“When you can measure what you are speaking

about, and express it in numbers, you know

something about it,” the British physicist

Lord Kelvin once observed.“But when you cannot measure

it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge

is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.”

“Unsatisfactory” is the word that best describes the contemporary debate over globalization. There seems to be a

consensus that globalization—whether economic, political,

cultural, or environmental—is defined by increasing levels of

interdependence over vast distances. But few people have

undertaken the task of actually trying to measure those levels of interdependence. For instance, how do we determine

the extent to which a country has become embedded within the global economy? How do we demonstrate that globalization is racing ahead, rather than just limping along? And

how do we know just how worldwide the World Wide Web

has become?

Like the physical universe that Lord Kelvin sought to

understand, globalization may be too vast a concept to be

fully captured by today’s still limited set of statistical measurements. But that same challenge has not deterred physicists

from their relentless pursuit to measure with ever greater

accuracy the forces that hold the universe together. Nor

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR APRIL 2001

The Globalization Index

A.T. Kearney, Inc., Foreign Policy Magazine, and

the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

WHAT’S INSIDE

Message from the Wilson Center Director . . . . . . . . .2

Message from the HUD Secretary: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

Florida’s Growth Management Study Commission

Istanbul +5: The United Nations Centre for . . . . . . . .11

Human Settlements (Habitat) and the

Global Fight to Eliminate Urban Poverty

Knowledge-Value Cities In The Digital Age . . . . . . . .13

Internet Policy and Digital Development . . . . . . . . . .15

in Malaysia and Africa

Regional Territorial Policies and Urban Economic . .17

Development in OECD Countries

Non-Governmental Organizations and . . . . . . . . . . . .19

Community-Based Economic Development

Do Property Rights Matter? An Urban . . . . . . . . . . . .20

Case Study from Peru

Participatory Planning in Metropolitan Manila . . . . .23

Developing New Financial Instruments in . . . . . . . . .27

Mexico to Expand Affordable Homeownership

Making Cities Work: The Urban Strategy . . . . . . . . .28

of the U.S. Agency for International Development

The World Planning Schools Congress in . . . . . . . . .29

Shanghai, China

The Urban Development Timeline Project . . . . . . . . .30

Urban Applications of Geographic Information . . . . .32

Systems in Developing Countries

UCGIS-HUD Global Urban Indicators Symposium . . .34

and Congressional Breakfast

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Dr. John Hope . . . . .35

Franklin Embark on a Journey Towards Peace

The Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, Canada .36

Goods and Services

Personal Contact

Finance

Technology

SINGAPORE

NETHERLANDS

SWEDEN

SWITZERLAND

FINLAND

IRELAND

AUSTRIA

UNITED KINGDOM

NORWAY

CANADA

DENMARK

UNITED STATES

ITALY

GERMANY

PORTUGAL

FRANCE

HUNGARY

SPAIN

ISRAEL

MALAYSIA

Singapore leads the rankings as the most global 

nation in the index, due in large part to its high 

trade levels, heavy international telephone 

traffic, and steady stream of international 

travelers. European nations round out the rest of 

the top five countries. Despite high levels of 

integration on various technological measures, 

the United States remains less integrated in 

economic terms, leaving it twelfth in the index. 

The Global Top 20

Goods and Services: Convergence of domestic prices with 

international prices, and international trade as a share of 

GDP. Finance: Inward- and outward-directed foreign 

investment, portfolio capital flows, and income payments 

and receipts as shares of GDP. Personal Contact: Crossborder remittances and other transfers as a share of GDP, 

minutes of international phone calls per capita, and 

number of international travelers per capita.Technology:

Percentage of population online, number of Internet hosts 

per capita, and number of secure servers per capita.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 4

US Department of Housing 

and Urban Development
GLOBAL OUTLOOK

2

GLOBAL OUTLOOK, the International Urban Research Monitor, is published quarterly by the Woodrow Wilson

International Center for Scholars, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC

20004; and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of International Affairs, 451 Seventh

Street, SW, Room 8118, Washington, DC 20410.

EDITORS: Marc A. Weiss, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

(202) 691-4229 (ph); (202) 691-4001 (fx); WeissMA@wwic.si.edu 

Alven H. Lam, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

(202) 708-0770 ext. 5827 (ph); (202) 708-5536 (fx); Alven_H._Lam@hud.gov

Opinions expressed in the articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of

HUD, the Wilson Center, or the U.S. Government.

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for

Scholars is pleased to co-publish, together with the

United States Department of Housing and Urban

Development (HUD), our second issue of Global Outlook.

We welcome HUD Secretary Mel Martinez as our new

partner in this effort to highlight important urban research

and best practices from nations, regions, cities, and communities throughout the world. Secretary Martinez served as

the elected Chairman of Orange County, Florida. In that

capacity, he was the chief executive of a county government

that includes within its boundaries the City of Orlando,

Disney World, and nearly one million residents. The rapid

growth of Orange County and its surrounding metropolitan

region in central Florida made Chairman Martinez the ideal

public official to be appointed by Governor Jeb Bush as

Chairman of the State of Florida’s Growth Management

Study Commission. Growth management is a major issue

for urban areas both in the United States and around the

world, and, thus, in this issue of Global Outlook, we reprint

a portion of the final report of Florida’s Growth

Management Study Commission produced under Secretary

Martinez’ leadership.

Another major theme addressed in this issue is economic

development and quality of life in developing nations. Here

we highlight the important work of the United Nations

Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) and the upcoming

“Istanbul + 5” meeting in New York to move forward on

measures to eliminate global urban poverty. Our previous

issue included an article from the World Bank on the Cities

Alliance, an important new partnership in the battle to end

poverty and deprivation.This issue contains related thematic

articles on the “Making Cities Work” initiative of the U.S.

Agency for International Development, the Summit of the

Americas, Fannie Mae’s important international activities to

promote new financing mechanisms for affordable homeownership, and the World Bank’s commendable efforts to

help reform property rights in Peru and expand access to formal credit markets for low-income families.

This issue also places

emphasis on the rapidly accelerating impacts of new information technology and

telecommunications on urban

areas. One article explains the

new “Globalization Index”

from A.T. Kearney and the

Carnegie Endowment for

International Peace, publisher

of Foreign Policy magazine. In a

closely related article, Wilson

Center Senior Policy Scholar

Leslie Simon reviews Internet

policy and digital development in Malaysia and Africa,

excerpted from his newly published Wilson Center book,

NetPolicy.Com. Additional articles that touch on aspects of

the technology and New Economy themes include Mario

Pezzini’s analysis of regional territorial policies in the

Organization for Economic Cooperation and

Development, Joel Kotkin and Ross DeVol’s Milken

Institute study of knowledge-value cities in the digital age,

and work by the United Nations, governments, and universities applying Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to

addressing urban challenges.

