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Abstract Background The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic severely affected global food security, but analyses of its impact on the cost and affordability of a healthy diet are limited. This study examines the immediate effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the cost and affordability of a healthy diet among urban households in Bangkok, Thailand and Manila, the Philippines. Methods We used official food price and household income and food expenditure data from the national statistics offices. The cost of recommended diet (CoRD) method was employed to assess the minimum cost of a healthy diet, following the healthy diet recommendations provided in the national food-based dietary guidelines of the specific countries. Regression discontinuity design was estimated to determine the COVID-19 effect on food prices and scenario analysis done to determine the effect of reduced food budgets with and without government relief programs. Results The results show that the average cost of the recommended diet was US$ 1.55 per person/day in Bangkok and US$ 3.76 in Manila (2019 prices in purchasing power parities) immediately before the pandemic. This diet is generally affordable for all households in Bangkok, but only for 37% of households (4.98 million people) in Manila, indicating much higher poverty in the latter. The pandemic and associated government measures decreased the cost of the recommended diet with 6.5% in Bangkok (p = 0.001) but not in Manila (p = 0.167). Assuming contractions in people’s food budgets of 15–20%, the recommended diet became unaffordable for 0.08–0.12 million people in Bangkok and 6.32–7.73 million people in Manila during the pandemic. Government relief largely compensated for this loss in Bangkok, but relief payments in Manila were not enough to compensate the effect. Conclusion These results show that the main effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the affordability of healthy diets was through the effect on reduced incomes of the poor rather than through prices. Government relief measures should target low-income households to give them the means to purchase healthy food items.

Although privatisation in Metro Manila has resulted in increased access to piped connections and reduced pilferage, the urban poor pay more for low-quality water and access it through small-scale providers including cooperatives and syndicates. While forming cooperatives can represent efforts of urban poor communities to claim legality, the selling of water to neighbours or offering protections for pilfering by local providers illustrates everyday illegality. Governing logics of the postcolonial state and concessionaires shape these Janus-faced survival practices of urban poor communities. These unwritten shared understandings, or informal institutions, operate within porous spaces of legality and illegality and remain at the mercy of the state, which can criminalise them. Moreover, while living in an informal settlement precludes access to individual piped connections from concessionaires, living on a resettlement site does not ensure access either, indicating that city planning directly impacts water access and supply. These realities suggest a relational reading of informality, linking the state and concessionaires from the top down with negotiated access to water from the bottom up, which may explain persisting inequities.

Direct effects of climate change on health, such as a rise in the incidence of heat strokes due to summer heatwaves, and indirect health effects such as under-nutrition due to a rise in food prices because of climate change, are mediated through the social and environmental determinants of health (SEDH), which include but are not limited to potable water, clean air, adequate sanitation, safe shelter, and adequate food. Based on a narrative review, this paper identifies possible mechanisms through which human health is impacted by climate change. Evidence has shown that climate change-induced effects such as high temperatures and heat waves, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), vector-borne diseases and undernutrition lead to undesirable health outcomes for the urban poor through unfavorable SEDH. Given that health of the urban poor is anticipated to be disproportionately affected by the risks of changing climate, this paper emphasizes the need for focusing on the environmental justice approach to safeguard the health of the urban poor in developing countries. It also argues for strengthening participatory and transparent urban governance to upgrade informal settlements and address factors that enhance health vulnerabilities of the urban poor. It contributes to the limited literature on environmental justice in the context of developing countries and provides a rationale behind mainstreaming the environmental justice approach for reducing the climate change-induced health risks for the urban poor.

The article explores eating-out practices among poor urban consumers in Bangladesh and their strategies to cope with food safety concerns. Using social practice theory, we implemented interviews and a household survey to analyse the eating-out practices of adult slum dwellers in Dhaka, Bangladesh and their food safety coping strategies. We identified two different dominant eating out practices: ‘snacking’ and ‘having a complete meal’. By reviewing the food safety concerns and coping strategies, we found that despite varying concerns, coping strategies are broadly similar across these two practices. The concerns include food presentation, unhygienic conditions, and unknown processing, while searching for information, using heuristic tools, and avoidance are the main coping strategies. These strategies are applied in both practices and do not exhibit significant differences in socioeconomic considerations and safety concerns. This indicates that the urban poor lack the resource and competencies to manage their concerns. The conclusion section presents a conceptual framework for future research on food safety coping strategies in urban eating-out practices. We also underline the need for context-specific policy interventions to ensure food safety in the urban food system of the global south.

