Innovation in Urban Development: Incremental Housing, Big Data, and Gender

To encourage a new generation of urban policymakers and promote early career research, the Wilson Center’s Comparative Urban Studies Project, USAID, the World Bank, the International Housing Coalition, and Cities Alliance joined to co-sponsor an annual paper competition for advanced graduate students working on issues related to urban poverty. The goal of the competition is to develop and strengthen the ties between urban policymaking and scholarship, and to disseminate evidence-based research on urban development programming. This publication marks the fourth year of the competition and includes a range of perspectives offering innovative policy solutions to pressing urban challenges. The 2013 “Reducing Urban Poverty” competition called for papers linked to one of the following subtopic topics representing new ways of conceiving urban development and moving beyond existing models: incremental housing approaches, big data, and gender. A panel of urban experts representing each of the sponsoring institutions reviewed over 80 abstract submissions, from which 17 were selected for invitation to write full length papers. Of these, eight were chosen for this publication to present new ideas and fresh perspectives from the next generation of urban planners, practitioners, and policymakers. The papers in this volume critically examine existing urban policies and projects, offering original, solutions-oriented research and strategies for tackling urban poverty.