urban management in developing countries: a critical role

National economic growth in developing countries is increasingly reliant on city functions, but cities are increasingly the focus of environmental and poverty problems. There is a strong rationale for improved urban management to encourage efficiency and equl- ty in the use of technical, human and financial resources in both public and private sectors. The Urban Manage- ment Programme is an important catalyst in a global network whereby the impact of individual actions in technical cooperation, research, dfssemina- tion and training in developing countries, addressing the four critical areas of land management, infrastructure, finance and environment, can be multiplied and developed according to critical issues and priorities.

Giles Clarke is working as a Land Policies Adviser within the joint UNDPMforld Bank/ UNCHS (Habitat) Urban Management Programme, and is also a Director of Cul- pin Planning, New Court, Temple, London EC4Y 9BE, UK.

This article has been prepared by the author drawing upon output of the Joint UNDPNVortd BanMUNCHS (Habitat) Urban Management Programme.

Urban management in developing countries

A critical role

Giles Clarke

The rate of urban growth is the single most important phenomenon in transforming human settlements in developing countries and the need for better management of this growth is critical for individuals, com- munities and governments. Cities are currently absorbing two-thirds of the total population increase in developing countries and more than half of this urban population growth now results from natural increase and not rural-urban migration. By the year 2025 eight out of ten urban residents will be in developing country cities and towns (see Table 1).

Such rapid growth is both a cause and effect of the growing economic importance of cities in national economies. National economic growth in most developing countries is becoming more and more dependent on the ability of urban centres to perform crucial functions within the macro and regional economies and to lead the development effort. Productive activities tend to be concentrated in urban centres where 60% of gross national product is generated by about one-third of the country’s population and where some 80% of the anual increment to GNP is expected to be located.

Policies towards cities have important benefits on national economic performance through their impacts on inter afia (1) efficiency with which resources are mobilized, allocated and utilized; (2) employment opportunities and the productivity of the labour force; and (3) the linkages between rural and urban development (the role of cities in providing the marketing and financial forum in which agriculture and industry meet). There is therefore an important rationale for improving the management of cities to encourage efficiency in the use of technical, financial and human resources in both the public and private sectors in the interests of economic growth.

Increasing urban environmental problems

While cities are making major contributions to the output of developing countries, they are also the increasing focus of environmental and poverty problems. Rapid, unguided growth, coupled with limited local government resources, ineffective control mechanisms and difficulties in quantifying the negative impacts of urban activities are overloading both

0264-2751/91/020093-15 0 1991 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd 93

Urban management in developing countries: a criricul role

Source: United Nations, Urban & Rural Popula- tion Projections 195&2025: The 1984 Assess- ment, New York, 1986.

Figure 1. Urbanization trends by income categories of developing countries, 1969-2020 (thousands).

Source: United Nations, Urban and Rural Population Projections 1950-2025: The 7984 Assessment, New York, 1986.

4ooc

3ooc

2000

1000

0 1960 1980 2000 2020

94 CITIES May 1991

Table 1. World and urban population (1970-2025).

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2025

World World urban population population (millions) (millions)

3 693 1 371 4 450 1 764 5 246 2 234 6 122 2 854 6 989 3 623 7 822 4 488 8 206 4 932

(%)

37 40 43 47 52 57 60

Developing country urban population (millions)

673 966

1 357 1 904 2612 3 425 3 845

(%)

49 55 61 67 72 76 78

man-made and natural systems and the capacities to manage these systems are being overwhelmed. Urban systems and services are

increasingly congested, leading to poor health conditions, increasing costs to industry (where factories install private alternatives to public systems) and unacceptable costs in journeys to work. Land prices may accelerate at rates higher than average price escalation, thus reducing the availability of affordable shelter and conveniently located land uses. Natural resources (water, air, forests, minerals, land) which can contribute to city economic development are lost or misused through inappropriate urban policies.

Such forces impact particularly severely on the poor who may be relegated to living in dangerous environmental conditions and who are more susceptible to disease, productivity losses and diminished quality of life. Poverty is increasingly becoming an urban phenomenon rather than primarily a rural one. In 1988 over 2.50 million city dwellers were estimated to live below an absolute poverty threshold. By the turn of the century this number is expected to nearly double; perhaps 90% of the poor in Latin America will be living in cities, as will 45% of those in Asia and 40% in Africa (see Figure 1 and Table 2).

