2014: 2nd Urbanization and Poverty Reduction Conference

The world is urbanizing rapidly, with cities today concentrating more than half the world’s population. While it is widely accepted that urbanization and economic development go hand in hand, the expansion of cities gives rise to both opportunities and challenges, with countries urbanizing in different ways. Urbanization has been occurring at different times and in different places, and some countries have concentrated the urban populations in a few mega-cities, while others have spread the urban population across many smaller towns. Current patterns of urbanization in developing countries raise a number of challenges such as accompanying structural transformation, providing infrastructure, managing urban spatial expansion, addressing externalities in congestion and pollution, and building effective institutions.