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• Urban Administration in India

Meaning and Structure of Urban Administration of India

Understanding the country's administration in which you live is of paramount importance. It gives you an insight into the country's governance, and above all, it makes you aware of the governance carried on in your country. 

Living in India means either rural or urban areas. The rural area means living in villages, whereas the urban area refers to towns and cities. These days, many people prefer living in urban areas rather than rural ones, and it might be on several accounts such as infrastructure, facilities, and the list goes on. 

But before deciding where to live, one should learn about the urban administration, its structure, and other things concerning it. 

Urban Administration - Meaning 

Municipal corporations and urban administration both are the same things. The primary aim of urban administration is to look after the basic amenities given to people and ensure their satisfaction. The concept of urban administration goes back to 1687 in Madras. As the years passed, many municipal corporations formed. 

Let us get down to the roles and responsibilities discharged by the urban local bodies. 

The urban local bodies work to develop their town and city, be it economic, financial, or legal. 

No matter the population size, it continues to carry its developmental functions. 

While governing its citizens, it ensures not to be biased and maintains transparency among different authorities of municipal corporations. 

Structure of Urban Administration  

The urban administration consists of eight types of urban local bodies. Let us understand each one by one. 

Municipal Corporation

Municipal corporations are usually found in big cities such as Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, etc. The acts of state legislatures and India's parliament help them get established. It is further divided into three authorities: the council, standing committees, and the commissioner. 

Municipality  

The smaller cities tend to have the provision of municipalities. The Municipalities are often called upon by other names such as the municipal council, municipal committee, municipal board, etc. It is also divided into three diverse authorities: the council, the standing committees, and the chief executive officer. 

Notified Area Committee  

The urban administration also consists of a notified area committee for the fast-developing towns and the towns lacking the basic amenities. The powers it shares are similar to the ones belonging to a municipality. Besides this, all the members of the notified area committee are nominated by the state government. 

Town Area Committee  

The town area committee is found in the small towns. Being a small town, it has minimal authority such as street lighting, drainage roads, and conservancy. 

Cantonment board 

The next department in urban local bodies is the cantonment board. It is usually set up for a civilian population living in the cantonment area. Unlike others, it is created and run by the central government. There are the following members on the cantonment board. 

A military officer 

An executive engineer

A health officer 

Eight elected members 

Chief executive officer 

Military officers 

Township  

Township is another form of urban government to provide basic facilities to the staff and workers living in the colonies established near the plant. It consists of technical, non-technical staff and some engineers. Consequently, it has no elected members and is merely an extension of the bureaucratic structure. 

Port Trust 

As the name itself indicates, port trusts are established in the port areas such as Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, etc. These have two purposes. 

It manages and takes care of the port. 

In addition to this, it also provides basic civic amenities to the people. 

Special Purpose Agency 

Besides the seven above-mentioned urban administration bodies, the states have set up some agencies also for the same. These agencies undertake the designated activities or specific functions belonging to the municipal corporations or municipalities. The people also refer to these as single-purpose, uni purpose, or special agencies. 

What is the Urban Administration in India?

The Urban Administration is also known as municipal governance. It takes care of all the duties which seek the comfortability of people living in urban areas. It takes care of the responsibility like a sweeper sweeping the streets early in the morning to switch on the street lights during the night. The first urban administration started in Madras in 1687. Later in 1726, the Calcutta municipal corporation and the Bombay municipal corporation had formed. As of now, The BMC is the largest municipal corporation in India.

If we observe the difference between rural and Urban Administration in India, the rural areas are further divisions of districts. As the geographical area and density of population are less, the rural administration can create a local body with the name of the gram panchayat.

The Urban Administration in India look after the following - 

It maintains effective, responsive, democratic, accountable local governance.

It encourages local citizens to participate in various development programs and take up key roles in the local bodies.

It always strives to maintain transparency among the people and authorities of municipal corporations. 

Even though the population is more than 5000 in every Urban area, the Urban Administration stood strong and worked for the economical, financial, legal, and more functionalities.

By this, we can understand why urban administration is important. 

Structure of Urban Administration in India  

The structure of urban administration or multiple governance may consist of various departments and people. They are as follows- 

It is the largest and topmost local body in urban administration. If the city contains more than three lakhs people, then the state government will create a municipal corporation for that city and give authority to look after the city. The people of that particular area may reach out to this municipal corporation for any kind of queries related to that area.

What is the Difference Between the Municipal Council and the Municipal Corporation?

Both the municipal council and municipal corporation work on the same principle. But the only difference between a municipal corporation and a municipal council is the size of that particular urban area. If the area contains more than three lakh people, as we discussed above, the multiple governances can be looked after by municipal corporations. If the size of the urban area is less than 3 lakh people, then the local body created by the state government is the municipal council.

Personnel in Urban Administration

The municipal commissioner is the highest Authority of urban Administration. The state government elects an Indian administrative service officer for this designation and provides the required power to develop municipal corporations. Next, the mayor and the deputy mayor are elected by the members of the municipality commission. Their tenure is one year, and they are treated as honour heads to discuss various issues and attend multiple meetings.

In both municipal corporations and municipal councils, the town can be divided into multiple wards. The responsibility of each ward will be taken by a ward member or a ward councilor. The ward people can elect the ward councilor, and issues like electricity, drainage, spreading of diseases, awareness programs, etc., were brought to their notice.

If the issue is a generalized one for multiple watts, the word councilors May create a word committee, and all the councilors can have a debate on resolving the issue.

What is the Difference Between the Municipality and Municipal Corporation?

The municipal corporation is a legal body of urban administration for cities that have more population. But the municipality is a legal body created for the urban areas with a population of around 1 lakh people. The head of the municipality is either a president or a chairman. Apart from the size of the urban area, the differences between the municipality and municipal corporation are not much.

Hence the urban Administration in India plays a vital role in the development of cities and towns. Even though the cities were developed much when compared to rural areas, the municipal governments took them forward to develop more. The metropolitan cities were the best example of the effectiveness of urban Administration in India.

FAQs on Urban Administration in India

1. What are the Eight Types of Urban Local Bodies? List Them.  

The urban local bodies are often classified into eight categories which are mentioned below: 

Municipal corporation 

Municipality 

Notified area committee 

Town area committee 

Cantonment board 

Port trust 

Special purpose agency 

All these bodies form the crucial component of urban administration and cater to different niches. 

2. What are the Problem Areas of Municipal Bodies? 

The municipal bodies do not function smoothly and face some challenges at different times. Here are some of the difficulties faced by the municipal bodies. 

Qualifications: The primary issue in the municipal bodies is the qualification of the members. Not all members are qualified, which creates a disbalance in the functioning. 

The lack of finance: The biggest hurdle in working urban local bodies is finance. The finance requirement is huge, but both centre and state governments fail to meet the finance requirements, which puts them in a difficult situation. 

3. What is the Municipal Act?

The municipalities act came into existence in 1992 due to the 74th amendment act. It provides a new structure for the municipal system. It is a three-tier structure to look after the urban areas more effectively. This three-tier municipal system is similar to that of the Panchayati Raj system of rural areas. 

According to the municipalities' act and the 12th schedule of the constitution, the municipalities may have a set of 18 functionalities. While electing the people to the municipalities, the reservation categories provided high priority. This municipalities act is also known as the Nagar Palika Act. The main motto of this act is for the transparency and the growth of urban areas.

4. What are the Major Functions of a Municipal Corporation?

The major functions of a municipal corporation are as follows- 

Providing drinking water facility.

It concentrates on giving basic amenities.

It is involved in City development programs.

It focuses on growing trees, preventing the spreading of viral diseases, cleaning the drainage, etc.

It regulates the construction.

It maintains transparency in law and order.

Electricity supply, water supply, other necessities but also be considered.

It also gives importance to the birth and death registrations, burial facilities, and crematorium.

Several additional responsibilities like growing plants, maintaining cleanliness, road expansion, welfare activities, etc are implemented.

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5 Urban Governance

B. Guy Peters, Maurice Falk Professor of American Government and Research Professor at the University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.

Jon Pierre is Professor of Political Science, University of Gothenburg and Adjunct Professor, University of Nordland, Norway.

• Published: 18 September 2012
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This article provides an overview of urban governance as a theory and research field in urban politics. It explains that urban governance as an analytical model emerged alongside this normative redefinition of the role of local government and suggests that it is more apt to describe the relationships between the complexities of the contemporary local government organization, particularly in bigger cities and their equally complex local environment. The article also argues that collaborative forms of urban governance can be considered as a strategy of purchasing organizational capabilities at the expense of some of the traditional values associated with democracy.

This chapter provides an overview of urban governance as a theory and research field in urban politics. Like all overviews, it does not claim to cover the entire range of the field but rather seeks to exemplify the research that is typical to the field and its core underlying perspectives and assumptions. The chapter first briefly discusses various constraints on local government before it proceeds to outline the urban governance field. The following section is devoted to a discussion about different challenges to urban governance. We then look more closely at the role of institutions and different types of objectives in urban governance before we assess the urban governance perspective. A concluding section closes the chapter.

Urban governance, simply defined, is about the formulation and pursuit of collective goals at the local level of the political system. Unlike traditional accounts of urban politics, governance theory makes no prejudgment about which social actors are most central to the pursuit of collective goals. Stoker ( 1998 , 17) argues: “Governance refers to the development of governance styles in which boundaries between and within public and private sectors have become blurred. The essence of governance is its focus on governing mechanisms which do not rest on the recourse to the authority and sanctions of government.” 1 As is the case in all forms of democratic governance, however, we expect political institutions and elective office to play a leading if not dominant role in urban governance. Those institutions, along with processes of popular input and democratic accountability, were put in place to define collective goals and to ensure the provision of financial resources and organizational control to pursue those goals. But one of the lessons coming out the governance research during the past twenty years is that the role of institutions and politicians has changed considerably. This is true for the role of national institutions in their governance context but it is an even more accurate description of local political institutions and actors (see Pierre and Peters 2005 ; Stoker 2000 ).

What makes urban governance distinct from governance at the national level is that the role of formal political institutions and their leaders at the urban level has probably never been as predominant as it is often said to be at the level of the state. Cities, to a much higher degree than national government, are deeply embedded in a web of institutional, economic, and political constraints which creates a set of complex contingencies in the process of governing. Since, as we argue in this chapter, much of the leverage of local political institutions is derived from different forms of concerted action with key societal players, managing these contingencies in a strategic way is the main governance challenge to the local political leadership.

The constraints on institutional capacity and political leadership are considerable. One important set of constraints is related to different aspects of the economy. Cities face more complex contingencies to their business sector compared to the macroeconomic interdependencies that the nation-state is embedded in. Cities, particularly smaller cities, often have fairly homogenous business sectors, which makes them vulnerable to structural changes in the economy. Secondly, taxes and service fees, which make up the bulk of the city's income, are delicate variables in the urban economy; voters will not accept dramatic tax increases but will see such measures as incentives to relocate to more moderately taxed jurisdictions. These economic constraints on urban politics tend to reinforce each other into either upward spirals with economic growth and low social costs, or downward spirals with low growth, increasing unemployment, and rising welfare expenditures.

A second type of constraint is related to institutional variables. Cities are subordinate to constitutional arrangements defining their autonomy and to mandates defined by national government. Central-local relationships vary considerably across different national contexts (Norton 1994 ). In the United States and the UK, local autonomy has historically speaking been very limited; local governments in America are in the classical “Dillon's Rule” seen as “creatures of the state” 2 and similarly in Britain the ultra vires principle states that local governments may only undertake those activities which Parliament has authorized them to do (see Gurr and King 1987 ). 3 At the other end of the spectrum we find the Swedish local government arrangement which accords local authorities considerable autonomy (Westerståhl 1987 ). Seen in the context of urban governance these constitutional arrangements define to a significant degree the range of policy choice available to a city. They also define ex officio channels of communications among local, regional, and national institutions.

A third set of constraints are political or related to public policy. Again, there are important variations among jurisdiction with regard to the significance of these constraints. Local governments are embedded in national, sometimes also transnational institutional and policy frameworks which prescribe or prohibit specific forms of political and administrative behavior among the local governments. In addition, countries such as Japan and the UK have from time to time witnessed ideologically based conflicts between central and local government (Gurr and King 1987 ; Harding 1998 ; Muramatsu 1997 ; Steiner, Krauss, and Flanagan 1980 ). The basic issue here is that central and local governments sometimes disagree about what is the best policy to address a particular societal problem. Although local governments are expected to implement the policies of central government, the reality is often more complex. In addition, most countries have probably experienced some disagreements between central and local government concerning the degree to which central mandates are funded. Thus, central-local relationships are more complex and contested than the constitutional blueprint suggests.

The above political constraints are linked to the nature of policies themselves, and the difficulties in addressing many public problems within the confines of individual urban areas. For example, transportation is only effective when it links cities to suburbs and the hinterlands. Likewise, crime does not respect the political boundaries within an area, so effective policing must be considered in a regional manner. Economic development issues also extend to regions, often even transnational regions (Morgan 2007 ).

Together, these economic, institutional, and political constraints on cities define a rather limited scope of local policy choice. At the same time, the urban policy agenda is a challenging political project, accommodating global pressures such as migration and a concentration of urban space (Hambleton and Gross 2007). This is the backdrop against which theories of urban regimes and urban governance have evolved (Stone 1989 ; 2008a ). In his seminal study of urban politics in Atlanta, Clarence Stone ( 1989 ) describes the gap between the challenges facing a city and the capabilities of that city as “overwhelming.” Essential to the present discussion, Stone also argues that it is precisely in order to increase their “capacity to act” that the urban political leadership forges alliances with resourceful societal actors, primarily the corporate sector.

Stone's urban regime theory defined much of the urban politics research agenda in the United States for two decades, if not more as it still maintains a predominant position in U.S. urban politics (Orr and Johnson 2008 ). In some important aspects, urban regime theory could be seen as a precursor to the evolving analytical models of urban governance, or what Stone himself refers to an “alternative lens” (Stone 2008b ) in the study of urban politics. Both theories look at local political institutions, political leadership, and policy choice in a contextualized perspective and both theories highlight the political strategy of mobilizing a variety of strategic and resourceful actors in the urban territory toward collective objectives. Both theories also define a capacity for choice as related to (i.e. both facilitated and confined by) the political entrepreneurialism of building coalitions with social partners to attain political goals and both theories argue that cities seek to enhance their capabilities through social partnerships; the rationale for city hall to engage those social partners is that it facilitates a blending of public and private resources.

We can now somewhat elaborate our definition of urban governance. Unlike many previous studies that look at the formal powers of local political and administrative institutions, the urban governance perspective is focused on the role of those institutions in steering and coordinating the local community. Political power in the governance perspective is highly contextualized. It is conceptualized almost identically to Clarence Stone's “social production” model of power in his 1989 book on urban regimes: “power to, not power over.” The formal power bases of local institutions are to some degree used as bargaining chips with which cities gain access to resources controlled by private business or other social partners.

Thus, urbanists’ attention has shifted from local government to urban governance. The core research issues in urban governance relate to the role of local institutions in the process of urban governance. The pursuit of collective objectives is conducted through a process involving a wide variety of actors among which public actors are but one category. Services are produced and delivered in cooperation with the market or civil society (see Clarke 2001 ). The role of the city in this process is to set up goals and coordinate the actions of public institutions, market actors, and voluntary associations. Urban governance thus sees the steering and coordination of the local society as a process wherein the role of the local government is not fixed as a constitutional mandate but rather a variable both in terms of its strength and its functions.

Some forms of exchange between the local government and its external environment have always taken place; indeed, it is impossible to think of any system of government that does not, in some way or other, utilize societal resources for its purposes or conducts dialogue with significant societal players. This means that we should be careful to think of governance as a new phenomenon that evolved in the 1980s. Governance—the process of societal steering and coordination—is as old as government. What has changed, rather, is the role of government in governance (Bell and Hindmoor 2009 ; Pierre and Peters 2000 ). This applies to all levels of government but arguably most strongly to local government. We are therefore uncomfortable with the common statement that there has been a “shift from government to governance” (see, for instance, Rhodes 1997 ). Government is still there, just as governance is an old feature of society. Its role has changed in important aspects; society's complexity has increased; and globalization urges us to rethink much of what we previously knew about domestic institutional capacity. But all of that being said, government remains, for the time being, the key player in governance albeit in a slightly different than before.

The new forms of urban governance that emerged during the 1980s and 1990s in the UK referred not so much to what local governments do but rather to how they do it, and what role they play in governing (Stoker 1998 ). Comparative analyses of urban governance argue that local governments “differ more in what they govern than in how they govern” (Teune 1995 , 16). A slightly different way of describing these changes would be to say that the “governance turn” is primarily related to changes in governance style and to a lesser extent as a matter of changes in the substantive issues at the core of local government service delivery. From both perspectives, however, there has not been a distinct “shift” from government to governance but the role of government in governance has certainly changed.

In addition, there are also normative and ideological aspects of the concept of governance that need to be separated from governance as an object of academic study. The urban governance perspective accords nonelected actors a significant role in the process of collective goal definition, implementation, and service delivery. This involvement of societal actors in the process of governing is at the heart of the (urban) governance discourse. That having been said, however, cities must maintain a delicate balance between a broad societal mobilization of external resources on the one hand, and maintaining a leading role in the governance process on the other. In many contexts, this notion of political and democratic control over the urban space might well be wishful thinking as there are powerful corporate actors involved in urban governance which have the capacity to make a powerful imprint on the city if they so choose.

The normative claim that elected and accountable officials ought to have the final word on collective matters in urban governance is just that—a normative claim which may or may not be reflective of the ways things actually work. Jill Simone Gross and Robin Hambleton suggest that to some, governance “is less a creative process for solving societal problems than a mechanism for allowing the state to abdicate its responsibilities for providing social care and support” and that “governance in the absence of strong government can lead to urban breakdown” (Hambleton and Gross 2007, 9). Again, there has been less of a “shift from government to governance” than a change in the role of government in governance. These transformations of the role of political institutions and elected officials in the process of governing have, as Hambleton and Gross argue, both direct normative implications and also raise questions about the quality of governance.

The blending of public and private resources which is the sustaining logic of both urban regime theory and urban governance theory raises important questions about accountability and democratic control. Public-private partnerships represent in many ways the epitome of this problem. Today there is a wide range of such partnerships at all levels of government created for a number of different purposes (see Osborne 2000 ; Pierre 1998 ). The partnerships that emerged at the local government level during the 1980s and 1990s were primarily set in place to help boost economic development. They were also meant to signal, in the spirit of Thatcherism, the idea that the role of politics was not to regulate and control business but instead to promote economic development.

1. Challenges to Urban Governance

We discussed previously the economic, institutional, and political constraints on local government and urban governance. The significance of these constraints comes into play as the city addresses different types of challenges to its governance. Cities are for the most part dynamic creatures that adapt to changes in their external environment at the same time as they seek to reshape and develop their urban space and economic base. The historical record suggests that some cities have adapted successfully to changes in their environment; consider for example cities that were quick to embark on the transition toward a postindustrial economy. However, history also provides ample evidence that not all cities possess this capacity to adapt to changes in the external environment.

Some time ago now John Mollenkopf ( 1983 , 40) devised a simple typology of American cities based on their economic history and transformative capacity. He differentiated between the old industrial cities, which were not able to regenerate the local economy as structural change hit the industry; the formerly industrial cities which have successfully redefined their economic base into a service-sector economy; and the “new” cities, for example cities in the American Southwest which could enjoy an economic boom without having to carry a financial and social legacy of declining industries. The typology suggests that transformative capacity is not a “given” but rather, we suggest, a quality related to urban governance. While economic restructuring urges the city leadership to play a reactive rather than a proactive role, that role can be executed in many different ways. Most importantly, perhaps, forging or maintaining close relationships with the corporate sector is an important strategy for city leaders to address issues related to the impact of economic restructuring and thus mitigate its effects on the city. Some cities simply appear to be better at changing than others, whether that change is in response to external shocks or initiated by the city leadership. By nourishing close contacts with all strategic players in the city, its leaders increase their capability to act and maintain some degree of policy choice. Whether that capacity to accommodate change depends on political leadership or the corporate sector's commitment to place or the involvement of civil society in the governance process is an issue beyond this chapter.

1.1. Globalization

It is difficult to avoid globalization as a key impetus for change at the local level. The literature on the impact of globalization on cities and regions argues with some consistency that global and transnational flows of financial resources, goods, information, and people have exposed urban and regional economies which previously were protected by the state to a new set of powerful pressures, but also that the institutions of the state mitigate those pressures (see for instance Beauregard 1995 ). Domestic institutions, through regulation and financial and institutional support, cushion the impact of global competition on businesses that had previously been secluded from overseas competition. This arrangement presupposes a rather proactive, regulatory state and intergovernmental relationships which facilitate this set of roles.

Reality has offered a more dismal account; cities and regions that have found themselves in dire economic circumstances as a result of overseas competition have for the most part been offered precious little support from central government. Such support was much more common during the structural crises of the 1960s or 1970s than in the globalization era. And, where support indeed has been offered it has typically been short-term remedies to accommodate labor or to help facilitate retraining. This pattern seems to hold true for a wide variety of countries, for example, Japan, the Scandinavian countries, the UK, and the United States (for an overview, see Hall 1987 ; see also Boyer and Drache 1996 ; Hirst and Thompson 1999 ). Thus, cities and regions frequently find themselves more alone in the accommodation of global economic pressures than much of the literature on global-local connections seems to suggest (cf. Clarke 2003 ).

The increasing speed of economic restructuring which is a trademark of the global economy thus places a major challenge on the urban political agenda. The task is not so much related to accommodating laid-off labor; that would be a task above and beyond what most cities are capable of. Instead, the governance challenge is to mobilize the political and economic spheres of the community toward a strategy of economic modernization which makes the city less vulnerable to rapid changes in the global economy. For the vast majorities of cities, this has meant promoting a long-term increased diversification of the local economy with an emphasis on service-sector businesses and management services.

Again, since these strategies include all major players in the city, the urban governance perspective seems better geared to conceptualize and account for these strategies compared to an analytical focus solely on the city's political and administrative institutions. In some cases (Melbourne being one example) it is the business community, not the city's elected leadership, which initiates a proactive strategy to accommodate global economic pressures. Private-sector-led economic development puts some pressure on city government to deliver on its part of the project.

1.2. Migration

Robin Hambleton and Jill Simone Gross ( 2007 ) argue that urbanization and migration are the two main manifestations of globalization at the urban level. If urbanization is more typical of those countries that industrialized during the global era, like China, migration has risen on the urban policy agenda in both developing and developed countries. Today, a major city like Toronto has a population where 45 percent are immigrants to the city (Simone Gross 2007, 86). It goes without saying that accommodating and integrating these large groups of immigrants poses a major challenge to the city.

Migration as a policy and administrative problem plays out slightly differently in different national and political contexts. The Scandinavian and European welfare states were built on the tacit assumption that the political economy would be a fairly closed system with only marginal movement in and out of the system. With increasing migration, large groups of immigrants have become eligible for welfare-state services compelling central and local government to increase their financial input into welfare-state programs. Local government, which provides the basic safety net in the welfare system in most European countries, has had to prioritize these social expenditures as part of the accommodation of migration.

Migration covers a wide range of cross-border movements (see Cornelius et al. 1994 ; Geddes 2003 ). The demographics of many European and Asian countries with a growing population in postretirement ages have meant that these countries face labor shortages and therefore actively seek to recruit labor from the outside world. Moreover, a large part of contemporary migration is caused by armed conflict or climate change. National and local governments have a major challenge in trying to link migration to labor demand. At the local level, such local labor market programs probably benefit from networks between the city administration and the business community.

1.3. Balancing Market Forces against Collective Objectives

The city's relationship to private capital, or urban political economy, was a major field in urban politics alongside urban regime analysis. 4 Ironically, urban political economy lost momentum at about the same time as globalization entered the urbanists’ agenda. For the present context we will not go into the urban political economy terrain, other than to point out that as is the case with urban regime theory, urban political economy has a governance dimension which is essential to an understanding of the potential for coordinated action.