I-

l-

,-

m Rural population

0 Urban population

E 8

.G I

Urban management in developing countries: a critical role

Table 2. Urban and rural population in developing countries, by income level and region, 1960-2020 (thousands).

Low-income developing countries Africa Asia Latin America

Middle-income developing countries Africa Asia Latin America Oceania

Upper-income developing countries Africa Asia Latin America Europe North America Oceania

Total=

1960 lf

245 13

231

92 27 40 25

132 12 28 al 11

i la9 121

1 066 3

282 aa

158 34

2 163

la 47 73 25

17.1 10.0 i 7.8 25.0 24.6 23.5 20.2 42.4

_

_

44.7 40.0 37.3 52.6 30.6 _

460 1614 22.2

R %U 1980 U

466 40

424

214 64 95 55

294 24 71

ia0 ia

_ _

966

R

1 769 ia5

1 580 4

413 138 227

44 3

la3 25 57 76 24

_

1 2 347

2000 %U U

20.9 908 17.8 125 21.2 779 20.0 4 34.1 466 31.7 162 29.5 200 55.6 104 25.0 1 61.6 529 49.0 48 55.5 141 70.3 312 42.9 26 _ _

_ 1 29.2 1 904

R

2 242 293

1 943 6

528 203 267

53 5

la5 34 61 68 21

1 2 941

%U

28.8 29.9 28.6 40.0 46.9 44.4 42.8 66.2 16.7 74.1 58.5 69.8 82.1 55.3

50.0 39.3

2020 U

1 774 321

1 444 9

a68 352 346 167

77; a5

217 433

34

3 425

R %U

2 274 43.8 404 44.3

1 863 43.7 a 52.9

577 60.1 260 57.5 257 57.4

55 75.2 5 37.5

176 ai .4 37 69.7 a0 78.3 62 87.5 16 68.0

_ _

3 021 53.1

Source: United Nations, Urban and Rural Population Projections 1950-2025: The 1984 Assessment, New York, 1986. Note: U = urban, R = rural. aThe sum of low-income, middle-income, and upper-income developing countries does not tally with the total for all developing countries as the classification used in compilation are different.

The need for improved urban management

The typical city administration in a developing country is faced with the twin tasks of (1) promoting economic growth so as to raise living standards and (2) trying to improve the delivery of infrastructure and services so as to avoid permanent damage to environmental resources in and around the urban area. However, the administration will more often than not have to act under major constraints. For example, finance for maintenance of existing assets, let alone for new capital investment, may be in very short supply; staff quality and quantity may suffer from the poor image and poor employment conditions of local government; policy and programme initiatives aimed at meeting urgent city needs may be directed by short-term political considerations; hostility and/or suspicion between the public and private sectors may preclude effective use of private sector resources to boost limited public sector resources.

Clearly, therefore, many governments need to reappraise their attitudes towards the role of cities in their national development efforts. Where the central role of cities is acknowledged, an improved orientation of urban management will be needed, involving more detailed reviews of institutional policy and technical issues. For example, will cities enjoy appropriately decentralized powers for revenue raising and decision making? Will career conditions be improved to attract and retain staff? Will the city administration embrace the talents and other resources of community groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), commercial organizations and other private sector interests in developing and implementing strategies for urban expansion and improvement? Will adequate procedures be established for the coordination and integration of actions by the wide range of actors in local government departments, parastatals, central government agencies and private sector organizations?

How does recent experience of urban policies and investment programmes match this new orientation? Evaluation of the ‘project’ approach to urban interventions during the past 20 years shows the continuing lack of revenue bases, inadequate and/or inequitable cost

CITIES May 1991 95


recovery, poor municipal financial management, institutional weak- nesses, ignorance of environmental impacts and outdated urban information systems, particularly those related to land, property and infrastructure data. There is general acceptance that ‘one off’ projects, narrowly focused interventions in specific sectors or at the neighbour- hood level, cannot hope to meet the massive demand for improved urban infrastructure services and shelter conditions in many cities, let alone contribute significantly to economic growth. Such ‘enclave’ projects have certainly demonstrated affordable alternatives for low- income households, but for a variety of reasons their physical, financial and institutional impacts have not been repeated at a citywide level.

