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Reaching urban poor populations poses challenges for equitable immunization coverage. Furthermore, COVID disrupted routine immunization services. In Mumbai, India, first dose diphtheria tetanus pertussis containing vaccine (DTPCV1) coverage dropped from 88% (2019) to 76% (2021). We identified and characterized 125 zero-dose (those without DTPCV1) migrant children in urban Mumbai in October 2022. Almost half were born elsewhere than Mumbai; 53% resided at their present location for less than a year. More than half were 12–59 months of age, well-beyond the age for first routine childhood immunizations. Three of four zero dose children had received birth dose vaccination in the hospital; but failed to receive DTPCV1. Vaccine hesitancy, awareness gaps and operational issues were common reasons for non-vaccination. Despite frequent visits to health facilities for illness, only a third of facility staff asked or advised parents about vaccination. Missed opportunities were much more common in private than government facilities. For the vast majority (88%), residential sites were included in local routine immunization micro-plans and distances to immunization sites were short (less than 1 km for 94 % of families). However, planned session frequency was inadequate half of the time. Expanded efforts to reach migrant urban poor children are needed to ensure vaccine equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving the quality and extent of urbanization and promoting the healthy and stable development of cities are important issues for governments worldwide. Taking China as an example, this paper empirically tests the direct impact of multidimensional relative poverty among the migrant population on their willingness to stay in cities through a series of robust analyses, including multivariate ologit regression and the instrumental variable method. It also uses willingness to stay as a mediator variable to further test the comprehensive impact of multidimensional relative poverty on the urbanization rate. The study reveals that for new-generation migrant workers, the lower the degree of multidimensional poverty is, the stronger their intention to stay in cities is, and settlement thresholds and occupational stability play a positive moderating role in this process. The results of the mediation effect test show that alleviating the multidimensional relative poverty of the migrant population helps increase the urbanization rate and that willingness to stay plays a mediating role. The results of the study not only provide new ideas for increasing the urbanization rate in developing countries but also offer a policy reference for developed countries to prevent the reversal of the urbanization and accelerate urban innovation. • Alleviating the relative poverty of the migrant population helps to increase their willingness to stay in the city. • Occupational stability facilitates the settlement of migrant populations in cities with high levels of well-being. • Alleviating the relative poverty levels of urban migrants contributes to the quality of urbanization in cities. • It provides policy references for developed countries to prevent the reversal of urbanization rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban energy poverty remains a critical challenge affecting millions worldwide, with significant implications for socio-economic development and sustainability. This study employs Monte Carlo simulations to analyze the variability in energy poverty, as measured by the Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (MEPI). Through this approach, we explored how different socio-economic predictors affect MEPI scores across five scenarios: economic growth and diversification, energy transition and technological innovation, climate change impacts and vulnerability, policy intervention and social safety nets, and stagnation and rising inequality. The sensitivity analysis revealed that household income, size, and food security are paramount in influencing urban energy poverty levels. Scenarios involving economic growth and technological innovation demonstrated positive impacts on reducing energy poverty, while scenarios of climate change and economic stagnation highlighted the vulnerabilities and widening disparities within populations. The results suggest that to effectively alleviate urban energy poverty, policy interventions must be comprehensive, targeting the identified influential factors. The study emphasizes the need for targeted policy interventions on social safety nets to alleviate energy poverty. • Utilizes Monte Carlo simulations for a detailed analysis of energy poverty's variability. • Examines energy poverty's sensitivity to socio-economic factors across diverse scenarios. • Identifies household income, size, and food security as crucial determinants of energy poverty. • Advocates for targeted policy interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban marginality has long-been a concern of urban studies. The governance of urban marginality is important empirical terrain, particularly in the context of COVID-19, an event that challenged established governance systems globally. This article contributes to our understanding of the governance of urban marginality during the COVID-19 pandemic by examining urban poverty management responses in one Canadian city, Edmonton, Alberta. The article makes two contributions in this regard. First, the paper theorizes urban poverty management as a dispositif, an approach which draws attention to the role of problematization in the configuration of poverty management landscapes and the implications these configurations have for the spatial management of urban poverty in the city. Second, we show that while municipal officials attempted to reconfigure Edmonton's poverty management landscape, their efforts were inflected, and ultimately limited, by three 'problem spaces': forward fiscal liability, risk management, and legal jurisdiction. These problem spaces comprise what we call the 'municipal mentality.' We argue that this municipal mentality is indicative of the fact that municipal government is a conflict-laden site of articulation and that municipal decisions are often shaped by deliberation, deference and jurisdictional struggles which can have implications for the character of urban poverty management. • Urban poverty management is one form that the governance of urban marginality can take, particularly in North America. • Urban poverty management can be theorized as a dispositif and examined on the basis of different problematizations. • Urban poverty management is subject to a municipal mentality that produces a mix of socio-spatial outcomes for the unhoused. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research addresses the pressing need to strengthen climate change resilience of the urban poor living in informal settlements by leveraging social capital - skills and networks. This research builds upon existing works to understand how social skills and networks contribute to building climate resilience in two informal settlements of Kumasi, noted to have diverse and strong community skills and networks. Through a qualitative research approach encompassing household surveys and focus group discussions, we gathered data from residents of Aboabo and Asawase, two of Ghana's largest informal neighbourhoods in Kumasi. We observed a strong presence of social bonding among the residents, characterized by tight-knit networks and reciprocal relationships. This form of social capital played a critical role in facilitating information sharing, resource pooling, and collective action in response to climate hazards. Despite limited government support, residents demonstrated a remarkable capacity for self-organization and community resilience-building, leveraging their social ties and local knowledge to address climate-related risks. However, we identified that the insular nature of these networks may hinder the inclusion of marginalized or vulnerable groups within the community, potentially exacerbating existing inequalities in climate resilience outcomes. These findings highlight the implications of our research for policy and practice, emphasizing the need for inclusive and participatory approaches and multi-scalar responses that involve local, national, regional, and global actors to climate resilience in informal settlements. • Informal urban settlements remain vulnerable to climate change impacts. • Residents interpret climate change to mean change in temperature and rainfall patterns. • Residents utilize available social systems to build adaptation to climate risks. • Group activities and social networks produce pathways for resilience and adaptability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on interviews with households in Brunei's Kampong Ayer, this paper explores the geography of poverty in an urban, high-income country context. Under the forces of modernisation and broader conditions of prosperity, the residents of Kampong Ayer can survive with dignity, but cannot prosper and are constrained in their upward mobility. State agencies' approaches to poverty normalise a terrestrial mode of living, implicitly problematising the lives of those who choose to remain in Kampong Ayer, thus overlooking the important role such a space provides for the less privileged in Bruneian society. The paper develops the notion of 'geographical context' as a means to elucidate the co-production of produced marginality and enduring survival in a national context of thoroughgoing transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to identify the location and characteristics of poor urban neighborhoods in Pyongyang using deep-learning-based remote sensing (RS), geographic information systems (GIS), and big data analyses. To this end, we first classify the residential areas of Pyongyang City into five classes. We then analyze each class's spatial and inter-variable characteristics to identify the location and characteristics of poor residential areas. Due to the scarcity of statistical data and the restricted access to the city, this study introduces a research methodology termed Machine-Human Sequential Design (MHSD). The results of the study show that low levels of Housing