In 2012 Papua New Guinea undertook a
national Service Delivery Assessment of rural water, rural
sanitation, urban water and urban sanitation services to
identify coverage and targets, how well services are being
delivered and the financing shortfalls in these subsectors.
Immediately following this assessment, stakeholders, through
a national policy task force, have developed a draft of the
country s first National Water, Sanitation and Hygiene

The paper investigates determinants of
civic participation in local budget processes in rural areas
in the Kyrgyz Republic by using data from the Life in
Kyrgyzstan survey, conducted in 2012. The analysis of the
data suggests that although civic awareness and interest in
local budget processes is relatively high, the participation
rate in local budgeting processes is low. The paper also
shows that interest, awareness, and participation are

As Vietnam enters a crucial period of
urbanization corresponding to its present stage of economic
development, the Government of Vietnam has placed strong
emphasis on developing its system of cities. In accordance
with this objective this Urbanization Review is dedicated to
understanding the key dimensions and aspects of
Vietnam's urbanization process and to identifying
trends, opportunities, challenges and core policy priorities

Despite considerable progress in the
area of environmental management over the last decade,
Colombia still faces significant impacts from population
exposure to urban air pollution, inadequate access to water
supply and sanitation, and indoor air pollution from solid
fuel use. This study estimates that the total health cost
attributable to these three factors amounts to about 10.2
trillion Colombian Pesos (COP) annually, or about 2 percent

The current report is part of the work
on integrating poor areas and marginalized communities in
Romania. Specifically, the Bank's technical assistance
provided through this project focuses on three primary
components: (1) a methodology for defining different types
of urban disadvantaged communities based on a set of key
criteria and indicators; (2) detailed maps that present the
spatial distribution of these indicators and the

Cities are hubs of global change, and
their global influence continues to grow. Cities contribute
significantly to global challenges like climate change and
biodiversity loss. At the same time, cities experience
impacts like climate change first and with greatest
intensity. Further, cities are becoming leaders worldwide in
efforts to address global environmental and social problems.
Some of the most important smaller-scale agreements and

Since economic liberalization in the
early 1990s, India has experienced high economic growth and
made considerable progress in gender equality in areas such
as primary education. However, it fared poorly on
gender-parity in labor force participation (LFP). During the
period between 1993-94 and 2011-12, female labor force
participation rate (LFPR) remained consistently low as
compared to male participation. More alarming is the fact

Urbanization deserves urgent attention
from policy makers, academics, entrepreneurs, and social
reformers of all stripes. Nothing else will create as many
opportunities for social and economic progress. The
urbanization project began roughly 1,000 years after the
transition from the Pleistocene to the milder and more
stable Holocene interglacial. In 2010, the urban population
in developing countries stood at 2.5 billion. The developing

Many developing countries display
remarkably high degrees of urban concentration that are
incommensurate with their levels of urbanization. The cost
of excessively high levels of urban concentration can be
very high in terms of overpopulation, congestion, and
productivity growth. One strand of the theoretical
literature suggests that such high levels of concentration
may be the result of restrictive trade policies that trigger

Rapid urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa
places immense pressure on urban services to meet the needs
of the burgeoning urban population. Although several
country- or city-level reports offer insight into the
housing challenges of specific places, little is known about
regional patterns affecting housing markets. This lack of
clear knowledge on the relative importance of the factors
influencing households' housing demand in countries in

Across the world, the housing sector
plays a key role in local and national economies, and
expanding access to housing can encourage more equitably
shared economic growth. This report surveys current policy
interventions designed to encourage affordable housing in
East Asia and the Pacific (EAP). The purpose of this report
is to provide a general overview of the recent trends in
urbanization and development in EAP and to consider

This paper focuses on several
interrelated key questions on the geography of development.
Although we herald cities with their industrial bases as
'engines of growth,' does industrialization in
fact drive urbanization?1 What economic activities do cities
of different sizes undertake? Does this change as countries
develop? If so, what are the policy implications? Do
development policies have a big-city bias? If so, what does