Finally,this issue takes a hard look at the role of non-governmental organizations and citizen participation in urban

development, with articles by Aprodicio Laquian on metropolitan planning in the Philippines, Marc Weiss on community development corporations in the United States, and

Douglas Spiro on international grassroots action to promote

interracial and intergenerational healing.

The Woodrow Wilson Center is delighted to forward to

you this second issue of Global Outlook.•

Message from Wilson Center Director Lee H. Hamilton
Florida’s Growth Management Study Commission:

Preparing Livable Communities and Regions 

for the New Economy

MEL MARTINEZ

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Editors’ Note: U.S. Housing and Urban Development

Secretary Mel Martinez served as the Chairman of the State

of Florida’s Growth Management Study Commission,

which released its final report on February 15, 2001. The

following is an excerpt from the report:

TIME FOR BOLD CHANGE 

This Commission believes that it is the State’s highest priority to achieve a diverse, healthy, vibrant and sustainable

economy. By promoting a climate which provides economic stability, maximizes job opportunities and increases

income for its workforce, Florida will be in the best fiscal

position to address the other major challenges of our State

which are education, infrastructure, the environment, public

safety and social services. Our proposed reforms for growth

management have been guided by this principle. For more

than 25 years, Florida has tried various legislative approaches to address the stresses of our State’s rapid growth.These

efforts resulted in a mandate to create a vertically integrated, state, regional and local comprehensive planning system.

As a result of landmark legislation passed 15 years ago, all

472 local governments in Florida have adopted comprehensive plans that attempt to address the community’s current

and future plans for land use, natural resource protection and

provision of infrastructure.These mandates raised the minimum bar for planning efforts in this State, and have produced some significant positive results.

Yet, these prior efforts have fallen short of our collective

aspirations, and some requirements, such as traffic concurrency, had unintended negative effects. We agree with the

assessment in the Executive Order establishing this

Commission, that although the processes established by

these laws were well intended, the quality of growth has not

met our expectations, the strains on infrastructure have been

only marginally reduced and, in essence, we have created a

more complicated, more costly process without the expected corresponding benefits. Traffic congestion, school overcrowding, loss of natural resources, decline of urban areas

and conversion of lands without adequate infrastructure are,

despite our laws, growing problems throughout the State.

There is a tendency to equate new development as the

only cause of growth-related problems, rather than to recognize that new development is a free market way of accommodating the demands of our State’s rapid population and economic growth.We cannot continue to erroneously conclude

that techniques that target only the effects (development) will

somehow change the root cause (population growth),and that

a regulatory framework applied

on a project- by-project level,

will be more effective than a

broad and innovative incentivebased approach, coupled with

new sources of revenues.This is

one reason why the “concurrency” model has failed to meet

our needs.

Although information presented to the Commission

demonstrates some successes in

our current system, we can and

must do a better job of managing our growth than we have in the past.We have reviewed

our progress, evaluated the successes and disappointments of

our current efforts, those of other states, and our own local

governments, and attempted to adapt and evolve them into a

program for the new century.

Florida’s population growth remains one of the highest

in the nation. According to the latest census data, approximately 16 million people currently live in the State. That

number is expected to increase by more than 6 million over

the next 25 years, and by 8 million in the next 30. Our elderly population is expected to grow at an even faster rate

and to comprise over 25 percent of Florida’s residents by the

year 2025.While our school-age population is expected to

be a smaller percentage of the total population by 2025 than

at present, the number of school-age children will still

expand tremendously over that time period, and is projected to increase sharply around 2020 as the baby boom echo

generation’s children reach school age. All of the favorable

attributes that Florida possesses will assure that population

growth will continue at a rate exceeding most of the country, primarily due to inmigration. Seasonal population

changes and tourism create enormous spikes in demands on

community services and facilities. Our economic success

and technological progress is likely to increase the demand

for housing choices in the future, and our suggested changes

acknowledge the fundamental principles of personal choice

and property rights.

No system should be immune from change, and our

growth management system is no exception.A realistic look

at the results of our past efforts, combined with the imperative of still rapid population growth, demand that we seek

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR

3

CONTINUED ON PAGE 9
should it deter those who seek a deeper understanding of

globalization and its impact on the contemporary world.

Without some means to quantify the extent of globalization,

any meaningful evaluation of its effects will remain elusive.

With this challenge in mind, we present the A.T.

Kearney/Foreign Policy Magazine Globalization IndexTM,

which offers a comprehensive guide to globalization in 50

developed countries and key emerging markets worldwide.

The Globalization Index “reverse-engineers” globalization

and breaks it down into its most important component

parts. On a country-by-country basis, it quantifies the level

of personal contact across national borders by combining

data on international travel, international phone calls, and

cross-border remittances and other transfers. It charts the

World Wide Web by assessing not only its growing number

of users, but also the number of Internet hosts and secure

servers through which they communicate, find information,

and conduct business transactions.

The Globalization Index also measures economic integration. It tracks the movements of goods and services by

examining the changing share of international trade in each

country’s economy, and it measures the permeability of

national borders through the convergence of domestic and

international prices.The index also tracks the movements of

money by tabulating inward- and outward-directed foreign

investment and portfolio capital flows, as well as income

payments and receipts.

Given the unprecedented range of factors that the

Globalization Index encompasses, we believe that it is a

unique and powerful tool for understanding the forces shaping today’s world. And the results of this year’s index prove

startling. Much of the conventional wisdom cherished by

both champions and critics of globalization collapses under

the weight of hard data, ranging from the pace and scale of

global integration and the characteristics of the “digital

divide” to the impact of globalization on income inequality,

democratization, and corruption.

The A.T. Kearney/Foreign Policy Magazine Globalization

IndexTM may not settle the question of whether globalization does more good than harm. But the index provides an

objective starting point for a debate that has typically relied

more on anecdotal evidence than empirical facts.

LEADERS OF THE PACK

In recent years, indicators of global integration have shown

remarkable growth. The number of international travelers

and tourists has risen, now averaging almost three million

people daily—up from only one million per day in 1980.

The latest data from the United Nations Conference on

Trade and Development show that foreign direct investment

jumped 27 percent in 1999 to reach an all-time high of

$865 billion, while total cross-border flows of short- and

long-term investments have more than doubled between

1995 and 1999. Due to the falling cost of international telephone calls and the rising levels of cross-border activity, the

traffic on international switchboards topped 100 billion

minutes for the first time in 2000.And with an online population estimated at more than 250 million and growing,

more people in more distant places have the opportunity for

direct communication than ever before.

The expansion of information technologies adds to

globalization in ways other than facilitating communication.

