Taking successful development interventions to scale is critical if the world is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and make essential gains in the fight for improved agricultural productivity, rural incomes, and nutrition. How to support scaling up in these three areas, however, is a major challenge.

This paper is a scoping exercise to explore options for research on urban poverty in developing countries. Based on a review of the literature and experience, the first part of the paper reviews the changing nature of the urban poverty agenda over the last 30 years by comparing today