It is now clear that the present systems of economic development and increasing rate of urbanization will lead to more and more income disparity and greater and greater problems in cities unless urban poverty is addressed properly. This brings up several important questions:

These are some very critical points which need to be considered and developed much more seriously. This involves re-thinking and experimenting with new ways of working, rather than merely following the conventional approaches within the existing institutional systems. Making small adjustments to old systems, old ways of thinking and old ways of working is not enough to keep up with the rapid social and economic changes that are coming with globalization, or the exploding scale and complexity of problems with poverty in cities.

Since 1992, the Urban Community Development Office (UCDO) in Thailand has been experimenting with new development processes to address urban poverty in Thailand. The challenge has been to use the Urban Poor Development Fund to generate holistic urban community development by poor people themselves - at a national scale. Today, through the very basic activity of community savings and credit, more than 600 urban poor community savings and credit groups in forty provinces throughout the country have organized themselves into community networks in each city. These community networks have become a collaborative development mechanism belonging entirely to communities within the same constituencies to develop solutions to problems they face, through land acquisition and housing projects, community enterprise, community welfare strategies, community development funds, environmental improvement activities, etc.

At the same time, the community networks have strengthened the negotiating status of poor communities in the city, and initiated innovative and effective collaborations and partnerships with other urban actors in city-wide development projects which affect the urban poor. The community networks have also joined forces with other civil groups in the cities influence the broader directions of city development. This kind of citizen network can work as a crucial development mechanism to bridge the gap of understanding which exists between the urban poor and the formal system, and to help balance this crucial political relationship.

The building of such citizen networks has become something of a trend, and has proven to be an effective way of addressing issues of urban poverty - by the poor themselves. Besides the experiments with UCDO in Thailand, there have been a number of interesting experiences which show the enormous potential of this new approach in several countries around the Asia region. It is time to make use of the knowledge gathered from these experiments in order to establish a new, forceful development direction in the region which can address urban poverty in our Asian societies much more effectively than in the past.