Some nations fear that the Internet is an engine driving U.S.

cultural hegemony. Others see the Internet as a catalyst for

creating global cultural communities, from Moroccan sports

enthusiasts rooting for their favorite Canadian ice hockey

team to anti-globalization protestors mobilizing against the

World Trade Organization and the International Monetary

Fund.The Internet also is an unprecedented means for disseminating ideology to a global audience, whether it is prodemocracy activists in Serbia rerouting dissident radio

broadcasts to the World Wide Web or Chechen rebels maintaining their own online news service.

The full impact of information technologies on political and social life is not easily measured. But it is possible

to gauge their effects on the economic sector. Information

technologies make it possible for nations to sustain deeper

levels of economic integration with one another. Nowhere

is this integration more evident than in financial markets,

which use advanced information technologies to move

$1.5 trillion around the world every day. For the United

States, cross-border flows of bonds and equities alone are

54 times higher now than they were in 1970. Such flows

have multiplied by 55 times for Japan and 60 times for

Germany.

At first glance, these trends lend credence to the popular

notion that globalization is fast creating a world that, as former Citicorp Chairman Walter Wriston put it, is “tied

together in a single electronic market moving at the speed

of light.” But a closer look reveals that global integration

appears to be growing no more rapidly now than it has been

for years, and its pace may even be slowing down.

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

4

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Is Globalization Slowing Down?

1995

1996

1997

1998

G-7 Nations

World 

Average

Emerging

Markets

Globalization advanced briskly until 1997, when 

the financial crises that hit various developing 

regions weakened trade flows and undercut 

gains in global integration. So why did overall 

integration still increase during this period? 

Simple: Technology has become the engine of 

globalization. 

Technology factors: Percentage of 

population online, number of Internet hosts per 

capita, and number of secure servers per capita. 

Non-technology factors: Trade in goods and 

services, capital flows, and personal contact.

MORE 

GLOBALIZED
Why does globalization remain sluggish even as indicators of technological integration—the number of Internet

hosts, online users, and secure servers—continue to grow

exponentially? The data from our broad spectrum of developed and developing markets suggest that global economic

integration has wound down to something of a crawl.The

drop in total trade to and from the 50 countries surveyed

weighs particularly heavy in this slowdown.The chief culprit was the series of financial crises that rippled through

Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Russia in the late 1990s.

Strong growth in portfolio investments and foreign direct

investment helped to moderate these declines, and the value

of world trade has rebounded since 1999.As a result, we see

a situation in which economic globalization slowed even as

technological globalization continued at a rapid clip.

Some nations have pursued integration with the rest of

the world more aggressively than others.The most globalized countries are small nations for which openness allows

access to goods, services, and capital that cannot be produced at home. In some cases, geography has played an

important role in sustaining integrated markets. The

Netherlands, for instance, benefits from (among many

other factors) its position at the head of the Rhine, which

knits together countries that account for almost three

quarters of total Dutch trade. In other cases, such as

Sweden and Switzerland, relatively small domestic markets

and highly educated workers have given rise to truly global companies capable of competing anywhere in the world.

And a host of other factors has contributed to the globalization of other small states. Austria, for example, benefits

from heavy travel and tourism, while remittances from

large populations living abroad contribute to Ireland’s integration with the outside world.

Singapore stands out clearly as the world’s most global

country. The country far outdistances its nearest rivals in

terms of cross-border contact between people, with per

capita international outgoing telephone traffic totaling nearly 390 minutes per year. Singapore also boasts a steady

stream of international travelers, equal to three times its total

population. In contrast, the United States hosts only onesixth that level of international tourists and travelers and can

claim less than one-fourth the per capita outgoing international telephone traffic.

Yet in recent years, Singapore has struggled to maintain

high levels of trade, foreign investment, and portfolio investment, which help support its globalization lead. The Asian

“flu” is partly to blame, since the financial crisis undermined

the entire region’s economic performance. But Singapore’s

slow progress in privatizing state industries, its failure to win

endorsement for a regional free-trade agreement, and its

tight controls over Internet development have also slowed

its integration with other countries.

Another country that ranks high on the Globalization

Index is the Netherlands. But here, the story is largely economic.Within only a few short years, the Dutch have both

invested heavily in other countries and seen foreign participation in their own economy rise to levels that few other

nations have been willing or able to sustain. In the wake of

aggressive reforms that have stripped regulations and

enhanced labor flexibility, foreign investment increased from

8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1995 to more

than 19 percent of GDP in 1998. Likewise, portfolio investments grew from only 5 percent to more than 30 percent

over the same period, the highest levels in the world—more

than double those in France and Germany and 5 times

higher than those in the United Kingdom.

With Sweden and Finland riding the wave of Internet

development to similar gains in integration with the rest of

the world, the current globalization rankings may well be in

flux. Singapore could slip from the lead in the coming years,

as countries that are better positioned to benefit from global communications technologies or that are more aggressive

about reforms to attract foreign trade and investment develop stronger ties with their neighbors.

Yet despite signs of greater openness among these few

leading countries, many others remain stalled at much lower

levels of integration, with little indication of imminent

change.Thus, there is reason to believe that the countries at

the top of the rankings are only running further and further

away from the pack.

THE DIGITAL ABYSS

Not all countries around the world have participated equally in the transition to the new global economy.The digital

divide between developed and emerging-market countries

is now more like a digital abyss. On many relevant measures—from the diffusion of Internet users to the number of

Internet hosts—the vast majority of economic activity related to information and communications technologies is concentrated in the industrialized world.

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR

5

Digital Divides

1995

1996

1997

1998

North America

Scandinavia

Emerging

Markets

An overwhelming majority of economic 

activity linked to information and 

communications technology is 

concentrated in the industrialized 

world, with developing nations lagging 

far behind. But there is also a divide 

within the divide, with the United 

States, Canada, and the Scandinavian 

countries far outpacing most West 

European economies.

Western

Europe

North America is 

five times more wired 

than Western Europe.

MORE 

WIRED
But among industrialized countries, another digital

divide exists. The Internet has penetrated deeply in the

United States, with neighboring Canada not far behind. In

both countries, over 25 percent of the population enjoyed

Internet access by 1998 (the last year for which data are

available for all countries in the survey). More recent estimates put that number above 40 percent in both countries.

Perhaps more important, the United States and Canada lead

the world in secure servers suitable for electronic commerce, signifying that their well-developed Internet networks can be used effectively to enhance commercial activities as well as personal communication.

In addition to the United States and Canada,

Scandinavian countries also rank among the world’s most

wired nations. Thirty-nine percent of Sweden’s population

was online in 1998, growing to 44 percent in more recent

surveys. Finland and Norway led in Internet hosts, each with

more than 70 servers per 1,000 inhabitants connected

directly to the World Wide Web.

Indeed, if any region of the world exemplifies the changing face of global integration, that region is Scandinavia,

where Sweden, Finland, and Norway have turned their traditional engineering and manufacturing prowess to work in

the information technology boom while further opening

their countries to trade and investment flows.

