Description

To address the absence of comparable city-level water data, this dataset compiles data from 15 global South cities located in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America and among the regions that are the focus of the World Resources Report (WRR) "Towards a More Equal City". The 15 cities are Kampala, Uganda; Lagos, Nigeria; Maputo, Mozambique; Mzuzu, Malawi; Nairobi, Kenya; Bengaluru, India; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Karachi, Pakistan; Mumbai, India; Caracas, Venezuela; Cochabamba, Bolivia; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; São Paulo, Brazil; and Santiago de Cali, Colombia.

To compile a data set on each city, we collaborated with local researchers who had a minimum of seven years of experience in the water sector. Data were obtained from a combination of interviews, fieldwork in an informal settlement, publicly available data sets, administrative records, websites, and project documents. Researchers in each city conducted an average of seven key informant interviews.

Data were collected about household water and sanitation access at the city level and fieldwork was conducted in one informal settlement in each city. The dataset includes cost, % coverage, availability, and cost burdens on household water and sanitation practices; water intermittency; household treatment practices; access to facilities; citywide sanitation infrastructure; cost of on-site sanitation construction, and fecal sludge removal; fees for piped sewage; the lining of pit latrines; and proximity of septic tanks and pit latrines to water sources. At the city level, data were collected on the water utility, the city’s sources of water, and the water utility’s legal and administrative status.

We augmented the city-level data with fieldwork and data from one informal settlement in each city, for two reasons: (1) city-level data are usually presented in averages and thus tend to mask extremes at both ends of the socioeconomic distribution; and (2) in many cities, informal settlements are excluded from formal city-level statistics because their land occupation is considered illegal. To select the informal settlement in each city, the researchers identified a centrally located, well-established settlement that did not represent either the city’s “best” or “worst” conditions but instead represented challenges to water access common in similar settlements in the city.