Although a high rate of urbanization and
a high incidence of rural poverty are two distinct features
of many developing countries, there is little knowledge of
the effects of the former on the latter. Using a large
sample of Indian districts from the 1983-1999 period, the
authors find that urbanization has a substantial and
systematic poverty-reducing effect in the surrounding rural
areas. The results obtained through an instrumental variable

This paper investigates the urbanization
of the Indian manufacturing sector by combining enterprise
data from formal and informal sectors. It finds that plants
in the formal sector are moving away from urban and into
rural locations, while the informal sector is moving from
rural to urban locations. Although the secular trend for
India's manufacturing urbanization has slowed down, the
localized importance of education and infrastructure has

Despite several attempts at reform,
immovable property rights in Albania are not adequately
secure and represent an important governance challenge.
Problems have resulted from incomplete first title
registration, the lack of accurate cadastral records, and,
in many cases, the absence of reliable evidence of
ownership. Although Albania has adopted legislation calling
for restitution or compensation for owners whose property

Eurasian cities, unique in the global
spatial landscape, were part of the world's largest
experiment in urban development. The challenges they now
face because of their history offer valuable lessons to
urban planners and policymakers across the world from places
that are still urbanizing to those already urbanized. Today,
Eurasian cities must respond to three big changes: the
breakup of the Soviet Union, the return of the market as the

The infrastructure gap is one of the
most significant impediments to India realizing its growth
and poverty reduction potential. Although India s transport
network is one of the most extensive in the world,
accessibility and connectivity are limited. Only 20 percent
of the national highway network (which carries 40 percent of
traffic) is four-lane and one-fourth of the rural population
does not have access to an all-weather road. It is estimated

No existe una definición comúnmente aceptada de dispersión urbana (urban sprawl), de modo que la investigación aplicada ha trabajado con diferentes indicadores que pretenden a su vez capturar los distintos significados con que se ha dotado al término. En este trabajo se mide cómo ha evolucionado la dispersión de la población y del empleo de la Región Metropolitana de Barcelona (RMB) entre 1986 y 2001. Las dimensiones exploradas se dividen en dos grupos: i) forma urbana (desconcentración, baja densidad y discontinuidad) y ii) estructura urbana.

This working paper by Tikvah Breimer previously of the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS) and Mark Napier previously of Urban LandMark, analyses the provision of core housing in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, specifically taking into account the residents' response to the state's delivery of core housing. It aims to explore to what extent the South African government's approach to providing large-scale housing addresses the relevant demands in the context of rapid urbanisation.

Population of two cities in Pakistan has already crossed the 10-million figure and for the rest of the areas in the country populations are also increasing rapidly. Urbanization has boosted the use of energy in the cities and so is greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but the ground situation as to the extent, vulnerability, past trends and future scenarios are not unveiled for the cities of Pakistan. Dearth of data in Pakistan is a huge hindrance to the investigation of energy use and actual GHG emissions.

Residents, developers and civic officials are often faced with difficult decisions about appropriate land uses in and around metropolitan boundaries. Urban expansion brings with it the potential for negative environmental impacts, but there are alternatives, such as conservation subdivision design (CSD) or low-impact development (LID), which offer the possibility of mitigating some of these effects at the development site.

Efforts in post-industrial countries to refine environment and planning administration in the face of unprecedented urban growth have important implications for ecological systems and human quality of life. This paper uses the case of an urban riparian corridor in South East Queensland, Australia to contribute to understandings of interactions between land use planning processes, watershed management initiatives and broader administrative structures in urban and rapidly urbanising settings. In particular it examines the understudied application of watershed management to an urban setting.

Urban planners are increasingly interested in agriculture around cities and have to decide whether to maintain or not areas of agricultural land use within and close to growing cities. There is therefore a need for researchers to design tools to guide public decision-making on land use. Various approaches, originating from different disciplines, may be adopted in this respect. We designed an interdisciplinary research program in order to test two related concepts: the “sustainability” and the “multi-functionality” of agriculture.

The Great Plains of the United States has undergone extensive land-use and land-cover change in the past 150 years, with much of the once vast native grasslands and wetlands converted to agricultural crops, and much of the unbroken prairie now heavily grazed. Future land-use change in the region could have dramatic impacts on ecological resources and processes. A scenario-based modeling framework is needed to support the analysis of potential land-use change in an uncertain future, and to mitigate potentially negative future impacts on ecosystem processes.