More broadly, cities must nourish a delicate balance in their relationship with private business. Market actors generate the growth in the local economy, provide jobs, and (in many countries) pay tax to the city. This tends to give private business what Charles Lindblom ( 1977 ) once referred to as a “privileged position” in urban governance; even if there is a pattern of interdependence between city and business it is an asymmetrical interdependence where business is more important to the city than vice versa .

The challenge to urban governance that comes out of this asymmetrical interdependence could be defined as one of integrating the business community into collectively defined projects without imposing so much political control that business decides to relocate to more probusiness locales. As a key societal player in most cities, the business sector has the capacity, through action or inaction, to determine much of the outcome of the city's policies. In his classic study of the political struggle in Gary, Indiana, to reduce air pollution from the local steel mills, Matthew Crenson notes that “though U.S. Steel never really threw its weight against the anti-pollution forces, its weight was felt all the same … In spite of its political passivity, U.S. Steel seems to have had the ability to enforce inaction on the dirty air issue” (Crenson 1971 , 78). Cities do not bite the hand that feeds them and tend to avoid enforcing tough regulation on local business. At the same time, cities have a responsibility not just toward the business sector but the local community as a whole.

A somewhat different aspect of this problem is related to the privatization of public space in many cities, not least in the United States. As Margaret Kohn shows, privatizing public space in cities has major ramifications on public debate and discourse as the right to free speech can only be claimed in public spaces, not in privately owned facilities such as shopping malls (Kohn 2004 ). Since urban politics from Tocqueville onward has been described as the unsurpassed setting for democratic training and political socialization, removing free speech from that space represents a serious encroachment on (urban) democratic governance. Again, however, the city has to balance the interests of its business community against collective values and objectives.

1.4. Playing the Multilevel Governance Game

As we pointed out earlier in this chapter, cities are embedded in national, sometimes also transnational institutional and constitutional arrangements. These arrangements define to a large extent the formal and actual autonomy of local governments. In addition, however, they also provide opportunity structures for cities to extract financial and other resources from higher echelons of government. With the growing importance of transnational institutions—the European Union (EU) being the prime example—or transnational or even global agreements, “agendas” or “protocols” that identify local government as a key policy agent, the vertical relations between the city and institutions and actors become increasingly important as well. These complex webs of vertical exchanges between institutions and actors from the global to the local levels are referred to as multilevel governance (see for instance Bache and Flinders 2004 ; Berger 2003 ; Betsill and Bulkeley 2004 ; Hooghe and Marks 2003 ; Peters and Pierre 2001 ).

Multilevel governance differs in several important aspects from traditional models of intergovernmental relationships (Torfing et al. 2012 ). One such important difference is that unlike traditional intergovernmental relationships, multilevel governance is essentially nonhierarchical; for instance, cities can engage transnational institutions, or vice versa , without having to consult the nation-state government level. This is the typical modus operandi of the EU structural funds or agricultural support programs. Second, these contextually defined institutional relations are negotiated, more than they are a matter of control and subordination. Third, participation, too, is defined by context and agency zeal rather than by legal requirements or regulation. Funds are created for specific purposes; conferences involving potential stakeholders are organized at short notice and circulated selectively; or a task-specific network to address an issue which includes several institutional levels is formed in an informal way and those actors and interests that are “in the know” may get access to these forums. This is part of the reason why so many European cities and regions spend large amounts of financial resources on lobbyists in Brussels or on maintaining permanent offices in the EU capital.

Taken together, all of this suggests that for a city to become involved in multilevel governance it is essential to have an open organization and to be involved in networks of various types. For the urban political leadership there is a distinct challenge in maintaining productive horizontal networks with strategic players in the local community while at the same time participating in the wide variety of regional and transnational forums, networks, and institutions which constitute the city's vertical environment. The vertical linkages are in many ways as important, if not more so, than the horizontal networks within the community, particularly in order to mobilize resources or be present when decisions that concern the city are made.

2. Urban Governance: Institutions and Objectives

Although urban governance should be perceived as a process, institutions play important roles in that process. However, one of the major topics of debate among governance scholars revolves around the role of institutions. In the more general governance debate, the standpoints cover the entire range from “state-centric” models of governance in which institutions are seen as leading actors, to “society-centric” governance which accords little or no role for government (see Kjaer 2004 ; Kooiman 1993 ; 2003 ; Pierre and Peters 2005 ; Rhodes 1997 ). The short answer to the question of who is more right is probably “it depends”; different levels of government, different national context, different policy sectors, and different specific issues show different roles for political institutions and actors and societal actors. In the urban setting, institutions are more constrained and contingent on external resources, as we pointed out earlier. We therefore expect urban governance, all else being equal, to have a stronger component of society-centrism than, say, governance at the nation-state level.

One of the problems in the literature on urban governance is that it, perhaps for obvious reasons, has been almost exclusively concerned with various aspects of collaborative strategies at the urban level. Thus, a great deal of effort has gone into studying the roles of networks and other governance structures and into understanding what facilitates or complicates collaborative governance. We argue, however, that in order to understand the composition of any governance structure and its key players you need to understand the objectives of governance. Who you decide to team up with depends to a very large extent on what it is that you seek to accomplish. If economic growth is the chief governance objective, political officials in the city will typically approach the corporate elite to see how closer cooperation can promote economic development (Pierre 2011 ). The consequence of that strategy, as Clarence Stone ( 1989 ) demonstrates, is that other urban policy objectives such as neighborhood development or distributive programs are given less political attention.

Another way of describing this relationship between the composition and the objectives of urban governance is to say that gaining access to the governance structure is imperative to societal players who wish to have a say in the process of defining the urban policy agenda. This means that the formation of a governance network or any other governance structure is far more contentious and controversial process than is often assumed. Governance networks are typically said to be composed by a constellation of actors sharing the same basic interests and objectives (see Sörensen and Torfing 2007 ). Thus, composition and objectives are defined in one and the same process. Where there is a stronger component of political institutions and actors in the governance structure, however, deciding on the governance forms, procedures, and participants (what is referred to as meta-governance) becomes critical to the objectives of governance.

The reader might summarize what we have said thus far by thinking that urban governance is an urban political strategy to define and pursue, in concert with other major players in the urban context, collective objectives. These objectives could be either “defensive,” that is, aimed at accommodating or resolving policy problems in the face of significant restrictions on the city's capacity to act, or “offensive,” that is, defining the ideal scenario for the city and a strategy on how to attain those goals. Just as globalization offers both challenges and opportunities to a city, so do policy contexts like climate change, migration, and sustainable development. Urban governance, in this perspective, becomes a process where an eclectic mix of actors, each with their own interest, is mobilized toward a collective goal. Political institutions and actors may or may not play a leading role in this governance. The outcomes are only marginally contingent on the success of the local agency, as national or transnational forces frequently redefine the preconditions for the urban governance. Another way of describing this could be to say, quite simply, that urban governance is messy, as Leach and Percy-Smith ( 2001 ) portray urban governance in the UK.

Admittedly, this is a bleak image of urban governance. While it is not very difficult to think of empirical cases that fit this pessimistic account of urban governance, it is also easy to think of a large number of cases where urban governance has been much more successful. A large number of cities (Baltimore, San Francisco, Manchester, Melbourne) have conducted a redevelopment of their downtown or waterfront areas, creating new spaces for housing, leisure, and consumption. Other cities (New York City) have been able to curb staggering crime rates. Yet other cities have been able to redefine their economic base from traditional industry to a postindustrial economy based in service sectors like health care, financial management, trade, fashion, design, entertainment, or the arts (Pittsburgh, Milan, Cleveland, Osaka, Gothenburg, Glasgow). These major projects would not have been possible without a broad mobilization of actors in the local territory combined with the influx of external resources. Needless to say, the role of the political leadership in these cases varies but it is extremely difficult to think of successful cases that did not see that leadership playing a mobilizing and coordinating role.

Such political leadership is perhaps not only critical to the success of large urban regeneration projects; it is also to a large extent a precondition for democratic accountability. The vast majority of such projects were enabled by a cocktail of financial resources from the local government, the business community, national government, and, in the European context, transnational funds from the EU. The role of private actors cannot be generalized, nor can we say something about the institutional arrangements within which different monies were pooled. What does seem clear, however, is that holding political officials to account in these complex processes is a rather daunting task. Accountability is preconditioned on control but we have no chance of ascertaining that elected politicians were, in fact, in control. This problem is not just typical to mega-projects redefining the economy of a city; it is present also in local public-private partnerships in small municipalities.

The broad mobilization of societal actors which is a defining feature of urban governance also holds one of the key problems associated with that governance; the problematic accountability and the limited role of popular input into the urban political agenda. True, such governance significantly enhances the city's “capacity to act” (Stone 1989 ), but that capacity comes at the price of a distinct political leadership which can be assessed against democratic criteria. It could be that output-based accountability makes up for the loss in traditional, input-based accountability; “if it works it's good, if it doesn’t it isn’t.” There is growing empirical evidence that such output-based legitimacy is becoming as important as legitimacy from the input side of the political system, if not more so (see Gilley 2009 ; Peters 2011 ). Result-based accountability is not without significant conceptual problems—how do we know with some degree of certainty who is responsible for specific outcomes?—but its role is clearly growing.

3. Assessing the Governance Approach in Urban Politics

A perennial problem in governance research is that it sometimes conflates the normative, empirical, and analytical meanings of the concept of governance (see Pierre and Peters 2005 ). Today, governance refers to a particular interactive form of governing, to a normative model of how cities and states should be governed, and to a political science theory of governing. Governance became a buzzword among both political scientists and practitioners during the 1990s and early 2000s. It represented a fresh perspective on the preconditions for governing increasingly complex societies. Instead of trying to break through social complexity, government should “steer, not row” (Osborne and Gaebler 1992 ; but see Peters 1997 ). In the normative model of urban governance, local government is seen as a political and organizational “hub” in the local community, defining objectives and making priorities but delivering services and promoting economic development in concert with societal players.

Urban governance as an analytical model emerged alongside this normative redefinition of the role of local government. There is, to be sure, not yet a theory of urban governance. Instead, urban governance has, as mentioned earlier, been seen as an “alternative lens” through which urban politics can be understood (Stone 2008b ) or as a framework identifying phenomena “worthy of study” (Stoker 1998 , 18). As such, this approach will ask many of the same questions that more conventional models would ask, but also adds other dimensions. In particular, the governance approach emphasizes the extent to which government is not alone in the processes of steering and can employ a range of other actors.

Perhaps the biggest strength of the urban governance approach to urban politics is that it helps conceptualize what appears to be the practice of urban politics and leadership—to seek coalitions and cooperation with other resourceful players in the local community. Thus, theory corresponds nicely with real-world behavior in the processes of steering economy and society. At the same time, the theory asks pertinent and important questions about the extent to which this model of governance delivers on baseline democracy requirements like transparency, accountability, and popular input.

Also, urban governance is more apt to describe the relationships between the complexities of the contemporary local government organization, particularly in bigger cities, and their equally complex local environment. Approaches that look solely at formal institutional arrangements fail to note the significance of agency and political entrepreneurialism. That said, there may be additional institutional structures created that link government, society, and market actors. These institutions may be more complex than conventional public sector organizations, and more difficult to manage, but they are crucial for steering in the complex environment within which contemporary urban governance occurs.

4. Concluding Comments

Urban governance as an analytical framework or proto-theory has helped scholars understand the incentives, but also challenges, related to collaborative forms of governing. Collaborative forms of urban governance could be seen as a strategy of purchasing organizational capabilities at the expense of some of the traditional values associated with democracy such as popular input, transparency, and accountability. This is not to suggest that those values are completely lost, but it is to say that the manifestation of those values will have a different appearance compared to more traditional forms of governing. Accountability becomes tied more to performance and less to representation; goal definitions reflect the increasingly complex and fragmented society and less the collective objectives of the polity; transparency prevails but will uncover processes that are less and less the real loci of political power; and equal treatment becomes neither possible nor desirable in the context of diversifying public service and the empowerment of the customers of those services.

At some stage or other, assessing governance arrangements becomes almost impossible without some normative benchmarks. Some standards of good governance apply regardless of the level being considered. We have already demonstrated that effectiveness is important for urban governance, whether that involves collaborative means or not. Likewise, any properly devised governance arrangements must emphasize accountability, and we would hope that governance would also be participative and democratic. These normative standards are not, however, unambiguous and they must be considered in light of the particular urban settings and the goals of the actors involved.

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Pierre's research for this chapter has been supported by a grant from the Swedish Science Council and a sabbatical grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundations. We appreciate the helpful comments on an earlier draft of the chapter from the Handbook editors.

This is not the place to rehearse the entire range of different definitions of governance, from Rhodes ( 1997 ) society-centred definition of governance as self-organizing networks to Bell and Hindmoor's (2009) more state-centric argument that different modes of governance are different strategies of the state to govern society.

That said, states do delegate substantial authority to sub-national governments, e.g. through home rule charters for cities.

Please note that recent legislation in the UK has accorded local government somewhat more autonomy.

See chapters by Chapter 23, Kantor and Turok, and Chapter 24, Garcia and Judd in this Handbook.

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Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World (2003)

Chapter: 9 the challenge of urban governance.

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Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 9 The Challenge of Urban Governance The preceding analysis of the demographic, social, and economic aspects of the urban transition has emphasized three important features. First, we have demon- strated the inevitable tendency for the global population to become urbanized. Second, we have illustrated the growth of a system of urban places—at both an international and national level—dominated by very large urban regions that are responsible for generating a significant proportion of national wealth. And third, we have argued that these large urban regions are functional because they have been integrated through improvements in the transactional environment of the flows of people, commodities, capital, and information. One of the least well- understood elements on this list is information. The information requirements for the management of large cities are impor- tant conditioning factors in the cities’ institutional elaboration. With the spread of democratization and decentralization now under way almost everywhere, lo- cal governments are increasingly being required to operate with the speed and efficiency of private business while facing ever more complex political and regu- latory issues. Local governments must digest an immense amount of information to perform their duties in a fair and efficient manner. Yet data are severely lack- ing in many cities throughout the developing world. The typical 10-year interval between censuses presents a problem for policy analysis and planning for large cities, where the metropolitan population may easily grow by 1 or 2 million in- habitants in 5 years. Moreover, demographic data at the subnational level typically are not processed or made available for several years after a national census has been conducted. Governments could also benefit greatly from data on population size, growth, and composition; differential fertility and mortality rates; and socioeconomic char- acteristics for numerous small-area units, which could then be aggregated to an- alyze trends within various parts of a metropolitan region. Employment data are particularly important here, since population growth has outstripped job growth 355 Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 356 CITIES TRANSFORMED in urban places in most developing countries. These data are also lacking or at least not readily available to planners and policy makers. Planners often have only rudimentary knowledge of the numbers and characteristics of recent migrants in most large developing-country cities. Moreover, cities’ own projections of their future population growth often have been widely off the mark. Planning is further hampered by limited information about local land markets. Most large cities lack sufficient, accurate, and current data on patterns of land con- version and infrastructure deployment. Frequently, urban maps are 20 to 30 years old and lack any description of entire sections of cities, particularly burgeoning periurban areas. In most large cities in developing areas, each municipal agency or department typically maintains its own database, often using differing standards and rarely sharing data. Computerization of such data is still relatively uncommon. Many municipal agencies continue to rely on paper files and maps, which are often stored in formats and at scales so diverse that they cannot be compared or col- lated and are not easily updated (Bernhardsen, 1999). There are almost no exam- ples of integrated databases for the constituent parts of large metropolitan regions. This is hardly surprising given the large number of political entities constituting most metropolitan regions, with their differences in age, socioeconomic needs, and financial and managerial capacity. Typically, there are reasonable data for the central city, with data (often noncomparable) for the outlying municipalities being of varying quality. This chapter is concerned with the political and institutional implications of the urban transition. For some commentators (Ohmae, 1990; Scott, 1998), the urbanization process is a result of powerful global forces that are, at the same time, leading to a reduction in the political power of the nation state. Whether or to what extent this may be the case, there appears to be ample evidence that the urban transition of the twenty-first century will involve a significant renegotiation of political relationships between national and urban governments. Just as the present system of governance grew out of the replacement of city states by national states (Mumford, 1961), new systems of governance may very well emerge from the current urban revolution. Underlying these political questions is one fundamental fact. The way in which present patterns of urban growth are being framed territorially differs from that of earlier periods of urbanization. Previously, government was organized on the basis of rural-to-urban responsibilities that were defined both spatially and structurally. Government was organized vertically so that tasks were divided among the national, provincial, and county levels, as well as highly local units of urban administration such as cities and towns. Each of these levels of gov- ernment was defined in terms of discrete spatial areas, although there were often overlaps in administrative responsibilities. Today there is general agreement that the rapid urbanization of developing countries should involve some reorganization and even reconceptualization of Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 357 systems of governance. For example, the increasingly close interaction between central cities and their rural hinterlands (made possible by improvements in trans- portation and information transmission, among other things) suggests that rural and urban jurisdictions need not always be administered separately. And the fact that very large urban regions (including their hinterlands) are in many countries the source of both major economic initiatives and advances in national productiv- ity suggests that these city-regions should not remain under the restrictive control of other levels of government if they are to reach their full potential for devel- opment (see Scott, 2001). Finally, the emerging importance of cities and city- regions in the world economy underlies the generalized shift from power relations based on pyramidal and hierarchical structures to those grounded increasingly in networks and horizontal relationships (Castells, 1997). This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the concept of urban gover- nance and the issues involved, which are illustrated by the case of the Bangkok Metropolitan Region. We then undertake a detailed review of the major challenges of urban governance in developing countries. Next we examine the question of whether there is, in fact, a single “best” model of urban governance. The final section of the chapter presents conclusions and recommendations. THE CONCEPT OF URBAN GOVERNANCE While the concept of governance is widely used today, its common usage in the social sciences is a product of the last decade and a half. In a lengthy discussion of governance as applied to urban examples throughout the developing world, McCarney, Halfani, and Rodriquez (1995) find that an important element in the development process, explicitly lacking in many official and agency-based def- initions, is the connection of government, and particularly local government, to emerging structures of civil society. Accordingly, they define governance as “the relationship between civil society and the state, between rulers and ruled, the gov- ernment and the governed” (McCarney, Halfani, and Rodriquez, 1995: 95). Im- portant elements of this definition were adopted by other researchers writing about comparative local government in developing countries (Wilson and Cramer, 1996) and were eventually incorporated into the United Nations Development Program (1997a: 2–3) current definition: Governance can be seen as the exercise of economic, political and administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels. It comprises the mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations and mediate their differences [emphasis added]. One reason for the emergence of the concept of “governance” or “urban gov- ernance” is that the context within which local government operates has become Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 358 CITIES TRANSFORMED much broader and more complex. In the United States, researchers dealing with metropolitan problems increasingly use the term “metropolitan governance” rather than “metropolitan government” because of the more inclusive connotations of the former (Stephens and Wikstrom, 2000: 47). Similar ideas have begun to take root in Europe. In an important article on France (where a Law of Decentralization was first passed in 1981), Le Gal`es (1995) argues for a shift in nomenclature from “the government of cities to urban governance.” While the term “local government” is associated with a formal description of powers and responsibilities of urban au- thorities, local politics and the way in which French cities are administered are changing rapidly. According to Le Gal`es (1995: 60), “the term ‘governance’ sug- gests . . . functions and actions of government, but without the idea of uniformity, rationality, or standardization. The term ‘urban governance’ implies a greater di- versity in the organization of services, a greater flexibility, a variety of actors, even a transformation of the forms that local democracy might assume, and taking into account citizens and consumers, and the complexity of new forms of citizenship.” The emergence of a discussion of “governance” in a continental European context is of more than purely scholarly interest, since for some time the concept was considered an Anglo-Saxon term, and as such inappropriate outside English- speaking countries. Some Latin American researchers believed the more apt terms to be “governabilidad” and “governabilidade” in Spanish and Portuguese, respec- tively, which essentially mean “governability.” But as Coelho and Diniz (1997) argue, the problem in the case of Brazil after formulation of the 1988 Constitution was not decision-making incapacity (or “ingovernability”), but rather the inability of leadership to achieve sufficient support and legitimacy to implement a whole host of technical measures. As a result, the authors propose retaining the concept of governability (governabilidad), but at the same time accepting a new concept, governance, to denote the state’s command and steering capacity, its capacity to coordinate among politics and interests, and its capacity to implement measures from the level of the center to the local area. The concept of local governance, they add, brings to bear the political dimension “and places the interdependence of state and civil society at the center of the debate” (Coelho and Diniz, 1997: 113). The intersection of state and civil society, in this view, takes place at all levels of government—from the most local to the national. Discussing Africa, the French planning writer Jaglin (1998) first notes how the concept of governance permits the incorporation of a wide variety of actors and groups in both the formal and informal sectors, as well as local, national, and international groups and agencies. The situation in South African cities in the mid-1990s, however, was extreme. In the transition from an apartheid system in which the majority population was totally excluded from power to a (potentially) fully democratic local government system, an elaborate process of dialogue and negotiating forums ensured a relatively smooth movement from exclusion to in- clusion. Jaglin argues that the complexity and multisectoral nature of this process can best be described under the rubric of governance. “In imposing a form of Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 359 representation of the political class, the private sector and local residents (through the ‘civics’ based in black townships) at the center of the required forums, the law made governance official, since it obliged the different actors to negotiate before local policies could be considered” (Jaglin, 1998: 31). Beyond the pure concept of governance, which to us denotes the neutral rela- tionship between government and the governed (mediated for some through cul- ture and political practices), many writers and policy makers now speak of “good governance.” While one must be careful not to reproduce in such a value-laden concept all the sociocultural and institutional prerequisites of government in de- veloped countries, the notion of good governance carries with it a premise of institutional design that is at once open and accountable to civil society in gen- eral, and effective in terms of financial management and policy implementation. Good governance involves an effective balance between the raising of revenue and the proper expenditure of this revenue on services and investments that are based on accountable decisions. This model, in turn, implies that many levels of government and many local stakeholders and social groups will be involved. The task of analyzing these changes in the patterns of governance in develop- ing countries is complicated by the diverse paths and scenarios of urbanization and socioeconomic development that exist in the developing world. Yet the expansion of the urban built environment is occurring everywhere, and thus the development of systems of urban governance that can cope with urban expansion is a major priority. The issues associated with urban governance are illustrated by the example of the Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR), which consists of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA), with a population of 8 million, and the five adjacent provinces. In 2000, the BMR was estimated to contain 11.5 million peo- ple. Adding the adjacent industrial heartland of Thailand creates an extended metropolitan region (EMR) of 17.5 million people, making up 28 percent of the total population of Thailand in 2000 (Webster, 2000b: 8).1 This region has been the focus of much of Thailand’s economic development, involving a major change from an agricultural rice-exporting economy to an economy open to foreign direct investment (a high proportion from Japan) in the 1980s and a very rapid increase in export-oriented manufacturing. The result was a period of hypergrowth that made the Bangkok region one of the fastest-growing urban economies in the world, with an annualized growth rate of 17.5 percent in the period 1990 to 1996. With gov- ernment encouragement, this economic expansion also led to the rapid outward sprawl of the region from the city (Webster, 2000b: 9), resulting in increased traf- fic congestion; environmental pollution; and serious infrastructure problems, in- cluding inadequate provision of water and sewerage and a substantial proportion of the population in the periphery living in substandard housing. 1 Much of the discussion in this section is summarized from Webster (2000b). Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 360 CITIES TRANSFORMED As the region grew in size and territory, no adequate system of governance emerged that could solve these problems in a coordinated manner. The city core, the BMA, is under the leadership of an elected governor; 60 elected councilors (one per 100,000 people), making up the Bangkok Metropolitan Council; and a large number of elected councilors in 50 local districts who advise district directors appointed by the governor. While it has a huge staff complement (num- bering 82,950, including teachers, in 2001) (Bangkok Metropolitan Administra- tion, 2001), the Metropolitan Administration has limited powers—although much greater than is the case for other local authorities in Thailand. Moreover, many of its key functions, such as water and electricity service, are under the control of national agencies. Outside the BMA, in the BMR, matters are even more com- plicated as provinces control most of the planning, and there is no overall plan for the EMR. Webster points out there are more than 2,000 local government authorities (many of them serving small villages) in this outer region of urban activity. The period of hypergrowth in Thailand was abruptly halted by the economic crisis that began in July 1997, which was focused on Bangkok. Between 1997 and 1998, the city product fell by one-half. By 1999 the official unemploy- ment rate had increased from 1.4 percent in 1997 to 5.1 percent, reflecting a decrease in construction employment. But the major effect was a decline in in- come among the urban informal sector, such as taxi drivers. Inflation caused in- creases in food and gas prices that also adversely affected the poor. Estimates suggest the slum population of the BMA grew from 1.2 million in 1996 to 1.5 million in 1998, and there appear to have been deteriorating social conditions, including increasing crime, drug use, and suicides (Webster, 2000b). In con- trast with the Indonesian case, however, there was no massive social and polit- ical disruption, for several reasons. First, households proved very adaptable— adopting strategies of outmigration, sharing of income, and increased participa- tion by women in informal-sector activities. Second, many foreign companies, particularly in the manufacturing sector, did not lay off workers but stopped giving bonuses; this was the case, for example, with a number of Japanese companies. As the baht devalued, these firms were able to take advantage of this strategy to export more cheaply. Finally, the government remained stable during this period. In fact, some writers have argued that the crisis benefited Bangkok, first because the city has been able to rebound more quickly than could either Vietnam or Indonesia, its chief competitors for export-oriented manufacturing in Southeast Asia; and second because the cost of living (including rent) has been substantially reduced, making Bangkok more competitive as a site for foreign investment. In addition to these factors, public works programs designed to provide employment have led to a decrease in pollution and traffic congestion. And the national govern- ment has been forced to accelerate its program of administrative decentralization to the local level despite very weak institutional capacity at this level. In this case, Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 361 important attempts to develop new systems of urban governance are being made during a particularly volatile phase of contemporary globalism. The urban form of the larger EMR of Bangkok is thus assuming many similar- ities to other large mega-urban regions in the developing world (see McGee, 1991, and McGee and Robinson, 1995, for a description of mega-urban regions in the Asian region.) Basically, the EMR is divided into three zones—the core, suburbs, and exurbia—on the basis of typical characteristics of each zone. While these three zones function as an economic region, there are sharp differences among them (see Table 9-1). Is there a preferred governance model that best fits such a mega-urban region? There are essentially four categories of mega-urban governance. These categories reflect attempts in other parts of the world to manage large metropolitan regions, a subject to which we return in the penultimate section of the chapter. The first cat- egory, which can be called the fragmented model, is characterized by a myriad of autonomous local government units, each with jurisdiction over a particular func- tion and/or territory. There is sporadic and poor coordination among the various units. This model is the most typical of the American approach to metropoli- tan governance, though some examples exist in developing countries as well. A second category, which can be termed the mixed model, encompasses regional governance approaches in which both central and local government play a role in the administration of a region. This approach is typical of most mega-urban regions in developing countries, including the case of Bangkok discussed above. A third form of administration is the centralized model. This model, still found in transitional societies such as Vietnam, is dominated by a central government. Finally, we should mention the comprehensive metropolitan governance model, although no pure examples of this approach currently exist in developing coun- tries. In this model there is either a single coordinating governance unit for the whole mega-urban region or a two-tier system in which local governments (or mu- nicipalities) perform a number of local functions, but cede to a higher metropoli- tan (subnational) authority the performance of region-wide functions. A version of this model has been operating in Abidjan, Cˆote d’Ivoire, since 1980, and a “unicity” model has been emerging in South Africa since the local elections of November 2000. Four major Chinese cities that are governed as provinces also fall into this category. While there is no consensus on the type of mega-urban governance that may emerge in this new era of urbanization, there is general agreement that as the wealth of these regions grows, some new form of governance will be required. As mega-urban regions grow in wealth, however, they will need to develop sys- tems of taxation and governance that operate at both a regional and a highly local level, a process that will involve both decentralization and privatization. The next section reviews some of the major issues involved in both designing and implementing governance structures at the metropolitan level in developing countries. Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

