Sustainability and Infrastructure

June 17, 2019
Lasting poverty reduction requires sustainable natural resource management as well as infrastructure development. This research program encompasses energy, environment, land, agriculture, water, climate change, biodiversity, and urbanization.
Featured
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    Productive Cities in the 21st Century

    September 2019
    On September 9 the 6th Urbanization and Poverty Reduction Research Conference brought together leading policy makers and researchers on urbanization from around the globe. This year’s conference focused on the most critical asset of any city—its people. While a city’s buildings, infrastructure, and spatial design are all important, cities are fundamentally about the people who live in them, their connections with each other, and the productivity of these connections.
    Story |  World Bank Live: Keynote and Opening Session |  Additional Event Materials
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    Structural Change in Space: Employment Transition and Urbanization in Developing Countries

    March 2019
    In this talk, Forhad Shilip discussed interactions between spatial and transformation based on research from more than a decade’s worth of research spanning many of the world’s poorest countries.
    Story |  Presentation |  Video |  Event Information |  More research by Forhad Shilpi |  Policy Research Talks
  • Land Conference 2017

    Land Research, Data, and Policy Insights

    Rural poverty, rapid urbanization, equity, and environmental degradation have placed land at the center of many of the world's pressing challenges. Through analysis of change, testing cutting-edge technology, and partnerships with governments, universities, think tanks, and the private sector in developing and developed countries, the World Bank's Development Research Group is generating new insights into how countries can reform their land policies to effectively tackle these challenges.
    Land Governance Assessment Framework |  Annual Land Conference
WORKING PAPERS
PUBLICATIONS
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    Raising the Bar for Productive Cities in Latin America and the Caribbean

    Maria Marta Ferreyra and Mark Roberts, eds., with N. Lozano Gracia, P. Restrepo Cadavid, and H. Selod
    This report is about the productivity of cities in LAC and the factors that help to explain its determination. Based on original empirical research, the report documents the high levels of population density and other features of LAC cities that mark them out from those in the rest of the world. The report also studies the role of three key factors – urban form, skills, and access to markets – in determining the productivity of LAC cities.
    World Bank, 2018
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    The Challenges of Urbanization in West Africa

    Calix, J., M. Rogy, M. Mukim, Y. Batana, L. Razafimandimby, A. Sanoh, O. Béguy, J. Hoogeveen, A. Zafar, M. Kitzmuller, E. Sergenti, A. Mijiyawa, M. Nshimiyimana, O. Kassim, A.-M. Taptué, I. Touqeer, S. Sánchez, E. Skrok, P. Avner, Christian Van Eghoff, A. Chunet, M. Winter, H. Selod, C. Plançon, O. D’aoust, S. Beddies, Z. Coulibaly, A. Anand and F. Taillandier.
    Bamako represents about 34 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), whereas Conakry and Niamey each represent about 27 percent of GDP in their respective countries. Furthermore, as their populations are increasing at a faster rate than anywhere else in the world, the attendant youth bulge could turn into either a demographic dividend, whereby cities take advantage of a temporary boom in the working age population to productively employ young people, or a demographic disaster, accompanied by urban instability if cities do not meet these aspirations.
    World Bank, 2018
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    Land Delivery Systems in West African Cities: Bamako, Mali

    Durand-Lasserve, Alain; Durand-Lasserve, Maÿlis; Selod, Harris.
    Urban and peri-urban land markets in rapidly expanding West African cities operate within and across different coexisting tenure regimes and involve complex procedures to obtain or make land available for housing. Because a structured framework lacks for the analysis of such systems, this book proposes a systemic approach and applies it to Bamako and its surrounding areas.
    World Bank, 2015

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    Environment and Energy |  Agricultural and Rural Development
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RESEARCH MANAGER
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Michael Toman

Research Manager, Sustainability and Infrastructure
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