environment, Economic status, Accessibility, and Block activation characterized poor neighborhoods in Pyongyang. In comparing individual variables, the density of single-story slate-roofed houses (tangjip) was the highest, and the density of night illumination, number of cars, and points of interest (POIs) was the lowest. This study illustrates the distinctions in urban poverty in Pyongyang compared to developing countries and introduces a novel research methodology tailored for a highly closed city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper contends that the covid-19 pandemic has reconfigured how cities manage urban marginality within Zimbabwe. The pandemic enabled cities to push everyday mundane practices away from the centre of the city to the margins of the cities through securitisation and criminalising informal activities within the centre. The paper's methodological underpinnings are hinged on a six month ethnography within Bulawayo (Zimbabwe's second largest city). The paper maintains the view that managing urban marginality in the context of covid-19 must be framed within the binary of two opposing forces – governing institutions (the government and municipality) and the low-income residents. Using covid-19 as a pretext of "curbing the pandemic" governing institutions have pushed informal economic activities from the centre through employing law and force; on the other hand low-income residents have found eclectic means to counteract the measures imposed to constrain their agency. Finally, the paper suggests that covid-19 has reconfigured how cities manage urban marginality through pushing everyday informal practices to the periphery and how the low-income residents deploy their agency to counteract confinement hence managing urban marginality can be understood as a two-way process involving governing institutions and the low-income residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The occurrence of disasters, specifically flooding, has intensified over the past two decades in African cities with devastating impacts on people and properties. In Ghana, cities are beset by weak community and urban planning capacities to contend with climate challenges; exacerbating the vulnerabilities of the urban poor. Given that the urban poor, mostly in informal settlements, are largely excluded from official climate change adaptation and resilience measures, involving them in co-producing disaster risk management interventions to build resilience remains crucial. Premised on six agency interviews and four focus group discussions of residents in Ahensan, Kumasi, the research examined efforts aimed at co-producing integrative disaster risk governance towards building resilience to disaster risks. The findings showed that the dominant disaster in the settlement was flooding. Consequently, there are flood disaster management plans designed to identify and reduce risks. However, these plans do not involve residents in their preparation; rather, they are largely involved in the implementation of the plans. This has resulted in the lack of ownership of these plans by residents and their unwillingness to participate in their implementation. This study concludes that to ensure the ownership of strategies for disaster management towards resilience, residents should be involved at every stage of the process - from plan preparation through to its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of numerous research efforts and policy interventions, housing the urban poor in a suitable manner has been a persistent challenge across the world. This prevailing difficulty calls for more resourcefulness in addressing affordable housing (AH) provision. To achieve this, this study thoroughly investigated the informal housing strategies of the urban poor, examining their informal housing solutions along the three main components of housing supply value chain (HSVC) - housing finance, land acquisition and housing construction. The methodology was semi-structured interviews of 40 randomly selected respondents from 5 strata of largest slums in Lagos, Nigeria. Following thematic, content, descriptive and deductive analyses of data, findings show that there are insightful lessons within the informal housing strategies of the urban poor that can inform suitable approaches to AH provision. Findings are that the urban poor are actively involved in trade unionism, microfinance institutions and cooperative societies as AH finance strategies within their informal means. The urban poor resolve their desperate housing needs through self-help incremental housing, cheap rental housing among others. Findings show that the urban poor needs shelter, which alternative housing and rental housing provide more affordably than homeownership. Insights are provided in this study on how these informal strategies of the urban poor can influence HSVC for effective affordable housing provision approaches. If these strategies inform policies with deliberate efforts made to modify and institutionalise the approaches, suitability of AH provision can be improved. Findings from this study are informative for future pro-poor housing studies. Recommendations are that informal strategies across the entire HSVC identified in this study can be modified and incorporated into housing policies towards making cities of developing economies more sustainable and inclusive. • Affordable housing provision for the urban poor • Affordable housing provision in developing economies • Housing supply value chain and its major elements • Informal housing strategies of the urban poor • Insights from informal housing strategies of the urban poor [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Urban political ecology is used to study fog oases degradation and conservation. • Fog oases degradation in Lima reflects and is rooted in unequal power structures. • Land-trafficking is one of the main contributors to the fog oases degradation. • Ecotourism could be used as a bottom-up political tool to achieve conservation. • Everyday governance serves to analyse the production of nature in bottom-up ways. Despite providing important ecosystem services and having a unique ecological value, the fog oases scattered around the City of Lima, face various human-imposed threats, with informal urbanisation and land-trafficking being the main drivers of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. As a response, local communities organise themselves to protect their fog oases by means of promoting ecotourism. The paper adopts an urban political ecology perspective to demonstrate that the different claims on the land which fog oases occupy reflect poor urban planning and the under- developed legal framework and, as such, they are inevitably intertwined with the wider structures of power across the city. Drawing from interviews with key stakeholders and various available documentation, the paper analyses the operations of local tourism organisations in Lima and finds that, although they strengthen local governance and contribute to the conservation of fog oases, they are constantly confronted with various formal and informal hurdles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing assumption in urban studies literature is that the urban poor remain vulnerable to climate change impacts yet excluded from planning interventions and their formation. However, at present, there is dearth of research examining the adaptation practices by the urban poor in African cities. Focusing on Ghana's capital, Accra, the purpose of this study is fourfold: (i) to explore climate change literacy among the urban poor and local planning institutions; (ii) to examine the urban poor's perceptions on climatic events in Accra; (iii) to analyze autonomous adaptation measures to climate change impacts; and (iv) to assess planned adaptation measures to climate change impacts. This paper uses household surveys, secondary data analysis and agency interviews in two informal communities - Nima and Chorkor - in Accra as case studies. Underpinned by the social exclusion theory, the results show limited climate literacy despite widespread experience of climate change impacts by the urban poor. Most adaptation measures were community driven and autonomous while the limited institutional responses were both planned and autonomous. However, both community and institutional planning responses were ad-hoc, reactionary and unsustainable. The paper recommends consideration of community-based self-organizing adaptation measures into city plans to ensure that autonomous measures are complemented with planned adaptation strategies. In addition to stakeholder participation, collaborations and partnerships in climate change adaptation, pro-poor adaptation measures - both autonomous and planned remain imperative as they can contribute to inclusive and just climate change policy. • Urban poor remain vulnerable to climate change impacts. • They are excluded from climate planning action. • Adaptation measures were community driven and autonomous. • Institutional responses to climate change are unsustainable. • Stakeholder partnerships in pro-poor adaptation required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Citizens' capacity to participate in governance is affected by power asymmetries. • Citizens' capacity to participate is also affected by knowledge asymmetries. • Urban poor's infrastructural access is driven by localised socio-political context. • Physical service provision is of no use without investment in associated governance. Despite widespread scholarly recognition that infrastructure delivery and consumption is as much a socio-political process as a technical-material product, global development agendas (e.g. United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals) continue to prioritise the universal provision of public infrastructure as a static transfer of physical goods/services without explicit recognition of their socio-political dimensions. This paper explores the everyday ways in which citizens negotiate public infrastructure delivery and access, situated in a global South context of extreme inequality and limited state capacity. Using a case study of two low-income settlements in Cape Town with differing infrastructure provision, we demonstrate how governance processes