362 TABLE 9-1 Extended Metropolitan Region of Bangkok, Characteristics of Main Zones Main Main Population Economic Government Built Form Drivers Threat Core High density Knowledge City Polynuclear Global and Too-rapid Longer-term Tourism government Mixed land use national decentralization residents elected property Political and social Services Hotels, convention developers Generational National centers instability contrasts service agencies Suburbs Medium density Service Provincial Gated suburbs Thai property Industry Outward flow of industry Changwad Shopping malls developers uncompetitive core households Specialized towns Environmental Leisure (golf) agriculture pollution Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World Some low-income Market gardens population Squatters Legal and illegal housing Expressways Exurbia Rural migrants Industry Provincial Industrial estates Foreign direct Overly dependent Changwad In-situ agriculture investment on exogenous towns drivers Squatters Industrial housing Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Ports SOURCE: Adapted from Webster (2000b: 9). 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 363 MAJOR CHALLENGES OF URBAN GOVERNANCE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES As the example of Bangkok illustrates, the governance challenges of large metro- politan areas in developing countries are both diverse and complex. It is arguably the case that this diversity and complexity are increasing with population growth and globalization, and that as this process unfolds, new approaches to governance and the management of cities will emerge. To impose some order on a very large subject, we examine these major urban challenges along five major dimensions: capacity (with a focus on urban services and service delivery); financial resources (with emphasis on generation of local revenues); diversity (in particular, issues of inequality and fragmentation, often leading to violence and a failure to regulate social conflicts); security (involving crime and violence, and approaches to the preservation of public order and the alleviation of violence); and authority (with a focus on decentralization and distribution of powers, local jurisdictional configu- rations, and political participation). The literature on these interrelated topics is voluminous, but a certain disci- plinary specialization tends to attach itself to each of these dimensions: geogra- phers (with some economists) are more likely to focus on urban services, public finance economists on the financial dimension, sociologists and criminologists on the diversity and security dimensions, and political scientists and public adminis- tration specialists on the authority dimension. Each of these dimensions can be related to demographic dynamics. The sectoral policies adopted to address the challenges associated with each have implications for such demographic variables as urban migration, the differential treatment of gender and age groups in the population, and the quality of life of urban residents. The Capacity Dimension During the 1980s, rapid urban growth throughout the developing world began to seriously outstrip the capacity of most cities to provide adequate services for their citizens. Beginning in the 1960s, this incapacity was made visible through the increasing number and extent of slum and squatter settlements in the cities of de- veloping countries. The 1960s and 1970s were a period of extensive contention between municipal (and national) authorities and low-income urban residents. While the authorities sought to limit the use of urban land to the purposes for which it was usually zoned (i.e., high-income residential, commercial, and indus- trial uses), low-income populations attempted to build individual shelters on some of this land or to organize “invasions” for more concerted attempts to convert the land to their use. Clearly, the supply of cheap, serviced urban land fell far behind the demand for land on the part of a rapidly growing low-income population—a Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 364 CITIES TRANSFORMED population that, in addition, had to be close to centrally located sources of income and employment to subsist economically. In many countries, government response to this demand originally took the form of setting up centralized housing banks and construction agencies. For ex- ample, the National Housing Bank of Brazil (established in 1964 and closed in 1986) produced around 4 million units; two major agencies in the Ivory Coast produced close to 40,000 units during the 1960s and 1970s; in Egypt, public hous- ing agencies built 456,000 units between 1960 and 1986; and in Singapore, some 460,000 units were built from 1969 to 1985 (UNCHS, 1996: 219). While this housing made up a substantial proportion of low-income housing in a number of countries by the 1980s, there were major problems: maintenance was poor, public subsidies were high, it was difficult to avoid corrupt practices entirely, and the pace of construction was in any case inadequate to respond to the level of inmigration (Cohen, 1974; Mayo and Gross, 1989; Perlman, 1976; Stren, 1978). Notwithstanding exceptions, such as Hong Kong or Singapore, in which high-quality housing was successfully developed and maintained (Yeung, 1998a: Chapter 4), international agencies turned to more collaborative approaches. Two policy responses stand out. The first is the sites and services projects of the 1970s and 1980s (Cohen, 1983), in which minimally serviced plots in large subdivisions were allocated to low-income applicants, who were expected (with some assistance in the form of training and loans of materials) to build their own homes. The second is squatter upgrading projects, which regularized land tenure and improved services and infrastructure in “slum” areas to encourage the orderly improvement of neighborhoods without displacing existing residents. Variants of these approaches are still operative today, but both involve complex, costly planning and administrative organization, as well as the design of an incentive system to encourage investment by the poor and discourage “leakage” to higher- income groups. From the building of housing units, public policy approaches in developing countries have shifted to “enabling” strategies that encourage land and infrastructure development, as well as support for medium-sized and small- scale enterprise (UNCHS, 1996). Prominent among these strategies are reforms in the governance of urban services—from arrangements based entirely within the public sector, to arrangements based on partnerships with private and nongovern- mental groups (Fiszbein and Lowden, 1999; Freire and Stren, 2001), to various kinds of arrangements with private service providers (Batley, 1996). Overall, these enabling and partnership strategies are consistent with what some observers see as a shift toward “neoliberal” economic policies, as applied at the local level. While the typical package of neoliberal policies (such as fiscal dis- cipline, reduction of public expenditures, deregulation, open exchange rates, and trade liberalization) was generally applied at the national level when first intro- duced, new approaches to reform include social safety nets and decentralization. In the case of the former, many countries began in the late 1980s to develop redis- tributive programs and agencies targeted at the very poor; these programs were Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 365 inevitably operated (at least partially) through institutional mechanisms set up locally—though not, in most cases, within existing local government institutions. As for decentralization, while most studies of national reform policies in the 1980s and 1990s relegate it to a minor role, some authors claim it is an essential element of neoliberalism. Vilas (1996), for example, sees the elaboration of what he calls “neoliberal social policy” in the 1990s as having three basic characteristics: pri- vatization, targeting of the poor, and decentralization. Lowi (2000), with special reference to the United States but by implication including developing countries as well, argues that decentralization (which he qualifies as devolution and links to privatization and deregulation) is a fundamental part of strategies to “address the spillover effects of extreme inequalities” caused by neoliberalism. Behind this assertion is the argument that local elites and political institutions in the United States are better able to manage the “fallouts” from continuing and increasing inequalities than are national institutions. One example of a large city confronting its service and infrastructure chal- lenges in an energetic and innovative fashion is Shanghai. With a population in its metropolitan area of more than 13 million (not including the transitory, unreg- istered population, which may account for a further 3.3 million) and a total land area of 6,340 square kilometers, Shanghai is the largest city in China and one of the largest in the world. The metropolitan area consists of 14 urban districts in the city proper (2,057 square kilometers) and six suburban counties, all within a single area with the status of a province within the Chinese system of government (Wu, 1999a: 207). While Shanghai was a major industrial and commercial center from the mid- 1850s until the takeover of the Chinese Communist regime, it experienced neglect and disinvestment after 1949. Overall, from 1949 through 1983, some 87 per- cent of Shanghai’s revenue was remitted to Beijing, leaving 13 percent for local allocation. By contrast, Beijing and Tianjin averaged 30 percent during the same period. As a result, Shanghai was known as the “golden milk cow” of the planned economy of China (Yeung, 1996: 9). Limited investment in infrastructure and housing meant that urban amenities suffered, so that “by the 1970s and 1980s, the central city’s infrastructure was near collapse. For instance, in the former French Concession, nearly 700,000 dwellings were without flushing toilets. Compared to the national urban average and Beijing (a city of comparable size), Shanghai lagged in several important indices of urban infrastructure, including per capita living space and per capita paved roads” (Wu, 1999a: 208–9). The central government’s neglect of Shanghai began to reverse itself in the early to mid-1980s, culminating in a 1988 agreement between the two to give the city more autonomy in revenue collection and expenditure. In the same year, the city established a foundation to mobilize funds for urban construction; in 1992, this became the Shanghai Urban Construction Investment and Development Company (Wu, 1999b: 2277). This state-owned company allocates funds in many different areas of infrastructure and services and to many different local agencies. Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 366 CITIES TRANSFORMED According to Wu (1999b: 2278), the company “has displayed an impressive record of achievement in infrastructure financing since its creation.” Wu goes on to say that the company . . . has employed a wide range of financing mechanisms, particu- larly through such non-state channels as international capital, bank loans and credits, construction bonds, stock markets and service con- cessions. It has entered into concessions with profit-making enter- prises to operate the three bridges and a tunnel across the Huangpu River. It also has established a number of subordinate entities, mainly in charge of water supply, which are listed on the Shanghai Stock Market. Available official information shows that in 1995 and 1996, funds mobilized by the company accounted for about 76 per cent and 90 per cent, respectively, of Shanghai’s total urban maintenance and construction revenue. These systematic investments had begun to show results by the mid-1990s in terms of road construction, park expansion, and wastewater treatment. Some massive infrastructure projects were completed, including the beginning of a new subway line, a tunnel, and three large bridges across the Huangpu River. The most spectacular outcome of the new emphasis on modern infrastructure in Shanghai has been the development of the Pudong New Area, a virtually new district across the river from the old commercial center to the east of the city. Pudong has been designated the country’s financial center, “the Wall Street of China” (Saywell, 2000: 58). Major financial institutions, such as the Shanghai Security Exchange, as well as many large international corporations (including Philips, General Motors, Eriksson, and Xerox) have already located their offices in the Lujiazui area of Pudong (Wu, 1999a: 214–15). By the end of 2000, some 70 foreign and joint venture companies had established themselves in Pudong’s industrial parks, and some 80 foreign and domestic financial institutions were em- ploying an estimated 150,000 white-collar staff in 20 large office towers (Saywell, 2000: 56). As impressive as they are, these infrastructure achievements have done lit- tle to improve the living conditions of the large majority of Shanghai’s working population, whose per capita living space is no more than 8 square meters on av- erage, with 10 percent of the population living in a space of less than 4 square meters (Wu, 1999a: 208). One of the main problems with housing construction is the cost of urban land. And yet in the future, as land prices increase with ma- jor infrastructure projects and international investments, the cost of housing will rise even higher. The 1996 decision of the Shanghai municipal government to grant residency permits to those from outside the city who purchase an apartment in Pudong worth at least 500,000 renminbi (US$60,200) can only reinforce the polarization of the housing market. Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 367 In addition to the rising cost of land, a major factor behind the lag in housing has been a large increase in the city’s population, caused partly by migration of rural peasants to urban areas. Most of these migrants (often referred to as the “floating population”) do not have official urban status and live in substandard housing. Many live in so-called “villages” named for the provinces from which the migrants originally came. As documented by Solinger (1999), recent rural migrants in major Chinese cities survive under very depressed conditions with respect to access to such major city services as water, electricity, transport, and even cheap food. As one Shanghai citizen complained, “The urban environment is ruined. Wherever there’s a large concentration of mobile population, shacks are erected at will, cooking is done outdoors, the streets are used as public toilets, structures are soiled, and public facilities are destroyed” (Solinger, 1999: 119). Box 9.1 describes the extremely marginal conditions under which some migrants subsist in Shanghai. The living conditions of rural-to-urban migrants in some of China’s largest cities will be a major public policy issue in the years to come. Yet in some respects, the Shanghai case is unique and very promising—at least from the point of view of urban services and infrastructure improvement. But on the housing side, with severe backlogs and pressure for improved accommodation for lower-income groups, it is more typical of the situation common in many cities of the developing world. By the end of the 1990s, a huge gap still existed across the developing world between the effective supply of adequately serviced land and minimal standard housing on the one hand and the demand for accommodation as expressed through what poor families are able to pay on the other. Because land and minimal standard housing are, in general, not supplied quickly enough to keep pace with demand on the part of low-income groups, the backlog is expressed in dramatic fashion through the continuing existence of slums, squatter areas, and other forms of informal housing or impermanent structures. These areas, often totally bereft of services and infrastructure (at least in the early stages of their development), are growing in many cities and declining in few. Estimating the growth in the proportion of the urban population living in “self- help” housing in four major cities of Latin America, Gilbert (1998) shows that the proportion in Mexico City increased from 14 to 60 percent between 1952 and 1990; that in Lima, Peru, increased from 8 to 38 percent from 1956 to 1989; and that in Caracas, Venezuela, increased from 21 to 42 percent from 1961 to 1991. Only Bogota, Colombia, was able to decrease the proportion of the population living in such settlements—in this case, from 40 to 26 percent from 1955 to 1991 (Gilbert, 1998: 82). The Global Urban Indicators Database of the United Nations Centre for Hu- man Settlements (UNCHS), based on a major survey of 237 cities around the world (some 176 of which were listed as being in “developing” countries) reflects the same trends in housing quality. According to 1993 figures, among cities in Africa, on average only 49 percent of dwellings could be considered in compli- ance with local building regulations; for the Asia Pacific region (which in the Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 368 CITIES TRANSFORMED BOX 9.1 Living on the Edge in Shanghai A stone’s throw from the glistening skyscrapers that tower over the eastern Chinese city of Shanghai, three-year-old Wang Kun lives with his parents in a hovel surrounded by festering garbage. A 15-strong tribe of rubbish collectors live in three rows of jerry-built shacks at the side of a rubbish dump in Shanghai’s southeastern Nanhui—one of scores of makeshift villages built on the outskirts of dumps around China’s gleaming economic capital. Wang Kun and his father Wang Jun are from neighboring Jiangsu province while many of their fellow scavengers come from central China’s impoverished Sichuan province. Their numbers are growing. . . . “Rubbish collectors do play an important role in cities and authorities have an ambiva- lent attitude towards them,” said Sophia Woodman, research director of Hong Kong-based Human Rights in China. Crackdowns on garbage collectors can be triggered for arbitrary reasons ranging from National Day celebrations to a senior leader driving past a cluster of migrant dwellings and “thinking we don’t want this in our gleaming modern city,” she added. For 26-year-old Liu Tian, his wife and four-year-old son, who live on a rubbish tip in Sanlitang village in Shanghai’s southern suburbs, the insecurity is bearable. The 800 yuan (97 dollars) Liu can rake in every month operating a smoke-belching machine that turns old plastic bags into rubber is four times more than he would earn in his Jiangsu village. “It’s not a bad life. I earn much more than I would at home and when my son is old enough I want to send him back to school in Jiangsu,” Liu said. . . . The Sanlitang rubbish dump is run by an entrepreneur who hails from Suxian, the same Jiangsu village as Liu Tian and his co-workers. Liu said his boss is doing well for himself but the authorities have asked him to relocate. “We have to move on in a few weeks, some of the other workers have already moved but we don’t know where we’re going yet. We have to wait for the boss to tell us,” he explained. . . . However, for Wang Jun, the smell of the refuse and filth as well as the threat of being driven out by police is no deterrent. “Although work here is dirty and hard, I have more freedom and human dignity than in a factory job,” he said. SOURCE: Agence France-Press (2001) survey does not include Korea, Singapore, or Japan), the figure is 59 percent; and for Latin America, the comparable figure is 74 percent. These figures show that access to adequate housing is still a distant goal for large numbers of people living in these three regions; they also show—all too clearly—that there is a strong rela- tionship between the per capita income of countries (and cities) and the level and quality of housing and urban services supplied to their people (UNCHS, 1999). In general, writes Angel (2000: 320), . . . while the formal housing sector [has] produced the bulk of hous- ing for high-income groups, and while public housing [has been] of Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 369 TABLE 9-2 Percentage of Urban Households Connected to Utility Services, by Region Region Water Sewerage Electricity Telephone Africa 37.6 12.7 42.4 11.6 Asia (Pacific) 63.2 38.5 86.1 26.0 Latin America and the 76.8 62.5 91.6 41.2 Caribbean Industrialized 99.4 97.8 99.4 89.1 SOURCE: United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (1999). limited scope everywhere—except in Hong Kong and Singapore— most low-income housing in the developing market economies was and is produced by the informal housing sector . . . occupying land il- legally (squatting) or built in land subdivisions that do not conform to zoning ordinances and planning regulations . . . without adequate infrastructure, without any state subsidies, and without any formal housing finance. This picture of housing supply lagging badly behind demand runs parallel to a variety of other statistical measures of urban service delivery. Based on the same UNCHS database of 237 selected cities, Table 9-2 reveals a major differ- ence between developing and industrialized regions. In terms of water, sewerage, electricity, and telephone connections, the proportion of urban households receiv- ing urban services is much lower in developing regions. By region, however, there is a clear gradation for each of these services from a low in Africa, through Asia and Latin America, to a high in the industrialized world. The poorest countries (in this case those located in Africa) claim the lowest level of urban services, re- gardless of which service is being measured. A similar gradation of urban service levels—from a low in the poorest cities of Africa to a high in the industrialized world—obtains for virtually all other major urban services not included in this table, including waste disposal, expenditures on roads per person, education, and health services (UNCHS, 1999). In the specific case of health statistics, the UNCHS database shows that African cities lag considerably behind cities in all other regions. Thus in the 87 cities representing Africa in the database, there is an average of 954 persons per hos- pital bed, compared with 566 for Asia Pacific (which includes China), 288 for Latin America and the Caribbean, and 132 for the industrialized world. Child mortality (under age 5) is also high in African cities, at a rate of more than twice that in the Asia Pacific region (UNCHS, 1999: socioeconomic develop- ment tables), and 30 times greater than that reported for the industrialized world. The low quality of health services in African cities is closely related to poor sanitation. The introduction to a major recent comparative study of waste Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 370 CITIES TRANSFORMED management in African cities (Onibokun, 1999: 2–3) makes the following ob- servation: The rapid rate of uncontrolled and unplanned urbanization in the de- veloping nations of Africa has brought environmental degradation. Indeed, one of the most pressing concerns of urbanization in the de- veloping world, especially in Africa, has been the problem of solid-, liquid-, and toxic-waste management. Recent events in major urban centres in Africa have shown that the problem of waste management has become a monster that has aborted most efforts made by city au- thorities, state and federal governments, and professionals alike. A visit to any African city today will reveal . . . heaps of uncontrolled garbage, roadsides littered with refuse, streams blocked with junk, disposal sites constituting a health hazard to residential areas, and in- appropriately disposed toxic wastes. As many commentators have observed, the poorest cities in the world (which are also among the most rapidly growing) have acute capacity problems when it comes to servicing their populations. Not only is there generally a severe short- age (verging on absence) of trained, professional staff to deal with complex urban management problems, but the overall resource levels of poor municipalities are extremely low. Since water and sewer reticulation systems, to say nothing of elec- trical and telephone networks, cost no less in developing than in industrialized countries, substantial financial resources must be found to finance major infra- structural investments. But with per capita municipal revenue figures at such lev- els as US$13.20 in Nairobi, $2.60 in Lagos, $17.10 in Delhi, $27.70 in Dhaka, and $31 in Abidjan, only the most elementary municipal activities and local services can be supported. Latin American revenue figures are somewhat higher—again, depending on the wealth of the country in question—but in rapidly urbanizing countries such as Bolivia (where the revenue per capita in La Paz is US$108) or Guatemala (with Guatemala City having a per capita revenue of $26) (UNCHS, 1999), services and infrastructure cannot even come close to keeping pace with population growth. When services (such as water or electricity) are either par- tially or fully privatized, the new owners have difficulty raising rates to finance new infrastructural investment. Cities in the industrialized world (such as Toronto, with municipal revenue per capita of US$2,087; New York, with $5,829; or Amsterdam, with $4,559) have a much larger pool of local resources from which to finance needed infrastructure. While the individual returns may be somewhat unreliable, the UNCHS survey indicates that in 1993, the average per capita revenue received by municipal gov- ernments in Africa was US$15.20, in Asia (Pacific) $248.60, in Latin America and the Caribbean $252.20, and in the industrialized world $2,763.30. The ratio between the lowest and highest regions is on the order of 1:182. This ratio is much higher than that between per capita income in sub-Saharan Africa and that in the Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 371 “high-income” countries (1:51) listed in the World Development Report (World Bank, 2000c: 275). As discussed in the following section, one important means of dealing with local service capacity problems is to devolve more power to local authorities. While there have been problems in many countries with undertaking devolution before the necessary financial resources are available, local governments are of- ten in closer touch than more central authorities with community and other civil society groups that can support service initiatives. In the Philippines, for example, the Local Government Code of 1991 trans- ferred responsibility for overseeing the implementation of primary health care to local government units. While the Ministry of Health apparently resisted devo- lution at first, the decentralization of many health services in fact took place on January 1, 1993, at which time 595 hospitals, 12,859 rural and urban health units and health centers, and most health programs were (at least formally) transferred from the national to the local level. Significant financial challenges resulted at the local level since revenues were allocated by the central government on the basis of demographic and poverty measures, not the existing distribution of health facilities and programs (Stover, 1999). Here, civil society helped buffer the shock. Since the central Ministry of Health had expended considerable effort on developing relations with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), volunteer health workers, and other community organizations at the local level before the advent of man- dated decentralization, local governments were able to find partners to carry out their primary health mandate, and according to some, the transition in many areas took place relatively effectively (Bautista, 1998). The Financial Resources Dimension While it is impossible to separate the capacity (or incapacity) of cities to deal with the service needs of their population from the financial resources they have at their disposal to do so, it is also the case that the level of resources available is not immutable. While wealthy countries can direct much higher levels of taxes and fees for service to their municipalities and/or private service providers than can poorer countries, the elasticity of supply of municipal revenue in relation to per capita income is clearly greater than zero. One of the reasons for this is that cities and their surrounding regions are often the most dynamic economic units in the country; the more effectively municipalities can build services and infra- structure to facilitate productive economic activity, the more both the country and individual urban citizens will benefit. The logic behind this relationship was at least one of the factors underlying the major decentralization reforms of the 1980s and 1990s throughout the developing world. There is some discussion among researchers as to the fundamental factors behind decentralization in different set- tings and different countries, as we have seen above, but the balance of opin- ion on these initiatives appears to be positive. In any case, as a result of these Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 372 CITIES TRANSFORMED decentralization reforms, local governments (and cities in particular) have been given substantially more power by central governments in many countries around the world. As Manor (1999: 1) points out: Decentralization has quietly become a fashion of our time. It is be- ing considered or attempted in an astonishing diversity of developing and transitional countries . . . by solvent and insolvent regimes, by democracies (both mature and emergent) and autocracies, by regimes making the transition to democracy and by others seeking to avoid that transition, by regimes with various colonial inheritances and by those with none. It is being attempted where civil society is strong, and where it is weak. It appeals to people of the left, the center and the right, and to groups which disagree with each other on a number of other issues. The nature of these decentralization policies varies tremendously—from in- cremental changes in protocols for intergovernmental relations on the one hand to major constitutional amendments or even new constitutional dispensations on the other. Three large countries gave new constitutional powers to municipalities during the period. In Brazil, a new constitution in 1988 considerably increased the power of mu- nicipalities in relation to the states, assigning to them control of intracity transport, preschool and elementary education, land use, preventive health care, and histor- ical and cultural preservation. On the participatory side, municipalities in Brazil were given the right to establish councils of stakeholders (termed in English “mu- nicipal boards” or “community councils”). These bodies, established in most of the largest cities in the country, include unelected representatives of community groups and deal with such important matters as urban development, education, the environment, health, and sanitation. In India, an important constitutional amendment in 1992 provided an illustrative list of functions that were henceforth to be considered appropriate for municipal government; among these functions were planning for economic and social development, alleviation of urban poverty, and even urban forestry. The amendment also limited the degree to which state governments are able to suspend democratic local government (a practice that, until then, had frozen democratic lo- cal governments in nearly half of the largest cities in the country), provided for a revision of state–local fiscal relations, and required that no less than 33 percent of all elected local councilors be women. The new South African constitution of 1996 devotes a whole chapter (con- taining 14 separate articles) to local government. Among other things, this chap- ter (Section 152) states that the objectives of local government (including mu- nicipal government) are “(a) to provide democratic and accountable government for local communities; (b) to ensure the provision of services to communities in a sustainable manner; (c) to promote social and economic development; (d) to Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 373 promote a safe and healthy environment; and (e) to encourage the involvement of communities and community organisations in the matters of local government.” There are two clear messages in these reforms. The first is that municipalities (and other local governments) are now expected to undertake and to finance a much broader range of services and other economic and social activities. The second is that community and important local stakeholder groups must be engaged in the local governance process. In spite of this general assignment of greater powers and responsibilities to municipalities in many countries, revenue has not kept pace with expenditure re- quirements. Not only are most local authorities dependent for up to one-third of their revenue on other levels of government, but their own resources are inade- quate. One important reason for this inadequacy of own-source revenue is that it is usually based on fees for service and property taxes, rather than on more lu- crative and collectible taxes (such as gasoline and income taxes) (UNCHS, 1996: 178–81). In many countries, even mandated central government transfers are not reliable. In poor countries, collecting fees and property taxes is notoriously diffi- cult. Most municipalities in developing countries cannot borrow, and they cannot run a deficit. In addition, local revenue is highly dependent on both macroeco- nomic factors (for example, whether national economies are prospering or in dis- tress) and on the level at which municipalities are permitted to borrow through the market. Under recent conditions of crisis in such countries as Argentina, Brazil, and Indonesia, local authorities have been negatively affected even though they have been able to borrow and their potential sources of local revenue have been augmented by improving the tax base. Comparative data on local government revenues and expenditures are partic- ularly difficult to obtain. Most countries do not supply consistent and reliable revenue and expenditure data. Even the Government Finance Statistics Yearbook published by the International Monetary Fund, the primary and most authoritative source of international data on government finance, gives information on local government finance for only 52 of its 114 listed countries in its 1998 edition, with time-series, detailed data being provided for only 12 developing countries (International Monetary Fund, 1998). Revenue and expenditure figures reported in the UNCHS database, referred to above, appear questionable in the case of some developing-country cities. Havana, Cuba, for example, reports revenues of US$1,418 per capita and capital expenditures per capita of $1,318, while Toronto reports, respectively, $2,087 and $253, and New York reports $5,829 and $582 (UNCHS, 1999). For the most part, as argued above, the level of revenues and expenditures for all cities in poor countries is very low. Given the increase in devolution of powers and responsibilities that has char- acterized the last decade, figures on municipal expenditures are slowly rising in comparison with national government expenditures, but the levels are still low. Figures published in the 1996 Global Report on Human Settlements—covering a sample of 18 wealthy countries; 4 transition countries; and 16 countries in Asia, Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 374 CITIES TRANSFORMED Africa, and Latin America—show that on average, local government expenditures are 22 percent of total government expenditures in the first group, 20 percent in the second group, and only 9 percent in the third group (UNCHS, 1996: 174). Unfortunately, many of these figures are over a decade old. Under Bolivia’s Ley de Participaci´on Popular (the implementation of which began in 1994), municipal governments automatically receive 20 percent of all central government revenues through fiscal transfer. And starting in the early 1990s, Colombia began to trans- fer an increasing fixed proportion of national recurrent income to municipalities— from 14 percent in 1993 to 22 percent in 2002 (Hoskin, 1998: 105). Looking at municipal spending as a proportion of total public-sector spending between the 1970s and the early 1990s for Colombia, Argentina, Chile, and Peru, one finds in- creases of, respectively, 10.5 to 15.7 percent, 5.4 to 8.6 percent, 4.7 to 12.7 percent, and 2.2 to 9.2 percent (UNCHS, 1996: 167). There is good reason to believe—as the Colombian example of fiscal transfer already indicates—that these proportions will rise further in the early years of the twenty-first century. As a result of changes in intergovernmental relations, the