Urban Poverty: Technical Notes [get by e-mail] September 0, 2002 Technical Note M.1: Urban Observatory System
Technical Note M.2: Dimensions of Urban Poverty
Technical Note M.3: Interventions at...
Urban Poverty [get by e-mail] September 0, 2002 This chapter is addressed both to stakeholders engaged in countrywide poverty strategies and to local level participants in such strategic...
Economic forces help to shape the social capital garnered by poor people and also bear upon their survival. The urban poor can be aided to make better use of the assets available to them using "the asset vulnerability framework." Economic crises can considerably damage social capital accumulation which could have far reaching ill-effects. Social and community relations strengthen the base and help make a more organized., less vulnerable social unit.
One fundamental issue is how we view the relationship between poor groups and economic development, and thus their claim to productive assets especially serviced land. Approaches to rural poverty, even from contrasting ideologies, generally recognise that access to land and its quality are critical for poor groups for survival
and move to a more stable situation.
The issue of poverty in Sri Lanka focuses very heavily on rural and estate populations. It is only during the last two decades that urban poverty has gained a certain degree of prominence.
This chapter is addressed both to stakeholders engaged in countrywide poverty strategies and to local level participants in such strategic exercises for their city. The chapter is organized around two major themes: 1)Understanding urban poverty; and 2)Addressing urban poverty.
This chapter is concerned with the relationship between environmental sustainability and poverty alleviation, and the way this complicates understandings of social capital and state-community synergy.
Prevalent types of violence in urban Jamaican neiborhoods is examined and its impact on community social capital is discussed. Gang and Political violence are the types of violence that poor Jamaicans preceive to be most disruptive and problematic to their communties. These types of violence impair residents' freedom to move from one neighborhood to another safely, and other services outside of their immediate neighrborhoods. The high rate of violence also weakens social capital.
Much of the important research on poverty, in South Asia and elsewhere, focuses on the rural poor, because their numbers are so overwhelming. Policy makers have also focused on alleviating rural poverty, with good reason. However, with trends showing increasing urbanization in the Third World, researchers and policy makers are once more shifting their attention to the problems of urban poverty.