Seasonality was shown to have an effect on food availability and accessibility, increasing the risk of food insecurity and causing poor diet quality and malnutrition. Therefore, this study aimed to determine seasonal effects on household food security status, diet quality, and nutritional status of urban poor adolescents in Malaysia. A cohort study was conducted among 164 adolescents aged 10–17 from 12 People Housing Programme in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia during the Northeast (November 2021 till March 2022) and Southwest (June 2022 till September 2022) monsoon. Household food security status was measured using the 18-item USDA Household Food Security Survey Module. Dietary intake was determined using a two-days 24-h dietary recall and translated into Standardized Malaysian Healthy Eating Index (S-MHEI). Anthropometric and haemoglobin level measurements were performed to determine nutritional status. Seasonality was found to have a significant effect on overall diet quality (p = 0.021), food groups such as fish (p < 0.001), meat/poultry/eggs (p = 0.003), and legumes/nuts (p < 0.001), and fat nutrient (p = 0.037) as well as anaemia status (p = 0.020) after controlling the confounders. Although food security did not vary with seasons, seasonality affected the consumption of certain food groups as well as anaemia status for urban poor adolescents. Seasonally sensitive nutrition initiatives should be developed to ensure diet adherence to recommendations, ultimately enhancing the diet quality of urban poor adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty alleviation through industrial development in China contributes to the long-standing debate on how the poor could benefit from the development. It creates four industrial organizing approaches (i.e. households operating independently, intermediary organizations providing linkages, modern enterprise leading and asset income distribution) and three ways of participation for the rural poor (i.e. participating as petty commodity producers, wage workers and shareholders), in which productivity has been improved and production relations adjusted. While highlighting the specificity of China's situation, this paper argues for the more general implications of China's case for other developing countries due to its theoretical hybridity in addressing poverty alleviation and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy poverty is a phenomenon understood as the result of conditions extrinsic and intrinsic to the household, although it is within this space where it manifests with greater intensity. This article identifies and analyzes the strategies deployed by households and, particularly, by women as the main historical responsible parties for the management of household resources to mitigate the causes and consequences of energy poverty in an electricitydependent urban locality in Argentina. Using the focus group technique, the study takes the voices of the protagonists and their experiences to qualitatively identify and analyze the strategies and practices women deploy in their daily lives to alleviate the consequences of energy poverty. These strategies and practices impact the organization of household resources and the physical and mental health of women due to their role in domestic and caregiving tasks. Although the women's proposal is to build learning spaces about energy usage that bolster their strategies, this would further reinforce the gendered distribution of domestic labor, which is why this paper suggests the design of multi-scalar policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Pregnant women in urban poor societies are vulnerable groups. Due to low financial capacity, there are obstacles to accessing delivery in an institution for poor women in urban areas. The study analyses factors associated with the delivery place among pregnant women in urban poor society in Indonesia. Materials and Methods: The study analyzed secondary data from the 2017 Indonesian Demographic and Health Survey (IDHS). A total of 1,562 samples were childbearing-age women (15–49 years) who gave birth in an urban poor society in Indonesia in the last 5 years. The study examined some variables, such as delivery place, age, education, employment, marital status, parity, insurance, knowledge of pregnancy danger, antenatal care (ANC), the autonomy of health, and family finance autonomy. The study employed binary logistic regression in the final stage. Results: The results show that age is associated with the place of delivery. The higher the education, the higher the possibility for delivery in an institution. Being employed and having partners are protective factors for women in institution delivery. The likelihood of giving birth in a medical facility decreases as more children are born alive. In addition, having health insurance, thorough ANC visits, knowledge of pregnancy danger symptoms, and health autonomy are protective factors for pregnant women having deliveries in medical facilities. On the contrary, pregnant women who rely solely on family financing have a higher chance of delivering in a medical facility. Conclusion: The study concluded that 10 variables were associated with pregnant women's delivery in Indonesia's urban poor society: age, education, employment, marital, parity, insurance, pregnancy danger knowledge, ANC, health autonomy, and family finance autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the economic policies adopted by the Indian government under different policy regimes, provides a political economy perspective of economic growth in the country during 1950–2020 and examines the inclusiveness of the rapid economic growth in recent decades. The growth performance of the economy improved as the economy moved from inward-looking policy regime to the regimes of pro-business and pro-market policies. India's political economy was supportive of the changes in policy regime. After growing at a sluggish rate during the first three decades after 1950–1951, the gross domestic product (GDP) growth accelerated significantly after the pro-business reforms in the 1980s, and there was further acceleration after the pro-market reforms since 1991–1992. It has, however, slowed down in recent years. Nevertheless, it has not been inclusive, as the benefits of growth have not reached all sections of the population and all regions of the country equally. On the contrary, disparities in income across regions and inequalities in income, wealth and consumption among individuals have exacerbated, and the problems of unemployment and poverty have been persisting in the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anaemia is a major public health issue in India. As per the National Health Family Survey (NFHS), the prevalence of anaemia has increased (55.8% to 59.1%) from NFHS-4 to NFHS-5. Anaemia among adolescent girls is higher (56% to 59%) than among boys (30% to 31%). According to NFHS 5, infant and child mortality rates have improved since the previous round; therefore, attention is required for adolescents because they are future mothers. It is relevant to bring out the prevalence of anaemia in adolescent girls to prevent maternal and child health in the future. This cross-sectional study was conducted among 250 adolescent girls in Munirika urban village, Delhi. 