Urban governance and its global importance

1. Urban governance and its global importance

2. 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

3. Slide 2: Local and global interfaces • Large-city governments have become more outward-looking: 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

4. 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)

5. Slide 4 – ‘Poverty hotspots’ map of Delhi: deprivations in well-being at electoral ward level using Census 2001 data Poverty index ranges from 0.15-0.52; darker shade of red indicates multiple deprivations Source: IDPAD project New Forms of Urban governance

6. Slide 5 – Mapping Poverty hotspots in Chennai: at electoral ward level using Census 2001 data 3 11 32 40 31 41 42 45 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

7. 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)

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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)

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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 directinvestment allocation? • Can private sector set limits to contracts to reduce non-profitable poverty-reducing activities?

14. 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