More recently there has been a growing realization that urban interventions should address the management of processes and that urbanization itself does not proceed by fits and starts in neat packages. Fast urban growth rates and severe resource constraints demand responses in most developing countries that involve macrolevel national policy changes as well as city-level actions. Addressing urban concerns in the context of national socioeconomic objectives requires focusing on the more effective mobilization and deployment of resources in a variety of government, parastatal and private sector organizations. In particular, there needs to be a much more rigorous analysis of the causes and effects of urban inefficiencies and the relationships between economic, social and physical actions in promoting city development objectives.

An improved definition of urban management

Management functions to be addressed

The management of sustainable urban development to meet city level and national objectives of economic growth and improved equity requires: (1) properly designed and implemented policies that maximize the effective roles that the public and private sectors may play in planning, investment, finance, construction, operations, maintenance

and rehabilitation of urban services; (2) this approach requires policies and strategies that promote the improved operations of markets for key resources and services while increasing the effective access of the poor to these resources and services. In this framework, appropriate alloca-

tion of responsibilities and authority between the public and private sectors, as well as among levels of government, are critical considerations. Policy formulation comprises the establishment of appropriate conditions, including prices, incentives, regulations, and targets to guide both public and private actions in the urban environment. For simplic- ity, the required urban management functions may be grouped under the following headings:

0 Governance: comprising the basic relations between national, provincial and local governments with regard to the allocation of responsibilities and resources as well as the internal structure of management responsibilities.

l Development policy and investment coordination: comprising short-, medium- and long-term general strategies for city development and planning within defined budgets across and within investment sectors, with agreed responsibilities for public and private sector ‘actors’.

0 Management of assets and services: comprising the implementa-

96 CITIES May 1991


tion, operations and maintenance of the city’s physical and social services, their pricing, the collection of charges and revenues on these services and their assigned responsibility to public or private sector agencies.

l Collective functions: comprising the assessment and collection of taxes and general revenues, the provision of regulatory frameworks for public services and private activities such as transport, communications, land development and building, business licensing etc.

Key themes

Country specific. By definition, urban management opportunities and constraints in a particular country will be strongly conditioned by traditions of decision making, by the particular income and other resource bases in the country, by prevailing attitudes to the informal sector and many other factors. Preferred urban management policies will therefore need to be country specific.

Motivations. Recommendations for new urban management policies and techniques must take account of the motivations of those adminis- trators, technicians, politicians, community leaders or whoever is likely to be involved in implementation. By doing so, much valuable time and other resources may be saved. For example, the preparation of any national or city-level land development policy is essentially a political process; but too often a technocratic approach is adopted which leads to the formulation of policies and programmes which are ignored or actually rejected by the politicians and/or community involved. The task therefore is to seize on particular times and methods of introducing policies so that interest holders find it to their benefit to act in ways consistent with these policies. Again, the extent to which such issues are amenable to change will depend on country specific administrative traditions and economic conditions.

Time factors. It is necessary to define urban management needs for any country over time. An integrated view of urban management encour- ages spatial integration, institutional coordination, pooling of resources and the interchange of information so as to facilitate beneficial exchanges. However, the pace at which such integration can be achieved will vary enormously.

Role of the Urban Management Programme

Objectives of the Programme

The global Urban Management Programme (UMP) is playing an important role in helping developing countries to improve urban strategies and urban management by promoting the efficient and equitable use of resources and by mobilizing local governments, the private sector, NGOs and individuals in the development process.

The UMP is designed as a ten-year programme and began in 1986. It is being undertaken jointly by UNDP/World Bank/UNCHS (Habitat) with contributions to date from Germany, Switzerland, France, the UK, Denmark, Sweden, Canada, The Netherlands and the USA.

The long-term objective of the UMP is to strengthen the contribution by cities in developing countries to economic growth, social develop-

CITIES May 1991 97


ment and’ the alleviation of poverty. The immediate objectives are to improve urban policies, programmes and tools in the selected high priority areas of urban land management, infrastructure, municipal finance and environment.