Scandinavia’s technological takeoff should come as little

surprise. In the last century, Sweden was among the first

countries to realize the full potential of the telephone. It

offered a means of mitigating distance in often sparsely populated lands.Thirty years ago, Sweden’s leading technology

company, Ericsson, was among the pioneers in mobile

telephony, and this decade the country has embraced

Internet technologies far ahead of the curve. Stockholm,

with nearly 60 percent of its population online, is perhaps

the most wired city in the world.

In similar ways, neighboring Finland suggests the possibilities of this Internet-led revolution. In 1995, Finland

topped all others in terms of Internet access. Information

technology made it possible for Finnish companies to

respond to competitive pressures by diversifying both their

export markets and their workforce. Recent studies show

that over one quarter of Finnish exports now go to countries beyond Europe, up from less than one fifth in 1990.

And nearly half the staff of Finland’s 30 largest companies

now operate overseas, as compared to only 15 percent in

1983. Although other countries have since pulled ahead in

levels of Internet penetration, Finland has witnessed rising

levels of trade and investment that have pushed it into the

fifth position overall in the Globalization Index, much higher than it would have placed only a few years ago. One other

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

6

INDIA

CHINA

KENYA

COLOMBIA

RUSSIAN FEDERATION

BRAZIL

PERU

MOROCCO

NIGERIA

MEXICO

INDONESIA

ARGENTINA

TURKEY

VENEZUELA

EGYPT

PHILIPPINES

UKRAINE

KOREA, REP.

THAILAND

JAPAN

TUNISIA

SOUTH AFRICA

CHILE

POLAND

Globalization and Inequality

Are more globalized societies also more 

unequal? Not necessarily. With some exceptions, 

countries scoring high in the Globalization Index 

enjoy more egalitarian income patterns, while 

nations that are less integrated with the rest of 

the world display more skewed distributions of 

income.*

*Inequality data are not available for all

 countries in the survey.

INEQUALITY

POPULATION 

GLOBALIZATION
symbol of success: The market capitalization of Nokia,

Finland’s global telecommunications giant, is now higher

than the country’s gross domestic product.

The fact that Sweden, Finland, and the rest of

Scandinavia have been able to nurture fast-moving technological developments with their traditionally lumbering regulatory and tax regimes offers an unexpected contradiction,

confusing traditional assumptions about how high levels of

regulation impede globalization. But what about areas of

relatively high regulation where no technological takeoff has

yet been achieved? Look no further than continental

Europe to see the negative effects of an unfavorable business

climate on integration. Indeed, most of the countries in the

Euro zone, weighed down by their relatively low scores in

Internet development, rank at the bottom of the top 20

globalized countries.

Concerns about the disparities between industrialized

and developing countries, especially with respect to Internet

access and use, have touched off a worldwide debate about

the global digital divide. Rather than a division between

developed and developing countries, however, the divide at

this moment reflects the vast technological advances in

North America and the Scandinavian countries compared

with the rest of the world.Together, those two regions stand

on one side of a gaping digital chasm that appears to have

left much of the remaining world behind.

If this “digital abyss” is to be bridged, developing nations

have the most ground to cover. But deciding how to use

their limited resources poses a difficult dilemma. Malaysia

offers but one example of the perverse choices that can

ensue. In an effort to attract investment and develop its

high-technology capabilities, Malaysia has spent more than

$3.6 billion on its Multimedia Super Corridor.At the same

time, over 70 percent of the nation’s primary schools lack

computer facilities, and almost 10 percent lack proper connections for water and electricity.The result is an impressive

infrastructure not sufficiently supported by human capital.

For other countries, Internet development cannot proceed unless more fundamental concerns about infrastructure

are addressed. In Chile, one of the most prosperous emerging markets, 57 percent of the fixed telephone lines and 58

percent of the mobile-phone subscribers are located in the

capital city, leaving most of the country without Internet

access. And Africa’s underdeveloped telecommunications

sector has left much of that continent without reliable connections to the World Wide Web. For instance, the

Democratic Republic of the Congo still has no direct link

to the Internet, and a large number of African countries can

count no more than a few hundred active Internet users.

MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

Anti-globalization critics frequently claim that globalization

increases income inequality. This assertion is elegant in its

simplicity, but it ignores a host of other important factors.

The level of income disparity in an economy might have

more to do with history, economic growth, price and wage

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR

7

GREECE

AUSTRALIA

CZECH REP.

NEW ZEALAND

MALAYSIA

ISRAEL

SPAIN

HUNGARY

FRANCE

PORTUGAL

GERMANY

ITALY

UNITED STATES

DENMARK

CANADA

NORWAY

UNITED KINGDOM

AUSTRIA

IRELAND

FINLAND

SWITZERLAND

SWEDEN

NETHERLANDS

Globalization and Inequality
controls, welfare programs, and education policies than it

does with globalization or trade liberalization.

Moreover, the empirical evidence suggests a very different story about income disparity and globalization.

Emerging-market countries that are highly globalized (such

as Poland, Israel, the Czech Republic, and Hungary) exhibit a much more egalitarian distribution of income than

emerging-market nations that rank near the bottom of the

Globalization Index (such as Russia, China, and Argentina).

There are some exceptions: Malaysia, for instance, is more

globalized but less equal than Poland. But the general pattern of higher globalization and greater income equality

holds for most countries, both in mature economies and

emerging markets.

These findings should reinvigorate the debate over

whether countries are poor and unequal because of globalization, or because they are not globalized enough.

Moreover, efforts to redress global inequality should be

tempered with the recognition that many countries with

skewed income distribution patterns, including Brazil and

Nigeria, also have large populations. That only underscores the difficulty of pulling the mass of humanity out

of poverty.

A CAT SCAN OF GLOBALIZATION

Trade, foreign direct investment, international telephone

calls, Internet servers—considered individually, statistics on

each of these phenomena are accurate, albeit insufficient,

measures of global interdependence. Yet, just as a cat scan

creates a three-dimensional image of the human anatomy

from a series of two-dimensional images, the A.T.

Kearney/Foreign Policy Magazine Globalization IndexTM

provides a comprehensive view of global integration

through an analysis of its component parts.

There is, of course, an irony associated with trying to

measure globalization on a nation-by-nation basis. Even the

least integrated countries are being drawn together by new

forces beyond their ability to control, whether it is global

warming, the spread of infectious diseases, or the rise of

transnational crime.And some of the most significant aspects

of globalization—the spread of culture and ideas—cannot

be easily quantified. These and other challenges highlight

the need for a closer and more refined examination of the

forces driving global integration, not to mention further

refinement of the tools used to measure it.•

This article is reprinted with permission from the

January/February 2001 issue of Foreign Policy Magazine,

published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

8

Foreign Policy Magazine produces the Globalization

Index in collaboration with A.T. Kearney’s Global

Business Policy Council. The Council is a strategic

service of A.T. Kearney, an EDS company. The A.T.

