Cities in developing countries continue to grow rapidly, accompanied by ever expanding informal settlements and worsening poverty. In cities where municipal capacity is already limited, effective measures are needed to address poor people’s priorities. City Development Strategies (CDS) are intended to develop urban participatory governance that favours poor people and are proving to be successful.

A report from the Urban Management Programme (UMP) highlights its experience implementing City Development Strategies in seven cities worldwide, in collaboration with Cities Alliance. An initiative of the United Nations Development Programme, the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) and the World Bank, the UMP provides municipal authorities with urban management knowledge to assist them to achieve equitable economic development.

The CDS approach is based on principles of enablement, participation and capacity building. Empowering local authorities and other partners, including urban poor people, through enabling legal and institutional frameworks is a necessary condition for success. For cities facing the challenges of poverty and pressures on economic and environmental sustainability, the CDS process has opened opportunities to allow local actors to work together to prepare a framework for equitable economic growth:

• In the Malian capital, Bamako, CDS highlighted the lack of statistical information and led to new channels of communication between the government, the private sector and civil society.
• In the Ecuadorian city of Cuenca the process led to the realisation that the informal production sector was not sufficiently involved and that a local information system had to be built to help institutionalise new relationships created by CDS.
• Lessons learned in Johannesburg, South Africa – especially concerning the need to ensure citizen participation – are contributing to a Southern Africa Cities Alliance, which is helping to promote the CDS experience more widely.
• The CDS process in Tunis introduced participatory planning and gender awareness amongst citizens unfamiliar with inter-sectoral or integrated planning.
• Through the CDS consultation process in China’s fourth largest city, Shenyang, which involved government agencies, private businesses and NGOs, consensus was achieved on critical issues, priority concerns and key projects.

Despite the highly participatory nature of most cities’ experiences, there were a number of significant challenges:

• In Colombo, Sri Lanka although the CDS generated excellent cooperation and was completed in a relatively short period of time, stakeholders were disappointed by the lack of subsequent investment support.
• In Santo Andre, Brazil the CDS process could have been improved by involving higher levels of government from the beginning and ensuring that key stakeholders agreed on post-CDS follow-up actions.
• In Tunis, more could have been done to engage the business community and ensure informed media coverage.

The experiences of these seven cities demonstrate that future action plans need to:

• emphasise a pro-poor focus, otherwise the process may exclude the urban poor and result in no real improvement in people’s lives
• recognise that local economic development should be viewed in the context of poverty reduction, otherwise private and business interests may dominate the process at the expense of the poor
• consider engaging a strong and committed local leader to support the CDS and mobilise diverse groups of stakeholders
• appreciate that donor investments take time: each donor agency, whether involved in CDS from the beginning or not, has a pre-defined set of procedures it has to follow
• recognise that although local resources to implement action plans may not be readily available, these are likely to be more sustainable than resources from external sources
• capitalise on existing initiatives. Coordinating and building on on-going efforts lends strength to the CDS process and improves the likelihood of institutionalising participatory mechanisms.

Source(s):
‘City Development Strategies: Lessons from UMP/UN-HABITAT Experiences’ by Liz Case, Dinesh Mehta and Cecilia Kinuthia-Njenga, Urban Management Programme Publication Series #29, UN-HABITAT, 2002 Full document.
City Development Strategies Documents Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 7 April 2005

Further Information:
Dinesh Mehta
Urban Management Programme
Urban Development Branch,
UN-HABITAT
PO Box 30030
Nairobi
Kenya

Tel:   + 254 20 623414
Fax:  + 254 20 623536
Contact the contributor: dinesh.mehta@unhabitat.org

UN-HABITAT Urban Management Programme

Contact the contributor: ump@unhabitat.org

Other related links:
Cities Alliance

Pro-poor growth in the city: are City Development Strategies the answer?

Cities Alliance: tackling urban poverty