60.4% of anaemia cases were found among 250 study participants. The study revealed that anaemia was highly prevalent among adolescent girls. Anaemia was associated with less literate, lower starta, poor diet and underweight factors. Anaemia was found to be significantly more common in adolescent girls, and this incidence was higher in lower socio-economic strata, parents who were less educated, poor diet habits, and underweight causes. To have an early impact on reducing adolescents' anaemia, school teachers and Frontline Health Workers (FHWs) should educate and counsel them during home visits. There is a need for IFA supplementation and regular diet pattern awareness among adolescent girls. Interpersonal counseling needs to be strengthened at the community level through home visits and initiating awareness programs. The nutritional status of adolescent girls can be improved through counseling and health education. T3 camps should be held at the school level to raise awareness of anaemia among adolescent girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research embarks from the standpoint that unequal geographies of service delivery in the Southern city evidence differentiating practices embedded within dominant rational planning practices. It aligns and responds to the call of Southern urban theorists to develop alternative planning practices by anchoring within the socio- spatial specificities of Southern urbanisms. Foregrounding this objective, the research turns to the collaborative planning model and its pragmatic tradition of resisting the subjugating tendencies of instrumental rationality by admitting new ways of knowing and being from the life-world. Drawing upon a multi-actor collaboration that sought to address the circumstance of water insecurity in the urban poor settlements of Ranchi city, the research uses Healy's (1997) Forum, Arena and Courts as entry points to frame on-ground recursive and collaborative interventions. These include unpacking the context to frame and implement interventions that sought to enhance water security while operationalising supporting actions that aim to sustain the interventions. Within this framing, the paper draws upon the critiques of the collaborative planning model as standpoints for contextual reinterpretation to foreground a) the importance of empowering strategic actors at the bottom of socio-political hierarchies to lead the process; b) conceptualize consensus as a process rather than an end-point recognizing its intrinsic relationship with conflict; and, c) institutionalizing formalized yet flexible processes for consensus-building. Overall the paper argues that collaborative planning with its focus on the particularities of place and on the human capacity to invent, create, and transform presents a viable starting point for resisting the dominating confines of instrumental rationality in significant ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The countryside is the principal area of population agglomeration with a high incidence of global poverty problems. As a shelter for the daily life of rural inhabitants, the rural buildings constitute the element of rural settlements. Moreover, they can directly characterize the level of rural development. Therefore, in the new stage of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this study selected Laos as the main study area and investigated the effect of different factors on the spatial heterogeneity of rural development based on the rural building spatial database. With the geodetector, the results are summarized as follows: (1) The spatial pattern of rural buildings in different regions of Laos varies significantly, with hot spots areas of rural buildings mainly located in the central and southern regions, while cold spots areas are mainly concentrated in the northern region. (2) Slope, transport infrastructure, and public service are the dominant elements influencing the spatial differentiation of rural buildings in Laos, but spatial heterogeneity existed in different regions of factors. (3) The interaction detector shows that slope ∩ road is the dominant interaction factor influencing the spatial distribution pattern of rural buildings nationwide, and there are marked divergences in the interaction factors. Finally, this study combines the findings to propose corresponding countermeasures for promoting the development and construction of rural areas in Laos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The much-acclaimed Roppongi Hills, a high-rise mixed-use development built in the early 2000s in a tonier neighbourhood of Tokyo, with four residential towers, two of which are 43 stories tall, has a resident population density of only about 17,000 per square kilometre (Fig. I Gotong royong i even made the pandemic a time of increased sociability, as residents combined neighbourhood guard duty with the pleasure of spending time outdoors together. The stories of my colleagues in Mumbai (India), Manila (Philippines), Yogyakarta (Indonesia), and Yangon (Myanmar) indicate a range of local responses to the pandemic, each revealing distinct local forms of community resilience as well as distinct relationships with state and municipal authorities. Keywords: Resilience; Informal settlements; Asian megacities; Community; Heritage; Urban density EN Resilience Informal settlements Asian megacities Community Heritage Urban density 1 9 9 10/10/23 20231008 NES 231008 Introduction: community heritage in Tokyo The neighbourhood in Tokyo where I lived while a student in the 1980s was a fire trap. [Extracted from the article]

Accurate geographic data of slums are important for handling urban poverty issues. Previous slum mapping studies using high-resolution or very-high-resolution (HR/VHR) remotely sensed (RS) images are commonly not suitable for city-wide scale tasks. This study aims to efficiently generate a slum map on a city-wide scale using freely accessed multispectral medium-resolution (MR) Sentinel-2 images. Composite slum spectral indices (CSSIs) were initially proposed based on the shapes of spectral profiles of slums and nonslums and directly represent slum characteristics. Specifically, CSSI-1 denotes the normalized difference between the shortwave infrared bands and the red edge band, while CSSI-2 denotes the normalized difference between the blue band and the green band. Furthermore, two methods were developed to test the effectiveness of CSSIs on slum mapping, i.e., the threshold-based method and the machine learning (ML)-based method. Experimental results show that the threshold-based method and the ML-based method achieve intersection over unions (IoU) of 43.89% and 