During the first phase of UMP (198690) the following priority topic areas have been addressed.

Land management component l clearer understanding of land market operations, both formal and

informal; l appropriate and incremental land tenure systems (formal and

informal);

l improved cadastral and titling systems; 0 development or improvement of land information systems;

l innovative policies to increase the supply of serviced land (such as guided land development);

l mitigation of environmental impacts by preventative and remedial actions;

l simplified spatial planning and land regulation procedures;

l simplified institutional and legal arrangements for land supply, survey, development and transfer.

Infrastructure component 0 appropriate strategies for operations and maintenance (O&M);

0 coordinated planning and financing of infrastructure using multi- sectoral investment planning techniques;

l institutional arrangements for infrastructure management including increased community participation;

l utility mapping and record keeping as a precondition for more systematic management of infrastructure assets;

l legal and institutional arrangements for infrastructure management, including clarification of respective roles of local and central government and the private sector;

l standards, procedures, materials and equipment for infrastructure provision and O&M, with emphasis on standards which can be upgraded over time.

Municipal finance component 0 new approaches to local tax instruments, in particular property

and business taxes;

l improved financing of infrastructure using municipal development funds and other intergovernmental transfers;

l improved municipal resource management including appropriate procedures for accounting, budgeting and financial control systems;

l potential tools for institutional reform including allocation of central-local government responsibilities, decentralization, staf- fing and training etc.

Environment component a appropriate policies for pricing of resources and services;

l improved urban waste management with particular emphasis on low income groups and potential involvement of private sector;

0 appropriate legal and regulatory frameworks to implement environmental management strategies;

98 CITIES May 1991


a integration of environmental planning in the overall urban plan-

ning process across space, between sectors and over time as part of strategies for sustainable city development;

0 institutional improvements for enforcement actions across levels of government and political boundaries and between public and private sector actors.

Outputs of the first phase of UMP

Background papers. These are written in order to review theory and practice in the adoption of particular policies and techniques for a particular topic area, drawing on both good and bad experience in developing countries worldwide.

Case studies. These examine the issues being investigated in the context of a specific country or set of countries. As a matter of principle, each case study is undertaken by national or regional experts, and provides vital materials for the policy papers and design of implementation tools being developed at a later stage in the UMP.

Policy framework papers. They summarize the results of research undertaken and the insights and broad recommendations developed under the work of the UMP to date. These papers are being widely disseminated and will be the major basis for discussions at the national and regional levels.

Implementation tools. These are instruments, techniques and procedures, presented in the form of guideline frameworks, that are useful in analysing the issues investigated under the UMP. In the second phase of the programme, beginning in 1991, these frameworks will be modified on a country by country basis to meet specific needs of government structures, problems and resources in the particular topic areas (see section on ‘Capacity building’ below).

Need for new paradigms in land management

Major emphasis in the UMP is being placed on the identification of new paradigms for land management. The need is urgent - urban areas in developing countries are likely to double in size over the next 15-20 years - for example, Bangkok, Thailand, covers some 600 square kilometres and is expanding at some 30 square kilometres annually (Table 3). At the same time there is a growing understanding of the interrelationships of land management, urban development and national economic growth. While land is the essential ingredient in urban growth, most developing countries have very poor data on the operation of their land markets and rely on inadequate and outdated mechanisms to create or support the development of suitable land for urban growth.

Table 3. Projected increases in built areas of selected cities by the year 2000.

Year 2000 Annual Built up area built up area increase

City Year (sq km) (sq km) (sq km)

Jakarta, Indonesia 1979 313 800 23 Bangkok, Thailand 1981 444 995 29 Lagos, Nigeria 1976 162 632 20 Source: United Nations, f’afterns of Urban and Mexico City, Mexico 1970 580 2 028 68

Rural Populations Growth, Population Studies 68, New York, 1980. Bogota, Colombia 1981 283 724 23

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This endemic lack of data on land markets is complicated by the multitude of perceptions of land in any community. Land may be treated as an avenue for investment/speculation; as a commercial good subject to conventional market forces; as a natural birthright; and as a natural possession of the state. An understanding of behavioural forces should therefore be a dominant factor in analysing land markets.