can undermine the physical delivery of infrastructure. While participatory governance remains a core policy mechanism to democratise service delivery, in practice the capacity of citizens to participate is affected by power and knowledge asymmetries that function both within and between communities and the state. These asymmetric power relations and knowledge flows contribute to clientelistic politics that not only limit citizen engagement in participatory governance, but actively undermine low-income urban dwellers' access to services that have been physically delivered and targeted to meet their needs. Framed by a case study of energy interventions, we conclude that widening access to public infrastructure requires significant investment in effective governance processes for low-income urban dwellers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We studied the distribution dynamics of household consumption upgrading in China. • The study is based on a dataset of 21,872 household-year observations. • Most households have a consumption upgrading index between 0.75 and 0.95. • Rural-urban gap and regional disparity can be reduced in the future. • The issue of urban poverty may exacerbate further. This paper studies the distribution dynamics of China's household consumption upgrading by using household survey data. The findings show that the consumption upgrading index is between 0.75 and 0.95 for most of the households. The convergence value of the rural households is much higher than their urban counterparts, and the rural-urban gap can be reduced in the future. However, urban poverty may exacerbate as our findings show that the urban households with consumption upgrading index around 0.63 would experience consumption downgrade. Turning to regional disparity, the western region in China would converge to the highest level of consumption upgrading index amongst the four regions, while the northeastern region would converge to the lowest level. The study suggests that consumption upgrading and development policy should pay attention to regional disparity, rural development, and urban poor, and the measures should be group specific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violent atmospheres are volatile mixes of socio-political and economic processes as well as biophysical ruptures that encompass surficial and gaseous matter across scales. Frequently driven by political-economic crisis, violent atmospheres are increasingly anthropogenically constructed and affectively experienced. While scholars have examined how the exploitation of resources in intensifying capitalist political economies produce violent terrestrial environments, very few have addressed the volumetric characteristics through which atmospheres—as both meteorological and affective entities—become violent. Integrating emerging work on resource political ecologies with the volumetric turn in the social sciences, we conceptually develop the notion of Violent Atmospheres to account for the recursive relationship between the internal contradictions of capital accumulation and atmospheric violence. In doing so, papers in this issue reveal how violent atmospheres, in their material and symbolic form, are volumetrically constituted and frequently attributed to the precarious livelihoods of the rural and urban poor. Through seven ethnographically grounded articles, the issue contributes to emerging scholarship within the "volumetric turn" by offering a political ecology of atmospheres in Southeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residential developments in African cities such as Kumasi, should proceed based on approved subdivisions. However, it is now common for land owners and residents to tweak approved layouts by creating additional unapproved plots to sell to the urban poor without the knowledge of planning authorities. There is dearth of research about the experiences, attitudes and perceptions of half plot developers and urban planning responses as well as the implications of this phenomenon. Using in-depth interviews of city officials and homeowners in the south-eastern part of Kumasi, the research sought to address this gap. The findings suggested that the urban poor opt to acquire half plots for housing development mainly because of the informal nature of the rental housing market and high rent charges. The challenges associated with the increasing phenomenon of acquiring and developing on half plots were revealed to be high densities, inability to secure mortgages, conflicts with neighbours and the fear of eviction due to lack of security of tenure as well as lack of legal documentation. Urban planning responses to this phenomenon appear weak and inefficient. The study concludes that the urban poor, considering the benefits of acquiring and developing on half plots might continue with the practice; hence, the need to find pragmatic ways of dealing with the rapid occurrence of the half plot phenomenon. • Calls for incremental housing have intensified over the years to address housing challenges in cities. • Incremental housing development does not conform to standards. • Perception and awareness on development control influence attitudes toward compliance. • Non-compliance results in unguarded developments which threaten city sustainability. • Integrating perception into urban planning efforts is crucial to safeguard the urban landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The spatial practices of urban poor in GFL are dictated by meeting basic needs. • Spatial practices of urban poor are disrupted by urban development in GFL. • Developments in GFL hide expressions of poverty in favor of economic desirability. • Local government should coordinate service provision in poor areas such as GFL. • Right to the city includes the right to development in line with spatial practices. Globalizing cities such as Calgary, Canada's center of the oil and gas industry, are confronted with increasing socio-spatial inequalities and uneven development. The aim of this paper is to comprehend poverty in the disadvantaged area of Greater Forest Lawn (GFL) in Calgary through everyday spatial practices of the urban poor and to examine how these practices are affected by urban developments in the area. We provide an in-depth ethnographic account of everyday routines and social conventions of people experiencing poverty in GFL. Our findings reveal how spatial practices that enable poor residents in GFL to meet basic needs are precariously balanced with many intersecting social, spatial, economic, and political structures. They also portray how many residents feel new developments in the area attempt to hide the presence of poverty by oppressing the undesirable aspects associated with it. Consequently, GFL as a social space is increasingly torn between the spatial practices of those trying to cope with poverty and the urban development which imposes a spatial code of desirability and consumption. Consequently, we see urban development in the case of GFL as oppressive and recommend a shift from thinking about urban development in terms of desirability and profitability to becoming more aware of and involved in local practices. Overall, we argue that the right to the city includes the right to urban development in harmony with one's own everyday spatial practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a context of rapidly increasing urbanisation and deepening global inequalities, slum tourism has thrived. This paper presents a discursive analysis of tourists' online reviews of two township tours in Cape Town, South Africa. We investigate how, and to what ends, tourists collectively construct townships as places of hope on TripAdvisor; we question how these reviews feed into broader narratives of urban poverty in the global south. We show how tourists draw on both neoliberal and colonial discourses to construct townships as places of hope–vibrant cultural spaces, rich in non-material assets, inhabited by happy, hard-working residents. We show that by producing slums as productive cultural spaces, tourists are able to resist the stigma associated with slum tourism and position themselves as ethical, enlightened and morally superior tourists. We argue that neoliberal and colonial discourses operate together to produce sanitised representations of townships that both obscure inequalities between poor residents and wealthy tourists from the global north and depoliticise issues like poor infrastructure in townships. In discussing the broader implications of the study, we highlight the importance of producing nuanced representations of townships that acknowledge residents' assets and excellence, while also foregrounding how they live within the oppressive constraints inherent in enduring systems of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy poverty occurs when a household cannot fulfill its energy needs. Despite its widespread occurrence, Chinese cities have yet to formally recognize energy poverty as distinct from general poverty at the national level, thereby limiting the effectiveness of countermeasures. Guangzhou, a subtropical first-tier city in China, has a complex population comprising diverse migrants and locals of all ages. This age diversity greatly affects energy demand and poverty sensitivity, so analyzing age's impact on energy poverty is crucial. Thus, this paper surveyed 1072 households in 2020 to measure the extent of energy poverty. The energy poverty rate was found to be 13.85 %. Additionally, a U-shaped relationship was discovered between age and energy poverty, with a turning point at age 44. The adults in Guangzhou who are in energy poverty are not in income poverty. Higher education levels were found to impact energy consumption in households of both younger and older adults. For individuals older than 42—or 46 with a higher education level—the likelihood of experiencing energy poverty gradually decreases with age. Our findings indicate a unique pattern in which both younger and older individuals are susceptible to energy poverty in a humid subtropical climate. To achieve the UN's 2030 clean energy goals, policymakers must focus on tailored skill training, enhanced social welfare, and effective affordable housing policies to alleviate energy poverty. • We use survey datato measure Guangzhou household energy poverty. The LIHC indicator is 13.86%. • The relationship between age and energy poverty in the household is U-shaped. • Younger and older residents are vulnerable to energy poverty. • Younger and older highly educated individuals are more vulnerable to energy poverty than those without higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Informal housing strategies devised by the urban poor. • Prevalent housing types within informal settlements. • Prevalent housing prices within informal settlements. • Prevalent housing tenure within informal settlements. • Informal finance models within informal settlements. • Self-help housing provision approaches within informal settlements. Providing affordable housing (AH) in a suitable manner has continued to be a global challenge despite various research attempts and policy interventions, suggesting a need for innovativeness in affordable housing provision. Review of literature exposes a mismatch between AH demand and what is supplied. A pragmatic approach to AH provision warrants an investigation of the urban poor, being targets of AH interventions. To achieve this, this study examined the urban poor to diligently explore their informal housing strategies. 