Vibrant cities: on the bedrock of stability, prosperity, and sustainability

The motivation for this report started with a focus on the MENA region—a region at the epicentre of multiple crises. Beyond recent shocks associated with Covid-19 and turbulent oil prices, the region has long been suffering from anemic growth and poor labor market outcomes. MENA also faces a jobs and youth unemployment crisis, and urban centers are on the frontlines of climate change. And it faces enormous demand for reforms in the wake of the Arab Spring, as policymakers across the region try to find pragmatic policy reforms to change their countries’ growth and job paths. The report builds on the recent World Bank report, "Convergence: Five Critical Steps Toward Integrating Lagging and Leading Areas in the Middle East and North Africa". It explains why MENA cities are not benefiting from agglomeration, migration, and specialization. It identifies the underlying causes of spatial fragmentation, limited economic mobility of its people, and walled-off national economies from regional and global markets. It provides further evidence on inequality within cities and intergenerational mobility in urban slums and informal settlements. And it also tackles the questions: When is inequality an outcome of the urbanization process, and when is it a systemic reflection of unfairness linked to a person’s origin and family?