Working Paper
Youth in Tanzania’s Urbanizing Mining Settlements
Over the last fifteen years many African countries have experienced a ‘mining take-off’. Mining activities have bifurcated into two sectors: large-scale, capital-intensive production generating the bulk of the exported minerals, and small-scale...
Policy Brief
Rising Spatial Disparities and Development
The UNU-WIDER project on 'Spatial Disparities in Human Development' has collected and analyzed evidence on the extent of spatial inequalities within developing countries. The studies find that spatial inequalities are high, with disparities between...
Working Paper
Cities of Youth
With a focus on cities in eastern and southern Africa, this paper draws on recent scholarship and my own research in Lusaka, Zambia, to analyse pathways for, and challenges to, greater social mobility for youth against the background of economic...
Journal Article
The Efficiency of India's Cities
One reason for unsatisfactory public service delivery in Indian cities is that city finances are in poor condition. Recent research shows that given the fragmented institutional arrangements for land in India's cities, there is a case for...
Journal Article
Evaluating multiple spatial dimensions of economic growth in Brazil using spatial panel data models
The goal of this paper is to evaluate the results of regional economic growth model estimations at multiple spatial scales using spatial panel data models. The spatial scales examined are minimum comparable areas, microregions, mesoregions and states...
Working Paper
Habitat II and the Urban Economy
The strategic conferences organized by the UN during the past 25 years have focused on assisting and mobilizing governments and other relevant actors of international life by enhancing collective thinking and action in those areas which may...
Working Paper
Gender Aspects of Urban Economic Growth and Development
The urbanization process is frequently shaped by prevailing constructions of gender. The recognition of this phenomenon is vital both in diagnosis and policy terms. This paper aims at illustrating the importance of gender in three major related...
Journal Article
Latin American Urban Development into the Twenty-first Century
This article argues for a more systemic engagement with Latin American cities, contending that it is necessary to reconsider their unity in order to nuance the ‘fractured cities’ perspective that has widely come to epitomize the contemporary urban...
Working Paper
Vertical Decentralization and Urban Service Delivery in South Africa
This study examines the role of politics on decentralization and service delivery in South Africa, with a specific focus on Johannesburg and Cape Town. The research delineates how national decentralization has affected service delivery...
Working Paper
ICT Sector, Globalization and Urban Economic Growth
This paper aims at economic analysis of economic globalization and urban growth of Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, as they are related to ICT sector. Overall analyses offer new insights and evidences for ICT sector as a major contributor for...
Working Paper
The Challenges of Global Environmental Change for Urban Africa
Cities—especially those with substantial poor populations—will face increasingly severe challenges in tackling the impacts of global environmental change (GEC). As economic dynamos and increasingly important population concentrations, cities both...
Working Paper
The Tangled Web of Associational Life
This paper examines how decentralization and informalization are reshaping urban governance in contemporary Africa. By exploring the interface between urban institutional failures and popular organizational solutions, the paper considers how informal...
Working Paper
Is There Such a Thing as a Post-Apartheid City?
In an introductory section, this paper considers briefly the achievements and problems of urban governance in post-apartheid South Africa through an assessment of three categories: administrative reform, developmental issues and conflicts over...
Working Paper
Urban Development Transitions and their Implications for Poverty Reduction and Policy Planning in Uganda
Urbanization is one of the critical global trends shaping the future of humanity. At the same time, it has been argued that full development requires an urbanized environment. This paper attempts to examine and characterize the major phases of...
Working Paper
Infrastructure and Poverty Reduction
The paper investigates the impact of infrastructural development on poverty reduction in Nigeria. Specifically, the relative effects of physical and social infrastructure on living standards or poverty indicators are examined, with a view to...
Working Paper
Cityness and African Urban Development
This paper explores one possible argument for how to respond to the epistemic troubles in the production of knowledge about urban Africa. The problem I have in mind is the preponderance of policy-oriented research on the development challenges and...
Working Paper
Urbanization and the South Asian Enigma
South Asia has the highest rate of child malnutrition in the world, despite rapid economic growth compared to other regions such as sub-Saharan Africa. Known as the ‘South Asian enigma’ this feature is partly attributed to the low status of women in...
Working Paper
Firm Location Choice in Cities
We use large survey data sets of firms provided by the World Bank for China, India, and Brazil—Investment Climate Surveys—to address the important question: what determines the locational choice of firms among cities in these countries. We find that...
Book
Informal Labour Markets and Development
This book presents significant new research on the informal labour markets of developing countries. Examining the critical role of informal labour markets in allowing countries to adjust successfully to the forces of globalization, this volume also...
Working Paper
Toward Efficient Urban Form in China
Land efficiency in urban China is examined, using Tianjin as a case study, from the perspective of agricultural land conservation; reduction in energy use, conventional pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions; and human time savings. Issues addressed...
Working Paper
Gender Earnings Differentials and Regional Economic Development in Urban China, 1988-97
Gender earnings differentials in urban China by region and their changes during the first decade of economic reform are examined. It is found that the female–male earnings ratio increased during the early stage of reform. The male earnings premium...
Working Paper
Challenges for Latin American Cities
Current urban interventions, particularly in cities in developing countries like Santiago de Chile, evidence major neglect in understanding the way contemporary living takes place and how it is changing under processes of globalization, global...
Working Paper
Is Internal Migration Bad for Receiving Urban Centres?
During the twentieth century, internal migration and urbanization shaped Brazil’s economic and social landscape. Cities grew tremendously, while immigration participated in the rapid urbanization process and the redistribution of poverty between...
Working Paper
Unlocking Public Entrepreneurship and Public Economies
Unlocking human potential requires a rich network of institutional arrangements in both private and public spheres. Opening the private sphere to entrepreneurship and complex market organization is well understood as a key to increasing the level and...
Working Paper
A New Way of Monitoring the Quality of Urban Life
A growing number of cities around the world have established systems of monitoring the quality of urban life. Many of those systems combine objective and subjective information and attempt to cover a wide variety of topics. This paper introduces a...
Working Paper
Socio-Spatial Implications of Street Market Regulation Policy
Unlike in most Latin American cities, street vendors organized in farmers’ markets popularly known as ferias libres in Santiago de Chile, gained legal recognition early in the twentieth century. Since then, comunas, or local municipalities, have...
Working Paper
Growth and Recovery in a Time of Default
International narratives on Argentina’s recovery from the crisis of 2001-02 tend to emphasize the role of rising commodity prices and growing demand from China. Argentina is said to have been ‘lucky’, saved by global demand for its agricultural...
Working Paper
Cocaine Cities
The relationship between the cocaine trade and urban land markets in South America has been overlooked by the mainstream economics and urban studies literature. This paper examines two avenues through which the cocaine trade can have a large impact...
Working Paper
Latin American Urban Development into the 21st Century
This paper argues for a more systemic engagement with Latin American cities, contending it is necessary to reconsider their unity in order to nuance the ‘fractured cities’ perspective that has widely come to epitomise the contemporary urban moment in...