40 randomly selected respondents were interviewed from the 5 strata of largest slums in Lagos, Nigeria. Following a descriptive, content and thematic analyses of data, findings are that there are concealed and untapped resources within the housing strategies of the urban poor that may inform suitable affordable housing provision approaches. Findings are that suitable rent for housing the urban poor should not exceed $9 per month, rental housing is more suitable for the urban poor than homeownership, incremental housing, use of cheaper construction materials, adopting alternative housing approaches such as shared housing, convertible homes and hostels are suitable housing construction strategies. Suitable housing financing strategies will be modifying their existent housing finance means among other essential findings. This study provides insights into informally devised housing strategies of settlers in the slums of Lagos. Data from this study may benefit policymakers and are useful for future studies on pro-poor housing provision. Study recommended that the informal strategies of the urban poor can be improved, institutionalized and incorporated into housing policies to achieve effective and sustainable affordable housing provision for the urban poor in developing economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colonialism's lasting impact on contemporary African cities has been firmly established – yet the ways in which colonial planning practices affected walkability, in particular urban permeability in contemporary morphologies, have been largely unexplored. High urban permeability supports livelihoods, particularly for the urban poor, and is needed for a transition towards more walkable cities. Through the mapping of three cities in East Africa, this paper demonstrates that cities in which indigenous planning practices were able to resist colonial planning practices, the emergent urban form has smaller urban blocks and higher urban permeability. As existing policy measures on walkability largely avert improvement of urban permeability, this study suggest a reassessment of those policies. • The area weighted average block perimeters for Kampala, Mombasa Nairobi are 1680 m, 1908 m and 2742 m; • The overall urban permeability in Mombasa, Nairobi and Kampala is low in a global comparison; • Indigenous spatial planning practices had a positive impact on contemporary walkability; • Colonial spatial practices persist in contemporary cities and continue to segregate neighbourhoods; • Curiously, cities with less public space correlated to a higher degree of permeability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of remunicipalisation in the past five years has brought a refreshing perspective to the water governance debate in Jakarta. By embracing the principles of equality and sustainability, water remunicipalisation has the potential to serve as a form of governance, particularly for the urban disadvantaged residing in informal settlements, which bear the disproportionate burden of persistent water inequality. This study aims to examine water governance through the lens of the urban poor in informal settlements and assess to what extent water remunicipalisation holds transformative capabilities for existing unequal systems. Employing an analytical framework that combines environmental justice, feminist political ecology, and everyday governance, the analysis will concentrate on aspects such as distribution, recognition, participation, scale, and multiple identities. Focusing on the case study of Penjaringan, an informal settlement in Jakarta, this research will explore the diverse experiences of water inequality as it intersects with gender, tenancy status, and social relations. While remunicipalisation has shed light on the issue of water inequality and generated momentum for governance reform, it must also encompass the lived realities of the urban poor in informal settlements. The intricacies of the remunicipalisation process in Jakarta impede discussions on the underlying structural causes of injustice, such as misrecognition and misrepresentation. Consequently, there is a failure to analyse the manifestation of water inequality across various governance scales and establish a more inclusive governance framework. This research further proposes the expansion of water remunicipalisation critiques beyond distribution alone to include recognition, participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate-induced migration is an increasingly pressing issue in many African regions, as rising temperatures and extreme weather events have caused the displacement of vulnerable populations. This is especially so in Eastern Africa and the Horn of Africa, particularly Kenya and Ethiopia, where extreme weather events have led to rangeland degradation, crop failures, water shortages, and food insecurity. Hence, there is a perceived need to understand these processes better. Against this background, this paper reports on a study investigating the processes associated with climate-induced migration in Kenya and Ethiopia. The research method used consisted of an expert-driven assessment approach, which assesses the causes of climate-induced migration in Kenya and Ethiopia and its human and social implications on local communities. Data were collected from 110 experts residing and working on climate and migration-related issues in Ethiopia and Kenya via e-mail, whose knowledge of the current situation has enabled the identification of some important trends. The results show that climate change is a primary trigger of migration both internally and externally. The high number of migrants, many of whom living within levels of poverty in their home areas is straining resources and services in the receiving regions. Their presence is also leading to increased competition for jobs and resources. Additionally, it has increased urban poverty, as many migrants have little access to living space and health care. This paper provides a welcome addition to the literature in that it lists the causes and implications of climate-induced migration and, by doing so, fosters a better understanding of the current crisis and its implications. The implications of this paper to the overall knowledge of climate change and migration are twofold. First, it highlights the need for governments, international organisations, and other stakeholders better to understand the complex linkages between climate change and migration. Secondly, it shows the usefulness of better recognising how climate change can drive migration and the other factors shaping the decision to migrate. The paper concludes by stating the urgent need for policies and programmes that support climate change-induced migrants. Also, it draws attention to the usefulness of promoting sustainable development in their origin countries and destinations, so that migration is not necessarily perceived as the only response to climate change. A further conclusion is that there is a perceived need for providing access to resources such as education, health care, and livelihood opportunities and establishing mechanisms to ensure a safe and dignified return for those who choose to do so. • Climate change is a significant driver for migration in Kenya and Ethiopia. • Droughts, conflicts, and crop failures are among the key drivers of migration. • Male migration is more prominent than a female one. • Limited access to productive resources leads to outmigration from rural areas. • Lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic did not cause any major migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This qualitative study explores the stories of young urban poor Filipino family members living with recovering parental drug users who turn themselves in to local authorities and completed theKatatagan Kontra Droga sa Komunidad (KKDK). This is a community-based rehabilitation program during the Philippine government's anti-illegal drugs campaign.Methods: Young urban poor family members living with parental drug use were interviewed (n = 13) and asked to narrate their experiences of parental drug use, surrender, and recovery. Their stories were analyzed using an integrated approach to narrative analysis guided by Rhodes' framework (2002) of risk environment.Results: Narrative work of participants focused on the stories of their parents' drug use and recovery after surrendering. These stories show contexts which evoke the salience of prevailing discourse (i.e., cultural organization of Filipino family) and shaming practices in the community, and how these are embodied in the lives of our young participants. In re-telling their stories of parental drug use, our young participants (re) positioned themselves in three different ways: "I am used to it", "I was neglected", "I am angry and hurt". After their parents completed the community-based rehabilitation program, they reconstructed their parents' stories of recovery as a catalyst to improve their situation as a family unit (i.e., "their change is our change").Conclusion: Set