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URBAN GOVERNANCE | capacity
building
The documents gathered in
this section illustrate innovative policies and projects
in inclusive governance for neighbourhood renewal, central
city regeneration, access to GIS and related technologies,
and knowledge-sharing.
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local level
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Patel, Sheela; Joel Bolnick & Diana Mitlin (n.d) - Sharing
experiences and changing lives - SPARC/SDI [pdf]
India - Community exchange programmes
are proving to be a powerful mechanism for supporting and
strengthening the capacity of community organizations to
participate in urban development. Groups in Asia and Southern
Africa have developed an exchange methodology to strengthen
the capacity of local grassroots organizations to devise
new development alternatives.
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SPARC (n.d) - Demolitions to Dialogue: Mahila Milan
- learning to talk to its city and municipality - SPARC
[pdf]
India - Most cities are in search of real
solutions to address problems of poverty impacting increasing
numbers of its citizens and balancing choices for economic
growth of the city. Clearly no one set of actors has the
answers. City authorities and government can no longer believe
they can find solutions by themselves. And yet there are
no ready recipes of how this dialogue and conversation between
the various stakeholders in the city will get initiated
or reach any fruition.
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UN-Habitat (2002) - Best Practice - Citizen Attention
System, Mendoza [pdf]
Argentina -Program objectivesare to strengthen
community capabilities about environmental and juridical
issues, to raise a further participation on decision-making
processes at local and state government level. Actually,
the most significantly successful are formation of more
180 "extensionistas juridico-vecinales y ambientales"
(community animators on environmental and juridical subjects),
which are working in 25 communities in Mendoza Province
through so-called "Consultorios vecinales" (neighbourhood
information bureau), whereby they get advice, guidance and
derive cases to others institutions to people's community.
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UN-Habitat (2002) - Best Practice - Incorporating Philanthropy
as an Integral Part of Business, Mombasa [pdf]
Kenya-Club Sun N' Sand is a private,
family owned beach resort located in Kikambala, a peri-urban
area on Mombasa's North Coast where abject poverty prevails.
The proprietors' conviction in institutionalizing philanthropy
by incorporating it within their business is a challenge
to other hoteliers to emulate this innovative practice toward
achieving sustainable social and economic development through
the creation of an enabling environment that responds to
local needs, preserves local culture, empowers women to
take leadership roles, and engages in sound conservation
practices.
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city level
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Beall, Jo; Owen Crankshaw & Susan Parnell (2000) - "Local
government, poverty reduction and inequality in Johannesburg"
- Environment & Urbanization Vol 12 No 1, April
2000 - IIED [pdf]
South Africa - This paper discusses the
difficulties facing the post-apartheid metropolitan government
of Johannesburg as it reforms itself, seeking to better
respond to the needs of all its citizens, while also attracting
new investment. These difficulties include high levels of
poverty, unemployment and inequality as well as the apartheid
legacy of separate development with its large
backlog of poor quality housing and inadequate basic services,
much of it concentrated in former black townships
and peripheral informal settlements.
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Hindson, Doug & Bongani Ngqulung (2001) - Case Study:
The Reconstruction of Local Government and the Evolution
of Development Policy in Durban - ISES-University of
Durban-Westville [pdf]
South Africa - The aim of this paper is
to describe and evaluate Durbans post-apartheid development
strategy. The paper begins by posing the major development
dilemmas and policy challenges faced by the city, some of
which are the legacy of its apartheid past and others the
consequence of the pressures placed on the city by its opening
to the world economy. The core of the paper is devoted to
a description of the institutional transformation of local
government and the evolution of policy in the city since
the early 1990s.
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Payne, Geoffrey (2001) - Building partnerships for development
- International Conference on Redevelopment in Southern
Lebanon, Beirut [pdf]
Lebanon - South Lebanon has suffered massively
from occupation and conflict. The wounds and visible symptoms
will not be quick or easy to heal. The challenge facing
all those in positions of responsibility, both locally and
internationally, is therefore one of initiating a process
of recovery which rebuilds local confidence, capability
and community.
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Solomon, Benjamin (2000) - "Governance, economic
settings and poverty in Bangalore" - Environment
& Urbanization, Vol 12 No 1, April 2000 - IIED
[pdf]
India - This paper suggests that an understanding
of poverty in cities such as Bangalore (often referred to
as India’s Silicon Valley) requires more attention
to the governance processes in which different groups compete
for public investments and support. It describes the differences
between the “local” and the “corporate”
economies within Bangalore and their links with government.
The local economies provide most of the population (including
virtually all poor groups) with their livelihoods. They
mostly develop outside the “master plan” areas,
with diverse and complex economies and land tenure forms
within which poor groups find accommodation and work. Their
links with government are through local government –
the City Corporation and its councillors and lower level
bureaucracy. The corporate economies include the information
technology industries for which Bangalore is well-known.
