Cities will be home to 2 billion new residents by 2045, and the pressure to develop land in and around cities is growing. This will pose a great challenge to lower-income cities since they tend to grow through slums and other informal settlements. Slum residents have inadequate and inequitable...

The purpose of this Independence Evaluation Group (IEG) special study is to illuminate the scale and scope of Bank support for municipal development and to draw specific lessons from the achievements and failures of a sample of individual projects. The study focuses on three dimensions of...

The fast and often chaotic urbanization of the developing world generates both economic opportunity and challenges, like contagious disease and congestion, because proximity increases both positive and negative externalities. In this paper, we review the expanding body of economic research on...

This evaluation examines the World Bank Group's evolving experience in building resilience in urban areas during the period 2007-17. The focus of this evaluation is the World Bank Group's support to clients in building urban resilience-to cope, recover, adapt and transform-in the face of shocks...

Africa is urbanizing rapidly, and this creates both opportunities and challenges. Labor productivity appears to be much higher in developing-world cities than in rural areas, and historically urbanization is strongly correlated with economic growth. Education seems to be a strong complement to...