Challenges of the 1990s

Work in the UMP, based on experience worldwide and case studies in Pakistan, Colombia, Honduras, Turkey, India, Mexico, Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Indonesia and elsewhere highlights land management challenges for the 1990s:

0 Making land markets work effectively. This involves identifying where distortions are occurring, and the policies and regulations that contribute to the distortions.

0 Improving the institutions and instruments to support the effective operation of land markets. Security and information are critical requirements for the effective functioning of land markets. A variety of instruments and institutions need to work effectively together to create the security of transactions, titles and tenure, and the openness and transparency that are necessary. Efficiency in cost and timeliness of land transactions are essential conditions for effectiveness. Strategic choices of instruments, techniques, institutional forms, relationships and capacity-building pro-

grammes are vital to success. 0 Improving governance - institutional, technical, cultural, finan-

cial, environmental and above all political forces affect decision making in land management. Unless technical proposals take into account the multitude of existing interests in land and the motivations behind these interests, all but the least radical proposals are unlikely to meet approval.

These three challenges, it may be argued, are a more than adequate agenda for two generations, not just for the decade of the 1990s. Adjusting vested interests and changing entrenched attitudes may take a long time. The potential benefits of establishing adequate access to affordable land by the many actors in urban development are enormous and may be measured in terms of lower cost industrial, commercial and residential development; higher environmental standards; increased employment and resource generation; more efficient provision of urban services etc as well as in more intangible terms such as individual peace of mind, cultural satisfaction and social stability.

Role of land in urban development

If urban economies are to be the main engines for national economic growth, it follows that the key objective of land policies can and should be to enhance the potential for new urban employment, levels of labour productivity, and income. The latter is particularly important since calls on income through taxation or user charges will be the key to providing adequate levels of urbanized land. To achieve these aims it is necessary to reduce or eliminate the many distortions in land markets and land management, taking careful account of the psychological aspects of land tenure and investment.

100 CITIES May 1991


Current crisis in land policies

There is mounting evidence of a crisis in land policies in developing country cities (eg where the majority of residents have no formal access

to land, land ownership is highly skewed and access to credit is impossible for low-income groups) as governments have adopted policies which have contributed to land shortages rather than helping the supply of land. The crisis results from, inter alia, inadequate understanding of land markets, particularly informal markets - this ignorance is both quantitative (number of transactions, prices, occupancy levels etc) and qualitative (the actors involved, customary forms of tenure, self-regulation by residents in informal settlement areas etc); the creation of land bottlenecks around large cities as developers tie up large areas of rural or semi-urban land; the imposition of land-use regulations and standards whose costs far exceed benefits; irrelevant approaches to physcial planning; shortages of infrastructure (tied in with resistance to cost recovery policies); poor property rights and land registration systems; and lastly the generally poor record of public land development agencies.

Costs of inaction

The costs of inaction in addressing the crisis will be severe in the coming years: escalating land prices in and around cities; declining affordability of housing; growing separation of work place and home; high costs of ‘retrofitting’ infrastructure and services once settlement densities have increased; increasing environmental costs both in the city and sub- region; increasing social and political tensions; and the marginalization of local government as its role in urban governance is gradually abdicated in the face of growing extralegal settlements, businesses forced to create their own services to survive and central government taking power away from the city.

New directions for land policies

New directions for land policies are urgently needed, centred around

the overriding objective of improving the supply of urbanized land. Cities must directly confront the need to make fundamental policy shifts which can address the three challenges identified. The emphasis on

policies highlights the need to reappraise the roles of the private and public sectors in land development and management, recognizing the comparative advantages of each in the various components of land development.

Based on the work on land management in the first phase of UMP, there is sufficient consensus among country findings to be able to identify seven major land policy orientations for the 1990s.

(1) Increasing the supply of urbanized land. This will include citywide actions to prepare a land development strategy with emphasis on the coordination of public sector ‘enabling’ actions with private sector investment actions; incorporating informal settlements into citywide land development strategies using an incremental approach to tenure regularization and infrastructure improvements which set the scene for later upgrading programmes without heavy calls on limited public sector resources; area-specific techniques such as land pooling/readjustment,

guided land development, use of existing vacant land in public or private ownerships, land sharing etc; improving access of low-income groups to

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existing and new urban land (eg selective use of initial low infrastructure and/or planning standards, cross-subsidies).

