The “Dialogues in Urban Equality” series is a London-based monthly seminar that provides a space of encounter to discuss the challenges of urban equality through different perspectives, geographies, and voices. This month we unpack extreme poverty.

In the struggle for fairer and more equal cities, urban extreme poverty remains a fundamental and intractable challenge. In the past thirty years, global poverty has decreased significantly. But global trends hide important variations within and between countries and regions; within and between urban and rural contexts.

We ask three renowned scholars on the subject of urban poverty to reflect on the changeable and changing nature of urban extreme poverty: how does urban extreme poverty manifest for different groups in different cities across the global South; how does the nature of urban poverty shift with time, place, and context; and what do these changes mean for efforts to increase urban equality?

Prof David Satterthwaite, IIED
Emeritus Prof Caroline Moser, The University of Manchester
Prof Colin McFarlane, KNOW Lead Co-Investigator on Extreme Poverty, Durham University
Prof Caren Levy, Chair, The Bartlett Development Planning Unit