Kearney/Foreign Policy Magazine Globalization

IndexTM encompasses several key indicators: globalization in goods and services is measured through the

share of international trade (exports of goods and

services plus imports of goods and services) in gross

domestic product (GDP), as well as the convergence of

domestic prices and world prices. Financial globalization is measured through income payments and

receipts, the inflow and outflow of foreign direct

investment, and the inflow and outflow of portfolio

capital, all measured as a share of GDP. The globalization of personal contact is measured with international tourists and travelers as a share of population, minutes of incoming and outgoing international telephone calls per capita, and transfer payments and

receipts as a share of GDP. Finally, three elements

comprise the Internet connectivity indicator—the

number of Internet users, the number of Internet

hosts, and the number of secure servers, all measured

on per capita basis. 

The most recent available data were collected from

a number of international sources, including the

World Bank’s World Development Indicators 2000

(Washington: World Bank, 2000), the International

Monetary Fund’s International Financial Statistics

Yearbook (Washington: International Monetary Fund,

2000), the International Telecommunication Union’s

Yearbook of Statistics 2000 (Geneva: International

Telecommunication Union, 2000), and the Secure

Server Survey, available online from Netcraft. 

For links to relevant Web sites, go to 

www.foreignpolicy.com.

Globalization Index

Methodology and Data Sources

But the general pattern of higher globalization and greater income equality

holds for most countries, both in mature

economies and emerging markets. These

findings should reinvigorate the debate

over whether countries are poor and

unequal because of globalization, or

because they are not globalized enough.
to improve upon our past efforts at growth management. Local governments and their citizens must

have the tools and the assistance to accommodate

these changes while retaining or regaining their sense

of community. Improved processes are only part of the

future.Technology has created tools for better governmental decision-making that are both remarkable and easily

accessible. Data on population composition and growth,

economic forecasting, computer-based resource mapping,

and visual graphics, among others, all are new tools that

allow communities to visualize and measure the impacts of

alternative growth proposals. Not only do these tools bring

a remarkable wealth of information to the fingertips of local

government decision-makers, but they also make the information much more accessible to citizens who wish to participate in the process.

While technology has changed the way we live and

work, people are the essence of a community.The current

system relies too heavily on litigation to resolve disputes

between citizens, and between citizens and their governments.We must create and take advantage of opportunities

for earlier citizen participation in a community’s planning if

we are to build the necessary consensus to make healthy and

livable communities.

In addition, many local governments have sophisticated

planning staffs and have already produced innovative and

creative solutions to local problems. However, these same

governments have chafed under the rote requirements of the

current law and found their time and money diverted to

achieve compliance with requirements which have had little positive impact on their local planning efforts. While

complex mandates may have been necessary to bring us to

this point in our local planning efforts, it is time to turn our

attention to achieving quality planning resulting in livable

communities. We believe in order to reach this goal, the

State must refocus its efforts on a more incentive-based

approach to planning and a more effective regulatory program targeted on limited, critical State issues while shifting

its primary role from a regulator to a partner of local government. Likewise, local governments must be given the

tools and economic incentives to bring their plans to the

level of quality and accountability that the citizens of

Florida seek. Local plans should be adaptive and evolutionary in nature, allowing a diversity in neighborhood design,

responsive to our population’s changing needs and desires.

Although a livable community does not consist solely of

good roads,water,sewer and bandwidth capacity,these amenities are basic to our health and quality of life. Infrastructure

planning and funding is one of the glaring deficiencies in our

current planning system.The current system envisioned infrastructure keeping pace with population growth, but our roads

and schools, in particular, are increasingly overburdened. Our

growth management systems do not fully integrate with

school planning and have never attempted to include planning

for the critical government services of police and fire protection, much less forecast the need for operation and maintenance of infrastructure. By failing to address the true costs of

population growth, both past

and future, we continue to

borrow against future

revenues, while the

quality of life in our

communities slowly

dissipates.As we respond to new

growth and address our existing

infrastructure deficits, communities

must evaluate their choices in a fiscally responsible manner.

International commerce is the

largest and fastest growing segment of Florida’s economy. An

interconnected, efficient statewide transportation system is the

essential component for Florida’s seaports and airports to

provide for the timely and cost-effective movement of

goods and passengers.The more efficient this movement, the

more competitive Florida is in the global marketplace; the

more competitive, the greater the creation of jobs and economic opportunity, yielding a growing, healthy economy.

We do have a great opportunity to make a real difference

in the livability of our communities for all citizens.It will take

more disciplined use of our dollars and prioritizing of activities, both state and local. If we are to succeed, to keep a thriving economy and preserve the precious natural resources and

communities that we have, we must engage the creative and

collaborative efforts of many more of the residents of our

communities. Real change is within our grasp if we have the

courage to realistically face our challenges together.

A LIVABLE FLORIDA FOR TODAY AND

TOMORROW 

Preparing Florida for the New Economy

A.Where we are today.

Under Florida’s Growth Management Act, each local government is required to provide for adequate facilities to support growth. If facilities are not available, concurrency

requires that new development to accommodate growth

must be denied. Local governments are required to adopt

level of service standards for application of concurrency to

six types of public facilities: potable water, sanitary sewer,

drainage, parks, solid waste, and transportation. School concurrency is an option available for local governments.

The infrastructure planning and management system has

three parts. First, comprehensive plans are to match future

land uses with public facility plans designed to accommodate

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR

9

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3

FLORIDA

Pensacola Tallahassee

Tampa

St. Petersburg

Apalachicola

River

Suwannee

River

Jacksonville

Daytona Beach

Cape Canaveral

Melbourne

Orlando

St. Johns

River

Vero Beach

Palm Beach

Fort Lauderdale

Miami

Hialeah

Naples

Lake

Okeechobee

EVERGLADES

NATIONAL PARK

Florida's Tpk Sarasota

Key West

75

75

4

95

75

10

95

10

Peace

River

© Bruce Jones 

Design, Inc.
the anticipated growth at acceptable levels of service. Fiveyear capital improvement plans are to forecast the demand

for public facilities, identify and schedule necessary improvements,and support the improvements with available funding.

Second, a financially feasible capital improvement schedule

which assures that level of service standards will be achieved

and maintained is to be adopted and updated annually.Third,

the regulatory application of concurrency occurs through

the local government’s concurrency management system at

the time of permitting. If capacity is not available, development is not to proceed. Several special exceptions have been

adopted for transportation concurrency to allow greater flexibility in urban infill and redevelopment areas.

By the time these requirements were put into place,

infrastructure backlogs throughout Florida were dauntingly

large and the State did not create new financial resources to

address these backlogs. Sources of revenue to address these

deficiencies were inadequate then and remain so today.

