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Urbanization in Cambodia offers the potential for inclusive growth and poverty reduction. The proportion of people living in cities is on the rise, and many of the drivers of growth for the country are urban based industries such as manufacturing, tourism, and trade. This creates an important opportunity for the country, as the decisions made today will affect the urbanization process in significant ways for decades to come. This report aims to help inform urbanization policy in Cambodia, understand the economic potential of cities, key constraints to realizing that potential, and develop a strategic approach for improving urban growth and resilience in those cities. The report includes three sections, i) an introduction to patterns of urbanization and the economic potential of cities in Urbanization; ii) analysis of key challenges; and iii) policy and program options for achieving the full potential of urbanization.

City to city alliances --- Infrastructure --- Municipal housing and land --- Municipalities --- National urban development policies and strategies --- Regional urban development --- Sustainable land management --- Transport --- Urban development --- Urban economic development --- Urban economics --- Urbanization

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This policy note discusses strengthening institutions for urban and metropolitan management and service delivery and is part of a broader Philippines urbanization study. Strong institutions are critical to the effective management of cities, the delivery of efficient urban services and infrastructure, and the establishment of an enabling environment for business and job creation. Strong institutions are needed to design and support policies for land and housing markets, raise and equitably redistribute revenues, and promote a safe and sustainable urban environment both at the national and local levels. A number of underlying institutional and governance issues at national and metropolitan levels in the Philippines stand out as binding constraints which have limited the country from optimizing the benefits of urban development. Even as the share of the national population living in urban areas has expanded to around 50 percent, urbanization in the country has never been guided by a comprehensive urban development policy supported by a clearly defined institutional framework. Institutional fragmentation among various oversight and sectorial agencies at the national level has exacerbated the weak institutional environment for urban development. The continuing expansion and population growth of urban areas throughout the country heightens the urgency for adopting comprehensive urban policy and institutional reforms that will enable the country to harness the benefits of urban development and mitigate negative externalities. There are a number of key challenges related to governance and institutions that are hampering successful urbanization: (i) absence of a comprehensive national urban policy; (ii) absence of a lead agency for urban development; (iii) weaknesses in the fiscal decentralization framework; and (iv) metropolitan fragmentation and weak mechanisms for inter-jurisdictional coordination.

City Development Strategies --- City to City Alliances --- Decentralization --- Municipal Financial Management --- Municipal Governance and Institution Building --- National Urban Development Policies & Strategies --- Regional Urban Development --- Urban Development --- Urban Economic Development --- Urbanization

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This study carries out a thorough investigation of the potential sources of mismatch in poverty and inequality levels and trends between the Tanzania National Panel Survey and Household Budget Survey. The main findings of the study include the following. First, the difference in poverty levels between the Household Budget Survey and the National Panel Survey is essentially explained by the differences in the methods of estimating the poverty line. Second, the discrepancy in poverty trends can be mainly attributed to the difference in inter-year temporal price deflators, and, to a lesser extent, spatial price deflators. The use of the consumer price index for adjusting consumption variation across years would show a decline in poverty during the past five years for the Household Budget Survey and the National Panel Survey. Third, despite noticeable differences in the methods of household consumption data collection, the Household Budget Survey and National Panel Survey show close mean household consumption levels in the last rounds, when using the consumer price index to adjust for inter-year price variations. Mean household consumption levels in the Household Budget Survey 2011/12 and National Panel Survey 2010/11 are comparable, and the mean consumption level in the National Panel Survey 2012/13 is around 10 percent higher. The difference is driven by higher levels of aggregate and food consumption by the better-off groups in the National Panel Survey. Fourth, the mismatch in inequality trends and pro-poor growth patterns between the two surveys could not be resolved and is a subject for further analysis.

Agriculture --- City to City Alliances --- Communities and Human Settlements --- Data Collection --- Education --- Educational Sciences --- Food Security --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Inequality --- National Urban Development Policies and Strategies --- Nutrition --- Poverty --- Poverty Reduction --- Public Sector Development --- Regional Urban Development --- Survey --- Transport --- Urban Development --- Urban Economic Development --- Urban Economics --- Urban Governance and Management --- Urban Housing --- Urban Housing and Land Settlements

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The impact of urban form on economic performance and quality of life has been extensively recognized. The studies on urban form have focused in developed countries; only a few cities in developing countries have been studied. This paper utilizes nighttime lights imagery and information on street networks, automatically retrieved from OpenStreetMap, to calculate a series of spatial metrics that capture different aspects of the urban form of 919 Latin American and Caribbean cities. The paper classifies these cities into clusters according to these spatial metrics. It also studies the relationship between the urban form metrics and some factors that can correlate with urban form (topography, size, colony, and economic performance) and performs a spatio-temporal analysis of urban growth from 1996 to 2010. Among the results, the paper highlights the identification of five typologies of cities, the tendency of a group of cities to grow at a steeper slope, some worrying cases of urban growth over protected areas, and a trend toward increasing sprawl in some Latin American and Caribbean cities.

Cities --- City to city alliances --- Cluster analysis --- Coastal and marine resources --- Communities and human settlements --- Energy and natural resources --- Labor markets --- National urban development policies and strategies --- Regional urban development --- Remote sensing --- Transport --- Urban development --- Urban economic development --- Urban economics --- Urban form

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Asset ownership indices are widely used as inexpensive proxies for consumption. This paper shows that these indices can be augmented using dichotomous indicators for consumption, which are equally easy to obtain. The paper uses multiple rounds of Living Standards Measurement Study surveys from Malawi, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Ghana to construct indices with different item subcategories and performs a meta-analysis comparing the indices to per capita consumption. The results show that the standard asset indices, which are derived from durable ownership and housing characteristic indicators, perform well in urban settings. Yet, in rural samples and when identifying the extreme poor, household rankings and poverty classification accuracy can be meaningfully improved by adding indicators of food and semi-durable consumption. The study finds small improvement from using national weights in urban samples but no improvement from using alternative construction methods. With most of Africa's poor concentrated in rural areas, these are important insights.

Asset Index --- City to City Alliances --- Communities and Human Settlements --- Consumption Proxies --- Education --- Educational Sciences --- Health Care Services Industry --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Industry --- Inequality --- National Urban Development Policies and Strategies --- Nutrition --- Poverty Reduction --- Poverty Targeting --- Proxy-Means Testing --- Public Sector Development --- Regional Urban Development --- Social Protections and Assistance --- Social Protections and Labor --- Urban Development --- Urban Economic Development --- Urban Economics --- Urban Governance and Management --- Urban Housing --- Urban Housing and Land Settlements