Urban and Rural Development Challenges

As cities in the Global South grow at unprecedented speed, millions of people find themselves settling on land they do not legally own, in neighborhoods that public infrastructure and formal housing policy were not built to reach. Researchers studying urban and rural development examine how these informal settlements form, persist, and change — tracing the relationships between land tenure security, housing quality, and the broader conditions of poverty that shape everyday life. A central tension in the field concerns who drives change: top-down slum upgrading programs backed by governments and international agencies have a mixed record, and scholars are actively debating how community participation can be made substantive rather than ceremonial. Open questions remain about how cities can accommodate rapid growth equitably without displacing the very residents whose tenure is most precarious.

Works

85,833

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477,004

Keywords

Urban PovertySlum UpgradingHousing PolicyInformal SettlementsUrbanizationLand Tenure