1. Advocacy and Progressive National Legislation: StreetVendors in India
2. Market Traders and Legal Victories in Warwick Junction, Durban, South Africa
3. Legal Change for the Adoption of an Inclusive Recycling Model in Bogotá, Colombia
4. Social Mobilization and a New Legal Framework for Inclusion of Informal Recyclers in Solid Waste Management in Brazil
5. Global Standard Setting and Advocacy for Domestic Workers

There has been remarkable advances in energy access for rural households. However, this research note argues that building the wider economy requires energy services that power new jobs and enterprises.

Although urban women generally enjoy some advantages over their rural counterparts, a range of gender inequalities and injustices persist in urban areas that constrain their engagement in the labour market and in informal enterprises and inhibit the development of capabilities among younger women. These include unequal access to decent work, human capital acquisition, financial and physical assets, intra-urban mobility, personal safety and security, and representation in formal structures of urban governance. But the nature of these varies for different groups of women, not only on account of poverty status and where they live in the city, but also according to age, household characteristics, degree of engagement in income-generating activities and so on. This paper reviews what we have learnt from the literature on gender and urban development. It discusses disparities in access to education and vocational training and to land and housing ownership through a “gender lens”. It considers service deficiencies and associated time burdens, which limit income generation among women. Violence and gender, and gender divisions in access to different spaces within the city and in engagement in urban politics, are also covered. These factors cast doubt on whether women’s contributions to the prosperity often associated with urbanization are matched by commensurate returns and benefits.

This resource guide provides practical guidance for designing, implementing and evaluating decentralisation reforms and local government practices to ensure they are as effective as possible. It also synthesises and presents current debates on the impact of decentralisation and local government on poverty reduction, service delivery and conflict as well as providing links to cutting-edge research and recent case studies.