International workshop Venice - March 11-12 1999 Concepts and Paradigms of Urban Management in the Context of Developing Countries
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Michael Mattingly (Development Planning Unit - University College London)

"Setting up a concerted urban management approach: the role of researchers and practitioners"

A practitioner is faced with the challenge of setting up an urban management approach in a town in southern Africa. This is a new township, one which is to be a model for others soon to be created as a measure to build a level of local government which hardly existed outside the capital city when the country was under foreign domination.

The practitioner's role is to act as an agent of change: change from the way the town was administered in the past, change from the performance of routines, and change to the pursuit of new objectives having to do with development.

Following a particular model of urban management (which will be defined) the practitioner will first seek to create the sense of responsibility which is the basis of urban management. But to what end? Objectives and purposes will need to be found by the town authority with the practitioner's help. They cannot be dictated, as some advocate, even if they are development objectives.

Then it is necessary to create within the town authority an understanding of the tasks which it can carry out.

This will result from understanding the problems and opportunities facing the town and their relative importance.

At the same time, an understanding of the processes (of planning, developing, operating, maintaining, and resourcing) needs to be created.

Then the town authority will be helped to understand the possibilities for carrying out the tasks and processes. This will involve formulating strategic actions and relationships and detailed actions and relationships.

The creation of capacities to carry out the tasks and processes will follow. Among the choices of actions and relationships, needs will be clarified and the gaps in capacity to satisfy these needs can be identified. As these new capacities are built up, the town authority will implement more of the chosen tasks and processes and do so more effectively.

But to sustain this approach, it is necessary to create a continuing capacity building operation within the town authority.

With regard to these actions in which the practitioner has a part to play, researchers have many functions. Some of these are to investigate assumptions which underlie most of the steps above: the perception of problems and opportunities, the possibilities for strategy and action open to the town authority, the definition of needed actions by the town authority, the perceptions of barriers to capacity building, and the effectiveness of actions to make capacity building continuous.

There are several basic aspects of the practitioner's role which need to be researched: the effectiveness of the relationship between the practitioner and the town authority and the assumptions underlying the model of urban management used by the practitioner.

Finally, there is the need for research to establish a base line of data against which any changes can be compared which might indicate the results of an urban management approach.

The paper will investigate how these concerns are given real substance in the case of this particular town, in order to illustrate the nature of the roles which both practitioner and researcher play in establishing an urban management approach.