Issues such as poverty, social and economic marginalization, and extreme social vulnerabilities are all the more important in urban contexts. Rapid urbanization, inadequate planning or resources, and territorial marginalization are making urban populations ever more exposed to these risks and more likely to fall or remain below the poverty line. Local governments and municipal authorities, therefore, have an enormous responsibility when it comes to taking on this challenge. Within the scope of action of local and territorial authorities, the reduction of urban poverty, access to secure land tenure and the formalization of tenure rights, as well as issue of housing and planning policies and the upgrading of slums and informal settlements, can all have a major impact on the achievement of Goal 1, and are worth specific attention. Urban poverty: extent of the challenge and policies to address it Data currently available on urbanization around the world are likely to underestimate urban poverty and, in many cases, do not allow for detailed geographical breakdowns to understand poverty trends beyond urban or city averages. Moreover, quantitative analysis of this phenomenon cannot adequately portray the quality of services, crucial in dense informal settlements where services are shared, and thus further misrepresent the challenge of poverty in urban contexts.59 The studies that have attempted to create comparable income-based poverty estimates suggest that the share of urban extreme poverty is gradually rising.60 They found that the share of income poor people living in urban areas increased from 19% (or 241 million) in 1993 to 24% in 2002 (291 million), as urbanization climbed from 38% to 42% in the same period. A recent study, moreover, analyzes performance in 20 cities in developing countries, showing that local authorities will require rates of progress more than twice as fast as we have seen since 2000s if they are to meet aspirations to end child malnutrition, to achieve universal access to drinking water and sanitation, and universal access to adequate housing. As a preliminary contribution to such analysis, this section presents selected good practices and positive examples from around the world that can give insight into policy actions that local governments can undertake in their territory and communities. Evidence shows that sustained local economic development and, in particular, policies creating work opportunities for the urban poor have a positive impact on the reduction of poverty in urban contexts. Local authorities and institutions can play a key role in stimulating investment, skills, and market opportunities for the local economy, including for those at the bottom of the income distribution. Positive examples of ‘local development state’ models – in which “sub-national levels of government” are proactive “in building the institutional and organizational infrastructures required for growth-oriented” activities – are starting to show also in developing economies. For instance, since the 1990s Medellín has implemented city ownership and management of energy production, local planning regulations and transit development designed to connect poorer households to better job opportunities, leading to significant improvement in prosperity and competitiveness for the city and its communities.61
59 See Lucci et al. (2016a) ‘Projecting progress: Are cities on track to achieve the SDGs?’, available online at: https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org. uk/files/resource-documents/11001.pdf. A study adapting existing multi-dimensional measures to better account for deprivation in urban areas in India found this resulted in poverty rates over 5 percentage points higher – in the case of Delhi, this amounted to over 1 million people. For more information, see Lucci et al. (2016b), ‘Are we underestimating urban poverty?’, available on: https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/ resource-documents/are_we_underestimating_urban_poverty_final_web.pdf. 60 Ravallion et al. (2008) ‘New Evidence on the Urbanization of Global Poverty’, Background Paper for the World Development Report 2008. Available on: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTWDR2008/Resources/2795087-1191427986785/RavallionMEtAl_UrbanizationOfGlobalPoverty.pdf.
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61 See more on this case in Milford Bateman et al. (2011) ‘A post-Washington consensus approach to local economic development in Latin America? An example from Medellín, Colombia’, available online at: https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publicationsopinion-files/7054.pdf.