Abstract
Community Groups and Non-government Organizations in the Urban Field in Pakistan is based on a study of community organizations and NGOs in five cities. The paper outlines the scale and nature of housing problems in urban areas, and the government's failure to address them. A large, informal private sector has become lower-income groups' main source of land for housing, and of water supply, education and health care. Community action groups formed by residents in low-income areas seek to tackle common problems, and provide cheaper and more effective basic services than the private sector. A concluding section discusses how governments and aid agencies might support and expand the effectiveness of community action groups and the NGOs which help them.