Additionally, Florida’s progress has increased our per capita

demand for infrastructure. In spite of existing policies, today

many local governments have not adequately addressed their

infrastructure demands, particularly in the area of schools

and transportation facilities. For many reasons, at both the

State and local level, revenues have not been allocated to

meet the infrastructure requirements of a burgeoning population. Despite the requirements of current law, there still

does not exist a good linkage between future land use plans

and infrastructure planning and budgeting. Concurrency is

an inadequate tool for managing growth.The fundamental

flaw of concurrency is the presumption that population

growth can somehow be controlled by the regulation of

land development activities on a project-by-project basis.At

best, it keeps a problem with overburdened infrastructure

from becoming exacerbated in one location while encouraging growth in other areas with excess capacity as measured by adopted level of service indexes. Over time, this system creates two unintended results: sprawl, as new residents

and therefore new developments seek locations without

infrastructure deficiencies; and ultimately, the restriction of

supply of new development to accommodate population

growth, which may drive up costs. Nothing in our system

adequately addresses the long-term operation and maintenance costs of existing substandard infrastructure.

While traffic concurrency has some appropriate flexibility, the exemptions are cumbersome to implement, thus discouraging development in urbanized areas where communities might realize economies of scale for other infrastructure and other benefits of thriving urban areas. Concurrency

is also required for only certain types of infrastructure and it

does not apply to many government services which are

impacted by population growth. School concurrency is so

difficult to implement that few local governments have yet

successfully done so.

Our local land use decisions around the state must be

better informed by the knowledge of all relevant capital

costs, operation and maintenance expenses, and the available

revenues to support them.The future health of our economy as a State and of the livability of our communities

depends on whether we realistically address these needs.To

ignore them continually borrows against the future.

The proposals that follow are intended to shine a light on

the fiscal impacts of our land use decisions in a way that is easily understood by decision-makers and the citizens they serve.

This new light will be uncomfortable at times, but not only

should it force some difficult decisions on revenue sources

and allocation, but it also should force some realism into the

cost side of the equation. It is not intended to push all the

costs of building our infrastructure on new development

because we acknowledge the deficits we are experiencing

today are community-wide responsibilities which should not

be pushed unfairly onto new housing.To enable us to address

the backlog in infrastructure, we suggest increased flexibility

in local revenue sources and targeting of State aid to local

governments. Gaining the revenues to support the costs of

new development is a local decision, but one that must identify the necessary resources to meet the expenses generated at

the time new development is approved.

B.Where we need to go.

Florida may already be the most livable State in our nation.

Its natural beauty and comfortable climate make it an ideal

landscape in which to live, work and play.

Our goal is to keep it that way.

Keeping Florida“Florida” does not mean that we should be

promoting policies that would restrict its inevitable growth, or

that we should try to hold Florida back from reaching its full

potential. Quite the contrary. We believe in Florida. It has

every natural advantage that makes it more than reasonably

possible that it can always be the same wonderful place—to

raise a family, to start a new business, to retire—that it is today.

We need to mindfully protect Florida’s most compelling natural assets while proactively promoting the development of

strategic and civic infrastructure.To do so,we need to be smarter

and more focused in our growth management goals.The policies described in this section attempt to define a process for a

more effective statewide growth management policy that:

• Encourages the development of strategic infrastructure;

• Ensures that new growth “pays for itself;”

• Identifies the current infrastructure deficit and promotes measures to address the backlog;

• Links policies for urban revitalization and rural economic development with community planning,

regional cooperation, and infrastructure development

strategies; and,

• Prepares Florida for the New Economy and promotes

high quality of life.• Mel Martinez is Secretary of the U.S. Department of

Housing and Urban Development in Washington, DC. He

previously served as a countywide elected official in Florida—

Chairman of Orange County—and as Chairman of the

State of Florida’s Growth Management Study Commission.

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

10
Editors’ Note: Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Dr.

Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka as Executive Director of the

United Nations Centre for Human Settlements—UNCHS

(Habitat)—in July 2000. Upon assuming responsibility as

head of the Centre in Nairobi, Kenya on September 13, her

first action was to support the Secretary-General’s call to

action to realize the goals set out in the Millennium

Declaration. “With over half of humanity already living in

cities and towns and the increasing urbanization of poverty,”

she said,“the work of Habitat, as the agency responsible for

human settlements, will be critical if the number of people

living in extreme poverty is to be halved by 2015 and if the

lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers are to be improved

by 2020.” One of the main items on her agenda in the coming months is the preparation for the special session of the

General Assembly for an overall review and appraisal of the

implementation of the Habitat Agenda—Istanbul +5—to be

held at the United Nations headquarters in New York City

during June of 2001.

The UN Chronicle recently interviewed Dr. Tibaijuka.

What follows are excerpts from that conversation, reprinted

with permission.

ON THE PRIORITIES FOR HABITAT

I myself have lived through the various processes of human

settlement problems,coming from a village to a rural township

to a city.This experience gives me a particular perspective on

the aims of the agency.Thanks to the Executive Director of the

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Klaus

Toepfer, who, as Acting Executive Director of Habitat, has

overseen the agency’s reform and revitalization over the past

two years, I am inheriting a strengthened organization.With

the restructuring now complete,I will continue to consolidate

the areas that need further strengthening: stabilizing sources of

funding and support, but also refocusing some of its programs,

linking them with other agencies working in urban areas and

particularly improving human settlements.In preparing for the

Istanbul +5 review, we are taking stock of our campaigns,

especially the global settlement strategy. We will try to see

where we succeeded and where we failed, understand the reasons, and improve upon the strategies. I think the Istanbul +5

process therefore provides us with opportunities to revisit and

improve our basic targets.The problems of human settlements,

development, and the environment are closely linked, and I

look forward to establishing a fruitful and productive partnership with UNEP and other UN agencies to further our common agendas.We must also work more closely with governments, municipalities and other local actors.

ON THE FUTURE OF

HUMAN SETTLEMENTS

In the twenty-first century, the

majority of the world’s population is headed for cities, many

of which already are overpopulated. This is our major challenge in human settlements.

The environmental future of

the planet is closely linked to

how we manage human settlements and their demand for

resources. Cities all over the

world share this common

agenda, and it is important for us to create links between the

cities of the north and the south to solve the problems of

urbanization.We all face city problems. But in the developing countries, these are more acute and the possibilities to

solve them without international solidarity are limited.With

our headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, Habitat has a special

responsibility to help the African continent.The rapid rate of

urbanization in Africa means that most governments and

local authorities are struggling to meet rising demands for

housing and basic services. However, any resolution to the

problems of urbanization in Africa has to address the important role of regional planning and rural-to-urban linkages. So

there is definitely a need to focus on programs that assist the

developing countries in better managing the urban situation.

