This report provides a baseline inventory of the standard of living, housing and infrastructure services as well as access to urban basic services in Mwanza, Tanzania, focusing on informal settlements. It provides evidence-based guidance on how to improve access to urban basic services in informal settlements as an essential element to achieve healthy, livable and sustainable cities.

The challenges faced by informal settlers in terms of access to urban basic services do not necessarily differ from those faced by many cities in the developing world: lack of access to water, sanitation, unreliable transportation modes, unclean energy, lack of schools, lack of health facilities, unemployment, lack of public lighting, lack of green and public spaces, unhygienic living standards and water-borne diseases are the most common. About 924 million people in the world live in slums and certain patterns related to access to urban basic services emerge as a common element that creates context-based opportunities to meet these challenges.

The report investigates these common elements and analyses the linkage between housing and basic social infrastructure services as a factor largely determined by spatial location, level of development of a place and the associated impact on the living conditions of these variables on informal settlers. Formalising land tenure, clarification of rights to access to basic services, coordinated infrastructure and land use planning, innovative service provision technologies, research, advocacy and citizen engagement and intensified urban basic service infrastructure investment are presented as important conditions for change. Particular emphasis is put on the access to urban basic services as a determining factor to the state of living conditions.

This book documents the processes, challenges and related successes of a pilot project on slum upgrading in Soweto East villages of Kibera informal settlement, Nairobi. As a post project intervention assessment report, it focuses on distilling lessons learnt and best practices with a view of informing future strategies and policy decisions on slum upgrading interventions for similar urban settlements in any part of the world.

The process of community engagement and their role as an integral part of the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme structure is a clear manifestation of the importance of public private partnership in forging a common front for the improvement of living standards for the slum populace.

This issue guide focuses attention on urban basic services in order to illuminate the effects of gender on equality of access and inclusion in the areas of urban energy, urban transport and water and sanitation. This issue guide further seeks to broadly outline the where and how of gender responsive interventions in order to strengthen planned and future actions that can go a long way to reduce poverty and overcome obstacles to gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Although sanitation has been hailed as “the most important medical advance since 1840”, over 2.5 billion people – most of them in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia – lack access to basic sanitation. The world is not on track to meet the 2015 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for sanitation.

For the drinking water MDG, progress is better, but the situation still critical in some regions. Meanwhile in the slums of cities such as Nairobi, Dar - es - Salaam and Mumbai, the daily reality is an extended struggle to find water, a place to defecate and a convenient location to dump or burn one’s rubbish.

UN-HABITAT had been present in Nepal intermittently since the late 1980s engaging in a number of technical assistance programmes in the field of human settlements development. In 2005, the Water for Asian Cities was launched in the country focusing on water and environmental sanitation infrastructure and administration.

The primary governmental counterpart for this programme is the Ministry of Physical Planning Works and its relevant departments, while secondary counterparts are local authorities. As of September 2007, a Habitat Programme Manger has also been recruited to strengthen representation of the agency with government and the UN Country Team.

This UN-HABITAT Country Programme Document (HCPD) has been developed in the context of a historically significant political transition that is taking place in Nepal at present. The HCPD attempts to address key urban development challenges and priorities on the thematic areas of land and housing, shelter and basic services, capacity development and urban governance.

Every day we all make choices to improve our lives. And that applies anywhere in the world. So how we do it here in Southern Sudan is important. Think hard of the public services that enable us to live safer, cleaner, healthier and better lives. Maintain them well everyone benefits.

A general guide to the design, construction, operation and maintenance of constructed wetlands for the treatment of domestic wastewater as well as introduction to the design of constructed wetland for sludge drying.

The Fast Track Capacity Building programme implemented by the National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC) in Uganda under UN-HABITAT’s ‘Water for African Cities’ programme demonstrates that an integrated programme of training and capacity building, combined with investments in physical infrastructure, offers the best hope of improving institutional capacities to reduce non-revenue water, improve service delivery and increase the sustainability of investments in the long-term. GRAHAM ALABASTER discusses the programme’s success in five towns in Kenya and Tanzania.