Cities can choose how they grow by directing investment and policies in specific ways. Those cities that have more upward growth relative to outward growth, for example, are better able to provide services and opportunities to their residents because development ...

More than half the global population lacks access to safely managed sanitation services – 4.5 billion people. Every year, more than 340,000 children under the age of five die as a result of this problem. And we’re not solving it ...

Illegal. Criminal. A drag on the economy. These are just a few of the derisive labels that beleaguer urban informal workers, says Martha Chen, co-founder of and senior advisor to Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing. Informal workers – ...

Imagine Lagos, Nigeria, a city of 22 million. What was once a small coastal town just a few decades ago has exploded into a sprawling megacity spanning 452 square miles. Its rapid growth has stretched the city’s services impossibly thin: ...

Affordable housing is a crisis that only seems to deepen. Some 1.2 billion people in cities lack access to affordable, secure housing – a number that’s projected to grow to 1.6 billion people by 2025. Cities in the global south, ...

While most cities around the world struggle with inequality, in Johannesburg, South Africa, the challenge is compounded by the legacy of apartheid. In the apartheid era, black populations were relocated to the poorly serviced areas far away from job opportunities. ...