(2) Providing basic infrastructure to guide urban development. In the absence of effective spatial plans, enforceable regulations or plentiful capital expenditure funds, cities have few tools to guide urban development and even the few they have may be blunted by conflicting objectives and lack of coordination among development agencies. However, the most common and effective tool is the location of infrastructure, in particular roads and transport.

As a minimum, major infrastructure planning and programming should be carried out as part of the preparation of ‘broad brush’ structure plans which indicate the broad magnitudes and directions of urban growth, including infrastructure networks. Such plans should not require excessive effort in gathering data, should not be static and should be able to be updated swiftly to meet the demand changes. They should also identify those areas where growth and change are such that more detailed local and action area plans are needed.

In planning and programming of infrastructure, care will be needed in three areas of decision. First, infrastructure needs to be introduced in a phased programme which minimizes the problem of underutilized capacity with the implications of high maintenance and debt servicing costs. Second, the distributional impacts of infrastructure standards need careful planning. Infrastructure investments, particularly roads, usually result in an immediate price rise on adjacent land. Thus if

infrastructure is introduced at inappropriate standards, land price changes may be such that access and allocation may not be efficient or equitable. Third, infrastructure planning and design must take account of the funding problem discussed below.

(3) Improving the funding of infrastructure. The strategy should be seen to be efficient and equitable (few reforms are as counter- productive as a badly planned, badly managed, inequitable and complicated new system of local taxation). The strategy will need to identify mechanisms for efficiently recovering capital costs of infrastructure from both classes of beneficiary, ie consumers and land owners within the service area, through consumption fees, connection charges and betterment levies or other techniques that capture part of the increases in private land values created by public investment. If greater use is to be made of borrowing, which is an equitable and efficient method of raising funds for long-term infrastructure investments such as roads, sewers and other public works, ways need to be found to identify reliable revenue streams that can be earmarked for debt repayment, eg to capture the income stream produced by the capital projects to be financed.

(4) Providing efficient systems of property rights and registration. Evidence from many countries demonstrates that security of tenure is an essential precondition both for private investment in shelter and for developing a sense of citizenship among residents. Equally, informal as well as formal markets in land are commonplace in most cities, despite often being clandestine and illegal; better policies are needed to bring law and administration into line with fact and reality.

The introduction of new or modified land titling and registration

102 CITIES May 1991


systems should address the following: (a) systems should be carefully designed in relation to the anticipated benefits, staff and other resources available, the legal heritage, and the requirements of credit agencies regarding loan security for land; (b) improvements should be made incrementally, with a gradual strengthening of institutions and recording items; (c) systems will need to take account of tenure choices, ie use rights, occupancy certificates, condominium tenure etc; (d) the

wholesale replacement of traditional tenure systems may not be desirable; a more sensitive approach would build on the traditional system and merge it with a more modern system over time thus avoiding the hostility engendered by too abrupt a change in direction.

(5) Providing land information and equity and efficiency purposes. Land information, both mapped and written, is needed both for project preparation and urban management and operations. It will vary in fidelity, content, regularity and period of collection and use. The needs of

land information can be classified under (a) land administration; (b) natural resource, topographic and environmental information; (c) en- gineering and infrastructure information for urban development; (d) socioeconomic, financial, and demographic information for urban development. Land information technologies should be introduced incrementally within a long-term strategy. For strategic planning, SPOT

imagery may be of benefit but for management control and O&M, conventional aerial photography will be the main source, providing that security restrictions allow. New technologies such as digital mapping

normally become effective at a later stage in the strategy, once staff, financial and technical resources are adequate.

Institutional arrangements using a land information network approach will involve three main groups of agencies: (a) the infrastructure group, (b) the fiscal cadastral agencies, and (c) the legal land registration agency, as well as the private sector where relevant. The overall strategy should address other critical issues, ie institutional mandates showing clear responsibilities for the collection, analysis and dissemination of data; cost recovery targets; information exchange as a corporate resource; information ownership, pricing and copyright; and education and training.

