Work

Hidden living-condition deficits in small and medium-sized cities

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: In growing cities, deprived neighborhoods house large numbers of residents, yet their extent and distribution remain poorly quantified, complicating implementation of SDG 11.1.1. We present the first global, neighborhood-scale spatial estimates of morphological deprivation, covering 5,132 cities in 103 countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America & the Caribbean (LAC) home to 3.2 billion people. Neighborhood units and built-environment indicators from the City Segments v1 dataset were combined with segment-level labels from the eight-city IDEABench benchmark to train a supervised model, which was then applied to classify each segment as morphologically deprived or non-deprived. The mapped cities contained 1.96 billion residents, of whom 349 million (17.8%) lived in deprived segments, with the highest regional shares in Africa and substantial burdens in Asia and LAC. Morphologically deprived populations spanned the urban hierarchy, with about one-third living in small and medium cities, revealing important gaps in current deprivation monitoring.

Source: Nature Cities

DOI: 10.1038/s44284-026-00498-w