against a national anti-illegal drug campaign, our findings contribute to a contextually nuanced perspective on the impact of parental drug use on children and families living in poverty. Policy makers and interventionists (e.g., mental health practitioners, social workers, psychologists) may need to consider young people's stories as a struggle to exercise their agency when tailoring community-based programs to respond to the needs of younger people. Challenges to advocate for psychological, social, and structural 'healing are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In high-motorisation, car-dependent countries, transport affordability is intimately linked to the price of oil derived motor fuels, which may become increasingly volatile in the future due to global oil price movements and environmental taxation. The negative impacts of fuel price spikes in terms of increased household expenditure and economic stress are unevenly spatially and socially distributed. Previous research has found that vulnerability to fuel price increases is higher in peripheral, peri-urban and rural areas, and that low income tends to be co-located with high car dependence and low vehicle fuel efficiency, with a compounding effect on vulnerability. The goal of this article is to test these hypotheses for England, providing new evidence on spatial patterns of vulnerability to fuel price increases at the small-area level. We propose a composite vulnerability indicator combining data on income, accessibility, vehicle inspection and vehicle registration for 2011. Within English city-regions , we find little evidence of the socially regressive patterns previously identified in the literature. This is explained by the persistent concentration of poverty in urban cores, as well as by the poor fuel economy of the vehicle fleet in wealthier areas, due to the prevalence of powerful vehicles there. On the other hand, our analysis suggests that the impacts of fuel price increases would be very unequal between city-regions , as the least sensitive metropolitan area (Greater London) is also characterised by high levels of adaptive capacity. We conclude by setting out an agenda for future research on spatial vulnerability to fuel price increases. • Vulnerability to fuel price increases is higher in the periurban North of England. • Income and car dependence are positively correlated at small-area level in England. • London is very resilient due to high income and low car dependence and expenditure. • Vehicle fuel efficiency is inconsequential to spatial patterns of vulnerability. • Oil vulnerability research must be sensitive to urban socio-spatial configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Studies of energy poverty have proliferated around the world. While the existing literature provides significant insights into the drivers and dynamics of energy poverty in some parts of the world, there remains little evidence from Asia – a region that combines rapidly changing developed urban conurbations alongside widespread rural poverty. This paper explores a case study of energy poverty in Hong Kong – a global city with high levels of inequality and housing precarity. To date, there has been no published academic work on this topic in the Hong Kong context, and little work in urban Asia. This paper draws on documentary analyses and interviews to present three narratives around the emergence and manifestation of energy poverty in Hong Kong: (a) energy systems, markets and policy (b) urban poverty and inequality and (c) energy services and cooling. By reading energy poverty 'through the city', the paper emphasises the importance of geographically sensitive accounts and proposes an agenda for future research. It thus enables the study of energy poverty to be productively pursued in the context of Hong Kong and urban Asia more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract While urban poverty has been known to be spatially concentrated in inner-city areas for a long time, the degree of poverty concentration has declined substantially since the 1990s, whereas poverty has increasingly expanded to suburban areas to which relatively little attention has been paid. This study examines how poverty distribution has changed in the Los Angeles-Long Beach Combined Statistical Area and why. More specifically, an investigation is made to capture the detailed changes of poverty rates in over three thousand census tracts over the last two decades and to identify driving forces behind these spatiotemporal changes by employing spatial regression models. Results show that high poverty areas have stretched over space, not in a way that expands their overall size but in a way that increases the degree of spatial fragmentation throughout the last two decades. The results also reveal that neighborhood poverty change is largely shaped by wealth clustering and other spatially-explicit processes. Highlights • We examine how and why poverty distribution has changed in Southern California. • Poverty has spread out in a complicated fashion. • Neighborhood-level poverty dynamics are highly location-dependent. • Recent poverty redistribution can be seen as a byproduct of wealth clustering. • Housing vintage and neighborhood development cycles also play an important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Today's rapid global urbanization highlights the need for long-term transformations of basic service sectors in developing cities in order to improve the livelihoods of the urban poor. Sustainability transitions frameworks have proven fruitful for addressing these sort of challenges. However, they have been at pains so far in accounting for the heterogeneity and complexities that typically characterize informal settlements in the Global South. We therefore propose a conceptual framework that extends the conventional analysis of socio-technical regimes by distinguishing the two levels of sectoral regime and service regime. Challenges for sustainability transitions may then be identified by missing alignments within and among the two regime levels. The framework is applied to the sanitation sector of Nairobi, Kenya, a city experiencing rapid population growth and a highly uneven provision of basic services. Drawing on a set of 152 in-depth interviews, observations, and five focus group discussions, the paper reconstructs the prevailing service regimes and shows how they suffer from misalignments and dysfunctionalities creating all sorts of problems at a sectoral level. We conclude that Nairobi's sanitation sector can best be characterized as representing a splintered regime. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the new conceptualization of socio-technical regimes suggests some new sustainable transition pathways and how this framework might also be instructive for transition challenges in cities of the Global North. Highlights • Accounts for the heterogeneity and unevenness of regimes in developing cities • Extending conventional regime analyses by distinguishing sectoral- and service regimes • A practice-oriented approach to create a grounded, spatially sensitive framework. • Transition pathways can come about through improved alignments within the regime. • Nairobi's sanitation sector is conceptualized as a splintered regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informal urbanization in the global North is an emerging field of research. Likewise, the need to expand existing morphological analysis into informal settlements is well established but lacks material. As our long-term study is able to show, Vienna was one of the European 'capitals' of informal urbanization in the 20th century. Drawing on both historical and present-day geodata and surveys, we trace the emergence and transformation of 'wild' settlements over the course of a century. City-wide GIS-reconstructions help us to localize and quantify Vienna's informal fringe. We discuss situational and site factors, the spatial patterns of clearance and legalization. Our research documents the remarkable scale and persistence of Vienna's 'wild' settlements. By the mid-1900s, the self-made "city of settlers and gardeners" had transformed more than 43 km2 of peri-urban terrain. Formalization and infrastructural retrofitting were a piecemeal process that lasted until the early 2000s, in some cases even until the present. It resulted in a patchwork of both legal status and urban tissues. The informal 'facts on the ground' not only came to structure and shape the residential suburbs of today's agglomeration, but also fed back on the planning instruments and the authorities that tried to enforce them. Informal urbanization in Vienna, as is often the case in the Global South nowadays, was a mode of production of space driven by desires for a better life, for autonomous nutrition and affordable housing. Tracing Vienna's 'wild' fringe, we conclude, helps to further demythologize the notion of "Northern formality" and contributes to a small, but growing number of long-term studies on informal (sub)urbanization. Moreover, our study shows that there are ways to reconstruct the settlement patterns of the urban poor even for the pre-google-earth era, provided there is the necessary source material and technical capabilities. Thus, it contributes to the methodological array in urban studies and the study of urban form in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the informal expansion of Constantine from the perspective of land as a property asset and a regulation target and what it involves in terms of stakeholders' interplays. The study was conducted on the southeastern expansion by drawing a parallel between land use regulation and the actual land use on large private landholdings. A qualitative survey was conducted to investigate the informal production and use of urban land through semi-structured interviews with relevant public and private stakeholders. The study shows that informal land use lies in the conflict between urban planners and landowners over the conversion and allocation of large private landholdings and the financial stakes it involves. Land transactions are engaged in the informal market when land use regulation does not converge with the owner's logic of land value maximization. The informal land market allows the latter to circumvent