Can the twin developmental goals of administrative decentralisation and improving services for the urban poor be meshed? How can urban authorities and local politicians learn to listen to service users, particularly women? What services should be run by municipalities and what could be managed by neighbourhood or private management?

A broad range of urban planning issues are analysed in a set of guidance manuals from the University of Loughborough’s Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC). Produced in collaboration with GHK Research and Training Ltd, and drawing on experience in South Asia, they are targetted at policymakers, planners and engineers engaged in providing services for the urban poor in developing countries. They set out both the principles and the practicalities of encouraging stakeholders to work with local users to plan, fund, construct, manage and maintain tertiary infrastructure without neglecting the need to develop integrated citywide approaches to planning.

The studies stress that improvements in operation and maintenance (O&M) procedures for existing infrastructure will often deliver more service improvements than those gained by new construction. Urging a focus on services, rather than infrastucture, it shows how municipal authorities can learn listen to the views and preferences of users while citizens can gain a greater appreciation of the need to improve and fund O&M.

The manuals examine the strengths and weaknesses of different institutional options for local programme management and the institutional constraints to the development of an action planning approach to improve services for the urban poor. They demonstrate that such non-networked neighbourhood services as wells and handpumps, unsewered sanitation, local drainage to soakpits or ponds and disposal of solid waste in pits can be developed by local action independently of municipal services.

Other findings include:

• While there is considerable evidence that communally managed water supplies can be maintained, this is not the case with sanitation: communal latrines have a poor record.
• Artificially created Project Management Units (much beloved by donors of large infrastructure projects) have several disadvantages. Bypassing existing bureaucracy can be counter-productive. PMUs usually have little interest in O&M.
• Assumptions about a harmonious community speaking with one voice block learning about caste, ethnic and political allegiances.

Among the key recommendations in the manuals are:

• As people can’t be expected to ask for things outside their own experience, it is essential to promote demand for new services by informing people about relevant affordable means to redress water, sanitation and solid waste problems.
• Rather than simply subsidising infrastructure costs, external financial support should be targetted towards ‘software’ – promotional activities for sanitation, health and hygiene which may generate increase demand and willingness to pay.
• True partnership arrangements between donors, municipalities, civil society organisations and users involves sharing of risks: without risk sharing, these relationships are akin to those of contractor and sub-contractor.
• Establishing loan funds could be a useful way of enabling households to borrow to improve facilities.
• Work with what is there. However exasperated donors get, they have to persevere in building relationships with local politicians and existing bureaucracies.

Source(s):
‘Services for the urban poor: guidelines for policymakers, planners and engineers’, Water, Engineering and Development Centre, Loughborough University by Andrew Cotton and Kevin Tayler, 2000

Funded by: DFID (IUDD)

id21 Research Highlight: 15 January 2002

Further Information:
Andrew Cotton
Water, Engineering and Development Centre
Loughborough University
Leicestershire
LE11 3TU
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1509 222885
Fax: +44 (0)1509 211079
Contact the contributor: A.P.Cotton@lboro.ac.uk

Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC), University of Loughborough, UK

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'Better urban planning? Spotlight on Bangkok'

'City politics: a voice for the poor?'

'Fighting disaster: reducing risk in cities'

Urban Governance Partnerships and Poverty provides a series of theme papers

UNCHS aims to promote sustainable human settlements development