According to the latest census of 2011,
the urbanization level in India has increased from 27.8
percent in 2001 to 31.2 percent in 2011, and for the first
time, the absolute increase in urban population exceeded the
increase in rural population. India has different
administrative arrangements for rural and urban areas, which
are based on the 73rd and 74th amendments to the
Constitution of India respectively. Since the census towns

Since the industrial revolution, the
economic development of Western Europe and North America was
characterized by continuous urbanization accompanied by a
gradual phasing-in of urban land property rights over time.
Today, however, the evidence in many fast urbanizing
low-income countries points towards a different trend of
“urbanization without formalization”, with potentially
adverse effects on long-term economic growth. This paper

This paper aims to contribute to
learning on community engagement and community driven
development (CDD) in urban areas. Specifically, the review
describes the World Bank’s use of participatory and CDD
approaches in urban areas between 2003 and 2013; identifies
the challenges of using participatory and CDD approaches in
the urban context; assesses lessons from the application of
CDD in urban areas through case studies; and makes

The recent decline in India’s rural
female labor force participation is generally attributed to
higher rural incomes in a patriarchal society. Together with
the growing share of the urban population, where female
participation rates are lower, this alleged income effect
does not bode well for the empowerment of women as India
develops. This paper argues that a traditional supply-side
interpretation is insufficient to account for the decline in

This report is based on a field study of
two large settlements, Satghara (a census town) and
Bhagwatipur (a rural cluster with 10,000 plus population) in
the Madhubani district of Bihar. The study explores the
social dynamics of the rural non-farm economy by empirically
mapping non-farm occupations in both the settlements. It
examines the dynamics of caste, community, and gender within
the social organization of the non-farm economy in terms of

El Salvador is the smallest country in
Central America, and one of the most densely populated in
the world. El Salvador is among the countries most affected
by weather-related events and other hazards, incurring
annual losses of around 2.5 percent of GDP. Worldwide, it
ranks second highest for risk exposure to two or more
hazards and highest for the total population at a relatively
high risk of mortality. Furthermore, climate change is

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

The world's urban population is
expected to increase by about 2.7 billion by
2050.Virtually all of the increased population
will be in developing countries, leading to massive needs
for new and improved housing and urban infrastructures
(UNDESA 2012). The planning and design of these new
developments will reshape or create new urban landscapes
with significant implications for energy consumption,

China has used two main spatial policies
to shape its geographic patterns of development: restricted
labor mobility through the Hukou residential registration
system and massive infrastructure investment, notably a
96,000 kilometer national expressway network. This paper
develops a structural new economic geography model to
examine the impacts of these policies. Fitting the model to
available data allows simulating counterfactual scenarios

This note is a summary of a report that
considers urban areas as the complement to rural areas that
will allow the Plurinational State of Bolivia to achieve the
goals set forth in its Patriotic Agenda for the Bicentennial
2025. The report uses data available at the national level
from censuses and household surveys from the National
Statistics Institute (INE) and the Social and Economic
Policy Analysis Unit of the Ministry of Development Planning

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

In 2012 Papua New Guinea undertook a
national Service Delivery Assessment of rural water, rural
sanitation, urban water and urban sanitation services to
identify coverage and targets, how well services are being
delivered and the financing shortfalls in these subsectors.
Immediately following this assessment, stakeholders, through
a national policy task force, have developed a draft of the
country s first National Water, Sanitation and Hygiene