International workshop Venice - March 11-12 1999 Concepts and Paradigms of Urban Management in the Context of Developing Countries
	[ Workshop home page] [ Index of papers]

Banashree Banerjee

"The role of researchers and practicioners in setting up a concerted urban management approach: lessons from South Asian municipalities"

Need for strategic choices

It is difficult to associate the average municipality in South Asia with the current urban management terminology - accountability, sustainability, good governance, social safety net, participation, public-private parternship, cost recovery. The spate of writing and policy orientation on reforms and restructuring have hardly percolated to the local level. Even the analytical tools that been developed (e.g. Land Market Assessment) are too sophisticated for use by local development institutions. The handful of successful cases do not necessarily imply that the concerns themselves are misplaced, but rather that the gap between policy and practice needs to be examined critically. That is where the role of practicioners and researchers is important. Again, whatever the ideology, the bottom line is that urban management has to benefit people and lead to social and economic development. Local institutions are seen as the appropriate agencies for this process. Here too practitioners and researchers can support urban institutions to improve on practice.

There is no doubt that practicioners and researchers have done a great deal to develop concepts and models, have carried out research into various urban issues and have evaluated policies and programmes. The contention is that these efforts have not achieved enough to set up an urban management approach. For this strategic choices have to be made in favour of supporting and building the capacity of local institutions and civil society in thousands of cities and towns and in supporting policy with ground realities. This would imply, for example, developing and applying simple tools and techniques for planning and decision making, developing skills for negotiating and resolving conflict, helping to improve accounting practices. Another aspect would be to develop techniques for documenting and sharing learning experiences. This implies a resolution of roles with greater emphasis on capacity building, communication and understanding and assimilating into policy and practice, local concerns and priorities.

Reality of urban management policy and practice in South Asia

Given the enormous diversity of situations, generalisations are risky. However, it is useful to recapitulate some of the shared reality of urban management practice in the region as a backdrop for setting out professional roles.

• Local government and other institutions do not always have the power, capacity, resources or tools for managing cities.
• The information base is weak and unreliable (even maps showing existing infrastructure are difficult to get).
• Planning methods are not responsive to development dynamics; much of urban development takes place outside plans.
• Uniform policy and top down programmes and projects leave little scope for consideration of local priorities.
  Accepted development and decision making culture is 'top down'. International agencies and national and provincial governments largely determine resource allocation and investment.
• Inadequate effort is made to operationalise decentralisation policies (e.g. 74 Constitutional Amendment in India).
• Comfort is often sought / helplessness is expressed by local government
• Stakeholders have a diversity of interests, often conflicting.
• Interests of vulnerable groups such as the poor, women, elderly, other minorities are not sufficiently addressed.
• Ethnic and cultural affiliations are strong: confrontations between groups are common.
• The awareness of civic rights and responsibilities is low among citizens and decision makers in local government.
• Willingness to change is hampered by archaic and regressive legislation, procedure and established practices.
• Little effort is made to maximise / mobilise local resources.
• Municipalities are strapped with debt servicing communities without being able to raise resources.
• Cost recovery is often seen to conflict with political concerns and social equity.
• Changes are beginning to emerge, other with local initiative (e.g. Ahmedabed) or through national and regional municipal capacity building programmes (e.g. Sri Lanka and Kamataka in India). Introduction of simple tools and techniques for local decision making and development investment planning are proving to be effective.
  Learning experiences are not always available in appropriate forms for sharing and dissemination.

The role of researchers and practicioners

Emerging from the existing situation, thrust areas indicated for researchers and practicioners (in research and training institutes, offering consultancy services and in development agencies) to set up an urban management approach are outlined below. This cannot be considered as an exhaustive list but rather, an illustration of the strategic choice approach that is advocated here.

Policy and programme support research and evaluation

• Analysis of likely impacts and implications (social, economic, spatial, institutional, political) of proposed policy before it is grounded. Cities can afford experiments based on good concepts alone.
• Feeding lessons from experiences into policy.

Targeting agents of change

• Targeting key institutions (international to local), levels of government (local/provincial/national), politicians, civil servants, technical workers, sections of civil society most likely to make a difference.

Supporting local development

• Improving demand making capacity of civil society (especially marginalised groups) through functional organisation and awareness of rights and responsibilities.
• Legitimising demand making through institutionalisation of participatory planning approaches.
• Building the capacity of elected representatives to represent and respond to their electorate
• Improving the capacity of local institutions to respond to the demand of different stakeholder groups through means such as improved financial practices, strategic and action planning, information systems, improved services delivery, focus on reduction of vulnerability and uncertainty of poor groups.
• Improving and designing interfaces / parternships between local government, private sector, civil society.
• Identifying and tapping local resources and more efficient use of municipal assets.

Sharing and learning from experiences

• Documenting learning experiences and making them available in appropriate forms (video, internet, publications, professionally guided tours, etc).
• Simulating city networks.

Training

• Undertaking training
• Developing innovative approaches
• Building capacity of local training institutions

Strategic research for capacity building for policy and practice

• Issue based research e.g.urban poverty, crime, employment, and income generation, environment.
• Legislative and fiscal reforms
• Political economy

Support from funding institutions and governments

The above agenda is possible if funding institutions and government make appropriate fund allocations to accompany programme / development budgets. This is already beginning to happen and the positive experiences can be used to stimulate further fund flows.