Strategies to help the one billion people worldwide who live in informal settlements have mainly focused on slum upgrading, sites and services programs, and tenure security. In contrast, there has been less attention on what enables slum dwellers to transition into the formal housing sector, which has the dual benefits of improving service access and escaping social stigma. In this paper the authors investigate residential mobility among slum dwellers in Bhopal, India.

Urban growth is, in all parts of the
world, inevitable and welcomed. Despite concerns that local
governments will not be able to address those issues
associated with increased urban population, the number of
people living in urban centers will sur-pass those of the
rural population by 2030. Since productivity levels are
consistently higher in urban areas than in rural settings,
this would seem a reason to rejoice since it suggests more

This review of the active portfolio of
World Bank projects aimed at improving urban environmental
quality was carried out during 2002-03 in order to assess
the level of commitment of the institution to urban
sustainability. The review focuses on the contributions of
key sectors to urban environmental improvements, in
particular on those belonging to the Infrastructure
Vice-Presidency, and on how projects are contributing to

This study reviews Malawi's
policies in the biomass, rural electrification, and
non-biomass renewable energy sub-sectors to identify
problems and constraints to progress and to propose
policies, initiatives, and institutional structures to
overcome those problems and constraints. The main
recommendations of this report to the Government of Malawi
are as follows: 1) reform the present legislative and

The states in the Brazilian Amazon have
made progress in reducing poverty and improving social
indicators in the last decade. Despite this progress, the
poverty rate in the Amazon is among the highest in Brazil.
As of 2000, rural poverty is the greatest challenge. In
Par?, not only is the headcount poverty rate of 58.4 percent
in rural areas more than 55 percent higher than headcount
poverty in urban areas, but also poverty is much deeper in

This report examines poverty issues in the Kyrgyz Republic, focusing on three areas. First, it provides a summary of the trends in poverty over the period 2000-2003 by drawing upon comparable data from the Household Budget Surveys from those years. Second, based upon the Kyrgyz Integrated Household Survey (KIHS ) it presents the new estimates of absolute and extreme poverty by applying updated poverty analysis methodology.

The rapid urbanization in many
developing countries over the past half century seems to
have been accompanied by excessively high levels of
concentration of the urban population in very large cities.
Some degree of urban concentration may be desirable
initially to reduce inter- and intraregional infrastructure
expenditures. But in a mature system of cities, economic
activity is more spread out. Standardized manufacturing

This report summarizes and consolidates the findings of three Bank studies on poverty issues in Mexico, written as part of the second phase of this work: Urban Poverty, Rural Poverty, and Social Protection. It also expands on how Mexico will seek to use social protection policy as a vehicle for redistribution. Discussed in Chapter 1, the state has a clear role in providing risk-pooling mechanisms where private insurance markets fail (e.g., old age and health insurance), but the role of social protection policy in promoting redistribution is more an issue of national choice.

In conformity with its objective of
functioning as a local Government, Kathmandu Metropolitan
City (KMC) sought the assistance of the World Bank for the
preparation of a City Development Strategy (CDS). The
various sectoral as well as integrated strategies presented
in this document seem to be an overwhelming demand on KMC
with its limited manpower and money. A CDS is essential if
KMC is to focus its development potential. The optimism lies

The proliferation of urban slums is due
in large part to obsolete regulatory, legal and
institutional frameworks at the local level governing land
use, development standards, land registration and titling.
These regulations are often exclusionary, insisting on
development norms and standards that are outside the realm
of the poor to pay and subdivision procedures are often over
burdensome, leading to informal land subdivision, thus

The Little Green Data Book 2005 is based on the World Development Indicators 2005, and represents an abbreviated collection of information. Its production is a collaboration between the Development Economics Data Development Group, and the Environment Department of the World Bank. Development and poverty alleviation-the World Bank's mission-call for a long-term vision. Enhancing environmental quality, improving natural resource management, and maintaining global ecosystems are all important steps toward this goal.

This book talks about participation,
from the first to the last page. And that is its strength,
for participation is a road leading to democracy. The true
participation it talks about does not rely on hours of
compulsory labor or imposed levies; there is nothing forced
about it. Rather, it is a process in which men and women
engage their will, their sense of responsibility, their
abilities, their dignity. It is a vital participation,