URBAN OPPORTUNITIES: Perspectives on Climate Change, Resilience, Inclusion, and the Informal Economy

To encourage a new generation of urban scholars, practitioners, and policymakers, and to disseminate their innovative ideas, the Wilson Center’s Urban Sustainability Laboratory, together with Cities Alliance, the International Housing Coalition, USAID, and the World Bank, sponsors an annual paper competition for advanced graduate students working on issues related to urban poverty.

To encourage a new generation of urban scholars, practitioners, and policymakers, and to disseminate their innovative ideas, the Wilson Center’s Urban Sustainability Laboratory, together with Cities Alliance, the International Housing Coalition, USAID, and the World Bank, sponsors an annual paper competition for advanced graduate students working on issues related to urban poverty. The competition is designed to promote the early career development of young urban researchers as well as to strengthen ties between urban policymaking and academia. This publication marks the fifth year of the “Reducing Urban Poverty” competition and includes a range of perspectives on urban challenges and policy solutions. The 2014 competition called for papers linked to one of the following subtopics: cities and climate change; urban resiliency; inclusive cities; and the impacts of the informal economy. Each chapter in this volume critically examines existing urban policies and projects, offering original, solutions-oriented research and strategies. To select the winning papers for publication, a panel of urban experts representing each of the sponsoring institutions reviewed 146 abstract submissions, from which 23 were invited to write a full length paper. Of these, eight papers were selected for this publication.