Urban Poverty: understanding and addressing its challenges

Key points

• Definition of urban poor and causes of urban poverty in urban and rural areas;
• Difference between urban poverty and rural poverty;
• Urban and rural poverty alleviation with adaptation and mitigation strategies.

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Urban Poverty Definition

What is the meaning of Urban Poverty? Urban poverty refers to the condition of deprivation experienced by individuals or families in urban areas who lack the financial means and access to basic services required for a decent standard of living.
This type of poverty is often associated with:

• Inadequate housing or homelessness;
• Limited access to education and healthcare;
• Precarious employment or unemployment;
• High exposure to environmental hazards, such as air pollution or natural disasters in poorly built settlements.

Urban poverty is unique because it occurs in densely populated environments where resources may be available but are often unequally distributed. The urban poor are often more exposed than other city dwellers to these environmental hazards because the housing they can afford tends to be located in environmentally riskier areas (such as floodplains and slopes) and of poorer quality, and because municipal governments overseeing such neighborhoods often fail to establish and maintain proper drainage and waste collection and disposal. The urban poor, the elderly, women, minority, recent immigrants and otherwise marginal populations most often face the greatest risks due to climate change. Fostering greater equity and justice within climate action increases a city’s capacity to respond to climate change and improves human well-being, social capital, and related opportunities for sustainable social and economic development.

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Causes of Poverty in Urban Areas

The causes of urban poverty are a combination of structural and situational factors.

Economic factors

• Job scarcity: cities attract large populations because of job opportunities, but there is often a shortage of formal jobs.
• Underemployment: many urban dwellers rely on informal or low-wage jobs that lack stability.
• High cost of living: urban residents are faced with a higher cost of living for housing, transportation and basic services compared to rural areas.

Social inequalities

• Education, employment, and healthcare can be difficult for marginalized groups, such as minorities and migrants.
• Women’s economic participation and upward mobility are limited by gender disparities.

Rapid urbanization

• Overcrowding and the expansion of informal settlements can be caused by the rapid influx of rural migrants into cities, which can overwhelm existing infrastructure.
• Cities often fail to expand services like water supply, waste management and public transportation in line with population growth.

Environmental challenges

• Urban areas are vulnerable to flooding, heatwaves and pollution, which disproportionately affect low-income communities.

Governance and policy gaps

• Weak urban governance leads to unplanned settlements and inefficient resource allocation.
• The poverty cycle is made worse by the absence of targeted programs.

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Rural vs. Urban Poverty

The manifestations of poverty in rural and urban settings are significantly different, even though it affects people globally.

Rural poverty

• Agricultural dependence: rural populations often rely on subsistence farming, leaving them vulnerable to climate variability.
• Isolation: geographic remoteness limits access to markets, education and healthcare.
• Lower costs: despite limited income, the cost of living in rural areas is typically lower.

Urban poverty

• Housing challenges: urban poverty is synonymous with slums and informal settlements.
• Overcrowding: high population density exacerbates resource shortages and public health risks.
• Employment struggles: although cities are economic hubs, opportunities for stable employment are unevenly distributed.

The contrast lies in the visibility of urban poverty while rural poverty is often hidden in the slums and marginalized neigh.

Urban dwellers are more likely than rural villagers to be exposed to the risks of cyclones and storm surges because urbanites are more likely to live on or near the coast: cities and towns account for nearly two of every three residents of coastal areas worldwide.

