The objective of this report is to inform the government's policies and strategies on urbanization as a driver of economic development, job creation, and poverty reduction. Note 1 examines Rwanda's urbanization process since 2002 by analyzing satellite images and other sources. This note...

Resilient land use planning integrates multiple perspectives, including exposure to natural hazards and associated vulnerabilities and risks, to ensure that development can cope with disruptions and recover swiftly from disaster events. Resilient land use planning aims to accommodate multiple...

This report uses administrative tax data on firm-to-firm trade in Honduras to evaluate the degree of integration between firms receiving export-oriented tax exemptions and the local economy. We present five stylized facts regarding firms' trade networks in Honduras and show that, across several...

This is a comparative study of the legal framework for water users' associations (WUAs) in six countries, namely, Colombia, India, Mexico, Nepal, the Philippines and Turkey. The study postulates that, since water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource and irrigation is the single largest...

The Ethiopia Urban Land Supply and Affordable Housing Study (EULSAH) responds to the request fromthe Government of Ethiopia (GoE), Ministry of Urban Development and Construction to carry outfollow-on technical assistance to the Ethiopia Urbanization Review (EUR) jointly published by theWorld...

Rapid urbanization in Ghana over the past three decades has coincided with rapid GDP growth. This has helped to create jobs, increase human capital, decrease poverty, and expand opportunities and improve living conditions for millions of Ghanaians. Ghana’s urban transformation has been...

The objective of this report is to explore innovative financing instruments and approaches for catalyzing private sector financing to fill the climate-smart investment gap in cities. The report reviews the existing literature, highlights key barriers in scaling-up private investment in...

Over the last decade, turkey has initiated several regulatory and institutional reforms to better mitigate and reduce disaster risks, with a focus on seismic risk. The Squatter (Gecekondu) Law No. 775 (1966) was the first regulatory effort to produce housing for low-income groups in Turkey, and...

Tanzania's growth and poverty reduction aspirations hinge on shifting from a reliance on agriculture toward greater productivity. Cities' key role in generating a more competitive economy is already apparent: in 2012, just four Tanzanian cities produced more than half of the country's gross...