land use regulation and to capture land added value on hypothetical uses, whether by informally converting agricultural lands or allocating urban ones. As to the resulting informal land use, it is not limited to housing issues but also meets the needs of private actors for tertiary real estate. It is also pointed out that land use policy and regulations failure in countering the phenomenon lies in ignoring the informal land market upstream of informal land use and urbanization. Finally, the study suggests that a preventive approach should address the conflict over land use with land management oriented towards local approach and consensus seeking with the private stakeholders. In this sense, we propose a tool to assess the likelihood of the emergence of informal land market as a decision aid for urban planners and policymakers in terms of land use. • The driving force behind informal land use lies in the conflict between urban planners and landowners. • The conflict occurs when regulations hinder the most profitable use of land for landowners. • This conflict manifests itself in the informal land market, which is the initial stage of informal urbanization. • A tool for assessing the emergence of informal land markets is proposed as preventive approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'sites and services' approach was conceived during the 1970s as a possible solution to tackle the issue of precarious housing in the global south. After providing land, infrastructures and services, the urban poor were allowed to incrementally build their dwellings. Despite initial criticism, the effectiveness of this approach has eventually been reconsidered. This paper aims to contribute to the long-lasting discussion on 'sites and services' projects by exploring their relationship with urban adaptability. Following the identification of the enabling conditions for adaptability at the neighbourhood scale, a fieldwork analysis has been conducted in the Indian neighbourhood of Charkop, located in the outskirts of Mumbai and first developed within a 'sites and services' programme. The results have shown that legal tenure, a hierarchical spatial plan aligned with the socioeconomic context, and a soft regulatory framework influenced by residents' associations and informal processes played a decisive role in the long-term project's success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vietnam’s urban population is growing rapidly: by 2020 45% of Vietnamese are forecasted to be residing in cities. Even though poverty today remains predominantly a rural phenomenon, there is a need to better understand the landscape of poverty in urban areas. Drawing on small-area estimation methods we estimate welfare outcomes at the level of individual towns and cities in Vietnam, including even the smallest towns. Such estimates could not be produced using national sample surveys alone. Results show an inverse relationship between poverty and city size in Vietnam, with the urban poor being disproportionately concentrated in small towns and cities. This relationship is robust to the location of the poverty line as well as to alternative city-size definitions. Interestingly, our evidence of a clear gradient between absolute poverty and city size is not replicated for subjective welfare, measured by self-reported food sufficiency. The absolute poverty-city size gradient does, however, accord with the observation of striking variation in service availability across cities of different size in Vietnam. Small town residents are typically confronted with far lower per-capita availability of basic services than are large city dwellers. The results suggest that policymakers concerned to tackle urban poverty in Vietnam should not neglect attending to smaller towns. Addressing inequalities in access to key basic services across the entire urban population may represent one means to this end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is predicted to have severe impacts on mountainous regions, including urban settlements, and livelihoods of the urban poor. Adaptive capacity for marginalized groups is largely determined by household-level resources and decision-making capacity. This study investigated the vulnerability status and prevalent adaptation strategies of urban slum dwellers in Dehradun, Indian Himalayas, using a pre-tested questionnaire covering household characteristics and indicators of vulnerability, in face-to-face interviews with the head of 122 randomly selected households in four slums. We found that overall vulnerability was very high, with very low absorptive and coping capacity for potential impacts of climate change. Moreover, vulnerability and coping strategies were socially differentiated in terms of the decision-making capability and resource capacity of households. Two groups per category (good and bad decision makers; poor and poorer households) were distinguished. The exposure dimension of vulnerability differed significantly by resource capacity and decision capability. However, the sensitivity dimension of vulnerability did not differ between the groups, while the adaptive capacity dimension of vulnerability differed depending on decision-making capability. In designing appropriate strategies for long-term disaster mitigation for urban slums, it is thus important to address slum socio-ecology and the capability and capacity of slum dwellers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides evidence on the number and volume of financial transactions undertaken by agents (local businesses that double as more convenient, lower cost alternatives to formal branches) of the largest microfinance institution operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). To our knowledge, this is the first econometric study of the activities of agents in a country as underdeveloped as the DRC. More important than agents’ personal characteristics, transactions are higher in low income, densely populated areas with high levels of commercial development, suggesting that the agent network has been best at supporting financial transactions among the urban poor. In addition, branding and effective liquidity management are strongly linked to agent activity. The results suggest that agents can be effective providers of basic financial services among the urban poor who lack suitable alternatives. But it remains to be seen how the agent banking model will play out in less densely populated areas of the DRC and other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective The objective of this paper is to report birth preparedness and place of birth and its determinants among recent- and settled- migrant households living in slums of Delhi. Methods In a cross-sectional survey, 458 migrant mothers with a child aged below one year of age were identified. Socio-demographic details, data on the place of childbirth, antenatal care (ANC) and birth preparedness in terms of planning for home birth or hospital birth, transport, saving money, knowledge of danger signs were collected through interviewer-administered pretested questionnaire. Logistic regression was carried out for the determinants of hospital birth. Results The present study migrants are characterised by younger ages, low educational attainment, low incomes and represented by socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. They mainly relied on government healthcare services for maternal care. ANC seeking was not satisfactory with 16% of women with no ANC; 46% receiving 1–3 visits; and only 23% of women reported health worker visited them at home. 59% of the births took place at hospitals. Having ANC visits (Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR) for having 4 or more ANC visits = 5.252), planning for hospital birth (AOR = 6.114), plan for transport (AOR = 1.989), mass media exposure (listening to radio; AOR = 2.871) and knowledge of danger signs (AOR = 3.872) resulted in significant chances of hospital birth. Conclusion Migrant women are at the risk of utilizing the services to a less extent. The health systems need to take measures to mitigate the disadvantage due to migration through specific strategies to make them inclusive and outreach to the poor migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Restrictions like work requirements and constraints on voucher transfers are often used in social welfare systems, but little empirical evidence exists on their impact on wellbeing. We conducted a 10-day randomized experiment with 432 individuals living below the poverty line in the Kawangware settlement of Nairobi, Kenya, testing two elements of social welfare design: workfare versus welfare and restricted versus unrestricted vouchers. Participants were randomly assigned to a “Work” condition, involving daily work for unrestricted vouchers, or one of two “Wait” conditions, involving daily waiting for vouchers that were either unrestricted or partially restricted to staple foods. We find that working improved psychological wellbeing relative to waiting, suggesting that the means of implementing welfare programs may have important effects on individuals beyond the impact of monetary benefit alone. Furthermore, although the restrictions were inframarginal, partially restricted vouchers crowded-in spending on staple foods, suggesting the existence of a “flypaper effect” in spending from restricted vouchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data collection methods and poverty measures have not caught up with the reality of an increasingly urbanised world; as a result, urban poverty may be underestimated. This has important implications for targeting interventions and allocating resources in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Several problems affect the measurement of urban poverty: definitions of ‘slum’ settlements vary widely, data collection may undercount slum populations, insufficient data disaggregation may conceal intra-city disparities, and common indicators and assumptions may be ill-suited to assessing both income and multidimensional poverty in urban contexts. However, not enough is known about the extent to which these issues affect the resulting estimates. This paper contributes to the existing literature by illustrating the scale of the bias associated with common practices