In Asia, 18% of the population lives in the low-elevation coastal zone – the highest percentage across all world regions – and 12% of the urban land is at low elevation and near the coast. Moreover, many of Asia’s largest cities are located in coastal areas that are cyclone-prone, such as Mumbai, or Karachi. Flooding and storm surges also threaten coastal African cities, such as Port Harcourt and Lagos in Nigeria. Similar vulnerabilities affect Mombasa and various cities in Latin America within cities. Vulnerable people and households are more likely to be affected during extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and storm surge flooding, partly because these groups live disproportionately in low-lying areas and flood plains in many world regions, as documented from various cities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Vulnerable people and households, such as women with low incomes or ethnic minorities, also possess substantially fewer resources to cope if damage occurs. For example, Hurricane Katrina disproportionately affected African-American residents and elderly people. Case studies suggest that mortality rates of women and men vary significantly for both climatologic and other natural disasters. During the cyclone in Bangladesh in 1991, death rates were 71 per 1,000 for women and 15 per 1,000 for men. In the 2004 Tsunami in Amapara, Sri Lanka, fatalities were 3,972 and 2,124 among women and men, respectively. In addition to human fatalities and infrastructure damages, a number of health risks are associated with coastal (and inland) flooding, such as cholera, cryptosporidiosis, typhoid fever, diarrheal diseases, and leptospirosis. Lau et al. (2010) suggest that the combination of climate change, flooding, population growth, and urbanization will almost certainly lead to an escalation of leptospirosis, with high risks for urban slums, low-lying areas, and small island states. Storms are also expected to lead to water contamination with chemicals, heavy metals, and other hazardous substances for populations living near industrial areas on the coast.

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Urban Poverty Alleviation

Cities across the globe are facing the reality of climate change. Hazards such as floods, storms, and slow-onset sea level rise are affecting human, economic, and environmental assets. Knowledge of the impacts of mitigation and adaptation strategies employed in the housing sector is critical to inform policies and decisions to achieve combined benefits on improving quality of life and closing the development and equity gap in cities worldwide. Addressing urban poverty involves a multi-faceted approach that combines policy reform, community engagement and investment in infrastructure. Key strategies include:

• Governments and organizations must prioritize the construction of affordable housing to reduce slums and improve living standards.
• Policies should incentivize private developers to include low-cost housing in urban projects.
• Sustainable urban planning ensures that infrastructure meets the needs of growing populations.
• Upgrading slums with basic services such as electricity, clean water, and sanitation improves health and productivity.
• Legal recognition and tenure security for informal settlements empower residents and reduce the threat of eviction.
• Initiatives targeting women and marginalized groups promote inclusive economic growth.
• Involving local residents in urban planning ensures that policies address their specific needs and priorities.

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References

Lead autors

• Rosenzweig, C., Solecki, W., Romero-Lankao, P., Mehrotra, S., Dhakal, S., & Ali Ibrahim, S. (Eds.). (2018). Climate Change and Cities: Second Assessment Report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network. Cambridge University Press.

Urban poverty definition

• Brady, D. (2009). Rich Democracies, Poor People – How Politics Explain Poverty. Oxford University Press.
• McGranahan, G., Balk, D., and Anderson, B. (2007). The rising tide. Assessing the risks of climate change and human settlements in low elevation coastal zones. Environment and Urbanization 19, 17–37

Causes of Poverty in Urban Areas

• Douglas, I., Alam, K., Maghenda, M., Mcdonnell, Y., Mclean, L., and Campbell, J. (2008a). Unjust waters: Climate change, flooding and the urban poor in Africa. Environment and Urbanization 20, 187–205.
• Adelekan, O. I. (2010). Vulnerability of urban poor coastal communities to flooding in Lagos, Nigeria. Environment and Urbanization, Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) 22(2), 312–333.
• Curtis, A., Mills, J. W., and Leitner, M. (2007). Katrina and vulnerability: The geography of stress. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 18, 315–330.

Rural vs. Urban Poverty

• United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. (2012). World Urbanization Prospects, the 2011 Revision. Final Report with Annex Tables. United Nations.
• UN-Habitat. (2011). Urbanization and the challenge of climate change. In Cities and Climate Change: Global Report on Human Settlement (pp. 1–16). UN-Habitat.

Urban poverty alleviation

• Baker, J. L. ed. (2012). Climate Change, Disaster Risk and the Urban Poor. Cities Building Resilience for a Changing World. World Bank.