Changing Cities: Climate, Youth and Land Markets and Urban Areas

The number of urban slum dwellers worldwide is staggering. In spite of surpassing a Millennium Development Goal to significantly improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020, UNHabitat reports that the number of slum dwellers increased by 55 million between 2000 and 2010, totaling 827.6 million people. By 2020, the world slum population is projected to reach 889 million.1 Failure to incorporate urban priorities into the global development agenda carries serious implications for human security, global security, and environmental sustainability. Recognizing a need to strengthen the ties between urban policymaking and scholarly work on urban development, and to disseminate evidence- based development programming, the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Comparative Urban Studies Project, USAID’s Urban Programs Team, the International Housing Coalition, Cities Alliance, and the World Bank joined in 2010 to co-sponsor an academic paper competition for graduate students studying urban issues. The success of the first competition led the partners to expand the competition in the next year to include the publication of top papers submitted in 2011. This publication marks the third year of the competition, and the second publication in a series entitled “A New Generation of Ideas.” The 2012 paper competition, “Reducing Urban Poverty,” focused on three topics: climate change, youth, and land markets and security of tenure. A panel of urban experts representing the sponsoring institutions reviewed over 70 abstract submissions, from which 15 were invited to write full length papers. Of these, eight were selected for this publication.