At the same time, we must also go beyond treating the symptoms of urbanization and tackle the underlying causes of the

problem.What we need is a program focusing on the population shifts from rural settlements to urban settlements.

ON THE PROBLEM OF URBAN SLUMS

It is not enough to go into an area and raze the slums. If you

don’t want another slum to spring up, you have to understand and address the factors which caused the slums in the

first place. In other words, we should not work against

squatters, but against squatting—that’s the difference. But we

have to convince the government and local authorities that

squatting is the problem. If people settle into an area illegally, then the police evict them by force. But they have to live

somewhere.Where will they go but to another slum? That

is why we urge governments to broker partnerships with the

poor, with the slum dwellers, to solve the problem of squatting. We have to secure tenure—the right to housing, the

right to land—for the poor. And that is why we have

launched a global campaign for secure tenure.

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR

11

Istanbul + 5: The United Nations Centre for 

Human Settlements (Habitat) and the Global Fight 

to Eliminate Urban Poverty

ANNA KAJUMULO TIBAIJUKA

The United Nations
ON THE GLOBAL CAMPAIGN FOR SECURE

TENURE

We need to empower the poor.They are often able people

who have been disenfranchised—most of them moving

from the countryside to an urban ghetto, with the expectation that they will find a better income. We all know that

people move not because they are actually better off; they

move because they think they will be better off.That expectation induces them to move. And with globalization and

the spread of information technology, you cannot tie people

to one place.That is why we must solve the problem of broken societies with devastated economies. Otherwise, the

pressure to move to western countries in Europe and North

America would be too great. People are prepared to move

when they come from a second-class economy and where

they are second-class citizens. Some may end up worse than

they were before leaving their original homes—they might

end up in a slum. But you see the “push factor” in the

expectations people have, thinking that they will be better

off elsewhere.

ON THE GLOBAL CAMPAIGN FOR GOOD

URBAN GOVERNANCE

If you don’t have a job, it is difficult to pay rent; you will

likely soon be homeless. So one thing really leads to another.A second campaign to support the right to secure tenure

is needed—a global campaign for good urban governance.

Therefore, we are linking up with poverty reduction programs.We now have developed partnerships with the World

Bank which, we hope, can help not only in slum upgrading

but also in providing support for these programs. We are

cooperating with the International Labour Organization in

terms of income-generating activities. Once you have

improved and upgraded squatters settlements, how will people be able to pay if they have no income? These are the

kinds of challenges facing us and are the focus of our campaigns.

ON THE ROLE OF WOMEN

The right to secure tenure is particularly important for

women. In western countries, a legal environment has been

created for the security of women in the home, including

tenure and land rights. In Africa, however, the woman mostly stays at home, and if something happens, if her husband

dies, in some traditional societies the widow will be evicted

from her house.Then you find homeless women wandering

around on the streets with their children.These are some of

the things we are trying to address—the right of women to

inherit property, particularly in matrimonial homes where

most women are bound to stay in the house. That is also

why we are trying to cooperate with the UN Educational,

Scientific and Cultural Organization on the question of

education, particularly for women, as part of economic

empowerment.

ON DEVELOPING PARTNERSHIPS

We try to develop innovative partnerships. In an international climate of decreasing funds for development, the

future of Habitat lies in finding innovative ways to provide

shelter and services for the poor. We need to support the

efforts of the poor, and especially women, in housing themselves. Our role is to work with governments and other

partners to ensure basic housing rights, security of tenure

and better urban governance as ways of reducing poverty.

The Cities Alliance Initiative with the World Bank provides

an important model for future activities, and Habitat will

continue to help governments and local authorities to build

their capacities in developing and managing human settlements. We do not have the kind of money that the World

Bank has, and it is not our business to have that kind of

money. Our business is to have ideas, vision and strategies. It

is also about raising awareness—that too is a form of partnership. Our job is to understand human settlements and to

design improvements, and then invite other agencies and

donors to come in and help.What matters in the end is that

we have made better living developments for people.•

Dr. Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka is Executive Director of the

United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) in

Nairobi, Kenya.

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

12

Lima, Peru
The revitalization underway in some of America’s

urban centers represents one of the most important,

if surprising, developments of the new millennium.

Cities across the country are showing signs of a new

dynamism that would have been impossible to imagine only

a decade ago.

The origins of this renaissance are at once demographic,

economic, and cultural. A growing interest in urban life

among young, unattached and well-educated individuals,

and middle-aged empty-nesters, constitute one source of

urban renewal. Immigration is another, fortifying our cities’

traditional role as centers of international trade and commerce in the process. Notably, tourism also has contributed

significantly to this rise in urban activity, but perhaps the

most salient reason for urban revival comes from the role

our cities are playing in the enormous technological revolution now transforming the larger economy.

Until the early 1990s, cities were on the periphery of the

technology boom, with the vast majority of technology-driven

activity occurring in suburban and even quasi-rural areas. Later

in the decade, however, access to the Internet on a mass scale

sparked greater demand for entertainment and other creative

World Wide Web content. It is here, on the “soft” side of the

technological revolution,that the traditional strengths of cities in

the arts, marketing, and graphics, have come strongly into play.

As the digital age enters a new and potentially tumultuous phase, urban communities are faced with new challenges and opportunities.The opportunity lies first in appreciating that, although it is in consolidation, the shift to a digital economy is not slowing, but accelerating. Despite the

dramatic drop in many technology firms’ stock valuations in

recent months and the business models of a large number of

firms having been proven unsustainable, the trend towards

use of the Internet as a communications and business tool

remains in place. Many were led to believe that the New

Economy was a “dot-com” economy. Certainly, Internetbased business models have an important role to play, but

they, by themselves, are not the New Economy.

Knowledge and the innovation capacities of human capital are at the core of the New Economy.The key source of

competitive advantage, be it among regions or industries, is

its intellectual capital—the knowledge embedded in its people. In the old industrial economy, the accumulation of hard

assets determined economic success or failure. Today, the

knowledge, skills, experience, and innovation potential of

talented individuals has greater value than capital equipment

or even capital itself.Talented individuals are highly mobile

and can reward those regions that attract them. Likewise,

their loss can be punishing. To attain a competitive advantage in the New Economy, urban centers must access, create, and utilize human capital. Cities that tap the knowledge

assets in their midst, such as universities and research centers,

will benefit from the talent that they attract to fuel local

economic growth. Life-long learning and retraining programs will bolster urban economic success, forestalling the

creation of a labor force that is “finished at forty.” Urban

areas that do not continually educate their populations face

the prospect of being left behind in the New Economy.

The urban revitalization process is still in its early stages.