54.45% in Mumbai, respectively. The accuracies of our methods are comparable to or even higher than the accuracies reported by existing methods using HR/VHR images and transfer learning. The threshold-based method exhibits a promising performance in mapping slums larger than 5 ha, while the ML-based method refines mapping accuracies for slum pockets smaller than 5 ha. The threshold-based method and the ML-based method produced the slum map in Mumbai in 2 and 28 min, respectively. Our methods are suitable for rapid large-area slum mapping owing to the high data availability of Sentinel-2 images and high computational efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing poverty in developing economies is a major challenge faced by the development stakeholders. Although poverty is a worldwide phenomenon, it has been observed that Nigeria is one of the countries that is worst hit by the poverty with biting effects more on the rural dwellers where the bulk of the population lives. Using the nationally representative household survey panel data by the World Bank/National Bureau of Statistics, from the 2012 to 2016 period to provide answers to what are the household demographic, farm, and geospatial characteristics that drive the likelihood of farm households entering, exiting, and re-entering poverty using the costs of basic needs approach as a marker of poverty. Four poverty levels were used in analyzing the household survey data. The two waves of poverty mobility in Nigeria approximately revealed 51.2 percent of poor farm households' in wave 1, and 42 percent in wave 2 were at risk of spending their entire lives in poverty. The probability of existing and entering two-year poverty mobility which started at 25 percent rose to 45 percent for four-year poverty mobility indicating that over time more farm households, have experienced changes in the status of their consumption expenditure relative to the poverty line. Close to households who begin poor, those who moved out of poverty in any of the other years had better endowments in terms of land and livestock ownership, urban residence, and involvement in non-farm income portfolios. It is concluded that older heads, higher educational attainment, engagement in crop/livestock production, and non-farm livelihood activities, strongly reduce the likelihood of farm households' poverty entry. Therefore, policy strategies aimed at dealing with poverty mobility should be heterogeneous across the poor farm households. Also, as the chronically poor lack physical assets and earning endowments, policy efforts should focus on education or other forms of skills acquisition programs in order to raise their livelihood portfolios and boost their earning capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to public space for earning livelihoods is important for street vendors in global south cities. However, due to continuous population growth and the demand for lands by the real estate development sector, pressure on land is very high in the global south. Consequently, global south cities such as Dhaka provide 'no place' for its poor migrant citizens. Yet, the urban poor are able to appropriate public space for livelihoods. Drawing on a case study of Sattola slum in Dhaka, this article investigates how the urban poor access to public space for livelihoods and construct counter-spaces by breaking the planned order of the city. This article argues that the urban poor are able to construct counter-spaces with the tacit support of translocal social networks as well as with the support of a range of state and non-state powerful actors who are compromised by the benefits and profits they extract from vendors. This article draws on qualitative data generated through in-depth interviews with 94 informal workers and 37 key informants. This article contributes to urban sociology literature demonstrating that the urban poor are able to construct counter-spaces drawing on a range of everyday tactics and appropriating public space by quietly breaking the planned order of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article theorizes some of the ways that the COVID-19 health crisis was publicly narrated and morally regulated in Canada. Beginning with Valverde's theory of moral capital, public health crisis communication is conceptualized as dialectical claims-making activities aimed at maximizing the individual moral capital of citizens and the aggregate moral capital of nations. Valverde's historical sociology explains how moral capital operated in relation to economic capital accumulation in the context of 19th-century moral regulation of the urban poor. This article applies aspects of Valverde's historical framework about mixed economies of regulation to contemporary biopolitical moralization in the midst of a pandemic. It does so by arguing that responsibilizing citizens to flatten the epidemic curve of the disease contributed to the social construction of a normative pandemic subject. In this way, the analysis provides insights into how public health crisis communication explicitly intended to mitigate COVID-19 infection rates both reflected and reinforced the conjunctural norms associated with neoliberal governmentality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the incidence of financial institutions' dynamics of depth and access in the effect of income inequality on poverty and the severity of poverty in 42 sub‐Saharan African countries from 1980 to 2019. The Gini index is used to measure income inequality while poverty is measured as the poverty headcount ratio, and the severity of poverty is generated as the square of the poverty gap index. An interactive quantile regression approach is used as an empirical strategy. Income inequality unconditionally increases poverty dynamics while the financial institutions' depth and access mitigate the adverse effects of income inequality on poverty dynamics. Financial institutions' policy thresholds or minimum financial institution levels needed to completely dampen the adverse effects of income inequality on poverty dynamics are provided. The findings are contingent on existing levels of poverty, poverty measurement, and proxies for financial institutions. Policy implications are discussed. Related Articles: Abdulai, Abdul‐Gafaru, Justice Nyigmah Bawole, and Emmanuel Kojo Sakyi. 2018. "Rethinking Persistent Poverty in Northern Ghana: The Primacy of Policy and Politics over Geography." Politics & Policy 46(2): 233–62. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12250. Adegboye, Alex, Kofo Adegboye, Uwalomwa Uwuigbe, Stephen Ojeka, and Eyitemi Fasanu. 2023. "Taxation, Democracy, and Inequality in Sub‐Saharan Africa: Relevant Linkages for Sustainable Development Goals." Politics & Policy 51(4): 696–722. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12547. Nchofoung, Tii, Simplice Asongu, Vanessa Tchamyou, and Ofeh Edoh. 2022. "Gender, Political Inclusion, and Democracy in Africa: Some Empirical Evidence." Politics & Policy 51(1): 137–55. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12505. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to develop a measurement of spiritual poverty for an urban residents based on the spiritual concept and practice of purifying of the self (Tazkiyah Al-Nafs). This follows the process of cleansing of the self, where the nature of bad practices are replaced with those of good practices. A quantitative approach was utilised by distributing questionnaires to 528 urban Muslim households in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Putrajaya, Malaysia, which was then analysed using descriptive analysis. This was, then, followed by the usability assessments by 14 experts from academia and industry, where the data was analysed using the 'fuzzy delphi method'. Findings indicated that 27.84% of respondents experienced spiritual poverty relating to the emotional indicator, 17.42% experienced from a perceptual indicator, while 91.86% of respondents experienced poverty from a practices indicator perspective. The study points out that the elements of emotion, perception and practice as indicators holds significance in measuring spiritual poverty with a percentage expert consensus of 78.6% on emotion and perception indicators and 85.7% on practices indicator. The results gives credence to the expansion of the concept of multidimensional poverty, to include measuring psycho-spiritual deprivations as one component of poverty in addition to measuring both monetary and non-monetary factors as currently being advocated. This study calls for further exploration of this important area relating to self development, which has been overlooked in poverty measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ending poverty in all its forms is the first of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Therefore, it is of great significance to study poverty in the context of sustainable development. After eradicating absolute poverty, constructing a long-term mechanism to solve relative poverty is an inevitable requirement for achieving common prosperity in China. Therefore, it is extremely important that relative poverty is accurately identified and quantitatively decomposed. This paper adjusts the Foster–Greer–Thorbecke poverty index to propose a new methodology for relative poverty decomposition comprising growth, dispersion, heterogeneity, and identification effect. Based on China Family Panel Studies data from 2014 to 2018, the empirical analysis reveals the contributions to relative poverty made by growth, dispersion, heterogeneity, and identification effects. Specifically, the growth effect reduces the incidence of relative poverty; dispersion effect worsens relative poverty by affecting the depth of poverty; the heterogeneity effect depends on the heterogeneous characteristics of the population; the identification effect aggregates relative poverty by acting mainly on poverty incidence. We also compare the four relative poverty effects in urban versus rural areas. The findings show that dispersion effect and heterogeneity effect are keys to the differences. In particular, dispersion effect differences arise from income disparities, while heterogeneity effect differences depend on heterogeneous characteristics such as education, health insurance, and migrant work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory that property rights increase household income among low-income households is widely acknowledged, yet empirical studies find scarce evidence of this effect. These studies encounter theoretical deficiencies and methodological challenges of endogeneity and selection bias in making causal inference. This paper examines effects of property rights on income using a control group design and propensity score matching. It employs the continuum of property rights as a conceptual framework, applying it to the case of Zango I social housing project and Paraiso, a slum, in Luanda. Results show the likelihood that property rights increase tenure security and income through the mechanism of home business activities but not through labour market participation or credit access. In contexts where housing projects for low-income groups depend on the informal sector and are located far from city centres, home business activities can be an important mechanism through which property rights may alleviate poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores urban land governance in Hargeisa as a critical site of Somaliland's post-conflict statecraft. Two key issues make this study imperative. First, the current research on Somaliland focuses on the central authority(1) with scant attention to the organization and functioning of the urban state and its effect for the urban poor, thus obscuring the importance of the conurbation as a site for statecraft. Second, Somaliland's post-conflict statecraft is marked by inconsistencies, previously unexplored. While the creation of the subnational state is characterized as bottom-up, with its origins in community-led peacebuilding, its governance practices are characterized by exclusionary top-down procedures imported from colonial and postcolonial periods. Based on interviews with key informants, archival research and document analysis, I historicize these layers of the state-building processes. I argue that the top-down approach of post-conflict land governance, a critical site of statecraft, marginalizes the disadvantaged by creating bureaucracies that favour the affluent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intrinsic attributes and service functions of community gardens (CGs) are closely related to the stage of national development and social needs. With the gradual implementation of China's urban micro-renewal policy, many CGs have been gradually developed, but they still face problems such as poor operation and low participation, which urgently require us to carry out site-based research under China's actual national conditions. Constructing a human's perception value-oriented evaluation system and summarizing the optimization strategies according to the evaluation results can provide more systematic and targeted practical guidance for the construction of CGs in China. We developed a set of evaluation metrics for CGs based network text analysis, literature analysis, and expert opinions and collected 245 questionnaires from 20 existing CGs in Wuhan as a study sample. Using the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) method, we conducted statistical analysis of data for each type of CG. The results show that "Mosquito impact", "Facility maintenance", and "Social experience" are essential parts of residential-type community gardens (Resi-CGs) that are easily overlooked; that the users of commercial-type community gardens (Comm-CGs) consider that "Mosquito impact" is a serious deficiency; that campus-type community gardens (Camp-CGs) need to be optimized with regard to the aspects of "Crop stewardship" and "Leisure facilities"; and finally