Urban work

Women near a water point in urban Bangladesh

A community water point set up with WaterAid and local partner DSK's support in Zakir slum, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Credit: Charlie Bibby / FT

Since May 2007 more people have lived in towns and cities than rural areas for the first time in history. The growth of urban areas is rapidly increasing through rural to urban migration and internal population growth.

In the developing world, many urban areas are unplanned, densely populated and unserved by even the most basic water and sanitation infrastructure. Families live surrounded by raw sewage, drink unsafe water from polluted sources, or pay dearly for water from illegal vendors. As a result, water-related diseases such as cholera, typhoid and dysentery run rife.

In response to this increasingly severe challenge, WaterAid has pledged to expand its urban work to help reach more of the world's poorest people.

Urban water and sanitation problems

WaterAid's urban work in practice

The total urban population of 3.1 billion is set to increase to 3.8 billion by 2015 and to 4.5 billion by 2025. This population growth will exacerbate water and sanitation problems in small towns, peri-urban fringes and inner city mega-slums alike. WaterAid is rapidly expanding its work in each of these urban contexts to help more poor communities.

Urban update: Small Towns Planning Project

WaterAid is undertaking a Small Towns Planning Project to deal with the looming human catastrophe that urban growth could have on access to essential water and sanitation services in small towns in Africa and Asia.

Characterised by rapid, unplanned growth, high concentrations of low-income populations as well as run-down and often non-existent basic infrastructure, small towns are posing a major development challenge that threatens to derail efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals for water and sanitation.

The project proposes to synthesize existing knowledge and identify promising technological, financing, and management approaches that could be scaled up to achieve sustainable impact. Combining insights from experts across a wide variety of relevant disciplines with the experiences of local communities, governments, and development actors, the project will then recommend action research initiatives to be implemented and documented in six WaterAid country programmes.

This strategic piece of work will be carried out in partnership between WaterAid and Building Partnerships for Development (BPD) with a funding grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Finding solutions in urban areas can be complex. Communities tend to be less cohesive than in rural areas and as community involvement is central to the success of WaterAid's projects, initial work often focuses on forming, or finding existing community groups to take projects forward.

Download the Urban Work issue sheet ( PDF 481KB)

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Urban work