Urbanization in East Asia and the Pacific has created enormous opportunity for many. Yet the rapid growth of cities can also create challenges as national and local governments try to keep up with the needs of their growing populations. Among these challenges is a lack of affordable housing, resulting in increasing slums, deficits in basic service provision, and widening inequality for urban dwellers. This study aims to better understand urban poverty and inequality in East Asian cities, recognizing that many countries of the region, particularly those of middle-income status, are at a critical juncture in their urbanization and growth process where potential social divisions in cities could harm prospects for future poverty reduction. The study uses a multidimensional approach to understand urban poverty and inclusion and draws on examples of programs and policies that have been successfully implemented in the East Asia region to develop a set of guiding principles for policy makers.

In this collection of essays, seven authors discuss issues of urbanization and urban poverty, including patterns of urbanization, the characteristics of the urban poor, their access to housing and infrastructure, aspects of the labour market, and the urban physical environment.

About half of the region's poor live in cities, and policy makers across Latin America are increasingly interested in policy advice on how to design programmes and policies to tackle poverty. This publication argues that the causes of poverty, the nature of deprivation, and the policy levers to fight poverty are, to a large extent, site specific. It therefore focuses on strategies to assist the urban poor in making the most of the opportunities offered by cities, such as larger labour markets and better services, while helping them cope with the negative aspects, such as higher housing costs, pollution, risk of crime and less social capital.

Cities are key to reducing poverty and promoting shared prosperity in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Cities generally are sites for cultivating and fostering the accumulation of multiple forms of capital. In urban areas, these different kinds of capital can bring economic, social, and political benefits to national development. Nurturing all of these forms of capital and turning them into development outcomes require security and regulation. The social and economic regulation of informal urban settlements in PNG needs to be expressed territorially and spatially in residential neighborhoods, public spaces and amenities, and transport nodes and routes. Regulatory failure, on the other hand, can lead to communal disputes and escalating violence at all levels that pervert and destroy capital and threaten national stability. This report will describe, the chief institutions of local regulation that have taken distinctive forms: local committees and flexibly institutionalized leadership roles, all enacted through mediation and the spatial regulation of settlements and markets. This report focuses on the everyday institutional arrangements that regulate the safety and security of PNG's urban settlements in relation to people and places where the reach of formal authorities is limited, dysfunctional, and or lacks legitimacy.

"The issues of urban change, and of environmental degradation have long been of concern to geographers with our strong emphasis on human/environmental relationships. Spatial inequalities, as reflected in the distribution of well-being are also a major focus for human geographers. In the Pacific Islands rapid changes occuring in the urban areas are obvious in deteriorating ernvironments and in increasing poverty amongst disadvantaged groups. This book on urban poverty and environment arose out of research carried out in the Pacific over the past decade ... The material presented here is partly original research (particularly Chapter V), and partly material which is largely unpublished, such as internatinal and regional agency and consultancy reports, largely inaccessible to the general public ..."--Preface