that there is no significant trend in the key improvement indicators of company-type community gardens (Comp-CGs) and the indicators like "Fitness and recreation experience", "Crop diversity", and "Aesthetics" need to be improved. According to the above results, we put forward specific optimization strategies to provide development guidelines and practical guidance for the future construction of CGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we propose a theoretical-methodological reflection on a research work that takes the form of an artistic (co)production workshop in a public secondary school located in a context of urban poverty in the Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires (MRBA). We recovered field material produced during 2022 to explore the possibilities of this methodology. Working with artistic practices allows the unfolding of a narrative, a saying, at the same time that it is proposed as a training experience for students, connecting with the task that the school carries out on a daily basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many studies examine Erdoğan's growing control over the Turkish media sector, there are hardly any studies that look at how post-truth affects the low-income urban consumers of partisan media in Turkey, which this article aims to do. This focus group study reveals that the partisan media has a significant impact on the views and behaviour of the relatively less educated urban poor, but personal experiences prove a significant factor in the success of post-truth politics. If interviewees are locked into a relation of interest with Justice and Development Party organizations, particularly if they are recipients of social aid, their loyalty to Erdoğan and inclination to believe fake news from partisan media are stronger. However, when their personal experiences are diametrically different from the claims made in fake news, these individuals are harder to be persuaded by partisan media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A failure of urban planning in many developing countries is evidenced by encroachment on road reservations. Urban planning literature suggests that such encroachment is largely explained by poverty and urban growth. But how do encroachers find space in the road reservations? This paper examines encroachment along the Anloga Junction to Ejisu section of the Kumasi--Accra highway in Ghana. It argues that formal rules are not effective in governing the road reservations: informal rules rooted in social networks of reciprocity matter more. The research involved interviews with encroachers, senior officials from government institutions and traditional authorities. It emerged that encroachers invoked mainly ethnic and political party ties with public officials to secure space in the road reservations. This occurred in an environment of non-enforcement of relevant laws, weak formal collaboration among public institutions, and inadequate political commitment. There is a need for effective application of the principles and methods of multi-stakeholder governance, linking improved legal regulation with informal processes, to achieve better outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the multidimensional poverty of the migrant workers. This paper also analyzed the migrant worker's household registration differences and multi-period analysis of the migrant workers. China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), a household and social tracking survey data conducted by the Institute of Social Science Survey, was used in this article. Income, health, education, social security, living standards, and urban intergration were considered Multidimensional Poverty. This paper combines the A-F multidimensional poverty method and Foster's duration analysis method to construct a long-term multidimensional poverty index. Our results show that the long-term multidimensional poverty situation of the migrant workers is not severe but is mainly concentrated in certain dimensions and specific indicators. However, the long-term multidimensional poverty of the migrant workers is a persistent problem. Although the situation is gradually improving, the long-term negative impact of multidimensional poverty on individuals is increasingly prominent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits a principle of distributive justice accepted by most, if not all, scholars of climate justice. The principle at stake, the limit, protects those who are very badly off from bearing the costs of climate change mitigation. The persistent noncompliance of developed states with their obligations toward burden sharing, however, means that this principle is increasingly in tension with successful climate change mitigation, given it seems to require that those in poverty have continued access to emissions in cases where alternative forms of energy are not provided. In the first half of the paper I outline this tension and show how the dominant expression of the limit in the literature, advanced by Henry Shue, must be abandoned. I argue that any attempt to articulate the limit in current circumstance, where the carbon budget is very scarce, must consider the climate harm associated with continued subsistence emissions. The second half of the article defends a principle, the exemption, which is best able to maintain the strong commitment to shielding those below the minimal threshold from the costs of mitigation, even in light of the potential harm that will result if they require emissions to fuel their energy needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Electronic Turkish Studies is the property of Electronic Turkish Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the 'emerging forms of spatialised and socialised authority' adopted by tenure-insecure peri-urbanites to secure coveted land in African peri-urban spaces. The paper demonstrates that tenure-insecure peri-urbanites are increasingly utilising various formal and informal institutions - 'emerging forms of spatialised and socialised authority', in the form of state functionaries, political party allegiance, traditional leaders, cooperatives, lobbying groups, legal courts, and religion and the occult to access and secure land in African peri-urban spaces. The review demonstrates how land remains of economic, social and emotional importance among tenure-insecure peri-urbanites. It further indicates that tenure-insecure peri-urbanites are not passive but 'nimblefooted and responsive', as they find ways to secure land by drawing on various normative orders like the courts and sometimes through evasion, patronage, performance and other means of conviviality. The paper also highlights the complex power dynamics characterising peri-urban areas and underscores the need for a nuanced understanding of the multiple actors involved in land governance. The paper recommends the need for effective and inclusive mechanisms of access and security over land to balance the interests