Urban Poor

Despite recent reports suggesting that access to improved sources of drinking water is rising in Ghana, water access remains a daily concern for many of those living in the capital region. Throughout the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA), the urban poor manage uncertainty and establish themselves in the city by leveraging a patchwork system of basic services that draws importantly from informal systems and supplies. This paper takes a case study approach, using evidence gathered from two-months of fieldwork in a peri-urban informal settlement on the fringe of Accra, to explore everyday practices involved in procuring water for daily needs that routinely lead residents outside of the official water supply system. Findings from this case study demonstrate that respondents make use of informal water services to supplement or 'patch up' gaps left by the sporadic water flow of the official service provider, currently Ghana Water Company Ltd. (GWCL). Basic water access is thus constructed through an assemblage of coping strategies and infrastructures. This analysis contributes to understandings of heterogeneity in water access by attending to the everyday practices by which informality is operationalised to meet the needs of the urban poor, in ways that may have previously been overshadowed. This research suggests, for example, that although water priced outside of the official service provider is generally higher per unit, greater security may be obtained from smaller repetitive transactions as well as having the flexibility to pursue multiple sources of water on a day-to-day basis.

Dhaka, one of the primate cities in Bangladesh and the nation's capital, has a diverse range of extremities in its general socio-economic composition. For the last few decades, the imprints of such a distinctive (but disorganized) and composite juxtaposition has become evident though the physical and cultural bearing of its housing industry. In a broader spectrum, the overall housing divide can be identified under two opposite categories - the formal and informal sectors in housing. With the government agencies out of the scene as the key provider in the housing stock, the formal sector is primarily dependent on numerous real-estate organizations and private entrepreneurs. The informal sector, on the other hand, is left to survive on its own - in conditions beyond human justification, but growing steadily to meet the demands of its urban machinery and economic whirlpool - an industry that presently comprises of the greater half of the total supply. This paper tells the tale of the Vastuhara resettlement scheme for the urban poor that stands out as a bright and optimistic example in transformation propensity where some cataleptic efforts by the government and the donor agencies have proven to be a spontaneous phenomena of social and economical advancement for its target group. Various sections of this text will portray a timescape of almost 40 years or so, assessing and addressing to details, which acted as contributing factors in the overall housing process.

From the early nineteenth century onwards, the urban laborers, most notably porters and boatmen in the Ottoman cities, emerged as one of the central themes in the Western literature, through which the foreigners attempted to make sense of the Orient and to define the boundaries and relations between the two worlds. However, the images of the Ottoman laborers in the Western literature were at best superficial and misleading, leaving much space to be filled with self-reflections, and later on imperialist plans.

"The current poverty scenario in Delhi indicates that one out of every five residents in Delhi resides in slums and
nearly half in other urban poor habitations like unauthorized and resettlement colonies. The real health conditions
and service coverage for the urban poor is masked by the urban average figures. The reanalysis of the NFHS data
by economic classes highlights the poor state of slum dwellers Delhi. Though there are various policies and
programmes which address the concerns of the urban poor, their impact on the lives of the urban poor has been
limited because of little coordination among different programmes and departments."

The current urban poverty scenario in Uttar Pradesh, India, indicates that three out of every ten urban dwellers in U.P. are poor. The real health conditions and service coverage for the urban poor is masked by the urban average figures. The reanalysis of the NFHS data by economic classes highlights the poor state of slum dwellers in Uttar Pradesh. Though there are various policies and programmes which address the concerns of the urban poor, their impact on the lives of the urban poor has been limited because of little coordination among different programmes and departments.