Abstract
After being emptied of all its residents during the Khmer Rouge
regime (1975-1979), the population of Phnom Penh, the capital city
of Cambodia, is now growing at a high though undefined rate. As
it is often the case, this growth has resulted in the rapid expansion
of irregular settlements in the periphery as well as in the central
areas of the city. With very limited resources (in the last four
years there was hardly any euro available for investment), the Municipality
is facing the common contradiction between high housing demand and
little or no capacity to plan and manage urban growth. For this
reason a "Scaling up Community-Driven Development Process"
has been funded under the World Bank-UN-Habitat Cities Alliance
Programme, whose "vision statement" stresses, as well
known, an inclusive and participatory approach emphasising "active
consultation by local authorities with the urban poor, with time
being taken to develop a shared vision for the city".
However, in the past months several somewhat dubious fires burst
out in various centrally located squatters settlements leaving homeless
several thousands families who, with no alternative available, were
forced to relocate at very distant sites kindly "offered"
to them by the government and the Governor himself. Up to now this
(unofficial) eviction policy has affected dramatically an estimated
sixty thousands people but, though several NGO's and UN-Habitat
have been strongly criticizing the government, no significant policy
change is in view. There are many reasons for this, but among them
a major one appears to be the type of decision making mechanisms
that govern the Khmer society, which also explains the relatively
contained reaction by the population affected by the recent fires.
Based on the recent experiences of the relocation of irregular settlements,
the paper will focus on the nature of urban planning and management
in Phnom Penh, trying to investigate the meaning of the neo-liberal
paradigms (governance, participation, accountability) in a country
like Cambodia and the donors' role, particularly the European Commission,
in Phnom Penh urban development.
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