This guidebook provides practical tips and resources for conducting quality socioeconomic surveys to enhance the effectiveness of urban development and water projects. It explains the importance of high-quality socioeconomic surveys to strengthen project design, ensure robust due diligence, and inform evidence-based policies. Focusing on urban development and water projects, the guidebook discusses common mistakes made with socioeconomic surveys and provides good practices for implementing high quality face-to-face and digital surveys. It includes a standardized set of annotated questionnaires that consist of basic questions as well as expanded questions that enable a more robust understanding of project impacts.

The overall objective of the study is aimed at generating a baseline data for monitoring the overall impact of development interventions in general and the irrigation schemes of the Tana sub-basin in particular regarding local livelihoods, food security and poverty alleviation in rural areas and local employment and income, assets and access to services in urban areas.

The world's population is rapidly urbanizing but the affluence and development often associated with cities are far from equitably or sustainably distributed. Where it was once taken for granted that responsibility for urban development lay with the state, increasingly the emphasis has shifted to market-driven and public-private sector initiatives, which can marginalize the intended beneficiaries - the urban poor - from decision making and implementation. This text outlines the essential conditions for effective urban planning and management by placing bottom-up community initiatives at the heart of the push for equitable and sustainable development in cities. Crucially, the state must engage with both the market and civil society in pursuit of sustainable cities. Presenting a wide-ranging selection of case studies in rapidly urbanizing and transitional countries, from the poorest parts of Africa and Asia to the relatively developed United Kingdom, the authors describe and analyze innovations in how globally disadvantaged urban communities can be engaged in improving their living environments.

This annual report lists and describes the World Bank Group's portfolio of projects designed to improve or protect the environment, all of which were under implementation during fiscal year 1996 (July 1, 1995 to June 30, 1996). The first part of the report discusses significant environmental issues for each sector and region and describes the environmental activities of various parts of the World Bank Group. Boxes, tables, and figures supplement the narrative. A useful bibliography of World Bank publications on environmental topics closes the section. The second part consists of reports on environmentally targeted projects; World Bank and International Finance Corporation (IFC) projects that required a full environmental assessment because of their potential impacts; investment operations supporting projects launched by the Global Environment Facility; and projects designed to help developing countries comply with the Montreal Protocol--a multilateral treaty that controls the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substance.

The Urban Projects Manual addresses key issues facing professionals working in the urban sector and illustrates methods with examples. For this new edition sections have been updated, references added to Latin American cases and additional technical notes included. "... is likely to continue to be an indispensable aid to development professionals worldwide."—Habitat International