This describes the innovative poverty reduction programmes set up by the Urban Community Development Office (UCDO) in Thailand and how this fed into a new institution into which its programmes became integrated - the Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI). Both UCDO and its successor CODI provide community-based savings groups with a range of loans to support income generation, community enterprises, housing improvement/upgrading, new housing (especially for squatters threatened with eviction) and community-managed revolving funds. Loans were also provided to networks of community organisations who could on-lend to their members. The loan programmes were complimented with a small grants programme for community managed environmental improvement projects and support for community welfare funds. CODI is also supporting rural community groups, networks of groups (for instance as all community organisations in a city join together to work with the local authorities on a city-wide plan) and is helping to develop the Thai government's ambitious 'cities without slums' programme. Read more: www.iied.org/urban/pubs/urbn_pov.html To order: www.earthprint.com/go.htm?to=9242IIED

This describes the innovative poverty reduction programmes set up by the Urban Community Development Office (UCDO) in Thailand and how this fed into a new institution into which its programmes became integrated - the Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI). Both UCDO and its successor CODI provide community-based savings groups with a range of loans to support income generation, community enterprises, housing improvement/upgrading, new housing (especially for squatters threatened with eviction) and community-managed revolving funds. Loans were also provided to networks of community organisations who could on-lend to their members. The loan programmes were complimented with a small grants programme for community managed environmental improvement projects and support for community welfare funds. CODI is also supporting rural community groups, networks of groups (for instance as all community organisations in a city join together to work with the local authorities on a city-wide plan) and is helping to develop the Thai government's ambitious 'cities without slums' programme. Read more: www.iied.org/urban/pubs/urbn_pov.html To order: www.earthprint.com/go.htm?to=9242IIED

Rural-urban Working Papers No 9 A high proportion of the urban population in most nations live in small and intermediate urban centres. These centres also play an important role for rural households and rural producers and enterprises. But the potential contribution of small and intermediate urban centres to local (rural and urban) economic development and to poverty reduction is all too often ignored by sectoral policies. This paper reviews what can be learnt from the role of small and intermediate urban centres in supporting more prosperous and often diverse local economies, including supporting rural non-farm employment and agricultural production, and in widening the role of ‘good governance’ in reducing urban and rural poverty

This publication has been prepared as background documentation for the Dialogue on the “Strengthening of Local Authorities” during the 19th Session of the Governing Council of UN-HABITAT.

Demonstrates that most arguments leading to the current bias against rental housing are highly flawed. Argues for more tenure-neutral housing policies, and urges governments to modify regulatory frameworks, develop credit programmes and other forms of assistance to support housing production, with a view to creating more rental housing and to improve the existing stock.

This toolkit is a contribution to the Global Campaign on Urban Governance, an initiative led by UN-Habitat in collaboration with a whole range of partners whose development goal is to contribute to the eradication of poverty through improved urban governance.

This paper has two principal aims: first, to unravel some of the arguments mobilized in the controversial privatization debate, and second, to review the scale and nature of private sector provision of water and sanitation in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Despite being vigorously promoted in the policy arenaand having been implemented in several countries in the South in the 1990s, privatisation has achieved neither the scale nor benefits anticipated.

Durban's Local Agenda 21 programme has been at the forefront of the Local Agenda 21 movement in Southern Africa since the mid-1990s. This paper describes the first four phases of the programme, 1994-2001 and the difficulties faced in localising the sustainable development concept in Durban, in particular the initiation and development of the programme during a period of local government transformation and restructuring.

This paper examines the organisation and functioning of state-sponsored fruit and vegetables farmers’ markets in selected urban centres of Tamil Nadu. The study assessed actual and potential contributions to more viable livelihoods for small and marginal farmers, and to increased food security for low-income urban groups.

This includes case studies of how globalization is affecting Karachi, Luanda, Buenos Aires, Windhoek and cities in Pacific Asia and influencing social exclusion in Johannesburg and Faisalabad. It also has papers on the evasion of corporate responsibility in Bhopal and on the role of cities and city-networks in globalization.