The future of the sanitation economy: Perspectives on World Toilet Day

Maria Angelica Sotomayor, Martin Gambrill |

Open defecation is the practice of people defecating outside, such as in street gutters, behind bushes or into open bodies of water. Between 2000 and 2017, the world nearly...

Haruna Kashiwase |

This page in: Arabic | Français | 中文 In a world divided over how to deal with such serious problems as terrorism, immigration, free trade, and climate change, governments agree on the urgency of…

Luis Triveno, Michael J. Lea |

About this series More blog posts Between 2010 and 2017, Chile was struck by 10 major natural hazard events. These disasters affected as many as 340, 583 houses and cost $3.6 billion in…

Julian Palma, Marisa Garcia Lozano |

Between 1977 and 1997, the World Bank supported “sites and services” projects in 27 cities across India A freshly-minted architect stood staring at a sea of toilets. Row after row of them, on…

Sumila Gulyani |

Photo: Pierre-Yves Babelon/Shutterstock In an effort to harness the benefits of urbanization and improve the living conditions of the urban poor, Latin American countries have experimented with…

Luis Triveno |

Pritzker Prize winner Alejandro Aravena’s Elemental firm designed the “half a good house”, which includes gaps between the houses for residents to fill according to their own needs. Cities are the…

Luis Triveno |

Within the next 30 years, urban populations in developing countries will double and UN-Habitat estimates that around 3 billion people will need housing and basic infrastructure. Already, 70% of…

Parul Agarwala, Syed Usman Javaid |

Many regions and countries face urbanization challenges, South Asia is no exception. Although the region is currently the least urbanized region in the world, its urbanization rate is on par with…

Judy Deng |

According to recent estimates, South Asia is facing a shortage of 38 million housing units, largely affecting low and middle-income households. It comes as no surprise that informal settlements,…

Parul Agarwala |