International workshop Venice - March 11-12 1999 Concepts and Paradigms of Urban Management in the Context of Developing Countries
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Background

The effectiveness of urban development and management policies in developing countries depends on the priorities set at the local and national levels and on their social, economic and technical feasibility. However policy options are also limited by the array of existing organisational and management approaches, based mainly on the experience of the developed countries. It is questionable not only how relevant these models can be to Third World cities, but also how objective and socially neutral they are. Rather than attempting to reconcile conflicting interests, many simply promote the interests of one group, and often the interests of the powerful win out over those of the poor.

Over the last few years a new vocabulary has emerged, authored largely by the United Nations and the World Bank, reflecting changes in the world economy (globalisation), the social conditions (growing poverty and polarisation), political priorities (environmental concern and democratisation) and political thinking (decentralisation and government disengagement). In the field of urban management terms such as accountability, sustainability, good governance, poverty alleviation, participation, security of tenure, public-private partnership, cost recovery, replicability and the third sector have turned into a new orthodoxy, enmeshed in a framework of privatisation, the shrinking state, deregulation, and a reduction in the power of labour.

This new vocabulary may limit further the options open to the management of the city in developing countries. Like earlier models, the new conceptualisation is based on a limited number of developmental, management and organisational models. More significantly, it provides too uniform an approach to a vast area with diverse urban problems and widely differing capabilities. Finally, it also shows how dependent academic and professional thinking has become on the conventional wisdom laid down by the international institutions.

To overcome the uniformity of the currently dominant views, the European Scientific Foundation Network aims to investigate the origin, meaning and use of the concepts underpinning the new orthodoxy, and to offer a wider range of approaches, as necessary and appropriate in such a highly diverse world.