(6) Removing inappropriate land-use regulations. The fundamental rationale for land-use regulations remains: to eliminate unwanted spillover effects when one land use imposes costs on adjoining prop- erties or upon the wider community, to promote efficiency in the use of land and to improve the distributional impacts of land development. However, there is a strong need to remove or modify unnecessary regulations (ie those where the benefits are less than the technical and administrative costs of their implementation); to adopt a flexible, performance-standard approach to achieving given standards of building or land use over time; and to restrict regulations to support those policies which have at least some political/community consensus.

Regulations should be carefully related to the administrative and financial capacity available to enforce them, and applied in parellel with more positive policies and techniques which support land development. It follows that development control systems should be permissive, ie exempt certain types of development from control, concentrate control

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in critical areas and operate by decisions taken at a lower level in the city

hierarchy. The cost saving implications of such improved regulatory measures

will generate the most significant benefits to low-income households and small businesses who will need to spend less money on plot development, services and building (at least initially) and who can therefore get access to land for the first time or get access to land in better locations. The cost savings of such actions will also generate wider financial and economic benefits to the community (eg greater potential for small-scale employment, more equitable distribution of shelter, lower costs of services etc).

(7) Mitigating environmental impacts by preventative as well as remedial actions. The external environmental costs of urban development need to be considered at the time when urban development is being planned, rather than ignored or remedied at higher costs after the event. Potential pollution sources, control techniques and responsibilities for monitoring and enforcement need to be identified and the role of land management should be integrated into pollution control strategies. Similar policies and actions are needed to guide new urban development away from hazardous areas such as flood or landslip prone land, areas of community importance such as ground water recharge, and areas of ecological importance such as residual natural vegetation. In parallel with these area specific decisions, city governments should liaise with national governments on policy questions such as the pricing of energy, water and commodities which could help in mitigating the environmental impacts of urban growth.

As with infrastructure investment, policies for both preventive and remedial actions will be more effective if implemented as part of a wider strategic planning approach. Environmental information, policies, standards techniques and monitoring need to be addressed in such an approach, including institutional responsibilities both horizontally (cross-sectoral and public/private roles) and vertically (central/local government roles).

Institutional and organization issues

The thrust of recommended policies is to promote appropriate devolu- tion of management responsibilities to local government and make much more use of the private sector (both formal and informal). City governments would take on a new emphasis in land management as the promoters and enablers of land development by the private sector. New forms of public/private sector cooperation are needed in terms of funding joint approaches to land development, secondment of professionals, privatization of certain functions of land management, co- funding of infrastructure and service programmes with local community groups. Local government will need more support from central government through secondment to establish better management systems, quality standards, inspectorates and systems of financial rewards and penalties for local government performance.

Improved coordination of land management activities at the city level will need cross-sectoral working arrangements in local government with participation by the private sector, NGOs, real estate associations and other actors in land markets.

Improved training is needed at all levels in the public sector (and

104 CITIES May 1991


increasingly in the private sector). Such training needs to emphasize the new roles of city government in understanding land markets, applying land information systems, using appropriate land development policies

and monitoring/evaluating the overall impacts of land management on social and economic objectives. The planner’s role in land management will need to switch from being primarily regulatory to one of leverage, involving advice, promotion and coordination. This new emphasis needs much more understanding of the workings of land markets, the relationships between economic and physical planning, as well as better communication and administrative skills in intersectoral coordination.

Capacity building

Activities

Capacity building is the ultimate objective of the Urban Management Programme. The beneficiaries of the UMP in any country are individuals (public officials, professionals, technicians, researchers, trainers and the community as a whole) and institutions (public sector, private companies, NGOs and community organizations). UMP capacity building activities include: collaborative programmes involving networks of experts, national research organizations, NGOs, consultants, trainers and journalists as well as data banks of UMP topic area related material; technical cooperation, involving urban management related projects in selected countries around which collaborative programmes are orga- nized on research, training and communications, development of country specific guidelines in key topic areas and direct linkages between on-going technical cooperation and personnel and the UMP; preparation of training modules for national training; research in urban management issues focused on national research organizations, regional research seminars/workshops; and communications via publication of

selected UMP policy framework papers, guidelines, manuals and book- lets, programmes information for publication by others, audiovisual, radio and TV programmes.

