Cities alliance: tackling urban poverty

The Cities Alliance, initiated by the World Bank and UNCH, aims to co-ordinate the urban activities of multinational, bilateral and local government associations through: long-term strategic participatory planning through City Development Strategies (CDS) and concrete investments through upgrading slums and the Cities Without Slums (CWS) programme.

Cities Alliance aims to create the conditions for reducing poverty through employment opportunities, improved access to basic services, legal and social protection and financial services. Badly governed cities, asserts the alliance, deny urban poor people the right to be heard and to place their needs and priorities on the development agenda.

CDSs are intended to be a consultative process through which urban stakeholders arrive at a shared vision of a way forward for their city or town. CDSs are often carried out through city level workshops that bring together the public, private and civil sectors to determine the key issues in the city’s development and the necessary strategies to deal with them effectively. Having established a collective vision, a strategic development framework is designed and followed by an action plan. Many CDS are currently at initial phases of development.

Early CDSs assumed that the best way to alleviate poverty was through successful competition in the global marketplace. Is there in fact, a need to tackle poverty more directly? If so, how can this best be done within the strategic planning process?

Over 50 CDSs have been launched in East Asia, South Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, since 1999. How successful are CDSs in addressing poverty? GHK Research and Training has examined the poverty aspects of CDSs and while it is too early to draw conclusions, insights are beginning to emerge:

* Where there is no tradition of community consultation there is a real danger that poor people and the groups that represent them will be excluded from the consultation process.

* Options for action identified through the CDS process: research to date suggests a focus on either actions designed to improve competitiveness in the global market or fairly narrowly defined basic needs rather than strategically planned and co-ordinated actions which fit into the city-wide vision.

* More work is needed on how strategies can be implemented, rather than on strategies per se.

Source(s):
Full document: Insights #38 'City politics: a voice for the poor?' http://www.id21.org/insights/insights38/index.html

Date: 1 November 2001

Further Information:
Janet Gardener
GHK Research and Training
526 Fulham Road
London SW6 5NR, UK

Tel: +44(0)20 7736 8212
Fax: +44 (0)20 7736 0784
Email: gardenerj@ghkint.com

GHK International, UK http://www.ghkint.com/

Cities Alliance http://www.citiesalliance.org/citiesalliance/citiesalliancehomepage.nsf/?Open

Other related links:

'Who Runs Cities? Relating urban governance to poverty' http://www.id21.org/urban/s3bnd1g1.html

The United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) has further research http://www.unchs.org/

Eldis offers a further portal to institutions working in urban development http://nt1.ids.ac.uk/eldis/urban/urban.htm

BLP works towards improved urban governance and poverty reduction http://www.sustainabledevelopment.org/blp/blpmain.html

IIED features further research on Urbanisation and Human Settlements http://www.iied.org/human/index.html