Urban poverty: from its origins to the contemporary global reality

David Benassi, Enzo Mingione and Enrica Morlicchio

A chapter in A Modern Guide to Urban Poverty, 2026, pp 1-17 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This introductory chapter explores the evolution of urban poverty from its historical origins to its contemporary global dimensions. Poverty has increasingly become an urban condition, shaped by industrialization, migration, and global economic change. We situate the growth of urban poverty within global urbanization trends, emphasizing that while urbanization has coincided with the decline of income poverty at a global level, it has also produced new spatial inequalities, marginalization, and forms of exclusion. Drawing on comparative perspectives from Europe, North America, and the Global South, the chapter highlights how different socioeconomic contexts generate diverse manifestations of urban poverty and varied strategies of resistance. It introduces the rationale behind this collective volume—to reassess theoretical and methodological approaches to urban poverty in both advanced and emerging economies—and calls for attention to local dynamics of dispossession, informal economies, and the everyday practices through which the poor inhabit and reimagine the city.

Keywords: Urban Poverty; Urbanization; Industrialization; Urban Poverty Regime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781800889682
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