working poor, needs to be recognized, valued and supported as economic agents who contribute to … Continue reading
An Optimistic View of the Long-Run Evolution of Poverty in Indonesia
Indonesia has achieved well-documented and drastic improvements in average incomes and in the reduction of poverty. Much research has discussed this progress. This paper adds to the literature with a … Continue reading
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