International workshop Venice - March 11-12 1999 Concepts and Paradigms of Urban Management in the Context of Developing Countries
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BARON Catherine Lereps (Laboratoire d'Etude et de Recherche sur l'Economie, les Politiques et les Systèmes Sociaux), Université de Toulouse I

"Urban growth, informal housing and socio-economic exclusion. The impact of conventions in the emergence of new forms of local governance in African Cities"

The issue of urban management in developing countries- especially in Sub-Saharan cities - must be placed within a largest context.
Since the early 80ies, the integration of big cities in international networks and the growing importance of "global cities" induces a high polarization of space at an international level. The issue of advantages and costs of urban growth, and the problem of the optimal size of cities arise. To explain spatial concentration, factors such as positive externalities have been stressed by urban researchers. However, this spatial concentration means also the exclusion of some areas disconnected from this evolution. This exclusion appears at a global level : some regions have been completely excluded as shown in the case of Sub-Saharan countries. The same process occurs at a local level : many recent studies have shown that metropolization emphasizes the spatial socioeconomic marginalization of suburban areas and increases social polarization in metropolitan areas. This leads to what we could call a "fragmentation of urban areas". Some refer to excluded areas as an "informal city" where the largest part of the African citizens live. The existence of these excluded areas shows that a unique model of urban management, or even a specific model elaborated for third world countries, cannot exist.
The existence of these excluded areas at the margins of cities arises then problems to urban planners, decision makers, politicians and other specialists of urban questions. They are often considered as the more obvious expression of a urban crisis in third world cities. But it is perhaps better to adopt another point of view. We must consider that inside these spatial areas arise some specific local initiatives, specific as far as the socioeconomic or the land management is concerned. As new forms of local management arise, we must assume that they illustrate the rising of new rules, and of new conventions that we have to interpret in the specific context of Sub-Saharan cities. More precisely, in Sub-Saharan cities, informal processes occur and interfere with existing formal structures. These informal process are developing as well in the socioeconomic field as in the land management field. They lead to a reconsideration of the urban management issue.

Some specific questions arise.

• To what extent should we conform to the experts' suggestions that informal activities or land management should be formalized ?
• What can we conclude from these experiences which tend to associate land tenure security to the necessity of land privatization and the land rendering as an economic good ? One of the solution proposed in that sense is to create a property rights market for land use. But many oppositions have arisen against these kinds of proposals, especially in Sub-Saharan cities where historically different kinds of land property rights have existed, with conflicts between previously traditional land right property and modern rights. This illustrates the critique that land cannot be considered as a common economic good which could be exchanged on a market like any other good. Land remains more a social link than an economic good.
• Can't we extend the concept of governance and apply it to urban management in Sub-Saharan cities ? We must pass beyond the integration of the logic of public and private actors to integrate other logics referring to legal/illegal practices, or legitimate/illegitimate practices. The emphasis of the diversity of actors permits the integration the issue of convention types that are existing in urban areas and their stability.
• In order to understand the structure of some areas and to elaborate urban policies, the impact of social networks must be taken into account. These networks have a strong spatial anchorage, allowing the construction and the structuration of urban territories. They symbolize the embeddedness of urban actors in a historically constructed stable system of social relations