In order to bring a thorough and comprehensive understanding of social, economic and environmental sustainability challenges faced by cities and local communities in the developing countries, the SHLC team conducted a major household survey followed by a neighbourhood focus group interview in seven Asian and African countries from late 2021 to early 2022. In each country the study includes two case study cities: one large city and one smaller regional cities. Within each case study cities, neighbourhoods were identified and categorised into five income and wealth bands: the rich, upper middle income, middle income, lower middle and low income neighbourhoods. A household survey was carried out face to face by trained interviewers with a random adult member of the household. The 20 page common questionnaire was designed and adopted by all teams, which cover topics of housing, residence, living conditions, migration, education, health, neighbourhood infrastructure, facilities, governance and relations, income and employments, gender equality and impacts from Covid-19. The sample was distributed in the city to representative the five neighbourhood types. The survey was completed in 13 of the 14 case study cities (fieldwork in Chongqing in China was delayed by the Covid-19 lockdowns and implemented in August 2023). The target sample for each city was 1000; the total sample in the database (SPSS and STATA) include 14245 households. The survey was followed by focus group interviews. A carefully designed and agreed common interview guide was used by all team. The target was to have one focus group for one neighbourhood in each income band in each city. A total of 74 focus group interviews were conducted (Fieldwork in Datong and Chongqing in China was delayed). The transcripts are the qualitative data shared here.The Centre for Sustainable, Healthy and Learning Cities and Neighbourhoods (SHLC) was funded by UKRI Global Challenge Research Fund (GCRF) from 2017 to 2023. Its main aim was to grow research capability to meet the challenges faced by developing countries (Grow). SHLC, led by University of Glasgow, was set up as an international collaborative research centre to address urban challenges across communities in Africa and Asia. Its work contributed to three UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals: 11 - Make cities and human settlements sustainable; 3 - Ensure healthy lives for all; 4 - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all. SHLC brought together the expertise of urban studies, education, health, geography, planning and data science from nine institutions in eight countries. Its international partners included: Ifakara Health Institute (Tanzania), Khulna University (Bangladesh), Nankai University (China), National Institute of Urban Affairs (India), The Human Sciences Research Council and University of Witwatersrand (South Africa), The University of the Philippines and The University of Rwanda. SHLC working programme had two streams of work and eight specific task packages. Stream one included four Capacity Strengthening Packages which involved the training of over 100 researchers and enhancing the associated academic networks. Steam two work consisted of four Research Task Packages. The co-designed research programme adopted a common research framework in all seven countries (14 case study cities), aiming to bring a thorough and comprehensive understanding of social, economic and environmental sustainability challenges faced by these cities and local communities. Apart from policy reviews, secondary data analysis, the project employed two major primary data collection methods – household questionnaire survey and neighbourhood focus groups. The team have overcome many challenges brought by the Covid-19 pandemics and completed the household survey in 13 cities with a total sample size of 14245, which covered five different types of neighbourhoods ranging from the rich to the poor. The team also completed 74 neighbourhood focus group interviews. Data collection was carried out from late 2021 to early 2022. Huge resources and researchers’ time were dedicated to coordinate, collect, translate, clean and merge these quantitative and qualitative data.

In each country the study selected one large city and one smaller regional cities as case studied. Within each case study cities, neighbourhoods were categorised roughly into five income and wealth bands: the rich, upper middle income, middle income, lower middle and low income neighbourhoods. A household survey was carried out face to face by trained interviewers with a random adult member of the household. A common questionnaire was designed and adopted by all teams. The sample was distributed in the city to representative the five neighbourhood types. The survey was followed by focus group interviews. A carefully designed and agreed common interview guide was used by all team. The target was one focus group for a sample neighbourhood in each income band in each city. Focus groups were recorded, all transcripts were translated into English for analysis.