I have been asked to write a paper over “my urban idol 2050” to be the foundation for a presentation at a session at the ERSA congress in Bratislava in August 2012. No special instructions were given, so I have chosen to write a kind of scenario for the possible future development in the...

An essential problem for the current investment processes in Romania is to identify mechanisms and funding sources for public works and public services. A solution for such investments financing is the public-private partnership tool, providing the basis for certain investments, and also for the...

We evaluate the role that cities play on individual productivity in China. First, we show that location explains a large share of nominal wage disparities. Second, even after controlling for individual and -firms characteristics and instrumenting city characteristics, the estimated elasticity of...

Human development and urban development play essential and intimately interacting roles in economic development. The availability and cost of the basic inputs in health, education, work and housing depend on the urban-rural context. On the other hand urban growth is shaped by the cumulus of...

This paper analyses through the use of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), the influence of several urban parameters in the expansion of natural gas distribution in the Brazilian market. The logic based on pair combination allows the verification of relationships such as demographic density...

Infrastructure at the Crossroads brings together lessons from the last two decades of World Bank engagement in infrastructure. It analyzes trends in the Bank's infrastructure lending, describes the evolution of the external environment and the Bank's own strategic priorities, and presents...

The Treasury Reference Model (TRM) gives guidelines for the design of automated treasury systems for government aiming at a) authorities within government and their advisors who are engaged in planning and implementing such systems; and b) software designers and suppliers from the private sector...

This report provides Mayors and other policymakers with a policy framework and diagnostic tools to anticipate and implement strategies that can avoid their cities from locking into irreversible physical and social structures. At the core of the policy framework are the three main dimensions of...

This book takes a look at the past to gain insights for the future. Nearly 30 years ago, when the world urban population was only about half of the 3 billion that it is today, when most Less Developed Countries (LDCs) were primarily rural, and before the wave of decentralization of the 1980s and...