financial health of municipalities is slowly improving—at least in some countries. A compilation of data from case studies carried out in the mid-1990s for Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, and Peru shows that transfers from other levels of government to the local level are now relatively high, representing 62.7 percent of total local revenue in Brazil, 54.7 percent in Bolivia, 47.8 percent in Colombia, 42.7 percent in Chile, and 58.1 percent in Peru (Agh´on and Casas, 1999: 77). At the same time, property tax reforms in some countries have resulted in a much higher level of recovery. In La Paz, for example, after the Ley de Participaci´on Popular (1994) devolved property taxes from the central government to municipal jurisdictions, property tax recovery increased considerably—from US$4.6 million in 1993 to $9.3 mil- lion in 1996. In Bolivia, the new law also created “vigilance committees” at the central municipal level, composed of local citizens who were to monitor the use of resources by elected mayors and councils, could propose investment projects, and in some cases could censure and dismiss the mayor (Grindle, 2000: 95–7). The creation of these groups contributed to a heightened sense of local “ownership” in municipal government, and probably to the higher rate of tax recovery as well. And in Bogota, Colombia, recovery rose from approximately 9 million pesos in 1993 to 30 million pesos in 1996 once a system of self-evaluation of property tax had been instituted (Agh´on and Casas, 1999: 78–9). That local tax collection and revenue generation may be as much a governance as a technical issue (requiring, for example, changes in tax codes, property attri- butions, and accounting systems) is illustrated by examples in China and Brazil. In the case of China, market-oriented reforms since the late 1970s have resulted in the devolution of important decision-making powers from the center to localities (Wang, 1994), as well as in changes in the fiscal relations between the two levels of government. While there have been many twists and turns in the redefinition of the fiscal relationship between levels of government, a decentralized market Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 375 environment has clearly emerged. Local governments now enjoy considerable “off-budget” revenues, generated from such sources as donations by individuals and enterprises to specific public projects, profits from township-owned enter- prises, fees for services and fines, and revenue from the leasing of public land to enterprises and developers (Gang, 1999). Indeed, the sale of land use rights has constituted the largest source of income for many cities in the coastal region since the late 1980s (Yeung, 1998b: 177–78, 271–74). In 1992, the last year in which off-budget revenues were officially counted as fiscal revenue, such revenues had reached 93 percent of total formal budgetary rev- enues at the local level, and they are presumably still rising, at least in the aggre- gate. Although observers remark on the difficulty of estimating the contribution of off-budget revenues to large government structures (such as city government), that contribution is undoubtedly considerable. By 1996, such revenues accounted for close to 40 percent of all funding for urban infrastructure (including local pub- lic utility and construction charges, transfers from the central government, and regular municipal budgetary allocations) (Wu, 1999b: 2271–72). While there is controversy over the legitimacy of the way these revenues are allocated (see be- low), local governments use informal revenue generation systems—with the in- volvement of their citizens—to generate necessary resources for the provision of public goods. Gang (1999: 234–5) remarks on the close connection between local participation and effective mobilization of local tax resources: A real challenge . . . is to develop a new type of local governance. Case studies in various regions show that in most places where off- budget revenue makes up a large share of local public revenues, some kind of democratic mechanism has emerged spontaneously. For ex- ample, people have started to use the local People’s Assembly as the mechanism for decision making and monitoring of local public fi- nance. Qingde town of Zhejiang province established three years ago an Assembly subcommittee, a “Financial Committee,” as the de- cision making body for local public finance. Almost 30 percent of the Assembly delegates joined the committee, whose main task is to discuss and decide whether public projects should be initiated, how they should be financed, how the resources should be mobi- lized and how the revenues (mainly off-budget revenues) should be distributed and used. . . . In Shahe town of Shantou city in Guang- dong province, the local people set up three years ago a special local “Board of Directors for Public Projects.” It functions as the decision making (legislative) and administrative body for local public projects, mainly physical projects for infrastructure, including roads, schools and hospitals. The board consists of most of the “elite” of the town, elected by the local people, but includes no current local government officials. It not only makes decisions on projects and fund-raising but Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 376 CITIES TRANSFORMED also takes responsibility for project implementation and fund expen- ditures. In some sense, the board functions like a “parallel govern- ment” in charge of special fields of local public affairs. Meanwhile, the local administration plays the role of an outside monitor: it still carries out other government duties and at the same time monitors the work of the board and reinforces the formal government policies which need to be taken into consideration. In both cases described . . . we can see the development of demo- cratic mechanisms and a new type of local governance. Such new mechanisms minimise the problems that have arisen with off-budget revenues. As it develops spontaneously, based on solid economic motivations, this local democracy holds promise, with an obviously far-reaching impact on local governance. While these new participatory mechanisms undoubtedly open some local eco- nomic systems to participation from the community, there is another side to this process. On the one hand, as researchers have pointed out, local governments and officials in China have been developing large collective enterprises, whose income (described above as “off-budget”) can be used in a constructive fashion for administration, infrastructure improvement, and the establishment of new en- terprises that can expand the revenue base of local governments (Oi, 1992, 1995; Walder, 1994). On the other hand, as Sargeson and Zhang (1999) point out in a case study of Xihu, a suburban district of Hangzhou, the provincial capital of Zhe- jiang, some local officials have taken advantage of these new enterprises to enrich themselves. They have done so by translating their political influence into stock shares, preventing a more balanced distribution of enterprise benefits throughout the local area. The costs and benefits of this decentralized fiscal system in China clearly warrant further evaluation. Another and much better-known case is the development of “participatory budgeting” in Brazil. While versions of this system have been operating through- out Brazil (see, for example, Singer, 1996), the most well-known example of a city practicing the participatory budget system is Porto Alegre, a city of about 1.3 million in the south of the country. The system—which essentially involves ordi- nary citizens in planning for the yearly capital budget—is based on the work of 16 forums based on local regions of the city. In addition, there are 5 thematic forums (created in 1994), addressing education, health and social services, transportation, city organization, and economic development. There is also a municipal budget council with representatives from the regional and thematic forums. The system was originated in 1989 by the Union of Neighborhood Associa- tions. By 1995, some 7,000 people were participating in the regional assemblies and 14,000 more in further meetings to negotiate compromises among regions’ conflicting demands. The system is complex and continues virtually throughout the year. The regional forums even micromanage the actual implementation of Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 377 capital projects (Abers, 2001). According to the municipality, more than 70 cities elsewhere in Brazil and throughout the world (including Buenos Aires, Barcelona, and Saint Denis) have adapted this system to their own needs (Porto Alegre, 1998: 10). A study of the city management process in Porto Alegre (Pozzobon, 1998) reveals that even from 1992 to 1995, the city increased its total tax receipts by 34 percent. The former mayor of the city claims the popularity of the budget- ing system contributed to a tripling of the city’s tax revenues during the period 1989–1999 (Pont, 2001). Abers (2001: 140), examining the participatory budget process, emphasizes the widespread democratic learning that was entailed: Along the way, [citizen] participants have developed a series of demo- cratic skills. The most elementary are the basic habits of collective decisionmaking—holding coherent meetings, allowing all to speak, and learning how to debate and vote on complex issues where choices are multiple. Participants have also gained critical skills in negotiat- ing with the administration. They pressure agencies to produce infor- mation about government actions and to demystify technical rules. They often successfully force administration officials to talk in or- dinary people’s terms and, in doing so, unmask attempts to veil in technical complexity the real reasons for rejecting or changing the demands prioritized. Abers also argues that participatory budgeting would not have been possible with- out the active, time-consuming, and persistent efforts of local government officials to work with neighborhood groups. Pont (2001), the mayor of the city during the period 1996–2000, implies that the participatory system in Porto Alegre was so popular that it resulted in the mayor’s party (the PT or “Worker’s Party”) winning the state governorship in 1996: In the last election [1996] we really guaranteed Olivio Dutra’s [the governor’s] victory with a huge landslide in Porto Alegre. Rio Grande do Sul has a population of almost 10 million; there are about 7 mil- lion voters, and the victory was by 80,000 votes. It was a very tight contest overall, but in the capital we won with a very large margin. So we can say that it was the voters in the capital [Porto Alegre] who guaranteed the victory (Pont, 2001: 146). While Porto Alegre is the best known of the Brazilian cities practicing par- ticipatory budgeting, it is not the only or even the first city to do so. In Piraci- caba, a municipality in the state of S˜ao Paulo, a Citizens Budgetary Committee— in which popular organizations had seats and votes—was established as early as 1980. The initiative died when a new mayor was elected, but other participatory Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 378 CITIES TRANSFORMED initiatives were undertaken in such cities as Lages, Fortaleza, and Recife in the 1980s (Souza, 2001). At the time, these cities were not administered by the PT, but by other leftist parties or coalitions. S˜ao Paulo had a less-than-successful ex- perience with participatory budgeting under mayor Luisa Erundina during 1989– 1992 (Singer, 1996). Since the election in 2000 of another PT administration under Mayor Marta Suplicy, the participatory budgeting process has been revived. On the more positive side, Belo Horizonte, a relatively affluent city in Minas Gerais State, has organized “priorities caravans” consisting of budget delegates making local bus visits to check directly on the problems identified at subregional meetings. Overall, Belo Horizonte has indicated on its Web site that some 200,000 people have already taken part in participatory budgeting (Souza, 2001: 15). In Recife, a much poorer city in the northeast of Brazil, participatory budgeting be- gan with the election of Mayor Jarbas Vasconcelos in 1985 and has continued to the present, including a recent period when the city was administered under a coalition government. Nevertheless, in Recife as in other cities, a relatively small proportion of the total budget is under discussion in the participatory bud- geting process (Melo, Rezende, and Lubambo, 2000). The needs of the poor are a long way from being solved by this process. As a knowledgeable Brazilian writer claims with reference to the process across the country, “although some of the claims and results [of participatory budgeting] deserve more research, the experience does allow low-income segments of neglected areas . . . to decide on investment priorities in their communities. Furthermore, it also argues that en- couraging participation in highly unequal societies like Brazil should be valued more for heightening citizenship rather than for the material gains it may bring to some areas of the cities” (Souza, 2001: 1). The Diversity Dimension As they grow, many cities become increasingly diverse with respect to both the cultural, ethnic, and even religious characteristics of their populations and the na- ture of their economies. The extraordinary internal diversity of cities has always been a source of stress and conflict, but also of creativity and originality. Hall (1998: 7) suggests that, contrary to gloomy predictions of decline, many of the largest cities of the Western world have also served as platforms for the highest levels of innovation. While “no one kind of city, nor any one size of city, has a monopoly on creativity or the good life . . . the biggest and most cosmopolitan cities, for all their evident disadvantages and obvious problems, have throughout history been the places that ignited the sacred flame of the human intelligence and the human imagination.” It can be argued that one of the most important measures of a successful city—in both the developed and developing worlds—is the ability to deal effectively with social diversity and to create structures of governance that integrate diverse communities and economic interests into a functioning system (Pol`ese and Stren, 2000). Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 379 Studies of the morphology of cities in developing countries almost always comment on the fragmentation of the population, from both a social and infra- structural point of view. In his classic article on urban planning in developing countries, Balbo (1993: 24–5) points out that, although Western industrial cities are characterized by a certain coherence that is amenable to master planning, almost all cities in developing countries are more complex, both spatially and socially: . . . the city of the Third World is a city of fragments, where ur- banisation takes place in leaps and bounds, creating a continuously discontinuous pattern. In the fragmented city, physical environment, services, income, cultural values and institutional systems can vary markedly from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, often from street to street. An aerial view of the city shows a spatial structure made up of many different pieces drawn together in a rather accidental way. There are more of some kinds than others. Those in the periphery are incomplete and more “fragile,” while older areas are well established with clearly defined boundaries. Even in Latin America, where most cities date from the sixteenth century, a process of “tribalisation” seems to be under way: the city is splitting into different separated parts, with the apparent forma- tion of many “microstates.” Wealthy neighbourhoods provided with all kinds of services, such as exclusive schools, golf courses, tennis courts and private police patrolling the area around the clock inter- twine with illegal settlements where water is available only at pub- lic fountains, no sanitation system exists, electricity is pirated by a privileged few, the roads become mud streams whenever it rains, and where house-sharing is the norm. Each fragment appears to live and function autonomously, sticking firmly to what it has been able to grab in the daily fight for survival. This depiction of the situation in the early 1990s has been reinforced by ev- idence of the further fragmentation of urban and interurban networks in both developed and developing cities. These networks involve such essential urban services as transport, water and sanitation, electrical supply, communications, and even security. As Graham and Marvin (2001:383) argue, the urban world of the last decade has seen a “splintering urbanism” in which “standardized public or private infrastructure monopolies . . . laid out to offer broadly similar services at relatively equal user charges over cities and regions, are receding as hege- monic forms of infrastructure management.” While a major factor behind these changes in developing-country cities is the inability of service providers to keep pace with demographic growth, more general factors behind these changes include “the widespread retreat of the idea that networked services are ‘public’ services that should be available to all at standard tariffs” (Graham and Marvin, 2001: 96) Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 380 CITIES TRANSFORMED and the pervasiveness of the idea that all forms of ownership (public and private) should compete for the supply of local services. As a result of many of these factors, knowledgeable commentators were still observing social segregation in Latin American cities toward the end of the 1990s. Thus, Gilbert (1996: 91–3) observes that “Latin American cities remain highly segregated. . . . In Lima, everyone knows that San Isidro and Miraflores are rich while Comas and Villa El Salvador are poor; in Santiago, the extremes are found in affluent Providencia and Vitacure in the north-east and poor La Pintana and La Granja in the south. In Rio de Janeiro, the rich live in Leblon and Ipanema and the poor in the Baixada Fluminense. . . .” While residential segregation is becoming more complex, he argues, there is no sign that it is declining; “indeed, in some respects there is greater polarization.” The complex nature of this pattern can be seen in a number of cities, as described below. Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro represents a story of “emerging dualization in a historically unequal city” (Ribeiro and Telles, 2000). The Rio metropolitan area, with a population of some 9.7 million spread over 17 municipalities, grew at a rate of only 1.1 percent from 1980 to 1991. As many of the city’s population migrated to medium-sized cities in the State of Rio de Janeiro, the outer parts of the city region grew much more quickly than the central portions. The authors’ observations, based on cen- sus data, show that the poor, the less educated, and nonwhites are concentrated in the periphery and the favelas (spread throughout the metropolitan area), while the white, educated population is concentrated in the city center. During the period 1980–1991, income concentration increased—the poor be- came more concentrated in the periphery and the indigent poor in the central parts of the city, while the rich increased their share of total income. At the same time, as salaried employment for the poor was becoming more scarce, and many at the lower end of the income scale were moving to the city center to take advantage of opportunities to work in the personal services sector, large real estate companies “intensified central city polarization, transforming the South Zone into an exclu- sive citadel, fortified by Rio’s steep hills and an ominous public and private police presence. The termination of the housing finance system in the 1970s, the reduced income of workers, and upper middle class desires to live in exclusive zones have made elite housing by far the most viable sector of the real estate market” (Ribeiro and Telles, 2000: 86–7). As these tendencies toward a duality among the population according to socio- economic status and location evolved, a parallel division emerged in the associat- ions maintained by the two groups. Thus, those who have little education and are poor are much more likely to become involved in neighborhood community and religious associations than in unions, professional associations, and political par- ties. Those with high income and education, by contrast, join unions, professional Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 381 associations, and cultural and sports associations and play a more active role in formal political parties. The periphery and the favelas are also characterized by what the authors call “the expansion of criminal and perverse forms of sociability” (Ribeiro and Telles, 2000: 93). These social patterns make coherent governance much more difficult to achieve. S˜ao Paulo S˜ao Paulo is another well-documented example of social fragmentation. The mu- nicipality of S˜ao Paulo, with some 10 million people, is one of the world’s largest cities. Greater S˜ao Paulo, which includes an additional 38 municipalities in a continuous urban area of 1,500 square kilometers, contains 17.8 million people (United Nations, 2001: 84) and is the second-largest metropolitan area in Latin America (after Mexico City). As was the case in Rio de Janeiro, the growth rate in the City of S˜ao Paulo and the greater S˜ao Paulo region slowed during the 1980s, to the benefit of smaller municipalities elsewhere in the State of S˜ao Paulo as man- ufacturing firms relocated from the center to the periphery. Total employment grew more rapidly outside the metropolitan region as well, with the exception of the financial services and communications sectors, which grew more rapidly in the City of S˜ao Paulo (Santos, 1996: 229). During the 1980s and 1990s, pock- ets of poverty and rundown housing developments bedeviled the generally well- equipped central areas of the city; at the same time, more and more of the housing in the peripheral areas of the city was classified as “precarious,” with low-quality materials, often on marginal land, with little or no infrastructure, and with few social services. Sposati (1996), a professor of social work and currently an elected municipal councillor, developed a series of maps of social inclusion/exclusion in the mid-1990s. In the introduction to her collection of maps (which depict the presence or absence of various facilities and services throughout the city), she makes the following observation (Sposati, 1996: 5): If the city of S˜ao Paulo had eyes and could see itself in a large mirror, it would see the broken and shocking view of its inequalities. How- ever, its two eyes would not be similar either. As in the popular song, maybe while one of them was staring, the other one would be floating. Because everything here seems unequal. The largest city in Latin America, with circa 10 million inhabitants, is famous for the pres- ence of the most advanced forms of technological development and the turnover of finance capital. It houses gardened neighborhoods, lavish mansions, dauntless buildings, excellent teaching centers and first class hospitals. A numerous fleet of luxury and imported cars cir- culates through its avenues or stops in traffic jams. Nevertheless, S˜ao Paulo also lives with the most severe forms of deprivation and human suffering. A deprived and unemployed population seeks refuge in slums and shack houses, or is abandoned on the streets. They are Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 382 CITIES TRANSFORMED daily victims of violence and do not have access to their rights and justice. They hang on overcrowded buses and trains, and if they get ill, the health service is poor. Their children, when they manage to, attend deteriorated schools, and evasion takes place very soon. . . . To some writers, this pattern is systemic. Rolnick (1999), a senior planner, argues that the coincidence of precarious housing, low income, and low formal employment that characterizes many peripheral zones of the city actually consti- tutes a pattern of “territorial exclusion,” whereby those groups consigned to live in these areas cannot fully realize the benefits of citizenship and economic growth that are available to people living in other areas of the city. She shows that there is a marked relationship between levels of violence and homicide in the city and levels of basic services available. Using 1991 census statistics showing housing conditions, location, infrastructure availability, and number of rooms per house- hold, she constructs a measure of territorial exclusion for 118 cities within the state, showing an inverse relationship between the ranking on territorial exclusion and homicide rates in both 1991 and 1994. “Territorial exclusion,” she explains, “makes daily life insecure and risky. It blocks access to jobs and educational and cultural opportunities, which are concentrated in small and protected enclaves within cities. Since most residences in excluded areas are illegal and mixed use is generally forbidden by municipal land regulations, people are denied the possibil- ity of using assets, such as home ownership, to generate money and create jobs. . . . [In these excluded areas] living in a permanent condition of denial of basic hu- man environmental needs makes inhabitants feel as if their lives are worthless” (Rolnick, 1999: 17). In particular, the peripheral areas of the city of S˜ao Paulo exhibit many of the preconditions for violence, in that resentment and anger build up when in- frastructure and services are not easily available. As Cardia (2000) describes the situation, violence in the metropolitan area is significantly greater in the periph- eral areas, where the population growth rate is the highest. Because of inadequate infrastructure, these populations are cut off from services and public authorities in a variety of ways (Cardia, 2000). While residential segregation and unequal in- frastructural development do not in themselves produce violence and crime, these writers clearly believe that such conditions raise the likelihood that a culture of violence will be reinforced. Another approach to describing this pattern of increasing fragmentation of so- cial groups and neighborhoods is offered by Caldeira (1996: 63), who discusses the development of social and spatial segregation in S˜ao Paulo from the early twentieth century to the present. During this period, S˜ao Paulo went from being a “concentrated city” (from the early part of the century to the 1930s); to a city with “a rich centre and a poor periphery” (from the 1940s to the 1980s); to its present form in the 1990s (and presumably later), which she describes as “proximity and high walls.” Her study of a rapidly growing wealthy suburban neighborhood Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 383 (Morumbi) shows that fear of violence and crime is a pervasive subject in every- day conversation. However, talk of crime is common throughout all social groups in the city, as “people from all social classes fortify their homes, change their habits, and end up transforming the city and its public areas.” The result is a new urban landscape made up essentially of “fortified fragments” from which the poor and marginalized are physically excluded (Caldeira, 1996: 64–5): As the spaces for the rich face inwards, the outside space is left for those who cannot afford to go in. In fact, the public is treated as leftover both by the design of the enclaves and by the citizens who create the new private order. The modern public space of the streets is increasingly the area abandoned to the homeless and the street chil- dren . . . fragmentation enforces separation and expresses not simple differences but irreconcilable inequalities. Newspaper advertisements appearing between 1985 and 1995 illustrate this trend. These advertisements—aimed at the rich—both reflect and promote an image of security, isolation, racial and class homogeneity, and high levels of services and facilities (Caldeira, 1999: 120). Manila A final example of the tendency toward social and institutional fragmentation is the case of Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Metro Manila (or the National Capital Region [NCR]), with a population in 2000 of 10.87 million (United Na- tions, 2001: 89), is by far the largest city in the country, almost 10 times larger than the next-largest city, Cebu City. Metro Manila incorporates 17 municipalities (or local government units) occupying a territory of 636 square kilometers. Accord- ing to Laquian (2000: 3), “the urban field of Metro Manila rightfully includes 18 adjacent [local government units] that add another 4 million people resident within a territory of 1,681 square kilometers within the so-called Calabarzon region . . . as well as the provinces of Bulacan, Zambales and Pampanga in Central Luzon.” In this mega-urban region, the outlying towns have been growing more quickly than the national capital region since the 1960–1970 intercensal period. Some of these towns registered an annual growth rate of over 6 percent during the period 1980–1990 (Ocampo, 1995: 285). In the process of growth, the net movement of migrants within the region has been outward rather than inward, creating major problems of sprawl and ribbon development. Sprawl has put an extreme strain on public utilities and services, extended travel distances for workers living out- side the NCR, and “resulted in social disparities and conflicts of various kinds” (Ocampo, 1995: 287). One knowledgeable writer has described Metro Manila as a “city of villages” in which “autonomous local units . . . have traditionally resisted efforts to cen- trally control their activities” (Laquian, 2000: 1). Local resistance to higher-level Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 384 CITIES TRANSFORMED controls is a result of three elements: a relatively entrenched localism that de- fines neighborhoods as distinct units within the wider metropolitan area; strong local government units, reinforced by the 1991 Local Government Code; and a strong political culture of particularism that makes coalitions difficult to achieve (Laquian, 2000). Fragmentation at the local level starts with the division of the city into four major types of neighborhoods. First are the barrios of the urban poor, often on marginal lands and even huge garbage dumps. Second are the “villages” of the rich, in which the residents lead protected, isolated lives with a full range of public services available for their use. Third are the traditional neighborhoods that house the majority of the population, bound closely by the observance of cultural and re- ligious festivals, and participating in groups such as parent–teacher and neighbor- hood watch associations. Fourth are the traditional villages on the city’s periphery, although these semirural areas are becoming pervaded by pollution and industrial enterprises, and their young are leaving for the city (Laquian, 2000: 1–2). The fragmentation of neighborhood cultures is reinforced, one author argues, by the control retained by powerful local families in many Manila cities and mu- nicipalities. It is further exacerbated by the competitive behavior of certain local units (such as Makati, Quezon City, and Mandaluyong), which vie for large infras- tructure investments and buildings that can serve the global economy. One result of this differentiation is that there is a wide disparity in the revenue collection of Metro Manila local governments. In 1997, revenue per capita ranged from 486 pesos in Malabon to 7,656 pesos in Makati, the upscale commercial and financial center (Shatkin, 2000: 2368). Coordination and planning at the metro level are weak. While there is an upper-tier authority with responsibility for the whole metropolitan area, its pow- ers and even its budget are limited, especially relative to the local government au- thorities, whose powers were increased under the 1987 Constitution and the 1991 Local Government Code. The power of the metropolitan authority was not en- hanced by the fact that Imelda Marcos had been appointed governor at the outset of the authority’s life, presiding over the Metro Manila Commission until President Ferdinand Marcos was toppled in 1986. The agency, renamed the Metro Manila Authority in 1990, was assigned a rotating chairman, chosen every 6 months from among the 17 city and municipal mayors of the NCR. In 1995, the Metro Manila Authority became the Metro Manila Development Authority, although it has “re- mained a weak governance structure” (Laquian, 2000: 8). While NGOs and civil society groups are highly active in Manila as well as throughout the Philippines, these groups have not been able to overcome the innate localism and particularism that obtains at the metropolitan level (Laquian, 2000: 23). The Security Dimension Urban security became one of the dominant issues of the 1990s in many devel- oping countries. Since September 11, 2001, an international dimension has been Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 385 added to the domestic sources of insecurity generated by some of the urban so- cial conditions considered above. We have chosen to discuss this important sub- ject here since it is closely related to issues of social fragmentation and social policy, and because we wish to explore the governance implications of different approaches to dealing with the problem. There is no question from both macro- and micro-level studies that urban vio- lence has increased in a great many parts of the developing world. At the global level, crime and violence are generally much higher in Africa and Latin America than in Asia. A dataset (United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, 1998) covering 18 developing-country cities2 shows that Asia consis- tently ranks the lowest for all types of crime, while Africa and Latin America share the highest ranking for all types of crime. When the “contact crime” rate (i.e., incidents involving violence) is analyzed separately, Latin American cities outstrip African and Asian cities with regard to sexual assault, with a rate of 5 percent of all types of crime (compared with 2.4 percent in the African cities and 1.6 percent in the Asian cities). For assault with force, African cities show a rate of 3.1 percent, compared with 2.7 percent in Latin America and 0.8 percent in Asia. For robbery, cities in Latin America have a rate of 8.1 percent, compared with 4.2 percent in Africa and 1.4 percent in Asia. Aside from the human and sociological effects of crime and violence, there is a significant economic cost to the countries in which rates of crime and vio- lence are high. A groundbreaking study by two Colombians (Londo˜no and Guer- rero, 2000) estimates the cost of violence against people and property in terms of loss of potential urban gross domestic product (GDP). The authors claim that El Salvador, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, and Mexico lose, respec- tively, 24.9, 24.7, 11.8, 10.5, 5.1, and 12.3 percent of their urban GDP annually as a result of violence (Londo˜no and Guerrero, 2000: 27). Likewise, a study by the Mexican Health Foundation (Lozano, Hijar, Zurita, Hern´andez, Avila, Bravo, de Jes´us Ramirez, Carrillo, Ayala, and L´opez, 2000), based on statistics for Mex- ico City collected in the mid-1990s (when the city’s violence rates were increas- ing), suggests that the annual cost of violence in the city (taking both direct and indirect costs into consideration) is a staggering $1.897 billion. Data on homicide in cities are often cited as the most striking indication that urbanization in the developing world produces a decline in social cohesion and an increase in conflict and insecurity. Table 9-3 summarizes some data on homicide rates for different cities in Latin America, indicating major differences among countries, as well as rather important variations within countries. Rates in Brazil 2 This dataset, collected through the International Crime Victimization Survey, constitutes the most detailed global dataset on urban violence available. Crime was measured according to five categories: vehicle-related crime, break-and-enter crime, victimization experienced by the respondent personally (including robbery, theft of personal property, assault/threat, and sexual incidents), consumer fraud, and bribery/corruption. Data were collected in the largest city in each of the selected countries. Al- though not representative of the urban population in each country, this dataset provides a starting point for regional comparisons of urban crime (bearing in mind such issues as underreporting). Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 386 CITIES TRANSFORMED TABLE 9-3 Homicide Rates per 100,000 Inhabitants in Selected Latin American Cities City Country Year Homicide Rate Medell´ın Colombia 1995 248.0 Cali Colombia 1995 112.0 Diadema Brazil 1997 146.1 Belford Roxo Brazil 1997 76.5 S˜ao Paulo Brazil 1998 55.8 Rio de Janeiro Brazil 1998 52.8 Lima Peru 1995 25.0 Ciudad de M´exico Mexico 1995 19.6 Santiago Chile 1995 8.0 Buenos Aires Argentina 1998 6.4 Caracas Venezuela 1995 76.0 Guatemala City Guatemala 1996 101.5 San Salvador El Salvador 1995 95.4 SOURCE: Carneiro (2000). and Colombia, for example, are very high by worldwide standards, while rates in cities such as Santiago and Buenos Aires are relatively low. Trend data from case studies show a general increase in levels of violence in cities of Latin America over the last two decades, although some cities have also experienced a decrease in recent years. Nevertheless, trends may not be consistent even within a country. In Brazil, for example, the critical period for increases in violence was the second half of the 1980s, coinciding with the reestablishment of democracy. More recently, however, Rio de Janeiro has seen a decline in the rate of homicides, while this has not been the case in S˜ao Paulo. This finding suggests that urban violence has both local and more systemic explanations. How to respond to the increasing violence is a major challenge at a number of levels—national, local, and social. Given the broad contours of a model that regards violence as a result of the erosion of physical, human, natural, and so- cial capital, it is possible to identify policy options with the potential to restore these community assets. Of the four types of capital, the most amenable to pol- icy intervention at the local level is social capital. In Chapter 2, we defined social capital as “networks and local associations . . . that might support collective action, enforce norms, generate expectations or reciprocity, or foster feelings of mutual trust.” What is the relation between social capital and urban governance? Among the reasons social capital is important is that both the size and density of social networks and institutions, as well as the nature of interpersonal inter- actions, significantly affect the efficiency and sustainability of development pro- cesses. Violence erodes social capital when it reduces the trust and cooperation within formal and informal social organizations and among their members that are critical for a society to function (Moser, 1998; Moser and Holland, 1997). Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 387 Social capital in formal institutions In contexts characterized by human rights violations and high impunity rates, violence often erodes faith in the relevance and governability of many formal social institutions. When judicial, educational, health, media, and security insti- tutions are no longer able to function appropriately and transparently, democracy itself is challenged. In some contexts, violence-linked industries associated with drugs, diamonds, or other natural resources can erode the state by corrupting in- stitutions and dividing the population. For instance, drug traffickers’ systematic threats and attacks against the communications media effectively suppress the ef- fective and peaceful participation of civil society institutions in political decisions at the community and national levels. Social capital in informal community-level institutions The capacity for community-level organizations to function depends on levels of cohesion and the ability to meet locally, which in turn hinge on personal safety issues. Sustained violence creates fear and reduces trust among neighbors and communities. Fear of crime is greater where rates of contact crimes are higher (United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, 1998). The response, particularly for women, is frequently to avoid certain places after dark. Such restrictions break down community cohesion. As noted earlier, fear increases urban fragmentation, resulting in a new ur- ban landscape made up essentially of fortified areas from which the poor and marginalized are excluded. Rodriguez and Winchester (2001) discuss how feel- ings of insecurity in Santiago, Chile, have led to reduced interaction across so- cial class levels, resulting in neighborhoods more homogeneous in income level and reduced social mobility. Agbola (1997) describes a crime prevention strategy in Lagos, Nigeria, based on environmental design, whereby the physical envi- ronment is ‘manipulated’ to deter crime more effectively through the installment of fences, residential enclaves, and other segregational measures. As discussed earlier, fear of crime in S˜ao Paulo has led middle- and upper-income citizens to segregate themselves spatially from the rest of the city (Caldeira, 1996). In some contexts, violence both contributes to and is the result of the creation of “perverse” social capital.3 A primary example of perverse social capital is gang involvement, whereby young people bereft of strong family and community support form mutually reinforcing groups. In many poor neighborhoods, gangs form the main nexus of socialization for children, who join as young as age 12 or 13. Often gangs may be at war with rival groups involved in robbery, theft, drug 3A useful distinction can be made between productive and perverse institutions. While productive institutions aim to provide benefits in order to improve the well-being of the community, perverse institutions benefit their members but are usually detrimental to the community or society at large (Rubio, 1997; Moser and McIlwaine, 2000a: 78). Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 388 CITIES TRANSFORMED distribution or consumption, and assaults. In some communities, gangs protect their neighbors, committing crimes elsewhere; in others they prey on their neigh- bors, creating a climate of fear (Moser and McIlwaine, 2000b; Rodgers, 1999). In Nicaragua, for example, almost half of all crimes and delinquent acts are attributable to youth gangs. Rodgers (1999) highlights five key factors linked to youth gangs in Latin America: their context is generally that of urban poverty; their behavioral patterns and formation are highly localized; their relationship with the local community may be protective or violent; when involved in drug traffick- ing, they tend to be more violent; and postwar migration and deportation of illegal immigrants are affecting their formation. Social capital in household relations Violence erodes beneficial household relations when it reduces the households’ capacity to function effectively as a unit. High levels of stress in conflict zones, for instance, where many men join illegal guerrilla or paramilitary groups, seriously disrupt family life. In poor urban communities, many women identify a direct linkage among male unemployment, alcohol abuse, and increased domestic vio- lence, which may result in increases in female-headed households. In Guayaquil and Budapest, for example, domestic violence was found to be the single most important cause of household restructuring (Moser, 1998; Moser and McIlwaine, 1999). Family members—both male and female—are put in a vulnerable position when communities are displaced by violence. Women are often more vulnerable than men at the moment of eviction, when they are exposed to the risks of flight and separation from their homes. While men appear better equipped to cope at such times, the reverse is true when displaced households restructure their lives; then the impact is greater for men, who become unemployed and experience a loss of status as breadwinners and a shattering of their sense of masculine identity. Women appear better equipped to develop support networks so they can continue the routines of daily survival and find new ways of earning an income, creating social capital not with other women originating from the same area, but with those sharing the same history of displacement (Meertens and Segura-Escobar, 1996). There are many initiatives under way to deal with urban violence. Currently in many cities, one of the biggest constraints is not the absence of interventions but the lack of a coordinated approach to reducing violence. The impact of im- pressive menus of initiatives—implemented by government, private entities, and NGOs—is often limited by fragmented approaches involving narrowly focused, independent programs. If informed policy decisions regarding the relative fiscal returns of different programs are to be made, one of the most important priori- ties is the development of a cohesive policy that integrates and combines different objectives and instruments for reducing violence, and encompasses monitoring of key indicators as well as rigorous evaluations. This is largely a governance issue. Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 389 Ultimately, the debate on preventing urban crime in the developing world can- not be separated from broader issues of improving urban governance and manage- ment. This linkage implies closer integration of crime prevention and reduction imperatives within the context of more general city planning and management strategies. In some contexts, coordinated initiatives to respond to the increasing problem of violence have emerged at the city level. The role of local govern- ment in reducing violence and crime is increasingly recognized as a practical and effective solution (South Africa, 1998): Local government, the level of government which is closest to the cit- izenry, is uniquely placed to actively participate in social crime pre- vention initiatives and to redirect the provision of services to facilitate crime prevention. Local municipal government tends to represent the lowest level at which plan- ning can take into account the needs of local communities and their particu- lar crime problems, and can therefore create effective linkages among locally elected officials, municipal departments, and the national police service (Shaw, 1998). Nevertheless, budget constraints and a lack of capacity often characterize developing-country municipal governments, and the consolidation of local gov- ernment structures presents an opportunity to integrate crime prevention into the line functions of municipal departments (Shaw, 1998). Along with government, civil society and local communities have an impor- tant role to play. Cohen and Swift (1993), for instance, advocate a public health approach that prioritizes coalition building and the development of networks of service providers. Thus, for example, one local health prevention program en- courages family violence services, alcohol abuse agencies, child abuse prevention agencies, rape crisis services, conflict resolution services, drug abuse agencies, and suicide intervention services to form a network of support to coordinate com- prehensive prevention services: Coalitions can accomplish a broad range of goals that reach far be- yond the capacity of any individual member organization. The work of an active coalition can range from information-sharing and co-ordination of services to advocacy for major environmental or regulatory changes. (Cohen and Swift, 1993: 62) Finally, the community can play an important role in reducing violence by creating its own authorities or groups to tackle the problem. Guha (1998) cites the example of the “peace committees” that are frequently formed in Indian commu- nities after riots. These committees often include members from both conflicting communities, considered to be “respectable citizens” who work to reduce the con- flict. The approach was found to be particularly effective in Calcutta for avoiding and containing many incidents that had the potential to escalate into major riots Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 390 CITIES TRANSFORMED (Guha, 1998). However, since the causes and manifestations of violence are con- text specific, the details of integrated intervention frameworks need to be tailored to the requirements of different situations. The Authority Dimension The basic parameters of urban governance in many developing countries have un- dergone a major transformation over the last decade and a half. Contributing to this transformation have been the relentless demographic growth of cities, with associated economic and geographic expansion of the urban base; the worldwide trend toward devolution of both power and financial resources from the national to the local level in most developing and transitional countries (as discussed earlier); the spread of powerful local movements, such as social and environmental move- ments in Latin America, the “people’s power” movement in the Philippines, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and the workers’ movement in Poland; and the powerful trend toward democratization and political pluralism, along with the emergence of robust civil society institutions (such as NGOs) at both the lo- cal and international levels (UNCHS, 1996: Chapter 5). These driving forces have been reinforced by specific institutional reforms in particular countries, such as the constitutional reforms in Brazil, India, and South Africa discussed above; the Ley de Participaci´on Popular in Bolivia; the Local Government Code of 1991 in the Philippines; the extension of communal status to towns and cities, small towns, and all rural settlements in Cˆote d’Ivoire in 1980, 1985, and 1996, respectively (Crook and Manor, 1998: 141); and a host of other reforms, well documented in the literature on Mexico, Colombia, Uganda, Indonesia, Thailand, and China. The particular governance structure currently in place in individual countries and cities is a result of the intersection of the decentralization process; the level of democratic reforms expressed through municipal restructuring; and local circum- stance, including leadership and the general involvement of civil society groups. Overall, urban governance appears most advanced in Latin America with regard to finding new modalities to manage and relate to growth, followed by Asia and then Africa (at least outside a few selected leaders in urban governance reform, such as South Africa and Cˆote d’Ivoire). While the focus of this chapter is on large metropolitan regions, the governance structure in these regions is invariably influenced by the overall approach to decentralization and local government in the country as a whole. Some examples follow. Decentralization—in the sense of genuine devolution of power and financial resources (or the ability to raise finances) from the national to the local level—has had a rather limited trajectory in Africa. One of the reasons for this is certainly the legacy of the centralized, statist bureaucratic regimes of colonial powers that did not cede independence until the 1960s and even later (whereas formal decol- onization took place 20 years earlier in South Asia and Indonesia, and a century earlier in Latin America). Another reason is that most postindependence regimes Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 391 in Africa were ruled initially by powerful leaders and single parties who relin- quished little ground to autonomous social formations or localities. By the 1980s, this picture had begun to change across the continent, and by 1991, only 8 of 54 countries for which reliable data were available could be con- sidered clearly “authoritarian,” with 3 more being governed by a system that could best be described as “directed democracy.” In addition, 8 countries were “demo- cratic,” while 35 were said to be in various stages of “transition” to more demo- cratic forms of government (Africa Demos, 1991). Through the next decade, the full democratization of South Africa in 1994 and the return to democracy of Nigeria in 1998 were the major events, even though a number of transitional countries became politically unstable. At the end of the decade, the respected NGO Freedom House reported that of 53 countries evalu- ated, 8 were “free” (i.e., full electoral democracies), 21 were “partly free,” and 23 were “not free” (i.e., authoritarian systems) (Karatnycky, 1999). Overall, there was little change over the decade. Abidjan A former French colony, Cˆote d’Ivoire has always had one of the highest levels of urban development and most elaborate urban policy systems of any francophone country (Cohen, 1974). As of 2000, its largest city, Abidjan, had a population estimated at 3.3 million (United Nations, 2001: 86) over a land area of 627 square kilometers (Attahi, 2000: 10). This coastal metropolis, often referred to as “the pearl of the lagoons,” represents some 40 percent of the country’s total urban population and about 75 percent of its formal employment (Attahi, 2000: 10). Like other major cities in the West African francophone region, and in spite of its relative affluence in comparison with other cities of the region, Abidjan suffers from insufficient housing and infrastructure (20 percent of its population lives in irregular or “spontaneous” housing in unserviced neighborhoods), strug- gles to remove ever-increasing amounts of household and industrial refuse, and cannot build enough roads to keep up with the increasing number of motor vehi- cles. Even though importations of cars and trucks were restricted in 1998 to vehi- cles no more than 7 years old, the number of these vehicles has been growing at a rate of 9 percent per year (Attahi, 2000: 16)—several times higher than the rate of population growth, estimated at 3.16 percent per annum for the period 2000–2005 (United Nations, 2001: 97). Abidjan’s fabled high-quality infrastructure and large formal employment base have been deteriorating since the late 1980s, as popula- tion growth has fallen from a high in the 11 percent per annum range up to the late 1970s to a figure closer to 3 percent today, a level lower than that of middle-sized towns in the region (Dubresson, 1997: 266). Like other ex-colonial states in Africa, Cˆote d’Ivoire emerged after indepen- dence (in 1960) as a relatively centralized country. Then, beginning in 1978, a de- centralization process directed by the President saw, in succession, the restoration Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 392 CITIES TRANSFORMED of “commune” (or municipal) status to the major cities in the country, including 10 communes in Abidjan; the amalgamation of the 10 Abidjan communes into a second-tier government known as the City of Abidjan; and the extension of com- munal status to 98 smaller towns (in 1985). Finally, 3 years after the death of President Houphou¨et in 1993, his successor extended municipal status to the re- maining rural areas of the country, increasing the total number of local government units from 136 to 196 (Crook and Manor, 1998: 141). In terms of the fastidious details of its planning, as well as the follow-up of support to local councils, the Ivoirian decentralization exercise stands as one of the most thoroughgoing and successful in Africa. Two aspects of this exercise are worthy of mention here. First, beginning in 1990, the Ivoirian government loosened control over the political system, permit- ting parties other than the government party to contest both local and national elections. As a result, independents and opposition parties (based on a list sys- tem) won 9 of the 135 communes in the 1990 communal elections; in the 1996 elections, the proportion grew to 27 of 196 communes (Crook and Manor, 1998: 149). The real possibility of opposition parties winning local elections and ad- ministering local councils clearly enhanced the legitimacy of local government in many parts of the country. Second, while it decentralized, the government also strengthened its advisory and central administrative systems, so that local councils could receive admin- istrative and technical support as needed. The Department of Local Government (within the Ministry of the Interior) grew impressively, its professional staff reach- ing 108 in 1995 (Attahi, 1996: 122). The governance of the Abidjan metropolitan area consists formally of a two- tier structure: at the lower tier are the 10 communes, of differing size and wealth, each having elected councillors and an elected mayor; at the second tier is the City of Abidjan, consisting of the mayors of the 10 constituent communes, plus four more councillors from each commune. The mayor of the City of Abidjan is elected by the mayors of the 10 communes at the first meeting of the collective legislative body, called the “grand council.” After his election, he resigns from his communal position, handing the position over to his “assistant mayors” at the local level. The major functions of the upper-tier government are waste disposal and man- agement; public lighting; sanitation; traffic regulation; maintenance of roads, parks, and cemeteries; and town planning. The communes administer markets, allocate plots for public purposes, deal with the maintenance of primary schools and clinics (but not school or health policy, let alone the supervision and payment of professionals, which are national responsibilities), operate social centers, and share functions with other levels of government with respect to pollution and hy- giene. Major services, such as waste removal, electricity, and water, are in the hands of private companies, albeit under some level of surveillance from either the local or national government. Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 393 Problems with revenue exist at all levels, even in relatively affluent Abidjan, where the differences among communes are sharp. In the early 1990s, for exam- ple, the 3 wealthiest of the 10 communes of the City of Abidjan spent, per resident, an average of 49 times the amount spent by the 3 poorest communes on recurrent expenditures and 6 times the amount for capital expenditures (Dubresson, 1997: 285). Although the metropolitan system has been functioning for 20 years, observers identify a number of problems. For example, the national government has been less than fully cooperative in permitting the City of Abidjan to exercise some of the functions for which it has a legal mandate. These include the inspection of construction sites, the issuing of drivers’ licenses, and the control of firefighting and rescue operations. Since the main source of the City’s revenues, the property tax, is collected by the national government and then remitted to the communes (which then pay a fixed proportion to the City), the City has little direct influence over its finances. Major service operations are controlled by private corporations that cannot easily be controlled by the City. Furthermore, since the mayor of the City is not elected at large but chosen by the mayors of the constituent com- munes, he does not have an independent political base from which to promote metropolitan-wide policies. Already the mayor of the wealthiest commune has resigned from the grand council on the grounds that the obligatory funds (40 per- cent of revenues) paid to the City could be used more effectively locally. On a more positive note, a number of communes have set up neighborhood man- agement committees and endowed them with an administrative budget. These initiatives have taken place without higher-level support. In the 1996 local elections, 1 of the 10 municipalities in the Abidjan area— Adjam´e—returned a mayor, Marcel Amondji, who was a member of one of the opposition parties. This mayor has since set up 19 neighborhood management councils to involve citizens in local affairs. Each has an annual budget equivalent to US$4,500 to cover the costs of the local office. According to a New York Times observer (French, 1998: 4), Adjam´e has been all but transformed. Once trash-filled streets are now kept clean by broom-wielding city workers [a program called “extreme hygiene”]. A multistory African-style market is rising to replace a warren of cluttered and dangerous side streets that served as the neighborhood’s informal bazaar. And white-smocked inspectors reg- ularly make the rounds of the community’s innumerable caf´es ensur- ing that food served to the working class population is not only cheap, but sanitary. The mayor attributes these changes, at least in part, to the competitive electoral system. “What is being done here,” he says, “represents a night and day change from the past, when elections were formalities and the office of mayor was largely an honorific title. We have managed to triple our budget by raising local taxes, Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 394 CITIES TRANSFORMED and nobody has complained because they see that local government is giving them valuable services for the first time.” (Amondji quoted in French, 1998.) In Abid- jan, as throughout the country, decentralization has been a relative success, but local resources are still very limited, and the level of activity of civil society is barely perceptible. Mexico City Our second example is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world—Mexico City. For many years, Mexico City’s massive, expansive growth was regarded as virtually inexorable. In 1991, for example, the population of the agglomeration was predicted to reach 25–27 million by 2000 (Rowland and Gordon, 1996: 173), although that prediction was scaled down considerably when the 1990 census fig- ures were released. The notion of an urban “leviathan” somehow out of control was reinforced by the city’s fabled scarcity of water, its high levels of air pollution and other toxic chemicals, its extreme traffic congestion, and the struggles of its poor citizens to obtain decent and affordable housing and accessible infrastructure. While the city’s service and infrastructure problems remain severe, many well- documented studies cited in earlier chapters show a decrease in its population growth during the 1980s and 1990s, a dispersion of its population from the cen- ter to the peripheral areas of the metropolitan region and beyond, and a gradual reduction in the pattern of socioeconomic differentiation among its major areas. Paradoxically, although there appears to have been a decline in social disparities in the city if one takes delegaciones as the unit of analysis (Rubalcava and Schtein- gart, 1987, 2000), at the very local level (Ward, 1999: 30), the segmentation, separation, and dividing line (barriers) between rich and working class neighborhoods is probably increasing. Mex- ico City, like many Latin American cities, has seen a dramatic rise in violence levels in the 1990s. Private security firms are increasingly hired to secure the perimeters of upper and middle income residential neighborhoods, making them effective no-entry zones for working class and outsider populations. Moreover as a growing number of urban services are contracted out to private operators, this serves to segment still further the transactional separation of rich and poor. Currently, the population of Mexico City—which includes both the Federal District (with 16 delegaciones) and 41 municipalities to the north, east, and west in the states of M´exico and Hildago—is estimated at 18.13 million (United Na- tions, 2001: 88), with an annual growth rate that has been shrinking for many years. Rates of both annual natural increase and inmigration have been declining since the middle of the past century. From a high of 6.7 percent in the 1940s (Ward, 1998: 48), the overall population growth rate for the metropolitan area has Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 395 declined to an estimated 1.81 percent, and it is projected to fall to as low as 0.35 percent over the next 5 years (United Nations, 2001: 99). The reasons for this reversal in trends are discussed elsewhere in this vol- ume, but Mexico City remains a relatively poor city with serious problems in both production and distribution of public goods and services. Its current highly lim- ited metropolitan governance system is a product of both the country’s history of decentralization and democratization and the unwieldy nature of a jurisdictional division between the Federal Capital district on the one hand and the adjacent municipalities of the State of M´exico on the other. For decades, governance of the Mexico City metropolitan area was a relatively low-key affair, involving a presidentially appointed regente of the Federal District and the mayors and administrations of the adjacent (but much less developed) towns and settlements of the periphery. Because of the importance of the capi- tal city, the regente position was a cabinet-level post in the federal government. Given the highly centralized and even personal nature of the Mexican political system until recently, ultimate control of the capital city was in effect vested in the president of the country. In practice, what planning and coordination existed between the two jurisdic- tions occurred often through the involvement of federal government ministries in both the State of M´exico and the Federal Republic, reinforced politically by the relationship between the governor of the state and the regente, the latter being, until the 1990s, from the same governing party (although the regente was a much more senior position in terms of protocol). During the 1970s and 1980s, plan- ning initiatives and institutions tended to operate either at the national level (for the whole country), or in one or the other of the Federal District or the State of M´exico. Metropolitan institutions, such as a Conurbation Commission, a secre- tariat for planning and budgeting, and a Council for the Metropolitan Area, came and went according to the political inclinations of different regentes. But with little or no public participation in planning and a multiplicity of competing and overlapping jurisdictions, the economic and social forces inherent in the growth of the city took their own paths, with little guidance from planners (Ward, 1998: Chapter 5). Aside from the appointed regente and his staff, the city was further subdivided into 16 delegaciones (municipalities before 1928), whose administrative directors (delegados) were in turn appointed by the regente. During the 1970s and 1980s, various local and neighborhood councils were set up to give residents a say in local matters, but these groups had at best a consultative role relative to the senior appointed administrators (Ward, 1998: 118–9). In 1994, an effort was made by the dominant party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), to introduce “citizen advisers” as elected, paid officers at the level of the delegacion, mandated to assist with local community service requests. Without explaining its action, however, the government discontinued this reform 3 years after its initiation (Eck- stein, 2000: 192). The arbitrary nature of local government in the capital city, Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 396 CITIES TRANSFORMED at least until nearly the end of the decade, led the author of a textbook on local government in Latin America to state that “few major cities in the world have less local democracy than Mexico City” (Nickson, 1995: 199). Traditionally, cities had little status in the Mexican system of government and politics. Article 115 of the 1917 Mexican Constitution gave states power over local government but spoke of the municipio libre as the cornerstone of territo- rial administration. It was not until 1983 that a new phase in intergovernmental relations began with a number of amendments and additions to Article 115. In proposing these changes, the president, Miguel de la Madrid (1982–1988), sug- gested a major “sea change” was in the offing. As one commentator observed of de la Madrid’s campaign for the presidency, the candidate made clear in public meetings throughout the country that (as cited in Rodr´ıguez, 1997: 69) his purpose is to eliminate, or at least minimize . . . excessive central bureaucracy and population concentration, tardiness and inefficiency in some sectors of the federal government, dependency and financial weakness of the municipalities, and so forth. The time has come to “federalize” the “National Life.” Each and every aspect of the state’s activities which before were forced to centralize, are now obliged to decentralize. Although de la Madrid went on to establish a system that was increasingly de- centralized in administrative terms while remaining highly centralized politically, the changes to Article 115 were the beginning of an altered political environment for the municipalities. The new article approved by Congress in February 1983, to take effect on January 1, 1984, specified the public services for which munic- ipalities had prime responsibility and suggested that the municipalities should be governed according to organic laws passed at the state level. The municipalities were also guaranteed their own sources of revenue, in particular a property tax. For many years thereafter, municipalities still relied largely on transfers from the federal government for the bulk of their revenues, but the potential existed to ex- pand their own-revenue accounts. After the reform was passed, the president set up a National Center for Municipal Studies to serve as an information and research center for reform-related issues. The most recent constitutional reform relevant to Mexican cities (and to Mex- ico City) is a revision of Article 115 passed by the Mexican Congress in June 1999. This revision, a result of negotiations among the three major political parties, rec- ognizes local government as an essential level of Mexican government. It not only states that local governments (municipios) are to be governed by elected councils consisting of regidores and syndicos, but also specifies a list of functions and pow- ers that are under their exclusive jurisdiction. Such functions cannot henceforth be limited by the state governments. They include the provision of drinking wa- ter and all related services, public lighting, cleaning and waste disposal, markets, police, streets and gardens, planning and land regulation, and other services the Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 397 municipalities judge to be within their capacity to administer. The municipalities are further empowered to set tax rates and to collect the revenues necessary to carry out the above functions (Guerrero Ampar´an and L´opez, 2000). While Mexicans have traditionally elected their mayors and councillors (ex- cept in the Federal District), the elections had little meaning for many years as long as the PRI controlled the selection of all candidates. But political pluralism (albeit constrained at first) began to erode this situation as, beginning in 1983, a significant number of municipal elections began to be won by opposition parties. While some of these victories were orchestrated by the PRI itself and some re- sulted from splits within the dominant party, others (such as those in Durango, Ciudad Ju´arez, and Chihuahua) reflected genuine support for the Partido Acci´on Nacional (PAN) (Rodr´ıguez, 1997: 53). The story of opposition politics at the subnational level in subsequent years is one of conflict between emerging opposition sentiment and (often) PRI tactics to discredit or undermine the local victories of opposition candidates (Rodr´ıguez, 1998: 174–83). By 1996 the PRI controlled 1,551 of the 2,412 municipalities in the country (or 64 percent); the PAN controlled 225 (or 9 percent); the Partido de la Revoluci´on Democr´atica (PRD) controlled 181 (or 8 percent); and “others” controlled the rest (19 percent), including Oaxaca state, where indigenous groups elected their civic leaders in 413 municipalities (Rodr´ıguez, 1998: 177). At this point, most major cities were under opposition control, with PAN mayors being significant in the more-developed north and the PRD more important in the area around Mexico City and in the south. Rodr´ıguez (1998) argues that the advent of more competitive politics has brought more scrutiny of candidates by voters. This in turn means that more competent individuals are selected and that the quality of governance is enhanced by greater transparency (Rodr´ıguez, 1998: 183). On the other hand, many municipalities—especially smaller, poorer towns and towns in the less industrial and developed areas of the country—are not competitive. Did the new political pluralism make a difference in urban management? A comparison of three cities with opposition regimes in the 1990s—Tijuana and C´ordoba under the PAN and Nezahualc´oyotl under the PRD—shows that dur- ing the decade, the new regimes were far from fully successful in implementing their campaign promises of administrative rationalization, greater efficiency, and improved citizen participation. Setting aside the case of Nezahualc´oyotl, whose municipal council had been elected only a short time before the research com- menced, the other two municipalities had been able to improve the delivery of public services to their citizens (in comparison with the previous PRI regimes), and efforts were at least under way to modernize the management of the munic- ipal enterprise. While they did not observe regression, the researchers are far from categorically enthusiastic about the changes that have ensued (Duhau and Schteingart, 1997). And a historical analysis of the politics and policies of var- ious mayors of Mexico City since the 1950s (Davis, 2002) reveals that different mayors have exercised considerable autonomy in developing their own signature Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 398 CITIES TRANSFORMED policies in spite of the fact that they were not elected until recently, and that this autonomy has been based at least in part on the fact that Mexico City as a political constituency of the national political elite must be heard and responded to (Davis, 2002). A major reform in Mexico City in particular was the decision by the Mexi- can government to permit elections in the Federal District, first at the level of the whole district and then at the level of the constituent delegaciones. In 1997 for the first time ever, the post of “head of government” of the Departmento del Distrito Federal was made an elective one, to be supplemented by elections throughout the city for positions in a new Representative Assembly. Of the 40 elective posi- tions in the assembly, 2 were won by the PAN and the other 38 by the PRD. The new head of government or mayor, who won by an overwhelming margin, was 63-year-old Cuauht´emoc C´ardenas, himself a former candidate for president and the son of a revered former president. At the same time that the PRD won the local government elections, it also captured 28 of the 30 single-member Mexico City congressional district seats in the national elections. A careful interpretation of the vote shows that the main supporters of the PRD were working-class vot- ers who were strongly antagonistic toward the ruling party. Many switched their intended votes during the campaign to align with the party that best expressed their antigovernment sentiments. As in other elections, the Mexico City elec- tions showed that “the prototypical PRI voter was a housewife with limited ed- ucation; the classic PAN supporter an educated Catholic; and the paradigmatic PRD voter a politically engaged member of the working class” (Lawson, 1999: 151). Among the watchwords of the new administration were the cleaning up of cor- ruption and crime, efficiency in service delivery, and popular participation. Be- cause the national government did not support, in terms of either resources or policies, the opposition PRD government in the Federal District, the mayor could achieve success in these particular objectives without calling on assistance from the center (Davis, 2002: 251). Nevertheless, Mayor C´ardenas left his position to run (unsuccessfully) for the presidency in 2000. The fact that the mayor had early on demonstrated his interest in national political issues (such as the situation in Chiapas) may have contributed to the widespread feeling among poorer people in Mexico City that, although electoral democratization was important, parties still operated as “clans” and did not represent them. “Residents had learned the hard way to be cynical about political change” (Eckstein, 2000: 194). Change, however, continued. In 2000, not only did the Federal District mayor stand for general election (won again by the PRD candidate, garnering 1.7 million of a total of 4.3 million votes cast) (G´omez Tagle, 2000: 661), but so, too, did the councillors within individual delegaciones (Rodr´ıguez Araujo, 2000: 657). Despite the new, more democratic system in the Federal District, however, no new structures of metropolitan governance have been instituted, and the larger metropolitan region is still almost totally bereft of a framework for planning. Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 399 Local participation in Chinese cities Although Western-style pluralist electoral politics is absent in China, major changes in the governance of Chinese cities have been proceeding since the late 1980s. These changes have taken place at the local level of the urban community in Chinese cities and, according to one estimate, affect 200–300 million of its cit- izens (Choate, 1998: 6). While these changes are complex, they can be discussed from two vantage points: the formal structure of urban government and the op- eration of the local residents’ committees that have become so prominent in the larger cities since the mid-1990s. During the period of centralized planning and administration in postwar China (roughly 1949–1978), the nation’s municipal administrative and political structure was characterized by the penetration of local communist party structures into all levels of urban administration. The secretary of the Communist Party’s city com- mittee, representing the party, was the most powerful individual, notwithstanding the fact that he had no position in the city government. The mayor, as the head of the city administrative bureaucracy, was second in importance, but at the same time was usually the party committee’s deputy secretary. Decisions were nor- mally initiated by the party and then carried out by the city government. The city government had control over land and construction, but many functions related to urban services (such as health care, housing, and primary education) were under the control of the work unit, or danwei, which could be a large government office or an industrial plant. Beneath the level of the city government, cities were divided into districts (of which the largest cities had up to 14), subdistricts (or street offices), and neigh- borhood (or residents’) committees. In this system of tight vertical control, only individuals who were formally working for a government-approved danwei were permitted to live in the city. Rural-to-urban migration was tightly circumscribed, and only those with a resident’s permit had access to housing, rationed commodi- ties (including staple grains and oils, meat and fish, cotton cloth, and most con- sumer durables) and social services. “The government managed not only urban development, but also urban residents’ lives” (Zhang, 2001: 187). With the introduction of market-oriented reforms beginning in 1978, local governments (as discussed above) were given more freedom to raise and distribute financial resources, responsibilities were transferred from the national to the lo- cal level, and the government stopped managing every detail of urban citizens’ lives. The formal structure of municipal government at the city level (including the relationship between government and party leaders) did not change; around 1985–1986, however, the government began to place much more emphasis on the structure and functioning of submunicipal government, in particular urban resi- dents’ committees (Choate, 1998: 10). Behind this decision were a number of important factors: massive movement of rural migrants into the cities, a rapid in- crease in urban under- and unemployment caused by enterprise restructuring, and Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 400 CITIES TRANSFORMED a withdrawal of the social safety-net functions formerly provided by large urban work-based units. From 1989 to 1993, a number of laws reorganizing residents’ committees were passed, and a 1992 joint policy paper and a 1994 major government cir- cular laid the groundwork for a more elaborate and stronger role for the local committees. By the late 1990s, these residents’ committees (which catered to modal populations of some 2,000 each) were systematically involved in some or all of the following services: information and record keeping; public safety and security; mediation of local civil and family disputes; public health and family planning; environment and sanitation; legal education of the public; provision of “convenience” services, such as fast food restaurants, public transport, and pub- lic telephones; social welfare (especially for young children and the elderly); and employment placement (Choate, 1998: 16–25). According to observers, the aver- age age of committee members is declining, and the committees are hiring more educated, experienced, and professional staff; paying more attention to the needs of the people through social surveys and feedback mechanisms; and connecting with newly formed associations, such as volunteer social service groups, propri- etor and land development associations, and cultural organizations (Choate, 1998; Read, 2000; Ying, 2000; Zhang, 2001). By the end of the 1990s, there were some 119,000 of these local committees throughout urban China. In Beijing and its suburbs in 1997, for example, there were 10 districts, 118 street offices, and 5,026 neighborhood committtees (Read, 2000: 807–8). In many of their local initiatives, committees organize to collect fees and de- velop local projects. Ying (2000: 8–9) gives a good example of the new local management style in Shanghai, a style that often involves city residents actively reporting their complaints to the residents’ committee office, which follows up with energetic—and probably financially advantageous—measures: The Quxi Road Market for Agricultural and Non-staple Products un- der the jurisdiction of the Wuliqiao Subdistrict [Street Office] in Shanghai [is a good] example. In 1997 the market was still dirty, chaotic and jammed with traffic. In addition, it was a market without effective management where some small private retailers ran ram- pant, gave short weight and beat up administrators. The local 2,000 households or more reported all this to the subdistrict office for ac- tion. Cadres of the office immediately held a meeting to discuss the matter and took measures. They cut the number of stands in the market from over 300 to 144. They also invested 260,000 yuan in building unified, standard permanent stands. They also organized an all-weather six-member sanitation team which worked on two shifts a day. The law enforcement team also entered the market to exercise supervision and strict management at regular intervals, thus reducing the number of problems. In 1998 the market was elected an advanced Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 401 exchange at the city level, and acclaimed by local residents. Find- ing problems through letters and calls and helping the people allay their worries and tide over their difficulties have become a distinc- tive feature of the Wuliqiao Subdistrict Office in its effort to offer good community service. According to statistics, in 1998 the office processed 253 letters from the people and received over 4,000 calls. These changes were not present in or before the early 1990s. They are also unprecedented in the development history of Chinese cities, so they are of great historical and practical significance. While not all local committees may be as effective as this particular exam- ple, Choate (1998: 28) reports that, based on his observations and interviews in 14 cities over a 3-year period, “it appears as though the work of residents com- mittees is reasonably well-regarded by the relevant populations themselves.” Per- haps as a result, many cities are developing full-service community centers at the street office and district levels. They are assisted by citizen “boards” or “man- agement committees” consisting of representatives of major mass organizations and the party (Choate, 1998: 29–31). While these groups are not elected, they constitute an interesting local solution to the challenge of representing a range of opinions and professional skills in an increasingly complex social and economic environment. IS THERE A “BEST” MODEL OF URBAN GOVERNANCE? In this chapter we have attempted a limited review of some of the more notable changes in urban governance in very large cities in the developing regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This review, while far from comprehensive and sys- tematic (inasmuch as more extensive case studies and comparative data do not yet exist in the research literature), indicates that new institutional forms are emerg- ing in municipalities across the developing world. Common to most if not all of these new institutional approaches are three main elements: greater involvement of NGOs and community groups in local governance, often through a more plural and democratic electoral system; greater transparency and accountability in both the planning and implementation of local policy; and the devolution of more legal and constitutional responsibility for urban affairs from the state or national level to the local level. From the election of mayors and local councillors across Latin America, to the increasing pluralism of the political process in Africa, to the incor- poration of massive numbers of new actors in the Indian and Philippine municipal systems, to the involvement of nonstate actors in service and infrastructure pro- vision in China, a massive opening of political space is taking place at the urban level. Behind this enhancement of the municipal political role are multiple and com- plex structural changes: the emergence and more active participation of civil Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 402 CITIES TRANSFORMED society at the local level (often together with or as an offshoot of other social movements, such as those involving human rights, environmentalism, and indige- nous rights); the connection of municipalities and their activists with networks of other municipalities and elected officials; the decentralization of powers and func- tions from national to local government units; and the new power and influence that cities—especially large cities—are assuming in a competitive and globalizing world. Given the diversity of the new institutional arrangements coming into active use, as well as the fact that each country has its own historical and political cir- cumstances that vest local governance with a special logic and legitimacy, can common elements be discerned? This question is particularly pertinent since cities and their surrounding regions increasingly see themselves as being in competition with other cities and regions around the world (Scott, 2001). At stake are poten- tially large investments on the part of multinational institutions (both private and public) that can make a major contribution to the employment prospects, and thus the economic welfare, of any city. Since the overall quality of governance is re- garded as contributing to a city’s ability to manage its infrastructure and services and maintain a certain quality of life for its citizens, alternative models of good governance frequently figure in discussions of ways to improve the competitive position of cities. Reforms in local governance and the technical support needed by developing municipalities to put these reforms into practice effectively in their constrained economic circumstances have been the object of significant program assistance from international agencies. These agencies include the Urban Management Pro- gram of UN Habitat (formerly UNCHS); the World Bank; a number of inter- national municipal and local government associations; and various bilateral aid agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and Germany’s Deutsche Gesellschaft f¨ur Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ). In 1999, Dinesh Mehta, current director of the Urban Management Program, compiled three lists of “good governance” criteria to be incorporated in advice proffered by interna- tional agencies: (1) a Habitat II list (including accountability, transparency, par- ticipation, the rule of law, and predictability); (2) a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) list (including participation, the rule of law, transparency, re- sponsiveness, consensus orientation, equity, effectiveness and efficiency, account- ability, and strategic vision); and (3) a list compiled by Konrad Adenauer Stiftung for the “Better Cities Network of East and South-East Asian Cities” (including accountability, responsiveness, management innovation, public–private partner- ships, local government–citizen interaction, decentralized management, network- ing, and human resource management) (Mehta, 1999). Of course, each program has developed explanatory text as to how these crite- ria might be applied, and there are many other lists. Virtually no research of which we are aware has been done on the relative effectiveness of different elements of these lists in either controlled or comparative situations. What is clear from these Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 403 lists is that an idealized liberal–democratic model of urban governance (in which well-informed citizens protected by legal institutions make periodic democratic choices of teams of politicians and professional bureaucrats to manage and de- velop their local space) is the suggested institutional format. While improving governance is important in smaller and intermediate-sized cities, the analysis of governance models most commonly involves the largest cities, which have the most at stake in the new economic dispensation. By common agreement, achieving good governance in the largest metropolitan regions is more difficult than in smaller cities. Populations are larger and more diverse than in smaller cities, the level of resources necessary to institute and maintain services and infrastructure is much higher on an aggregate basis, civil society groups are more organized, and the range of functions for which the city is responsible makes the organization and logistics of urban management much more complex. As an element of his widely discussed argument that much of the world is moving from order toward anarchy, Kaplan (2001: 55) singles out urbanization: The 21st century is going to be the first century in world history when more than half of humanity will live in cities. Even sub-Saharan Africa is almost 50 percent urban. Urban societies are much more challenging to govern than rural societies. In rural societies people can grow their own food, so they are less susceptible to price increases for basic commodities. Rural societies don’t require the complex in- frastructure of sewage, potable water, electricity, and other things that urban societies have. Urbanization widens the scope of error for lead- ers in the developing world while simultaneously narrowing the scope for success. It is harder to satisfy an urban population than a rural population, especially when that population is growing in such leaps and bounds that governing institutions simply cannot keep pace. As we have seen, very large cities do indeed present complex problems of urban management, but there is little or no evidence that they are sliding into an- archy. What we can conclude, which is also consistent (but not coterminous) with Kaplan’s argument, is that the largest metropolitan areas will be more likely to house a highly diverse range of active civil society groups. Along with this or- ganizational diversity, large cities will harbor important movements of political opposition to the party or regime in power at the center. This tendency is most likely a function of both social and economic diversity and the pervasive pres- ence of global ties among the population. Thus in Kenya, the municipal elections of 1992 and 1997 reflected a largely antiregime sentiment, and both elections in Nairobi (the largest city) produced a majority of councillors representing oppo- sition parties. In Mexico City, as we have seen, the left-wing PDR carried the municipal election in 2000. In Brazil, the most recent municipal elections, in Oc- tober 2000, produced left-wing majorities (as against the center–left position of Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 404 CITIES TRANSFORMED the ruling party) in the three largest cities—S˜ao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, and Rio de Janeiro. Political opposition may be one reason central governments are notori- ously reluctant to agree to municipal reform packages involving greater autonomy for their largest cities. One major issue arising in the design of governance systems for large metro- politan areas is that of coordination. Aside from the question of scale and size, the physical expansion of large cities in almost all cases extends the population and the rural (or rural/urban) hinterland over which the city holds sway to include a large number of separate and even independent political jurisdictions. Coor- dinating these jurisdictions is both a political and an organizational challenge, particularly given the tendency of the effectively urbanized area to spread over an ever-larger territory. In one of the classic works on this subject, Jones (1942) argues that growing cities in the United States (including central cities and their suburbs) were increasingly being fragmented into a multiplicity of inadequately coordinated units. “This fragmentation ensured competitive behavior between local governments, an inability to solve regional problems, an uneven distribu- tion of tax resources, a lack of citizen control of local government, and the un- equal distribution of services, especially pertaining to mass transit, sewerage and garbage, water supply, public health, law enforcement, and firefighting” (Stephens and Wikstrom, 2000: 40). To solve these problems, Jones argues, new arrange- ments to ensure metropolitan political integration should be undertaken. Since the time of Jones’s study, a considerable literature has addressed this problem in both Europe and North America. Yet as metropolitan areas grow in both size and number around the world, we are no closer to finding suitable com- prehensive solutions. In an overview of four major metropolitan areas in Canada and five in the United States in 1995–1996, Rothblatt (1999) shows that the av- erage metropolitan area in Canada contains 40 municipalities, while that in the United States contains 157 municipalities and counties. This difference in North American cities reflects the American tendency to localized, individualistic so- lutions as compared with greater acceptance in Canada of a coordinating role for higher levels of government (Goldberg and Mercer, 1986). Nevertheless, there are exceptions to the trend in both countries, and there is today a disturbing tendency toward greater social polarization and fragmentation in both American and Cana- dian cities. This trend appears on the surface to be positively related to political fragmentation (which permits the separation of groups by income and race), but the relationship cannot be clearly demonstrated. (For the American literature, see National Research Council, 1999: Chapter 3.) As large cities in developing countries spread outward, the jurisdictional mo- saic becomes larger and more complex. As we have seen in the case of Mexico City, the capital region now includes some 41 municipalities in two states, a Fed- eral District, and 16 subunits within that district that are equivalent to municipal- ities. The metropolitan area of S˜ao Paulo consists of 39 separate municipalities, while Greater Santiago is made up of 34 separate communes. Rio de Janeiro Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 405 has 17 separate municipalities and Buenos Aires 20 local government units. In Africa, Abidjan consists of 10 communes and a second-tier government, but one must also include a number of privatized service agencies and central government ministries that administer important functions in the city region. In South Africa, there is currently a trend toward consolidation, but in the period immediately after democratization (in the early to mid-1990s), Cape Town was made up of 39 local government units and Durban as many as 69. The pattern extends to Asia as well, where, as we have seen, Bangkok consists of a Bangkok Metropolitan Admin- istration (divided into 50 districts) plus 5 adjacent provinces (which themselves include as many as 2,000 small local governments), while the greater Manila area includes 17 municipalities and up to 18 additional local government units in the surrounding mega-urban region. The governance of large (metropolitan) urban areas is currently a central issue in a number of Latin American countries as they try to reconcile a resurgent local democratic culture with the need to manage complex local functions efficiently so as to safeguard the economic benefits accruing to their city-regions. There are two parallel arguments in the literature on metropolitan governance—a literature that, until recently, was based almost entirely on European and North American evi- dence. One argument addresses the question of whether there should be a unitary organization of government dealing with the entirety of the built-up metropolitan area. Assuming the answer to this question is positive, a second line of argu- ment has to do with whether there should be a single-tier or two-tier metropolitan government (Sharpe, 1995). In principle, there are three possible organizational models arising from these options: (1) a loosely organized collaborative system involving relatively autonomous local governments that cover the metropolitan area; (2) a relatively unitary form of government incorporating the whole of the built-up area; and (3) a two-tier system of government covering the metropolitan area, with lower-level municipalities undertaking certain defined local functions and a higher-level council or metropolitan government dealing with functions of a regional nature. The first of these models parallels the fragmented model dis- cussed earlier in this chapter, while the second and third are variants of what we have called the comprehensive model. While the two-tier model was considered the most desirable system in prin- ciple for many years, it has been coming under attack for practical, political, and theoretical reasons (Sharpe, 1995: Chapter 2). Among the practical problems are the difficulty involved in keeping up with the de facto extension of the boundaries of the metropolitan area, the problem of reaching agreement on exactly where the regional government begins and local municipal functions stop, and the distribu- tion of revenue both horizontally and vertically in large areas that are becoming fragmented and differentiated. There are, in addition, two major political prob- lems, one local and one intergovernmental. At the local, metropolitan level, those attempting to coordinate area-wide structures, whatever their democratic creden- tials (which are, in any case, usually limited) have great difficulty capturing the Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 406 CITIES TRANSFORMED loyalties and attachments of their citizens. Tasks are too technical, and local- ized political attachments to one’s own commune or municipality tend to prevail. Area-wide sentiment, which the metropolitan structure could tap as a political resource, is in short supply; rather, tensions and conflicts among different local structures and communities within the overall metropolitan region appear increas- ingly common. At the intergovernmental level, there is almost always tension between a large and powerful local (metropolitan) government and a higher level of government—such as a state, province, or central government—that must de- centralize functions and allocate revenue to another unit with which it may very well be in political competition. Some would argue that the fragmented model is theoretically superior to the comprehensive model. An argument can be made, based on public-choice princi- ples, that a number of small local jurisdictions is superior to a single overarching government. Since a variety of small local government units can offer different baskets of services and taxes, the whole local area can operate as a quasi-market, supporting greater efficiency through a kind of competition among jurisdictions based on the choices of citizens about where to live (Tiebout, 1956; Ostrom, Tiebout, and Warren, 1961).4 It appears clear that, whatever the challenges to governance in large urban re- gions in the developing world, no single or even dominant model of metropolitan governance is likely to emerge in the foreseeable future. This has not happened in Europe and North America (Lef`evre, 1998) and is unlikely to happen in de- veloping countries, which are even more differentiated in history, geography, and culture. More effective structures for coordination need to be developed, but each solution will have to respond to a myriad of complex political, financial, and tech- nical problems. What can be said is that more participatory local solutions will be attempted for the myriad of challenges entailed in assessing and collecting taxes; improving transparency and justice in the allocation of capital funding; and involving com- munities in such local services as health care, primary education, and even the construction of basic infrastructure. As these cities grow (albeit more slowly than smaller, intermediate-sized cities), their professional staff will become more pro- ficient and their elected officials more experienced, and the new powers and re- sponsibilities devolved to them will be consolidated. One can only hope that all cities will see the value of democracy, the rule of law, and honest and effi- cient local administration, as well as the importance of supporting strong civil society organizations. However they are eventually constructed, cities must draw on the legitimacy of an emerging localism and commitment to democracy, and they must find nontechnical means to engage the imagination and energies of civil society. 4 Virtually all these arguments came into play in Toronto when, in 1997, the provincial government of Ontario removed the well-known and much-admired upper-tier government and its six second-tier governments and replaced them with a single municipal government covering one-half of the greater Toronto area. Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 407 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Conclusions The emergence of large urban regions, spread over many jurisdictions, presents acute problems of governance. Partly as a response, important institutional re- forms have taken place over the last decade. One way of characterizing these trends is to see them as a movement from “local government” to “local gover- nance.” The term “urban governance” implies a greater diversity in the organization of services, a greater variety of actors and stakeholders, and a greater flexibility in the relationship between municipalities and their citizens. These trends in institutional reform can be illustrated by the example of the Bangkok Metropolitan Region. From this analysis the question may be asked: Is there a preferred governance model that best fits such a mega-urban region? There are four types of mega-urban governance in actual use around the world: the frag- mented model, the mixed model, the centralized model, and the comprehensive governance model. The first and last are the most widespread. The comprehen- sive model exists to some degree in Cˆote d’Ivoire, is emerging in South Africa with the “unicity,” and is in effect practiced (albeit without local structures of democratic political representation) in four of the largest Chinese cities. In dis- cussing some of these variations on an overall theme of mega-urban governance, we looked in this chapter at some of the key challenges faced by all large urban areas: the capacity dimension (involving services), the financial dimension (with a focus on the generation of local revenues), the diversity dimension (where is- sues of fragmentation and inequality are central), the security dimension, and the authority dimension (looking at the distribution and allocation of power). As a result of decentralization reforms in many countries, local governments have been given more functions, as well as—after an initial time lag—more power to raise revenues. The range of these reforms is truly vast. Unfortunately, com- parative statistics are very incomplete, but what figures we do have show that municipal expenditure levels are slowly rising as a proportion of national govern- ment expenditure, although the level is still low. Local tax collection and revenue generation may be as much a governance is- sue as a technical finance issue, if we take into account some examples from China and Brazil. In the case of China, reforms since the late 1970s have decentralized decision making from the center to localities and have allowed local governments to enjoy the benefits of substantial “off-budget” revenues. With citizens’ involve- ment, these revenues are a major source of infrastructural investment. In Brazil, many municipalities have adopted various versions of a “participatory budgeting” system, whereby cities are divided into regions or districts, and citizens in those areas participate in a process of determining the shape of the investment budget for each financial year. Security is an increasingly important dimension of urban governance. During the 1990s and beyond, urban security has become one of the dominant issues. As Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World 408 CITIES TRANSFORMED for policy responses to violence, the emphasis in a myriad of programs throughout the world focuses on strengthening local social capital. Violence erodes social capital when it reduces trust and cooperation within formal and informal social organizations; conversely, when social capital is strong, development processes are supported. Since the late 1980s, major decentralization initiatives that have strengthened municipal governance have taken place in a large number of countries. Exam- ples such as Abidjan in Cˆote d’Ivoire, Mexico City, and some of the larger coastal cities in China illustrate a wide variety of institutional reforms that have been tak- ing place at the local level around the developing world. Common to most of these reforms are greater involvement of NGOs and community groups, greater openness and accountability, and the disposition of more legal and financial re- sponsibility for urban affairs at the local rather than at the state or national level. The issue of coordination of multiple jurisdictions is central to the governance challenge in large city-regions. The literature on metropolitan governance fo- cuses on the fragmented situation typically found in almost all North American metropolitan areas. But developing countries exhibit high levels of jurisdictional incoherence as well. Here there are two competing arguments: one suggesting that a wide variety of jurisdictions and local agencies can be beneficial to citi- zens since it permits local choice in services and living environments; and an- other promoting more coherent metropolitan-wide administrative and political solutions. These correspond, respectively, to the “fragmented” model and the “comprehensive” model of governance. As yet, no single model holds sway around the world, but discussions and analyses of competing visions are taking place almost everywhere. Recommendations The field of comparative urban governance is relatively new. But to improve our ability to explain and analyze urban governance reforms and policy options, we recommend more comparative studies and better interdisciplinary tools. This will involve, at a minimum: • Paying more attention comparatively to the local dynamics of policy reform, both among cities within individual countries and across national bound- aries. As urban populations increase to staggering dimensions in some cities, and as decentralization devolves substantial powers to municipal gov- ernments in the areas of health care, education, social assistance, and urban development, we need to incorporate information on and analysis of local governance into our development and policy discussions in a much more central fashion. Municipal development is real development for a large part of the population and must be treated as such in the research literature. Just as we have good cross-national information on GDP, demographic change, Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and Its Implications in the Developing World THE CHALLENGE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE 409 and even income inequality, we need to disaggregate as much of this infor- mation as possible to the urban level for comparative purposes. • Incorporating local governance into our models and analyses of urban change. Until now, research on urbanization has focused primarily on the disciplines (such as sociology and geography) that deal with social and physical change in the urban environment. This was understandable as long as local governments had few powers and little ability to effect changes in the urban situation. But issues of metropolitan reform are on the table in many countries and need to be addressed using analytical approaches that link politics, administrative reform, and the other social sciences in the same discussion. Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 