of diverse actors and promote the rights of tenure-insecure peri-urbanites in periurban spaces. Overall, the paper helps to broaden the scope of actors that need to be engaged in the planning and governance of peri-urban spaces in the age of complex peri-urbanisation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper uses the survival strategies of food shelf clients to explore how food access, chronic disease, and spatial isolation shape the lives of low- and no- income urban citizens. The abundant availability of unhealthy food intersects with the presence of long-term health conditions to create a marginalized urban space where low quality commodity food is available, but exacerbates existing health conditions, is difficult to access, and does little to create food security. To survive, clients have normalized a sustenance strategy of going to multiple food serving sites, carrying food long-distances and using SNAP benefits to make ends meet. However, this nourishment strategy is time-consuming and unsafe, demanding that people put themselves in precarious positions and push their bodies farther physically than is healthy. These food procurement strategies exacerbate their marginalization. Qualitative data from food shelf users is used to develop a theory of ambient struggling wherein the struggle for food access is unhealthy and time-consuming, making it difficult to improve their standard of living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1-Introduction Groundwater is one of the most important water resources that is always used by humans in different sectors. The composition and chemical quality of groundwater sources are always threatened by natural factors such as climate, soil type, geology, topography, precipitation and evaporation, as well as human factors such as population growth, extensive agricultural activities, and industrial development. Hence, hydrogeochemical researches can provide very detailed information about the effect of the aquifer materials of the study area, the route of recharge and discharge, the areas of evaporation from the groundwater, the effect of surface water on the groundwater of the region, as well as its quality in various uses for decision makers. This research was conducted to 1) compare and determine the significant difference (using the paired samples t-test) between physicochemical parameters in the statistical period under review (between wells and springs), 2) use geochemical ion ratios in order to discover the origin of ions and influencing processes that are responsible to alter the concentration of ions in the studied water resources, 3) investigate and identify the ion exchange process (normal and reverse) using chloroalkaline indices and some hydrogeochemical graphs, and 4) identify saline water intrusion from subsurface layers or human pollution into the groundwater sources. 2-Methodology In this study, 14 piezometric wells in the eastern part of Gorgan plain and 8 springs located in the heights between the cities of Ramyan, Minoodasht, Kalaleh and Gonbad were selected for hydrogeochemical study for which hydrogeochemical processes and qualitative changes of physicochemical parameters results (including Ca, Mg, Na, K, HCO3, Cl, SO4, TDS, pH and EC) were used over a period of 10 years. To compare and determine significant differences between physicochemical parameters in the statistical period under study between wells and springs, paired samples t-test and analysis of variance were performed in Minitab software. Before performing the paired sample t-test, normality of the data was checked using the Anderson-Darling test. In paired samples t-test, if the pvalue estimated by the software is greater than or equal to 0.05, with a probability of 95%, the hypothesis H0, which means that there is no significant difference between the average of the investigated treatments, is accepted and the hypothesis H1 is rejected. However, if the calculated p-value is less than 0.05, the hypothesis H0 is rejected with a probability of 95% and the hypothesis H1, which means that there is a significant difference between the averages of the investigated treatments, is accepted. Next, the maps related to the spatial changes of the groundwater parameters were plotted in the GIS environment and by using the IDW method, and then the trend of their changes in the studied area was interpreted. Aq.QA software was also used to better analyze the hydrogeochemical data and to draw the stiff and piper diagrams. Finally, to identify the factors governing changes in groundwater quality and also to investigate the relationships between variables, Gibbs diagram, ion ratios, and compositional diagrams have been used. All the mentioned graphs were prepared using Excel software. 3-Results The spatial distribution of hydrochemical parameters showed that the concentration of most physicochemical parameters due to groundwater flow (from west to northwest) is increasing. The results of the investigation of the water type in the springs showed that magnesium bicarbonate (Mg-HCO3) is the dominant type of water in the studied springs. Unlike springs, a wide range of water type is observed in piezometric wells (Mg-HCO3, Mg-Cl, Na-Cl and Na-HCO3). Also, Ca-Mg-CO3-HCO3 bicarbonate facies and then mixed Ca-Mg-Cl-SO4 facies are the most abundant in water resources. Based on the distribution of water source samples in the Gibbs diagram, the chemical composition of all the samples, except for one sample related to the well, is controlled by the reservoir rock of springs or piezometric wells in the plain. Since the main ions show a linear relationship with TDI, it can be concluded that there is a possibility of intrusion of saline water containing sodium and chlorine ions or dissolution of halite minerals in the groundwater of the plain. The results of ion ratios showed that groundwater is recharged by dolomite, dolomite-limestone, and lime-dolomite formations associated to different geological periods is the main factor controlling hydrogeochemical parameters in the springs. But in the observation wells of the plain, in addition to the above cases, the weathering of silicates and the small intrusion of saline water into the ground water table have caused changes in hydrogeochemical parameters. The results of ion exchanges showed that the normal ion exchange process has a more effective role than the reverse ion exchange process in final concentration of main elements in the groundwater of studied water sources. 