Background Paper for the ESCOR Commissioned Research on Urban Development: Urban Governance, Partnership and Poverty

This background paper considers how people in low-income urban households pursue
secure livelihoods. Livelihoods are understood not only in terms of income earning
but a much wider range of activities, such as gaining and retaining access to resources
and opportunities, dealing with risk, negotiating social relationships within the
household and managing social networks and institutions within communities and the
city. A focus on the livelihood initiatives of urban households and communities
serves to highlight the importance of human capabilities and agency. This focus is
not meant to obscure the vulnerabilities of people in poverty, or to over-emphasise the
options available to them in their efforts to earn incomes, create liveable
environments and develop positive social relationships. They frequently pursue these
ends in the context of severe structural constraints. Nor is a livelihoods perspective
meant to suggest that policy-makers and planners can simply rely on the initiatives of
poor urban dwellers for solutions to problems of social development in the city.
Rather, the aim of this review is to point up the significance of households and
communities for urban planning and policy research and second, to demonstrate the
value of a conceptual framework that recognises socially constructed identities such
as gender. It is argued that these influence the material and physical well being of
women and men at different stages of their life cycle and are in turn, constitutive of
wider economic and political processes. Thus a third aim of the paper is to analyse
the linkages between the workings of smaller units such as urban households and
communities and the larger-scale economic, social and political processes operating in
and on the city.: