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URBAN
ECONOMY | Globalisation and Structural Adjustment Programmes
This cluster highlights a number of responses to current
globalisation processes and structural adjustment programmes
including new policy analyses of urban economies, new initiatives
and practical measures to modify the impact of adjustment
on poor communities.
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local level
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Ottolini, Cesare (2000) - The Habitant's Association
and the ICTS, Proposals for an International Research-Action
- May 2000 ESF/N-AERUS Workshop [pdf]
The technological innovation in the information fields
is in fact provoking a real revolution in the relationships
between production and exchange, and is thereby accelerating
the globalization processes. We are dealing with an unprecedented
revolution whose influence permeates as far as the families
and the city quarters. |
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city level
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Barwa, S.D. (1995) - Discussion Paper 3: Structural
adjustment programmes and the urban informal sector in Ghana
- International Labour Office, Geneva [pdf]
Ghana - This study on Ghana confirms the
negative overall impact of the structural adjustment programme
on the urban informal sector. But the informal sector entrepreneurs
in Ghana appear to have shown a better response in the sense
that many were able to adapt their production technologies
and product lines and have developed niche markets. This
study, which is largely based on data collected by other
researchers, also discusses the differential impact on various
sub-sectors and groups. One weakness of all these studies
has been that they have essentially looked at the short-term
impact of structural adjustment programmes. They nevertheless
provide some indications for future policy change in this
area.
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Latapí, Agustín Escobar & Mercedes González
de la Rocha (1995) - "Crisis, restructuring and urban
poverty in Mexico" - Environment & Urbanization,
Vol. 7 No. 1, April 1995 - IIED [pdf]
Mexico-This paper describes the scale
and nature of urban poverty in Mexico and how it changed
during the 1980s and early 1990s. The authors draw on their
own research in Guadalajara and on other studies in Mexico
and in other Latin American countries to consider how men
and women within households responded to rising prices,
falling incomes and other economic and social problems.
The paper also includes a review of how poverty and inequality
have changed in Mexico, over the last few decades.
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Hasan, Arif (2002) -"The changing nature of the informal
sector in Karachi as a result of global restructuring and
liberalization" - Environment & Urbanization,
Vol 14 No 1 April 2002 - IIED [pdf]
Pakistan-This paper describes how much
of Karachi’s population has relied on informal settlements
for housing, informal infrastructure for water and sanitation,
informal services for health care and education and informal
enterprises for employment. These have filled the gap between
what large sections of the population needed and what neither
government nor formal private enterprises provided. The
paper then discusses the changes that global restructuring
and liberalization have brought, which include inflation
(as the rupee devalued) and the decline of light engineering
industry (unable to compete with cheap imports), and carpets
and textiles production (in part because of greatly increased
electricity charges). It suggests that, while the communications
revolution helps fuel aspirations, the informal organizations
and the middlemen that manage them will no longer bridge
the gap between needs and aspirations for most of the population.
Since there is no sign of new private investment, the result
is also growing unemployment and widening inequalities.
As yet, there is no research on the long-term effects of
liberalization on this city with some 10 million inhabitants.
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Jenkins, Paul; Paul Robson and Allan Cain (2002)-"Local
responses to globalization and peripheralization in Luanda,
Angola"- Environment & Urbanization, Vol
14 No 1, April 2002, IIED [pdf]
Angola-This paper questions the likely
benefits of globalization for Luanda by considering how
global political and economic forces affect the lives of
its 3.4 million inhabitants. Most live in informal, self-constructed
settlements which lack basic infrastructure and services.
Most receive little benefit from the nation's oil and diamond
exports, while many have had their livelihoods eroded by
the collapse of the local economy and the contraction of
the state. The paper also describes how the city has always
been shaped by external forces – as a port serving
the slave trade or colonial export agriculture – and
what the role of external forces has been in creating and
perpetuating the long-running civil war.
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Kanji, Nazneen (1995) - " Gender, poverty and economic
adjustment in Harare, Zimbabwe" - Environment &
Urbanization, Vol. 7 No. 1, April 1995, IIED [pdf]
Zimbabwe-This paper examines the changes
in household incomes, expenditure, savings and debts, patterns
of work, living costs and use of social services among 100
households in a low-income settlement in Harare, Zimbabwe.
The households were interviewed in mid-1991 as the Economic
Structural Adjustment Programme began, and one year later
in mid-1992 to see what changes had occurred. The paper
considers the way in which gender functions as a critical
variable in determining the effects of Structural Adjustment
and disaggregates changes in incomes, expenditures and work
of men and women and their effect on gender relations.
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Pírez, Pedro (2002) - "Buenos Aires: fragmentation
and privatization of the metropolitan city" - Environment
& Urbanization, Vol 14 No 1, April 2002 - IIED
[pdf]
Argentina-This paper describes how Buenos
Aires has been affected by changes in political structures
and economic orientations that are linked to globalization,
including the removal of trade barriers, privatization and
“reduced” government. In the absence of any
democratic decision making at the metropolitan level, key
decisions are left to market forces, especially to the powerful
economic actors, including developers and private companies
now controlling privatized “public” services.
The only true “planning” occurs within large
private developments, including the gated communities in
which half a million people now live. A growing spatial
fragmentation accompanies growing levels of inequality.
The metropolitan area fails to provide an arena for its
citizens, which means that any general public interest is
lost as the built environment is reshaped and constructed
in response to private demands.
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Potts, Deborah with Chris Mutambirwa (1998) - “Basics
are now a luxury”: perceptions of structural adjustment’s
impact on rural and urban areas in Zimbabwe - Environment
& Urbanization, Vol. 10 No. 1, April 1998 - IIED
[pdf]
Zimbabwe - This describes differences
in the impact of the Economic Structural Adjustment Policy
on Zimbabwe's rural and urban areas through the views of
recent migrants to Harare. Although the outcomes of this
policy have been more acutely felt in the city than in the
countryside, rural populations have also suffered in multiple
ways. Due to the strength of rural-urban interactions and
the economic interdependence between city and countryside,
the impact of structural adjustment is not clearly geographically
defined.
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international level
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Collingwood, Vivien, edt (2002) - Good Governance and
the Worl Bank - Bretton Woods Project [pdf]
The World Bank's 'good governance' agenda is concerned
with the relationship between the state, the market, and
civil society in loan-receiving countries. The Bank argues
that in order to be effective, the state must play a critical
role in managing and regulating the market and civil society.
This briefing paper looks in detail at the Bank's conception
of 'good governance', examines how it has been implemented
in practice, and identifies some of the tensions underlying
the governance agenda.
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Gossé, Marc (1999) - Problemes Conceptuels du
Developpement Urbain - Institut Supérieur d'Architecture
La Cambre, Bruxelles - March 1999 ESF/N-AERUS Workshop [pdf]
Plutôt que de se livrer à une analyse généalogique
et critique (par ailleurs bien nécessaire et à
laquelle se livreront de nombreux intervenants à
cette session de travail vénicienne) du vocabulaire
dominant des agences internationales de coopération
au développement (Système des Nations Unies,
Banque Mondiale, Bureau International du Travail, Union
Européenne....) concernant les faits urbains, comme
la "durabilité"(1) , la "bonne gouvernance",
la "participation publique", la "sécurité
foncière" ou la "replicabilité",
dont les traductions en différentes langues montrent
d'emblée le flou conceptuel, nous aborderons quant
à nous une réflexion sur les
enjeux que représentent les "théories"
ou "paradigmes" véhiculés par le
monde des architectes et des urbanistes, et auxquels les
spécialistes des problèmes urbains relatifs
aux pays du Tiers-Monde ne semblent accorder aucune importance.
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Helmsing, A.H.J. (Bert) (2001) - Partnerships, Meso-institutions
and Learning New local and regional economic development
initiatives in Latin America - Institute of Social
Studies, The Hague [pdf]
Chile and Colombia had decentralized government functions
which created space for local initiatives. In Mexico the
coming to power of the opposition created space for new
local efforts. Globalization, through MERCOSUR and NAFTA,
played a role in Argentina and Mexico. However, in certain
cities such as Rafaela, Auracania and Ilo, other random
factors such as disease, unexploited resource opportunities
and negative environmental consequences of mining stimulated
initiatives.
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Janeba, Eckhard & Guttorm Schjeldrup (2002) - The
Future of Globalization:Tax Competition and Trade Liberalization
-, Background Paper- World Development Report 2003 - World
Bank [pdf]
This paper presents some recent findings in the literature
on tax competition and the political economy of trade, and
discusses interesting policy implications from these intertwined
fields pertaining to globalization. A basic message that
emerges from early contributions is that tax competition
leads to underprovision of public goods and a shift of tax
burden from mobile factors (such as capital) to less mobile
factors (such as labor).
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Rivière d'Arc, Hélène (1999) - Les
mots-concepts de la Banque Mondiale et la gestion décentralisée
des villes au Mexique et au Brésil - CREDAL
/ CNRS / March 1999 ESF/N-AERUS Workshop [pdf]
Ce qu’on appelé en Amérique latine
la transition démocratique qui a marqué les
années 1980, a eu des effets considérables
sur la gestion des villes, non seulement sur le discours
dorénavant tenu par de nombreuses municipalités
mais aussi sur les politiques et les priorités affichées.
Un des effets les plus visibles et qui mérite
d’être souligné d’emblée,
c’est l’accès à la propriété
du sol urbain par des millions de familles au cours des
vingt dernières années.
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Sassen, Saskia (2002) - "Locating cities on global
circuits"- Environment & Urbanization,
Vol 14 No 1, April 2002 - IIED [pdf]
This paper discusses the cities that have the resources
which enable firms and markets to be global. It considers
the new intensity and complexity of globally-connected systems
of production, finance and management which may disperse
production, yet need (relatively few) networks of cities
to provide their organizational and management architecture.
This produces new geographies and hierarchies of centrality
– particular cities and regions that have key roles
in globalization. Many such cities become far more closely
linked to the global economy than to their regional or national
economies – and this can have harsh consequences locally,
pushing out firms and people that are not within the internationalized
sector. The paper discusses why certain cities retain such
importance, when production is so dispersed and when telecommunications
and rapid transport systems have limited the advantages
of spatial concentration. It also considers the dependence
of global cities on each other; a crisis in one key centre
often brings problems rather than opportunities for others.
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Jai, Sen ( 2002) - On Building Another World : Or :
Are other globalisations possible ? - World Social
Forum [pdf]
The slogan of the World Social Forum as it stands today
is ‘Another World Is Possible !’. This paper
is an attempt to critically interrogate and reflect on the
theory and practice of the World Social Forum as an idea.1
I want to start by asking the question I was asked last
night at dinner : Just what does the ‘democratisation
of globalisation’ mean ? I recognise that this is
a little different from the issue of ‘global democratisation’
that we are concerned with here at this Seminar, but it
is still this that is the question that is most commonly
asked. To the person who asked me this question, it is a
meaningless phrase; she insisted that since globalisation
is – as she understands it – just another word
for capitalism, and since you cannot democratise capitalism,
the phrase has no real meaning – and is therefore
an illusion.
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van Vliet, Willem (2002) -"Cities in a globalizing
world: from engines of growth to agents of change"
- Environment & Urbanization, Vol 14 No 1,
April 2002 - IIED [pdf]
This paper describes the key role that city authorities
and their civil societies should play in mediating the relationship
between economic globalization and human development so
that cities act not only as engines of growth but also as
agents for greater social justice and environmental sustainability.
In a globalizing and urbanizing world, urban governments
have a much more important role in guaranteeing that citizen
needs are met and citizen rights are respected. This is
not a conventional public-sector-led, professionally determined
role but one more rooted in participatory democracy and
partnerships with citizens, both to redress the limits of
market mechanisms and to ensure urban livability.
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Wilks, Alex and Fabien Lefrançois (2002) - Blinding
with Science or Encouraging Debate?-How World Bank Analysis
Determines PRSP Policies - Bretton Woods Project [pdf]
Far from abandoning aid conditionality, international financial
institutions are collaborating to retool the aid regime
under the rubric of ownership and aid effectiveness.
Aid has become increasingly technocratic, with an overwhelming
reliance on donor systems of aid management and accountability,
implemented by a host of consultants and advisors.
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World Social Forum (2003) - Colonialidad del poder,
globalizacion y democracia - WSF [pdf]
En esta ocasión me propongo, sobre todo, abrir algunas
de las cuestiones centrales que me parecen aún no
suficientemente indagadas en el debate sobre el proceso
llamado "globalización" y sobre sus relaciones
con las tendencias actuales de las formas institucionales
de dominación y en particular del moderno estado-nación.
No obstante, aún si es restricta como aquí,
toda discusión de esas cuestiones implica de todos
modos una perspectiva teórica e histórica
sobre la cuestión del poder y aquí es sin
duda pertinente señalar algunos de los trazos mayores
de la que orienta esta indagación.
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Documents highlighting DFID's published
work on globalisation and structural-adjustement programmes
and their impact in urban areas.
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