in measuring urban poverty at different stages of the production of poverty estimates. The analysis draws on selected examples in the literature alongside new analysis of data from Demographic and Health Surveys and Household Income and Expenditure Surveys. The article also provides recommendations on how to address each of these problems to improve urban poverty measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When we think about living environments of the urban poor, slums might be the most immediate association. These slums evoke a more or less stereotype impression of built environments: complex, high dense alignments of small makeshift or run-down shelters. However, this perceived characteristic morphology is neither globally homogeneous nor is this perception covering morphologic appearances of urban poverty in a comprehensive way. This research provides an empirical baseline study of existing morphologies, their similarities and differences across the globe. To do so, we conceptually approach urban poverty as places which provide relatively cheap living spaces serving as possible access to the city, to its society and to its functions – so called Arrival Cities. Based on a systematic literature survey we select a sample of 44 Arrival Cities across the globe. Using very high resolution optical satellite data in combination with street view images and field work we derive level of detail-1 3D-building models for all study areas. We measure the spatial structure of these settlements by the spatial pattern (by three features – building density, building orientation and heterogeneity of the pattern) and the morphology of individual buildings (by two features – building size and height). We develop a morphologic settlement type index based on all five features allowing categorization of Arrival Cities. We find a large morphologic variety for built environments of the urban poor, from slum and slum-like structures to formal and planned structures. This variability is found on all continents, within countries and even within a single city. At the same time detected categories (such as slums) are found to have very similar physical features across the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mekong Delta faces significant challenges in supplying Vietnam and its export market countries with agricultural commodities, while ensuring livelihoods and providing living space to its growing population in the context of climate change and the country's agrarian transition. Anthropogenic factors, such as the construction of dykes to control river flooding, river sand mining, the further development of triple-cropping rice production, and infrastructure development, together with climate change impacts on sediment and water availability, are all combining to threaten agricultural production. One of the key challenges in sustainable development is the need to identify plausible future states of agricultural-based socio-ecological systems which draw upon differing strategies of land management, and to characterise the impacts of these systems on both the landscape and employment. It was hypothesised from the literature and rapid rural appraisals that each land system can only provide a certain number of jobs, which was further demonstrated using binomial regressions. We show that the odds of being employed are lower for intensive agricultural systems (OR=0.78 for triple rice; 0.91 for intensive aquaculture) than for diversified systems (OR=1.16 for rice-aquaculture; OR=1.63 for mixed fruit trees). Drawing from workshops with local and national stakeholders, we then used Earth observation and national census data in a spatial land use systems dynamic framework to simulate two alternative Mekong Delta futures based upon the climate pathway RCP 4.5 in combination with two existing policies (i) Resolution No. 124 (Specialisation) which promotes triple crop rice and aquaculture intensification and (ii) Resolution No. 639 (Diversification), which states that there should be a development of sustainable rice aquaculture and crop diversification. Based on the quantitative objectives of each policy, we estimated likely changes of services provided by land use systems if either policy were to dominate. The estimated impacts of each future scenario on the provision of employment ultimately indicate that policies with a diversification development paradigm will provide more employment (+0.9%) than policies with a specialisation paradigm (−46%), and that current policies have potentially conflicting consequences. Decisions driving towards intensive farming risk triggering rural unemployment and outmigration, potentially exacerbating urban poverty in major cities such as Can Tho and Ho Chi Minh City. On the other hand, decisions aiming at increasing diversified agricultural systems can help secure more job opportunities. Our results indicate that spatial planning policies should rely on a broad-based assessment of land system services that include employment and environmental impacts to ensure a just transition towards resilient and environmentally sustainable rural territories. • We modelled associations between land use systems and employment opportunities and projected land use systems until 2030 based on two policy paradigms: specialisation and diversification. • More intensive farming systems provide less employment opportunities than more diversified systems at a territorial level. • Current development policies have potential conflicting aims, leading to a drastic increase in intensive aquaculture and triple rice cropping systems at the expense of more diversified systems. • Inclusion of employment opportunities as a policy target leads to more diversified systems that provide more employment without compromising overall agriculture and aquaculture gross product. • Future interventions should support transitions to off-farm livelihoods in well-connected communities while steering towards more diversified land use systems that could offer on-farm livelihoods to landless households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding and ending poverty has become one of the most important SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) all over the world. The street-level built environment is an important indicator to reflect urban poverty. However, traditional data such as satellite imagery may not provide fine-grained information of built environment at the street level. In recent years, street view image has become promising data for assessing an urban micro environment. This study aimed to use street view data and deep learning technique to examine the association between street-level built environment and urban poverty in Guangzhou, China, from a geographical heterogeneity perspective. First, we measured urban poverty in Guangzhou based on the Index of Multiple Deprivation. Second, we used the Pyramid Scene Parsing Network model for image segmentation and then performed principal component analysis to extract five major street view factors (i.e., vegetation enclosure sense, color complexity sense, road openness sense, sky openness sense, and building enclosure sense) from the street view data. Third, we conducted the geographical detector analysis to examine how street view factors is associated with urban poverty. Results suggested that vegetation enclosure sense, color complexity sense, and road openness sense are significantly related to the spatial heterogeneity of urban poverty. Among all factors, vegetation enclosure sense played a leading role. The results also confirmed the coexistence of different street view factors have association with the spatial heterogeneity of urban poverty. In conclusion, street-level built environment is generally associated with urban poverty, and therefore our proposed method can be considered as an efficiently method for identifying urban poor communities. • The street-level built environment based on street view images is used to reflect urban poverty. • The geographical detector method is applied to understand how street-level built environment is associated with urban poverty. • The coexistence of different street view factors can reflect poverty more significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on travel and life satisfaction in vulnerable Global South contexts are scarce. This paper contributes by addressing how travel satisfaction, neighborhood satisfaction, and social capital relate to life satisfaction among a low-income community in Bogotá (Colombia) as a case study. Building on the available literature, we propose six hypotheses to understand such relationships before and after a cable car implementation, considering control and treatment groups. We defined seven latent variables and three objective indicators. We tested the hypotheses using a multiple-cause multiple-indicator modeling approach, which allowed us to identify how the comprehensive cable car intervention impacts perceptions and life satisfaction. Results showed that the principal factors associated with life satisfaction were neighborhood satisfaction as well as leisure activity participation, while travel time and transport affordability had negative effects. Positive changes in satisfaction regarding the travel experience can trigger significant improvements in life satisfaction in low-income communities in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates land investments and credit access resulting from a land rights formalization initiative in the Lusaka city region, Zambia, through 302 household interviews, key informant interviews, satellite image analysis and focus group discussions. Results reveal that no more than 27% of respondents in Bauleni and 15% in Madido had mortgaged their houses to formal institutions despite a perceived increase in house values due to the legitimization of property ownership. There was no marked increase in access to formal credit but local informal saving and credit associations, with only 30% having accessed credit. The reported and observed increase in immovable land investments such as house structure expansions, fencing of property and renovations by respondents (78% in Madido and 65% in Bauleni) was attributed to the availability of finances and not land rights formalization per se. The importance of