Urban and Rural Development Challenges

As cities in the Global South expand at unprecedented speed, hundreds of millions of people settle in informal neighborhoods that lack secure land rights, adequate housing, and basic services — conditions that compound poverty across generations. Researchers in this space examine how policy interventions such as slum upgrading programs and housing finance reform succeed or fail in translating urban growth into genuine improvement for marginalized residents, paying close attention to who controls land and who gets displaced in the process. A central tension in current work is whether community participation in planning produces durable equity outcomes or is routinely captured by state and developer interests, and how that question changes under different governance systems. Scholars are also pressing on how climate risk intersects with informal settlement patterns, asking whether sustainable development frameworks can be redesigned to reach the urban poor rather than bypassing them.

Works

85,232

Total citations

472,669

Keywords

Urban PovertySlum UpgradingHousing PolicyInformal SettlementsUrbanizationLand Tenure