Most of their links with government are with state and national
parastatal agencies that control most of Bangalore’s
development functions and have access to most government
funding. But there is little local representation in these
agencies. This profoundly disadvantages poor groups and
the local economies in the competition for land, infrastructure
and services.
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UN-Habitat (2002) - Best Practice - Strengthening the
Municipal Association of Nepal (MuAN) [pdf]
Nepal - MuAN, a member-funded umbrella
organization, was founded in the spirit of decentralization
and good governance. It represents its member-municipalities'
collective interests to the central government and international
community. Today, working closely with the Ministry of Local
Development, it is the key player in urban and local development.
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UN-Habitat (2002) - Best Practice - Local Government
Policy for Sustainable Urban Development, Sofia [pdf]
Bulgaria - The project Global Urban Observatory
(GUO) of UNCHS aims at capacity building for application
of urban Indicators, to monitor progress in implementing
the Habitat Agenda (Istanbul 1996), to build an infrastructure
of local and national urban observatories capable of collecting,
managing, analysing and presenting urban indicators data
for policy-making purposes.
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international level
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Sliuzas, Richard (1999) - Research issues for the adoption
of Geographic Information Technology for Urban Planning
and Management in developing countries - March 1999
N-AERUS/ESF Workshop [pdf]
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the formulation
of a relevant research agenda on urban management in the
South. Emphasis is given to identifying issues related to
the adoption of information technology, and in particular
Geographical Information Technology (GIT), to enhance urban
planning and management capacity at a local level.
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World Bank (2000) - Cities in Transition: World Bank
urban and local government strategy - World Bank [pdf]
The motivation for this new strategy stems from the growing
demand for World Bank assistance from newly-empowered local
governments, as well as from the realization that urban
development activities could and should have a greater impact
on raising the living standards of the poor and promoting
equity. The World Bank holds over three decades' worth of
operational experience in urban lending and sector work
that provides a strong basis for response.
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Documents highlighting DFID's published
work in the area of capacity building and enabling
environments in urban areas: |
DFID (2001) - Strategies for Achieving the International Development
Targets: Meeting the Challenge of Urban Poverty
[pdf]
This paper sets out the central role that well-governed
and managed cities and towns can play in reducing
poverty. The key message is that achievement of the
International Development Targets will depend in part
on the development of strategies which recognise the
important role played by cities and towns in strengthening
poor people's capacity to improve their socio-economic
and political conditions. |
Kanji Nazneen; Carla Braga &
Winnie Mitullah (2002) - Promoting Land Rights
in Africa: How do NGOs make a difference? - IIED
/ DFID [pdf]
This report is based on a study of seven NGOs promoting
land reform and land rights in Mozambique and Kenya.
Through collaborative research in both countries we
explored a number of key questions:- Do NGOs influence
policy or are structural, institutional and political
constraints too great? - Should NGOs maximise their
own advocacy roles or focus on building the advocacy
capacity of less powerful groups? - Do NGOs have the
skills for advocacy work or should they focus on innovation
in development interventions at the community level
- showing by doing?... |
Cities Alliance (2000) - Making Cities Work for All, Global
Action Plan for City Development Strategies [pdf]
The challenge for the cities is to improve equity,
efficiency, productivity, and governance in order
to provide sustainable livelihoods, safe and secure
living environments, and a better quality of life
for the urban poor. The City Development Strategy
is one tool which, along with squatter upgrading,
is being sponsored by members of the Cities Alliance
to achieve sustainable urban development. |
Max Lock Centre (2002) - Improving Knowledge Transfer, Guides no.1-8
- [pdf]
There is growing awareness that researchers in developed
countries need to be more active and imaginative in
the dissemination of the development knowledge they
produce. Technological innovation in communication
is giving knowledge producers and communicators an
increasing array of media to get their message across
to a variety of audiences within a shorter time scale. |
"Building
Institutions for sustainable Development in Rio Grande
De Sul, Brazil" - Allen, Adriana; Nicholas You
(2002) – Sustainable Urbanisation: Bridging
the Green and Brown Agendas – DPU [pdf]
Brazil - Brazil has a National Environmental
System (SISNAMA) made up of bodies at national, state
and municipal levels, which is responsible for EPM.
The main instrument applied by SISNAMA has been a
system of environmental licensing: that is, the process
of evaluation and authorisation of any activity (from
policy to project) that has potential impact on the
environment. However, this system has operated only
at project level and SISNAMA's overall effectiveness
in EPM has been limited by a lack of capacity and
unclear roles and responsibilities. |
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