In Bangladesh, urban poverty is neglected in research, policy and action on poverty reduction. This paper explores the underlying foundations for this relative neglect, including national identity and image, the political economy of urban poverty, and the structuring of knowledge creation. It argues for more comprehensive policy and programmes for the urban poor given Bangladesh's increasingly urban future and the growing magnitude of urban poverty. The impact of climate change will accelerate Bangladesh's ongoing urbanisation, as well as deepen the scale and severity of urban poverty. That urban poverty reduction will subsequently be increasingly important to the ability to meet national goals for poverty reduction means that policy and action must pay more attention to the urban poor. This is contingent upon two factors: a better understanding of the scale and nature of urban poverty reduction and vulnerability, and the confrontation of powerful interests necessary to secure national commitment to urban poverty reduction.

BWPI Working Paper 178Creating and sharing knowledge to help end poverty www.manchester.ac.uk/ overty in Bangladesh: causes, strategies 8Creating and sharing knowledge to help end poverty www.manchester.ac.uk/bwpi 2 AbstractBustees are places where physical, social, economic and political vulnerabilities collide, creating a multi-layered blanket of vulnerability for their residents. Although income is central to day-to-day survival in an urban environment in which cash income is needed to meet a household's basic needs, work options are limited to low-paid and irregular work, primarily dependent on physical labour. This forces households to rely upon loans and labour mobilisation strategies to get by. Unsanitary, poorly serviced, and densely populated environmentsfrequently situated in environmentally hazardous areas -mean ill health is both endemic and chronic, playing a routine and devastating role in the lives of the urban poor. The repercussions of resource scarcity at the household level are compounded by the social and political exclusion of the poor from urban governance structures and processes. Amidst a lack of formal institutional support, and in the absence of formal rights and entitlements, the process of facilitating and maintaining patron-client relationships is a central coping strategy for the urban poor. It is a means of trying to manage uncertainty and improve their access to resources. For the majority, however, these strategies are limited to helping households to cope, rather than advancing their interests. Informal systems of governance at the bustee level reproduce and exacerbate existing inequalities, with access to power, information, resources, employment and other lucrative income-generating opportunities limited to a close circle of wellconnected bustee households.

Research in Bangladesh reveals the limitations of actor-oriented frameworks for understanding urban poverty that assess household livelihoods on the basis of a household's portfolio of assets or capitals. The narrow focus of these frameworks on households and their depoliticized definition of social capital overlook the political roots of urban poverty. The informal systems of governance that dominate resource distribution within low-income settlements ensure that the social resources necessary for long-term household improvement are confined to a small elite. Only through extending our analysis beyond the household level, to explore their position within this local political economy of employment and enterprise, can we recognize the limitations placed on household efforts to improve their livelihoods.