socio-economic and local cultural norms in accruing benefits from property ownership is underplayed by land rights formalization proponents. Therefore, while land tenure reforms remain necessary, they are not sufficient conditions for the urban poor to realize the espoused benefits of formalization - induced capital formation. • Residents of previously illegal settlements have received title deeds. • Land titling has not resulted in increased access to formal credit. • Land owners reluctant to mortgage their titled properties. • Land investments are related to availability of finances and not titles per se. • Banks are reluctant to accept title deeds for houses located in informal settlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While interim property rights are thought to achieve incremental improvements of tenure security and rights for the urban poor, there is surprisingly little research into the provision of starter documents in sub-Saharan Africa. Namely, how effective are interim property rights in responding to local demands for tenure security and rights in the long run and vis-à-vis other de facto and de jure tenure options? Drawing on an institutional analytic approach and mixed-method research, we study the Residential Licence programme of Tanzania, which offers short-term leases to around 220,000 plots in Dar es Salaam. This interim property right has undergone substantial institutional drift , with decreasing uptake rates, low renewal rates and poor updating of records. Today, landholders value other de facto and de jure proofs of ownership over and above the Residential Licence, which is now less perceived as pro-poor and fit-for-purpose. These results illustrate that interim property rights need maintenance and recalibration, or they will 'come adrift' amidst other institutional layers. Reflecting on the effects of institutional layering in property rights, this paper contributes to literatures on incremental land reform and demand for land titles, and it provides important policy recommendations relevant to urban Tanzania and wider contexts. • Incremental approaches to tenure security are difficult to maintain in the long-term. • Institutional pluralism impacts interim property rights in urban Tanzania. • Institutional layering caused Residential Licence to drift v other land documents. • The Residential Licence requires recalibration to maintain its pro-poor potential. • Interim rights in other African contexts must be examined for institutional drift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green spaces in relation to low-income informal settlements are critical to sustainable and equitable urban futures. This paper considers the development of green spaces in an informal settlement in Johannesburg, South Africa. It reports a survey investigating the residents’ willingness to pay for the development and use of four relevant components of green infrastructure in the informal settlement. I find out who is willing to pay and how much, if the green spaces are delivered by the state (municipality) as well as non-municipal agents. The survey points to possible areas of innovation on green space development in relation to the urban poor in informal settlements. Consideration of socio-economic equity and inclusion, rights and responsibilities will nevertheless need to accompany the residents’ preference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kenyan water utilities face a challenge of balancing the financial objective of commercial viability with the social objective of service expansion. To achieve this, they employ service differentiation in which different categories of consumers receive different levels of service. Although service differentiation has achieved results, it reflects a prioritization of financial objectives over social objectives and raises three particular concerns. First, service differentiation reflects a withdrawal of the utility from core service provision responsibilities. Second, it results in inequitable service provision. Finally, it may lock low-income consumers into a low level of service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years earthquakes and their secondary hazards have claimed the largest number of lives of all large natural disasters. Some of the world’s most earthquake-prone zones are also areas of high population density. The impact is magnified by vulnerability factors including non-enforcement of building codes, knowledge gaps, urban poverty and poor governance capacity to manage and reduce earthquake risks. Poor security of land tenure and property rights increases the vulnerability of people and affects their ability to respond to natural disasters. Earthquake recovery and reconstruction provides very significant challenges for land agencies, with these challenges differing from one country to the next due to differences in the local context. Drawing on contrasting case studies in Haiti, Nepal and New Zealand this paper identifies the common post-earthquake land administration functions and challenges that may apply to many contexts. These lessons provide land agencies and other key stakeholders with a summary of the challenges an earthquake poses for land administration at different post-disaster stages. We also discuss the policy and regulatory, institutional, operational and preparedness lessons for land administration. From these lessons we propose a framework for evaluating the earthquake-responsiveness of a land administration system. This framework can be used by a land agency in an earthquake prone region, or where an earthquake has recently occurred, to assess what challenges to land administration might occur in the event of an earthquake, and the preparedness of their land administration system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, many Latin-American states have been increasingly involved in the provision of subsidized housing for the urban poor. These housing projects are usually implemented in forms of massive master planned estates located in urban peripheries. The focus on quantity of housing units built, as opposed to the good location, connectivity and functionality of the dwellings, impedes access of the residents to income-generating opportunities and reduces their socio-economic mobility. This paper analyzes how residents in one of such social housing complexes –Villas de San Pablo in Barranquilla, Colombia– adopt and respond to these challenges in their own, informal ways. Building on empirical data obtained from interviews, observation and an enumeration survey, the author explains how the lack of jobs and economic opportunities in the area motivated many of the dwellers to convert their houses to accommodate different income-generating activities. Thus, this paper documents how a master planned project and its land-use transform from a strictly controlled into a diverse and organic urban ecosystem. The author argues for an urgent revision of the planning practices, inflexible zoning bylaws and outdated design principles that shape these “modern” affordable housing projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined predictors of depressive symptoms in emerging adulthood in a sample of 1142 individuals (94% African American) who grew up in urban poverty. Data were drawn from a longitudinal study that followed participants from age five and included participant, parent, and teacher surveys, and administrative records. Depressive symptoms were self-reported at age 22–24 using a modified version of the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI; Derogatis, 1975). Binary logistic regression analyses identified several significant predictors of depressive symptoms in emerging adulthood, including: sex, adverse childhood experiences (ACE) score, socio-emotional adjustment in the classroom, juvenile arrest, and on-time graduation. Significant sex differences were also detected, with the final models fitting the male sample better than the full study or female samples. Implications for future research and intervention are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the provision of basic infrastructure services to the urban poor, limited rigorous evidence on the most effective service delivery approaches is available. This meta-analysis synthesises the evidence on the effectiveness of bottom-up approaches that is characterized by the strong involvement of alternate service providers such as NGO's and CBO's in improving access to electricity, water supply, and sanitation services for the urban poor. Although bottom-up approaches are espoused, we find that they do not have a statistically significant effect. This trend was consistent for all dimensions of access: connectivity, affordability, adequacy, and effort and time. However, our findings also show that bottom-up approaches may be more effective in the water and sanitation sectors than in the electricity sector. When bottom-up approaches involve active participation from the community, the results are significantly positive. Our study suggests that innovations to bottom-up approaches that facilitate active community participation can be an effective way to increase access to basic services among the urban poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an analysis of urbanisation in a Ghanaian city of Kumasi in relation to its impacts on commercialisation of residential land use is presented. The analysis further highlights the impacts of residential land use makeover on urban functionality and the urban poor. Using physical survey, interviews, agency consultations and review of secondary data, findings indicate that a majority (85%) of residential land use has been converted into commercial and mixed land uses due to increased demand and associated high land values as well as weak urban planning system. Regrettably, most urban poor (86.7%) cannot afford higher rents, resulting in their eviction by property owners and occupation in kiosks and on streets in Kumasi central creating urban blight. Additionally, urban functionality is hindered with chaotic scenes of uncontrolled commercial development and activities, and limited consideration for basic facilities such as parking. Planning implications of the findings are further presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]