Transfer of knowledge

The second phase of the UMP from 1991 onwards will work with countries to build capacity which can address priority issues and which will strengthen regional networks dealing with these issues through increasing information and discussion flows about promising strategies and experiences. This capacity building requires the UMP to work together with public and private agencies, institutes and consultants within countries as well as regions in a systematic programme designed to continue to generate and to transfer knowledge and experience in two directions. The UMP will convey the experience and results of the first phase while the local and regional participants will similarly convey local knowledge, data and experiences to the UMP in order to increase the international pool of knowledge about urban management issues at the global level. This feedback loop should ensure that the research which will continue to be undertaken under the four subject areas of the UMP will be updated and enriched by the experience from these capacity building activities, and results flowing into the regional networks will also benefit. Figure 2 illustrates the structure of capacity building activities and relationships with the networks, and the flow of information between the national, regional and global levels.

CITIES May 1991


Figure 2. Urban Management Prog-

ramme: structure, relationships and

information flowchart.

Regional and national research and policy analysis

1 r---- ------

Infrastructure - Capacity building

and

Finance t . dissemination

L Urban Management Programme! --___-_----------

-Regions --

Global Regional research and research and policy analysis development

Application

Countries

Networks

I

Priority issues from among the group identified during the first phase of the UMP shall be selected by countries and will be addressed in a collaborative effort that will bring together local authorities, in-country and regional research/training institutions, consultants and external assistance in a research partnership. These issues will be examined in depth, and solutions devised that will be applicable in the specific circumstances of the country.

Phasing of capacity building

Three stages of application are proposed, beginning in 1991. The first, starting with consultations at the country level, will be guided by the

UMP task managers for each Programme component working collabor- atively with the selected in-country institutions.

The second stage will be managed jointly by UMP and particular regional or national institutions, as appropriate. Two sets of circumstances are envisaged; new applications in the same country and applications in new countries. In the former case, it would be desirable that a national institution share lead responsibility, with regional agencies and networks being involved in regional exchanges and dissemination. However, as it is imperative to provide for the participation of as many countries as possible, it will be more usual for the UMP to initiate activities in new countries in the second stage. In these circumstances the UMP would share lead responsibilities with regional institutions that participated in, or closely observed, the first stage. This would enable the UMP and the regional institutions to prepare themselves to advise new countries which would want to address the priority issues in the third stage.

The third stage, therefore, will be managed by national institutions, or by regional agencies as appropriate, and the UMP task managers will be observers. In this manner, there will be a programmed transfer of knowledge from the UMP to national and regional institutions. Similar- ly, participating institutions will be able to transmit knowledge, local experiences and information to the UMP.

In most cases, each phase will involve a different country within each region and require two to three years to complete. However, succeeding

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phases would come into being before the end of the preceding phase; implementing activities would thus overlap and the entire second phase of UMP would require a total of about six years.

Conclusion

It is now becoming more and more accepted that urbanization is a force for the good in countries’ economic development. However, there is an urgent need to improve the best of human, technical and other resources and to overcome or prevent the environmental and poverty problems associated with the concentration of economic and social activities in cities. Increasingly the path to improved urban management is seen not only as a question of project expenditure in individual sectors but a much more complex consideration of institutional, economic, social and physical interactions by a variety of ‘actors’ in government, parastatal, formal private and informal community group sectors.

The role of the Urban Management Programme can be viewed as a dynamic catalyst in a global network whereby the impact of individual actions in technical cooperation, research, dissemination and training in developing countries can be multiplied and developed according to critical issues and priorities. A key activity in the new second phase of the programme is therefore to promote information networks on good and bad practice, innovative thinking and new initiatives, by building on existing national, subregional and regional networks and promoting such networks where they do not exist.

Although some of the key topic areas for improved urban management have been illustrated in this article in the case of land management, space does not allow similar detailing of other components of the Programme. It is hoped to remedy this gap in future issues of Cities as well as to illustrate regional and national level Programme activities in more detail.

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urban management in developing countries: a critical role

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