Virtually all of the growth in the world's population for the foreseeable future will take place in the cities and towns of the developing world. Over the next twenty years, most developing countries will for the first time become more urban than rural. The benefits from urbanization cannot be overlooked, but the speed and sheer scale of this transformation present many challenges. A new cast of policy makers is emerging to take up the many responsibilities of urban governance—as many national governments decentralize and devolve their functions, programs in poverty, health, education, and public services are increasingly being deposited in the hands of untested municipal and regional governments. Demographers have been surprisingly slow to devote attention to the implications of the urban transformation.

Drawing from a wide variety of data sources, many of them previously inaccessible, Cities Transformed explores the implications of various urban contexts for marriage, fertility, health, schooling, and children's lives. It should be of interest to all involved in city-level research, policy, planning, and investment decisions.

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Introductory essay

Written by the educators who created Ecofying Cities, a brief look at the key facts, tough questions and big ideas in their field. Begin this TED Study with a fascinating read that gives context and clarity to the material.

Right now, our economy operates as Paul Hawken said, "by stealing the future, selling it in the present and calling it GDP." And if we have another eight billion or seven billion people, living on a planet where their cities also steal the future, we're going to run out of future really fast. But if we think differently, I think that, in fact, we can have cities that are not only zero emissions, but have unlimited possibilities as well. Alex Steffen

The urgency of urban planning today

Within a few decades' time, we can expect the planet to become more crowded, resources more precious, and innovative urban planners increasingly important. By midcentury, the global population will likely top nine billion, and more than half will live in cities. What will these cities look like? Will we have the resources to power them and comfortably provide for their residents? Will global urbanization harmonize with efforts to curb climate change and secure a sustainable future, or are these forces hurtling towards a head-on collision?

The TED speakers featured in Ecofying Cities underscore the urgency, but also suggest that some optimism's in order as they outline the issues and offer imaginative solutions.

There's no single reason for or response to the complex environmental, economic and social challenges that are part of our future in cities. They call for multiple approaches, originating from different sources — individuals, communities, governments, businesses — and deployed at different levels — in the home, the neighborhood, the city, region, nation and across the globe — to respond to the challenges at hand. As Alex Steffen reminds the urban planners, architects, designers, elected leaders and others involved in the effort, "All those cities are opportunities."

Urbanism and the environment: A brief history

For centuries, successful city-building has required careful attention to the environmental consequences of urban development. Without this, as Jared Diamond demonstrated in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed , a city inevitably ended up fouling its nest, thus entering a spiral of epidemics, economic hardship, decline and, ultimately, oblivion. Civilizations evolved different ways of dealing with environmental considerations — some with more success than others. For example, thanks to elaborate aqueducts and sewer systems, the Romans were able to build and sustain for centuries large cities that featured a reliable public water supply and state-of-the-art public health conditions.

In other civilizations, however, residents simply abandoned cities when they could no longer rely on their environment to supply the resources they needed. Often this was a direct result of their own activities: for example, deforestation and the attendant erosion of fertile soil, epidemics due to contaminated water and, with the advent of coal-fired industrialization, air pollution.

Urban planning got its start as a profession largely dedicated to averting different types of crises arising from urban growth and providing conditions for public health. This was particularly true in the many 19th century European and North American cities transformed by industrialization and unprecedented rates of population growth. Rapidly deteriorating air and water quality made it necessary to introduce regulations to protect the health of the residents of these cities.

The planners' first-generation improvements included sewers, water treatment and distribution, and improved air quality through building codes and increased urban green space. It's especially remarkable today to think that these interventions were adopted in response to observable health consequences, but without knowledge of the contamination mechanisms at work: germ theory didn't arrive on the scene until Louis Pasteur published his work in the 1860s. From the late 19th century onward Pasteur's findings bolstered the case for even more urban sanitation improvements, particularly those designed to improve water quality.

Starting in the 1950s, however, planners no longer narrowly targeted immediate health effects on urban residents as their chief environmental concern. Their work also absorbed and reflected Western society's deeper understanding of, and respect for, natural processes and growing awareness of the long-term environmental impacts of cities from the local to the planetary scale.

Rachel Carson is often credited as the first to popularize environmentalism. Published in 1962, her landmark book Silent Spring sounded a warning call about how pesticides endanger birds and entire ecological systems. Soon after, air pollution became a rallying point for environmentalists, as did the loss of large tracks of rural and natural land to accelerated, sprawling development. Today, sustainable development and smart growth, which largely overlap and address multiple environmental considerations, enjoy wide currency; most urban planning is now based on these principles.

Today, as we reckon with population growth, advancing rates of urbanization, and widespread recognition of climate change, we know that the cities of the future share a common destiny. The choices we make about how we build, inhabit and maintain these cities will have global and long-term effects.

Sustainable development: Two schools of thought

In modern urban planning, there are two general categories of sustainable development. The first doesn't challenge the present dynamics of the city, allowing them to remain largely low-density and automobile-oriented, but still makes them the object of measures aimed to reduce their environmental load (for example, green construction practices). Ian McHarg spearheaded this approach as a way to develop urban areas in harmony with natural systems; the planning principles he formulated gave special care to the preservation of water and green space. His lasting influence is visible in many of the more enlightened suburban developments of recent decades which respect the integrity of natural systems. Today, the Landscape Urbanism movement promotes these same ideas.

A second school of urban development focuses on increasing urban density and reducing reliance on the automobile. This approach advocates transit-oriented and mixed-use development along pedestrian-friendly "complete streets." On a regional scale, it aims to reduce sprawl by creating a network of higher-density multifunctional centers interconnected by public transit. Today, it's common for plans with a metropolitan scope to follow this approach.

Studying the city: About these materials

Cities are arguably the most complex human creation (with the possible exception of language) so it's not surprising that we study them at multiple scales and from diverse perspectives. We can approach cities through a narrow focus on an individual building or a neighborhood, expand the investigation to consider a metropolitan region in its entirety, or study the global system of cities and its interconnections. What's more, we can think about cities as built environments, social networks, modified ecologies, economic systems and political entities. Aware of the multiple ways that we engage with cities, the Romans had two words to refer to them: urbs referred to the physical city with its wall and buildings, and civitas , the city as a collection of residents.

Ecofying Cities explores urban areas at different scales. In some cases, the TED speaker focuses on a neighborhood project, like The High Line in Manhattan; others describe city-wide transformation, as in Curitiba, Brazil, or a regional or national initiative like China's plan for a network of eco-cities to house its growing urban population. Likewise, the talks explore cities from different disciplinary perspectives including urban planning, urban design, transportation planning, architecture, community organization and environmental science. What unites them all? A commitment to sustainability and a belief that sustainability is more about creating positive effects rather than reducing negative impacts.

The message emanating from Ecofying Cities is one of complexity, optimism and uncertainty. We can't be sure that the changes these speakers suggest will be enough to help us balance supply and demand in the sustainability equation. But we can expect that their ideas and efforts will improve the built environment — as well as quality of life — in cities, thereby providing hopeful perspectives for a sustainable future.

Let´s begin with writer and futurist Alex Steffen´s TEDTalk "The Sharable Future of Cities" for a look at the interplay between increasing urban density and energy consumption.

Alex Steffen

The shareable future of cities, relevant talks.

Jaime Lerner

A song of the city.

Majora Carter

Greening the ghetto.

Robert Hammond

Building a park in the sky.

Michael Pawlyn

Using nature's genius in architecture.

William McDonough

Cradle to cradle design.

James Howard Kunstler

The ghastly tragedy of the suburbs.

Ellen Dunham-Jones

Retrofitting suburbia.

