The Wilson Center’s Urban Sustainability Laboratory, in partnership with USAID, International Housing Coalition, World Bank, and Cities Alliance, is pleased to announce the 5th Annual Urban Poverty Paper Competition for graduate students. The competition calls on students currently enrolled in a Master’s or PhD program to submit paper abstracts on topics relating to urban poverty in the developing world.

Winning papers will be published and selected authors will be invited to present their work in a policy workshop to be held at the Wilson Center. In addition, a grand prize winner will receive a travel stipend to present the paper at a Cities Alliance Forum in Brussels.

Papers should be policy-based and solutions-oriented and should critically examine existing projects and/or propose new strategies for tackling issues related to urban poverty.  Papers must be linked to one of the following sub-topics:

Cities and Climate Change: Papers on this topic should explore the ways in which cities of the developing world are adapting to, and mitigating the severity of, climate change.

Urban Resiliency: Papers should focus on long-term reconstruction planning, preparedness, early response, resiliency, and recovery, and could address issues such as shelter and housing, service delivery, infrastructure, or city planning in a post-disaster setting.

Inclusive Cities: Papers should examine policies that are confronting the challenges of urban diversity, developing and strengthening urban inclusion through governance structures, civic engagement, planning, the use of city space, and other mechanisms.

Impacts of the Informal Economy. Papers on this topic should explore innovations in measuring the informal economy and supporting productive livelihoods in urban areas, especially in informal settlements.

For detailed competition guidelines and further information on the sub-topics, please see the full call for papers on the Urban Sustainability Laboratory website. The deadline for the submission of abstracts is April 30, 2014.

Photo Credit: Block printing in Dharavi, Mumbai, courtesy of flickr user Ishan Khosla.