Urban governance and its
global importance
Slide 1: Raising the issues
• Urban governance gained importance from
decentralization processes in majority of world’s
countries
• Urban local bodies have new mandates concerning
economic development; previously limited to local
infrastructure and social policies
• Cities are less bound to government funding; actively
competing with each other in obtaining investment,
including FDI
• Cities produce larger than proportionate share of their
regions/provincial GDPs; important sources of tax
revenues for regional and national governments
Slide 2: Local and global interfaces
• Large-city governments have become more outwardlooking: linking directly with international companies,
professional associations, financial investors
• Transnational companies look for attractive places to
locate, have high requirements for quality infrastructure
for business locations and staff living conditions
• Large cities compete to become part of ‘global city
networks’: better infrastructure, housing and services,
new communication technology,
• Cities have become less integrated with their regional
and national economies
Slide 3: Cities for citizens?
• Cities are becoming fragmented spaces: gated areas for
wealthy citizens, ‘abandoned’ spaces for the poor
• Deprivations in well-being are becoming concentrated;
lack of housing and basic services, access to education
and employment cumulative (Delhi map)
• Middle-class citizens organize for their own agenda,
focusing on neighborhood improvements, excluding poor
households and poor areas of the city
• Increasing ‘urbanization of poverty’, although statistics
do not recognize this; 1$/day understates urban poverty
(Satterthwaite,IIED)
Slide 4 –
‘Poverty hotspots’ map of Delhi:
deprivations in well-being at
electoral ward level
using Census 2001 data
Poverty index
ranges from 0.150.52;
darker shade of red
indicates multiple
deprivations
Source: IDPAD project
New Forms of Urban
governance
Slide 5 –
Mapping Poverty
hotspots in Chennai:
at electoral ward level
using Census 2001 data
3
11
32
40
41 31
4245
80
Poverty index
ranges
between 0.17-0.57;
darker shade of red
indicates multiple
deprivations
150
Source: IDPAD
project New Forms
of Urban governance
Slide 6:
Can local government make a difference?
• Some researchers suggest that local governments have
to follow neo-liberal agenda and cannot adopt localized
social policies in the face of global economic forces
(Sassen, Hall)
• Others researchers contend that local government
policies can make a difference through a range of
measures: institutional development, accountability,
representation, reducing corruption (Cavill, Devas,
Hasan et al.; Douglass)
• Local governments cannot go it alone: they have to
work with other levels of government and international
agencies to be effective – metropolitan governance (A.
Scott)
Slide 7: Institutional development
• Local governments need to make their policies transparent
and available to citizens (using e-governance and ‘right to
information’ measures)
• Local governments need to put their financial house in order:
– collecting taxes and other revenues effectively
– Building staff capacity
– Using accountancy methods that show capital investment
as well as cash flows
• Local governments need to streamline their regulations and
enforce them effectively (illegal building not confined to
slums)
• Local governments need to provide services effectively
• Local governments need financing for investment in
infrastructure
Slide 8:
Accountability and Participatory governance
•
•
Local governments work with ward-level representatives within cities
Local governments have privatized basic services, but often lose
effective control over them in doing so; they need to be able to make
private providers accountable to themselves and to citizens
– WDR 2004 describes long and short road of accountability and context for
different models of accountability
•
Local governments work more in ‘partnerships’ with citizen groups;
ranging from participatory budgeting, implementation of services,
monitoring activities; context is influential in determining which
‘citizens’ voices’ are heard
– middle-class citizens organize themselves strongly for their own agendas
and confront government directly
– Poor households have little voice, and work through political ‘leaders’ to
gain more voice; leaders may have their own agendas
Slide 9: Participatory governance –
developing local models
• Local ward representatives within cities – political
representation
• Many municipalities in Brazil: Porto Alegre, Curitiba, and
many others with political leadership of the PT
• Aggregating local initiatives to national levels for greater
effectiveness: Cities for Life Forum, Peru
• Local-to-local initiatives with international networks
behind them: Homeless International, working with
National Slum Dwellers Federation in India, South Africa
and local NGOs (SPARC)
Slide 10: Lessons learned from the
Latin American experience in PB (Cabannes)
• political context – tensions between executive and
legislative wings of local bodies? Private sector
influences in the background (Mumbai)?
• Municipal finance and participatory budgeting; strong
differences in budget allocated to PB, information
available about progress, and in accounting systems
• Effects of PB – less tax avoidance, avoided costs
through contributions in kind by citizens
• method of participation – 2-7% of total population in
direct participation; representative participation through
CBOs/CSOs ; area-based participation
Slide 11 - Cont,d.
• Government as anchor for PB – political or executive?
• ‘inversion of priorities’: investment moves to excluded
areas
• Role of professionals (researchers, NGOs, universities)
– from ‘experts’ to ‘resource persons’
• Spatial dimension – how far to decentralize? How to link
different scale levels? Within city and outside?
• Avoiding political cooptation, bureacratization?
• Resources: www.pgualc.org Urban Management
Program (UNDP/WB/UNCHS), Environment &
Urbanization
Slide 12: Government and private sector
interests – unexplored links
• Private sector providing collective goods –
housing, infrastructure, collective services
• How does private sector direct city policy priorities
to high profit activities?
• Does private sector prevent distributive policies?
• Can private sector link with higher government
levels to direct investment allocation?
• Can private sector set limits to contracts to reduce
non-profitable poverty-reducing activities?
Slide 13 - Conclusions
• Cities and their governments more important as ‘new state space’
• Urban poverty needs to be recognized as multi-dimensional
deprivations
• City governments need to strengthen their own capacity and link up
with other scale levels of government – metropolitan governance
and city-to-city networks, and trans-national urban governance
networks
• Diversity of citizens’ identities and interests made explicit, so that
inequalities do not grow further
• Participatory models can support redistributive urban policies
• Urban regime research still very necessary to analyze government –
private sector links