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• Urban management and administration

Increasing resource efficiency, service quality and citizen satisfaction

Faced with dwindling financial resources and the new and increasing demands created by climate change and demographic trends, politicians and government authorities are having to be more effective and efficient in how they use funds. At the same time, they need to improve the quality of services and enhance citizen satisfaction with delivery. To achieve this, many cities are undertaking reforms in organisation and management, human resources development and cooperation with civil society and business.

The understanding of urban management has changed radically over the last few decades, both in Germany and in other western European states. We have seen traditional government authorities transform into modern service providers. Strongly hierarchical, rigid administrations are giving way to transparent administrative processes and improved quality in public services. The citizen has become a ‘customer’ who is entitled to effective, high-quality services. Policy-makers and government departments are taking their lead from market standards and the principles of business management. For the public, this modernisation has meant one-stop shops, extended opening hours of municipal offices and online access to selected services.

But cities in developing countries and emerging economies are also taking this path. In particular by using information technology, local authorities can do much to enhance the transparency and efficiency of their work. The city state of Singapore and the city of  Sragen in Central Java , Indonesia are leading the way internationally in this respect. But even poorer developing countries offer opportunities. On behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), GIZ has supported Jamalpur Pourashava, Bangladesh in setting up a  one-stop service centre . The centre offers citizens a single window for all their dealings with the authorities. This means, for instance, that even people who cannot read can always get the help they need, which helps foster inclusion of otherwise marginalised groups. Computerising administrative procedures has also made for huge efficiency gains and significantly reduced processing time.

Modern management methods are also playing an increasing role in the maintenance of municipal infrastructure and real estate. Such methods include agreeing on staff objectives, decentralised responsibility for resources and transferring tasks to public and private businesses.

One good example here is the German city of Freiburg’s efficient and sustainable facility management. Rather than leaving responsibility for the operation and maintenance of public buildings in the hands of the authorities using them, in 2006 Freiburg founded the special facility management body Gebäudemanagement Freiburg. The body is responsible for the operation, energy supply, cleaning and renting of all city-owned properties. Thanks to the eradication of non-transparent and parallel structures, the central facility management body now works much more efficiently, in both economic and environmental terms. It uses environmentally friendly materials and alternative energy sources, making a significant contribution to achieving Freiburg’s sustainability objectives.  

It is now widely accepted that city governments must be service-oriented. The new paradigm is ‘local government for citizens’, which sees the member of the public as an active force in helping design and create public services. In many cities this approach has produced impressive results: citizens are involved in developing guiding principles for local government, establishing and running pre-school facilities and swimming pools, and participatory development planning in urban districts. German cities face the challenge of creating an enabling environment for civic engagement and developing a new self-understanding of politics and government.

The crucial factor in all efforts to modernise city governments is a results-based approach aimed at contributing to the common good. This requires political management capacities and authorities that are willing and able to perform and that are open to actively involving civil society in their work. As well as ensuring appropriate training for staff, a suitable incentives system must be put in place and opportunities for codetermination introduced.

Cities in developing countries face particular challenges here. Lower wages and changes at political level mean high staff turnover rates, making it more difficult to establish efficient managerial and administrative capacities and resulting in the loss of institutional knowledge. Steps that can be taken to counter these effects include drawing up career models, standardising contracts and processes, and appointing two members of staff in key positions.

• Democracy and public participation
• Municipal and regional networks

Good Practices

Creating inclusive public spaces for women

Public spaces can bring together communities and facilitate cultural expression and diversity, so it is important to…

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• NCERT Solutions
• NCERT Class 6
• Class 6 Social Science
• Class 6 Civics
• Chapter 7 Urban Administration

NCERT Solutions for Class 6 Civics Social Science Chapter 7 Urban Administration

Ncert solutions for class 6 social and political life – i chapter 7.

Do you live in a city? From where do you get the water and electricity in your home? Do you know who fixes the lamp posts in your street? In Chapter 7 of CBSE Class 6 Civics, you will learn that urban administration is required to provide basic amenities like street lights, garbage collection and water supply. The urban administration is also required to collect taxes (house and water taxes) and is responsible for cleaning the city’s drainage system and maintaining parks and the market. The municipal corporations or councils carry out duties related to urban administration in India. This chapter talks about the roles, responsibilities and duties of the urban administration in making sure that the city functions smoothly. We also provide here   NCERT Solutions for Class 6 Civics Chapter 7 “Urban Administration,” which covers the solutions for the exercises given in the book ‘Social and Political Life’.

• Chapter 1 Understanding Diversity
• Chapter 2 Diversity and Discrimination
• Chapter 3 What is Government
• Chapter 4 Key Elements of a Democratic Government
• Chapter 5 Panchayati Raj
• Chapter 6 Rural Administration
• Chapter 8 Rural Livelihoods
• Chapter 9 Urban Livelihoods

Students can download the NCERT Solutions for Class 6 Civics PDF below.

NCERT Solutions for Class 6 Civics (Social and Political Life) Chapter 7 Urban Administration

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NCERT Solutions for Class 6 Social Science Civics Chapter 7- “Urban Administration”

The solutions for Chapter 7, Urban Administration are given below. Students should also check NCERT Solutions for Class 6 for other subjects.

Questions Page No 63

1. Why did the children go to Yasmin Khala’s house?

Solution 1:

The children wanted to replace the street light, which was broken by them. Hence, Rehana suggested that the children visit Yasmin Kala’s house to understand the procedures for getting it replaced. Yasmin Kala lived in the same lane and had just retired from Municipal Corporation.

2. List four ways in which the work of the Municipal Corporation affects the life of a city-dweller.

Solution 2:

• Construction of roads, street lights, parks, etc.
• Disposal of garbage
• Maintenance of drainage system
• Supply of drinking water and electricity

3. Who is a Municipal Councillor?

Solution 3:

He is an elected member of the committee of a municipal corporation.

4. What did Gangabai do and why?

Solution 4:

She was protesting against the Ward councillor due to the lack of maintenance of streets. The garbage was not being disposed of, and this was creating a menace in the locality due to dogs, rats, flies and mosquitoes.

5. How does the Municipal Corporation earn the money to do its work?

Solution 5:

They usually earn their money by imposing the following taxes.

• Education tax
• Tax on hotels and shops

In the two photographs, you see different ways of collecting and disposing of garbage.

i) Which way do you think provides safety to the person disposing of garbage?

Solution i:

The 2nd photo shows the right and safer way of disposing of garbage.

ii) What are the dangers of collecting garbage in the manner shown in the first photograph?

Solution ii:

The person collecting garbage will fall sick due to various diseases.

iii) Why do you think that proper ways of disposing of garbage are not available to those who work in municipalities?

Solution iii:

One reason could be due to the apathy of the concerned officials. The other reason could be a lack of funds.

7. Several poor people in the city work as domestic servants as well as work for the Corporation, keeping the city clean. Yet the slums in which they live are quite filthy. This is because these slums seldom have any water and sanitation facilities. The reason often given by the Municipal Corporation is that the land in which the poor have set up their homes does not belong to them and that slum-dwellers do not pay taxes. However, people living in middle-class neighbourhoods pay very little in taxes compared to the amount of money the corporation spends on them in setting up parks, street lighting facilities, regular garbage collection etc. Also, as you read in this chapter, the property taxes collected by the Municipality makes up only 25-30 per cent of its money. Why do you think it is important that the Corporation should spend more money on slum localities? Why is it important that the Municipal Corporation provide the poor in the city with the same facilities that the rich get?

Solution 7:

The lack of basic facilities leads to various health issues. It leads to the rapid spread of diseases, which can be dangerous for the well-being of the entire society. It leads to excess expenditure on healthcare, which can be a burden on the Government. The constitution guarantees a life of dignity for all its citizens. Not providing basic facilities is equal to stealing their basic rights to a decent livelihood.

8. Look at the image below.

The Government of India launched the Swachh Bharat Mission on 2 October 2014 to promote cleanliness in both rural and urban areas all over the nation. Under the “Swachh Bharat, Swachh Vidyalaya” campaign, many activities are also being carried out in schools to generate awareness on sanitation and hygiene amongst students. Observe the ways in which “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan” is being implemented by municipality/panchayat in your locality. Prepare a poster and display it in your school.

This is an activity that students need to carry out at their school.

Urban Administration Summary

The NCERT Class 6 Social and Political Life Chapter 7 talks about the following topics:

• The Ward Councillor and Administrative Staff – It talks about how the city is divided into different wards, the problems associated with it, and the work that is done.
• A community protest – It talks about how a protest is carried out by different citizens when the work done by municipalities is inadequate.

Frequently Asked Questions on NCERT Solutions for Class 6 Civics Chapter 7

How can students prepare for the annual exam using the ncert solutions for class 6 civics chapter 7, what are the ways in which the work of the municipal corporation affects the life of a city-dweller discussed in ncert solutions for class 6 civics chapter 7, what will students learn in chapter 7 of ncert solutions for class 6 civics, leave a comment cancel reply.

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Essay on Urbanization for Students and Children

500 words essay on urbanization.

Urbanization refers to the movement of the population from rural areas to urban areas. It is essentially the gradual increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas. Furthermore, urbanization is quite a popular trend in the contemporary world. Moreover, people mostly undertake urbanization due to more work opportunities and a better standard of living. According to the expert prediction, by 2050, 64% of the developing world and 86% of the developed world will be urbanized.

Causes of Urbanization

First of all, political causes play a big role in urbanization. Many people get forced to leave rural areas for urban areas due to political unrest. Therefore, many families go to urban areas in search of food, shelter, and employment .

Another important cause of urbanization is an economic cause. Furthermore, poverty is a widespread phenomenon in rural areas. Moreover, farmers are finding it very hard to earn enough money and make a living. Consequently, rural people move to urban areas in search of better job opportunities.

Education is a strong cause of urbanization. Urban areas offer opportunities for seeking high-quality education. Moreover, urbanization offers opportunities for studying at universities and technical colleges. Such handsome education opportunities attract many young people in rural areas to move to urban areas.

Environmental degradation also plays a part in contributing to urbanization. Deforestation destroys the natural habitat of many farming families. Furthermore, mining and industrial expansion also harm the natural habitat of farming families.

The social cause is another notable reason for urbanization. Many young rural people migrate to urban areas in order to seek a better lifestyle. Moreover, many young people want to escape the conservative culture of rural areas. Most noteworthy, urban areas offer a more easy-going liberal lifestyle. Furthermore, cities have clubs to attract youth.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Benefits of Urbanization

First of all, urban areas are much more efficient in providing resources than rural areas. Important and basic amenities like housing, clean water, and electricity are easily available in urban areas.

People in urban areas find it quite easy to access to various important services. Most noteworthy, these services are high-quality education, expert health care, convenient transportation, entertainment, etc. Furthermore, some or all of the services are unavailable in rural areas.

Urban areas offer better employment opportunities. Furthermore, these employment opportunities are the result of industrialization and commercialization.

Urban areas play a critical role as creators and disseminators of knowledge. This is because of the highly connected urbanized world. Most noteworthy, the geographical proximity of people in urban areas helps in the propagation of ideas.

Urban areas enjoy the benefits of technological development. Furthermore, many types of technologies get implemented in urban areas. Moreover, urban people quickly get in touch with the latest technology. In contrast, many rural individuals remain ignorant of many types of technologies.

To sum it up, urbanization is a process which is on a continuous rise. Furthermore, urbanization ensures the transformation of rural culture into urban culture. Moreover, the government must be vigilant to the rapidly increasing urbanization. A fully urbanized world looks like the ultimate destiny of our world.

FAQs on Urbanization

Q1 State any two causes for urbanization?

A1 Any two causes for urbanization are high-quality education and good job opportunities in urban areas.

Q2 Why urban areas offer better employment opportunities?

A2 Urban areas offer better employment opportunities due to high industrialization and commercialization.

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Don’t Be Fooled By Trump’s Failure to Endorse a Nationwide Abortion Ban

F ormer President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he favors state control over abortion law and policy and declined to endorse a nationwide ban. He also claimed that the Supreme Court’s overturning of  Roe v. Wade  in  Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization  was favored by “all legal scholars” on “both sides.” Abortion is “where everybody wanted it, from a legal standpoint,” according to Trump.

All of this is patently false, of course. Decades of legal scholarship and advocacy support the federal constitutional right to abortion that Dobbs eliminated. Some scholars who support legal abortion as a matter of policy have criticized the result the Court reached in  Roe , but they are in the minority. Others have critiqued the  reasoning  of  Roe v. Wade . Some, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg , prefer the equality rationale of  Planned Parenthood v. Casey   (1992), where the Court noted the central importance of reproductive freedom to women’s ability to participate fully and equally in the social, political, and economic life of the nation. But the notion that all or most legal scholars wanted the Court to obliterate the right to choose abortion is ludicrous.

No one should be fooled by Trump’s failure to endorse any of the proposed nationwide abortion bans, a move designed to appear “moderate” and lull voters into a false sense of complacency. Make no mistake: a second Trump administration will empower an anti-abortion movement determined to make abortion illegal everywhere. Even if Republicans do not take over Congress, there are plans in place to make medication abortion unavailable and to resurrect the 1873 Comstock Act, an archaic anti-vice law, to ban abortion nationwide. Proponents of fetal personhood, which defines an embryo as a legal person from the moment of fertilization, will be closer to realizing their goal, threatening not only abortion and miscarriage care but also IVF and common forms of contraception. Trump promotes the grotesque lie that Democrats want to “execute babies” to distract from his own party’s extremism.

Trump peddles these false and misleading claims because he understands that the truth about abortion endangers his candidacy and Republicans generally. Far from ending the controversy, returning abortion to the states already has led to outcomes wildly out of step with public opinion. Doctors and hospitals routinely deny patients basic medical care, including miscarriage treatment, because they are not close enough to death to have their rights outweigh those of an embryo or fetus. State laws with no or ineffective exceptions force children, survivors of rape and incest, and people with nonviable fetuses to carry pregnancies regardless of the consequences to their health and future fertility. Maternal health deserts multiply because doctors fear criminal and civil liability. Abortion bans exacerbate a maternal and infant mortality crisis that makes pregnancy a mortal danger to American women— especially Black women , who are almost three times more likely to die from pregnancy and childbirth than their white counterparts.

Read More: How Louisiana Has Become a Microcosm of the Abortion Access Fight

Even people with qualms about abortion in theory don’t favor these horrific results in fact. Recent polling from Gallup and Axios respectively reveals supermajority popular opposition to total and near-total bans on abortion, and majority support , even among Republicans, for keeping the government out of reproductive health care decisions altogether. Every ballot initiative since Dobbs has been resolved in favor of abortion rights and access. In fact, abortion motivates Americans to turn out and vote for candidates who support reproductive freedom.

Perhaps the most pernicious of Trump’s lies is that returning abortion to the states is a victory for democracy. Depriving people of the right to make the most basic decisions about their bodies and lives is deeply undemocratic and a hallmark of authoritarian regimes worldwide. Extreme abortion bans and fetal personhood laws pass  despite  popular opposition because of unchecked partisan gerrymandering that gives Republicans supermajorities. Even the most conservative lawmakers live in fear of a primary challenge from the right if they support any exceptions, however minor and ineffective, to total abortion bans. Trump says abortion law after Dobbs is “all about the will of the people.” But in fact, Republicans are scrambling to take decisions about abortion out of the people’s hands by preventing referenda from reaching the ballot, protecting state courts that defy public opinion from accountability for their decisions, and disenfranchising voters.

The GOP has long used abortion to secure the support of voters to promote a much broader right-wing agenda. Trump, as promised, packed the federal judiciary with jurists who would destroy the government’s ability to regulate corporations, combat climate change and political corruption, enact sensible gun-safety laws, provide for affordable health care, expand opportunities for women and people of color, fight discrimination, protect the rights of workers and immigrants, ask the wealthy to pay their fair share in taxes, and so on. The problem is that a majority of Americans actually support each of the policies the Right is determined to undo. To remain in power, Republicans must undermine democratic institutions and practices. Partisan and racial gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the evisceration of campaign finance regulation and voting rights laws are longstanding strategies; more recently, election denialism, insurrection, political violence, and white supremacist resurgence—all fomented by Trump—place democracy and the rule of law in mortal danger. All of this is at stake in Trump’s ultimate lie: his claim to be a champion of democracy rather than the architect of its demise.

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Guest Essay

Why Is Biden Struggling? Because America Is Broken.

By Damon Linker

Mr. Linker, a former columnist at The Week, writes the newsletter Notes From the Middleground.

Seven months away from a rematch election pitting President Biden against former President Donald Trump, the incumbent is struggling. Mr. Biden suffers from persistently low approval ratings, he barely manages to tie Mr. Trump in national head-to-head polls and he lags behind the former president in most of the swing states where the election will be decided (despite some recent modestly encouraging movement in his direction).

The question is why.

When Mr. Biden’s defenders seek to answer the question, most of them tick off declining rates of inflation, historically low unemployment, strong economic growth, a list of legislative accomplishments and other evidence of a successful presidency. This suggests the problem is primarily a failure of communication — the thing flailing administrations always blame first, since it implies the path to improvement requires little more than doing a better job of “getting the message out” about how great the president is doing.

It’s usually wiser to listen to what voters are saying — beyond the obvious concerns about the president’s age.

Recently, Gallup released the latest edition of its longstanding survey measuring “satisfaction with the way things are going in the U.S.” Three out of four Americans (75 percent) claimed to be dissatisfied. The long-term trend tells a clear story: From the mid-1990s to late 2004, the level of satisfaction bounced around between 39 percent and 71 percent. But in the aftermath of the George W. Bush administration’s failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and during a yearslong violent insurgency challenging American military occupation of the country, numbers began to slide. They would reach a low of 9 percent satisfaction in October 2008, in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

What followed was a very slow 12-year recovery of satisfaction across almost the entirety of the Obama and Trump administrations, with a post-2004 high of 45 percent reached in February 2020, on the eve of the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. By January 2021, the level of satisfaction was back down to 11 percent, just two points off its historical low. Under Joe Biden, Americans briefly became somewhat more upbeat — but figures have sunk again from the mid-30s to the high teens and low 20s in recent months.

These findings mirror what other pollsters have found when they asked respondents about whether they think the country is on the right or wrong track, and about their trust in government and confidence in American institutions . The latter number has been slowly falling since the 1960s, but it, too, really began to collapse in 2004, eventually reaching the low 30s by 2007. In 2023, just 26 percent of Americans expressed confidence in our institutions.

In January 2021, Alana Newhouse published an essay in Tablet, “Everything Is Broken,” that gave voice to this incredibly widespread (but underreported) sentiment. Why did so many people in the United States believe that, as Ms. Newhouse put it in a follow-up essay , “whole parts of American society were breaking down before our eyes”?

The examples are almost too numerous to list: a disastrous war in Iraq; a ruinous financial crisis followed by a decade of anemic growth when most of the new wealth went to those who were already well off; a shambolic response to the deadliest pandemic in a century; a humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan; rising prices and interest rates; skyrocketing levels of public and private debt; surging rates of homelessness and the spread of tent encampments in American cities; undocumented migrants streaming over the southern border; spiking rates of gun violence, mental illness, depression, addiction, suicide, chronic illness and obesity, coupled with a decline in life expectancy.

That’s an awful lot of failure over the past 20-odd years. Yet for the most part, the people who run our institutions have done very little to acknowledge or take responsibility for any of it, let alone undertake reforms that aim to fix what’s broken. That’s no doubt why angry anti-establishment populism has become so prominent in our politics over the past decade — with Mr. Trump, a political outsider, taking over the Republican Party in 2016 by running against the elites of both parties, and Senator Bernie Sanders giving the establishment favorite Hillary Clinton a run for her money that same year by taking on the banking and finance sectors of the economy, along with their Democratic and Republican enablers.

Mr. Biden has never been that kind of politician. Most of the time he speaks and acts as if he thinks American institutions are doing perfectly fine — at least so long as Mr. Trump doesn’t get his hands on them. Part of that is undoubtedly because Mr. Biden is an incumbent, and incumbents always find themselves having to defend what they’ve done in office, which isn’t compatible with acting like an insurgent going to war against the system.

Then there’s the fact that Mr. Biden has worked within our elected institutions since the Nixon administration, making him deeply invested in them (and implicated in their failures). Finally, as a Democrat who came of age during the heyday of mid-20th-century liberalism, Mr. Biden is wedded to the idea of using a functional, competent and capable federal government to improve people’s lives — whether or not more recent history validates that faith.

This places him badly out of step with the national mood, speaking a language very far removed from the talk of a broken country that suffuses Mr. Trump’s meandering and often unhinged remarks on the subject. The more earnest statements of the third-party candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , Cornel West and Jill Stein also speak to aspects of our brokenness, taking ample and often nostalgic note of what’s gone wrong and promising bold, if vague, action to begin an effort of repair.

That leaves Mr. Biden as the lone institutionalist defender of the status quo surrounded by a small army of brokenists looking for support from an electorate primed to respond to their more downcast message.

There may be limits to what Mr. Biden can do to respond. For one thing, his 81-year-old frailty can’t help appearing to mirror the fragile state of our public institutions. For another, in an era of political bad feeling, when presidential approval ratings sink quickly and never recover, incumbents from both parties may no longer enjoy the kind of advantage in seeking re-election that they once did, at least at the national level.

Still, there are things the Biden campaign could do to help the president better connect with voters.

First, he should stop being so upbeat — about the economy in particular — and making the election entirely about the singular awfulness of his opponent. While the latter sounds evasive, the former makes the president seem hopelessly out of touch and risks antagonizing people who aren’t in the mood for a chipper message.

Mr. Biden should instead try to meet Americans where they are. He should admit Washington has gotten a lot of things wrong over the past two decades and sound unhappy about and humbled by it. He could make the argument that all governments make mistakes because they are run by fallible human beings — but also point out that elected representatives in a democracy should be upfront about error and resolve to learn from mistakes so that they avoid them in the future. Just acknowledging how much in America is broken could generate a lot of good will from otherwise skeptical and dismissive voters.

Even better would be an effort to develop a reform agenda: Mr. Biden could declare it’s long past time for America to put its house in order, to begin cleaning up the messes of the past two decades, to face our problems and return to our own best national self. He might even think of adapting and repurposing for the center-left a few lines from Ronald Reagan’s first Inaugural Address : “It’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work — work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.”

In concrete terms, this means pledging to reform existing institutions and programs, not promising to build new ones on top of the ambitious legislation and substantial spending Congress passed during Mr. Biden’s first two years in office. It means, instead, a commitment to pause and begin assessing what government has been doing at all levels, under both Republican and Democratic leadership, over the past two decades.

It means, more specifically, a resolution to continue and expand existing reviews into what worked and what didn’t during the pandemic — in red states and blue states, in cities, suburbs and small towns — in order to prepare for a better response the next time we confront a public-health emergency. It means talking honestly about the surging and unsustainable national debt and what it will take to begin reining it in. It means trying to help government function better, including a concerted effort to increase state capacity , eliminate regulations that constrain the nation’s housing supply and build on the administration’s attempts at permitting reform to streamline or remove regulations that slow down and increase the cost of private as well as public development.

These projects will far outlast a second Biden term. But the president can promise to get them started, with the remaining work to be completed by presidents and generations to come.

Taking this approach may help to neutralize the populist advantages Mr. Trump enjoys (at least when he isn’t running as an incumbent). However much voters appreciate his denunciations of a corrupt and rigged system, as well as his management of the economy over the first three years of his presidency, they have no love for the G.O.P.’s obsession with pairing cuts to entitlement programs and upper-income tax rates with draconian restrictions on abortion — not to mention Mr. Trump’s focus on personal grievances and legal recklessness. That leaves plenty of room for Mr. Biden to make a case for himself as the guy who can enact the sweeping reforms American needs, and without all the unnecessary and dangerous drama a second Trump administration would surely bring.

Everything is broken — or so it feels to many of our fellow citizens. Denying this reality only empowers populist candidates whose message acquires its potency by pointing to an entrenched political establishment unwilling or unable to learn from (or even admit) its myriad mistakes. That shirking needs to stop. And it should do so with Joe Biden.

Damon Linker, who writes the newsletter “ Notes From the Middleground ,” is a senior lecturer in the department of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow at the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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