4-Discussion & Conclusions The changes in the concentration of ions in the springs are much less than the observed wells in the plain. Bicarbonate is the dominant anion in both well and spring water sources. Nevertheless, in the two wells no. 3 and 10 chloride ions prevail, which can be caused by the intrusion of saline water from the lower layers into the groundwater. Based on the spatial distribution of the physicochemical parameters, the concentration of most of the parameters in the direction of the groundwater flow is increasing due to the presence of layers with poor quality, the infiltration of urban sewage and agricultural effluents, as well as the intrusion of saline water from the subsurface layers. The investigation of the water type of the springs shows that magnesium bicarbonate is the predominant water type. Therefore, it can be concluded that the reservoir rock that recharges the springs is more than dolomite limestone. Similar to the springs, all the wells drilled on the edge of the highlands have the dominant type of magnesium bicarbonate. But by moving away from the mountain front and changing the concentration of some ions due to environmental and human factors, the type of groundwater becomes more diverse. Based on the composition graphs, it can be concluded that there is a possibility of intrusion of saline water containing sodium, magnesium, sulfate and chloride ions or the dissolution of some minerals such as halite and gypsum sulfate, especially in the groundwater of the plain. The results the ionic ratios related to the intrusion of salt water in water resources show the good quality of the groundwater and the recharge of the aquifer by limestone formations. Considering that the springs are located in the groundwater recharge area (fresh water), they are less affected by human pollution and, as a result, they have better chemical quality. On the other hand, the wells situated in the plain, due to human activities such as the excessive use of nitrogen fertilizers for agricultural products and the infiltration of urban or domestic sewage into the aquifer along with the intrusion of saline water into the groundwater in some areas of the plain show a greater tendency to become salty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Inequalities in access to and utilization of maternal and child health (MCH) care are hampering progress on the path to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. In a number of Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) population subgroups at disproportionate risk of being left behind are the urban poor. Within this neglected group is the further neglected group of the homeless. Concomitantly, a number of interventions from the antenatal period onward have been piloted, tested, and scaled in these contexts. We carried out an overview of systematic reviews (SRs) to characterize the evidence around maternal and child health interventions relevant to urban poor homeless populations in LMICs. Methods We searched Medline, Cochrane Library, Health Systems Evidence and EBSCOhost databases for SRs published between January 2009 and 2020 (with an updated search through November 2021). Our population of interest was women or children from urban poor settings in LMICs; interventions and outcomes corresponded with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) guidance document. Each SR was assessed by two reviewers using established standard critical appraisal checklists. The overview was registered in PROSPERO (ID: CRD42021229107). Results In a sample of 33 high quality SRs, we found no direct relevant evidence for pregnant and lactating homeless women (and children) in the reviewed literature. There was a lack of emphasis on evidence related to family planning, safe abortion care, and postpartum care of mothers. There was mixed quality evidence that the range of nutritional interventions had little, unclear or no effect on several child mortality and development outcomes. Interventions related to water, sanitation, and hygiene, ensuring acceptability of community health services and health promotion type programs could be regarded as beneficial, although location seemed to matter. Importantly, the risk of bias reporting in different reviews did not match, suggesting that greater attention to rigour in their conduct is needed. Conclusion The generalizability of existing systematic reviews to our population of interest was poor. There is a clear need for rigorous primary research on MCH interventions among urban poor, and particularly homeless populations in LMICs, as it is as yet unclear whether the same, augmented, or altogether different interventions would be required.

Across North American cities, emerging forms of urban governance from the 1970s produced forms of racialized, visualized, and spatialized urban poverty. Attempts to revitalize, recast, and spectacularize the urban environment left cities with vexing questions about what should be done with homeless people and also what homeless people should be doing. Amidst the rolling back of State social welfare policies and provision (Peck & Tickell, 2002), creative, informal, communal, or non-governmental initiatives have emerged in response to urban poverty and homelessness. One such organization is Back on My Feet, a national, not-for-profit organization that partners with homeless and addiction recovery facilities, which strives to utilize running as a means of empowerment. This ethnographic inquiry speaks to the ways in which the social practice of running amongst those housed in a temporary recovery facility is imbricated with their lifestyles and identities, an urban context, and homeless discourses and stigmas. It is illustrative of how the rhetoric of "recovery" yokes together the entrepreneurial ethos of neoliberalism with the management of homeless people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Remaindered Life" by Neferti X. M. Tadiar is a book that challenges traditional analyses of global capitalism by focusing on the aftermath and continuing effects of decolonization. Tadiar argues that contemporary global capitalism thrives on devaluing certain lives and extracting value from their existence. The book draws on Marxist theory, feminist scholarship, and critical race studies to explore how capitalism operates in relation to waste and the concept of a "wasted" life. While the book is theoretically dense and requires familiarity with these frameworks, it offers valuable insights into the Philippines' relationship with global forces and addresses topics such as extrajudicial killings, urban poverty, and Filipino migrant workers. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the Mahila Arogya Samiti (MAS) model in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, which is a women's health committee that focuses on addressing social determinants of health. The MAS committees, consisting of working-class women, have been successful in taking action on various health-related issues, such as community-level health services, food security, gender-based violence, and safe drinking water. The success of MAS can be attributed to factors such as participatory formation, women's leadership, capacity building, and accountability. However, there is still room for improvement, and the article suggests that India can learn from countries like Brazil in terms of creating institutional and legal provisions for community engagement in health services. [Extracted from the article]