Urban Poverty
New Opportunities for Asia and ADB
 700 million people in Asia and the Pacific live on less than US$1 a day, 400 million of which are residing in urban areas. Each day a further 120,000 people are added to the populations of Asian cities due to rural-urban migration and job-mobility.
Many Asian cities face deteriorating sanitation and environmental conditions, inadequate housing and infrastructure, and other problems. The Asian cities need the construction of more than 20,000 new dwellings, 250 kilometers of new roads, and additional infrastructure to supply more than 6 million liters of potable water.
Urbanization, however, is also a chance for the poor to escape poverty traps and isolation.
ADB recognizes that urban issues require integrated approaches that specifically target the poor, promote economic development, treat cities as a living ecosystem, and foster the involvement of private sector and civil society.
ADB is therefore embracing new directions to systematically address urban poverty and improve the social and environmental living standards of the poor and vulnerable.
It has set up specific initiatives in water and sanitation, to address the goals of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 7.
Other sector areas the ADB is expanding, are slum upgrading and housing, and new challenges in urban mass transport and energy efficiency.
| Did you know? Poor farmers in and around Hyderabad and Secunderabad in India’s semi-arid Andhra Pradesh state have made use of urban wastewater for irrigating their crops and supporting other livelihood activities. The farmers claim that the wastewater contributes to the growth of leafy vegetables, bananas, coconuts, jasmine, fodder grass for cattle-raising. Though a 2002 water quality study indicated that the Musi River has high levels of faecal contamination, health risk to consumers is expected to be low, assuming that none of the vegetables irrigated with wastewater are eaten raw. This, however, does not mean that water treatment is not a necessity. |
View ADB's knowledge products and operational expertise on addressing urban poverty.
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