This paper reviews 23 recent Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) to consider how they define and measure urban poverty and the extent to which they actually consider urban poverty.

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 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.

This Working Paper examines the processes, challenges and lessons that can be learnt from the Local Agenda 21 programme in Nakuru, Kenya, where rapid population growth and falling standards of service provision have prompted the local authority to adopt LA21 as a new approach to urban planning and management.

This paper describes an initiative to support community-directed development projects in low income neighbourhoods in San Fernando, one of the poorer, peripheral municipalities in Buenos Aires. This was part of a national programme for 'vulnerable groups' in low-income areas and which sought to facilitate access to social services, increase participation and promote transparency in the use of government resources at local level.