The first cities to see the full benefit of this transformation

are those that held the strongest appeal for artists, creative

individuals, and predominately younger, educated people. By

the late 1990s, these “first-tier” cities, among them, New

York, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago,

emerged as leaders in the expanding digital economy.

Today these cities have burgeoning “cyber districts” that

have transformed large blocks of formerly destitute warehousing and manufacturing space into highly desirable post-industrial hubs. In many cases, these districts have become knowledge-value neighborhoods with strong residential, retail, and

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR

13

Knowledge-Value Cities In The Digital Age

JOEL KOTKIN AND ROSS C. DEVOL

The Milken Institute 

Lima, Peru

Spread of Products to a Quarter of the U.S. Population

Product Year Invented Years to Spread

Electricity 1873 46

Telephone 1876 35

Automobile 1886 55

Airplane 1903 64

Radio 1906 22

Television 1926 26

Video Tape Recorder 1952 34

Microwave Oven 1953 30

Personal Computer 1975 16

Cellular Telephone 1983 13

Internet 1991 7

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
cultural components. Concomitantly, rent for both work and

living space has increased markedly in these districts, driving

newer firms and workers into adjacent, formerly depressed

neighborhoods.Though reduced affordability for housing and

traditional manufacturing and warehousing space is one consequence of this new development,growing price pressure and

anti-growth sentiment present prospects for choosing from a

broader range of urban locations that are only beginning to

harvest the opportunities of the digital economy.

Emerging-technology cities, whose populations are near

or less than 500,000 persons, offer several advantages to

firms, knowledge workers, and entrepreneurs over their

first-tier counterparts. These include far lower costs of living, a supportive business environment, and an often concerted effort by local officials and business leaders to lure

and nurture new industries.

A knowledge-based economy rests upon two interdependent but distinctively different skill sets. Knowledge generation is contingent upon highly educated and skilled creative people at the pinnacle of the skill continuum, typically found in first-tier urban areas. Knowledge deployment

requires widely held quality skills and education in the middle of the skill distribution. A city will have comparative

advantage in one or the other area.

Most successful emerging-technology cities will find

their comparative advantage in the area of execution competence, but many can position themselves as implementers

of innovation.These cities excel in making products or services based upon an infrastructure and supply network that

support high value-added, cost-effective production.Worldclass manufacturers gravitate toward execution cities.

Many cities around the country are trying to become

emerging-technology centers and some have made particular progress. Our research identifies several, among them,

Reno, Albuquerque, Tulsa, Huntsville, Omaha, and Boise.

These centers, for various and often quite unique reasons,

are positioning themselves well for the information age, particularly by concentrating on the infrastructure and “blue

collar” functions connected with the Internet such as the

development of enabling software, customer support, and

on-line order fulfillment.

Perhaps the most encouraging phenomenon of this digital revolution has been the movement to yet another kind of

urban area—the old industrial center. Once seen as “basket

cases,” these regions have begun to attract significant investment and growth in their technology-related sectors. Like

emerging-technology cities, they offer lower costs than the

first-tier urban centers,but often possess an impressive mix of

rich architecture, history, cultural activities, institutions of

higher education, and well-developed transportation infrastructure.These comeback cities represent perhaps the most

dramatic evidence of the potential for urban centers in the

information age. Our research identifies several such centers

in various stages of recovery, including Baltimore, Oakland,

central Dallas, downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood, as

well as smaller, old industrial communities like Kingston in

New York’s Hudson Valley, and Dayton, Ohio.

The resurgence of these first-tier and emerging-technology cities as urban centers offers many positive examples of

revival in older areas. Executing clearly focused policies such

as zoning changes to accommodate New Economy companies and “new urbanites,” crime reduction, bolstering local

education and training, and reinforcing ties with local universities, creates wide-ranging urban recovery. Success also

has its downside as evidenced by the pricing-out of traditional industries and working class populations, resulting in

the emergence of a “dual city” of rich and poor. As the

information revolution spreads and deepens, cities will need

to find ways to ameliorate these unintentional consequences

of success.

Despite these dilemmas, the digital revolution presents

enormous opportunity for urban centers.The imperative for

each city is to recognize the attendant challenges and pursue a path toward participation in the New Economy.Urban

viability is linked to the extent to which a region can establish local industry clusters that are networked into the global business community.

The paradox of the global technology-based economy is

that the enduring competitive advantages lie in location-specific competencies—knowledge, workforce skills, customer

and supplier relationships, entrepreneurial infrastructure, and

quality-of-place attributes—that allow firms and talent to

thrive. In essence, cities are thinking locally to succeed globally. Cognizance of these components will enable municipal

economic development and political officials to adjust their

strategies accordingly, or risk being left behind.The alternative is a return to the pattern of stagnation and hopelessness

that nearly buried America’s cities a decade ago.• Joel Kotkin is a Senior Fellow at the Milken Institute in

Santa Monica, California and author of The New

Geography: How the Digital Revolution is Reshaping

the American Landscape. Ross C. DeVol is Director of

Regional and Demographic Studies at the Milken Institute in

Santa Monica, California.This article is excerpted with permission from a new HUD-funded study recently published as

a report by the Milken Institute in February, 2001, entitled

Knowledge-Value Cities in the Digital Age.

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

14

Company Location Determinants

Importance

Quality of Life

Skilled Professionals

Proximity to Markets

Skilled Labor

Low Business Costs

Access to Universities

Regulatory Climate

Taxes

2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0

0.5

Source: Bank of Boston

Technology Company Location Determinants
MALAYSIA’S CYBER-REGION:THE

“MULTIMEDIA SUPER CORRIDOR”

Distantly echoing the creation of ultra-modern Brasilia by

the Brazilian government in the 1960s, Malaysia has chosen

a unique way to make its approach to cyberspace. The

nation is attempting to create a cyber-region—the

“Multimedia Super Corridor,” or MSC—as a wedge into

the future for the entire nation. The idea of the MSC has

been attributed directly to Prime Minister Mahathir

Mohammed and has its roots in “The Way Forward—Vision

2020,” a paper developed by the prime minister’s office and

presented to the Malaysian Business Council in 1996.“The

Way Forward” expresses the hope that Malaysia will be a

“fully developed country by the year 2020” but argues that

Malaysia must go its own way. Although it recognizes that

the development and application of technology is critical,

the paper argues that the nation must deal at the same time

with the challenges of preserving its culture and spirituality

and deal with its ethnic and racial challenges. From this

flows the notion that the information age must be exploited relentlessly for its economic potential but controlled at

the outset so that it does not disrupt the social fabric.

Actually begun in 1997, the MSC is 50 kilometers long

and 15 kilometers wide and flanked by two new cities:

Putrajava is planned to be the government’s new electronic

administrative center, a key user of new applications developed in the MSC; Cyberjava will be the site for information

technology companies investing in the region.A new multimedia university will be built to provide skilled workers, and

the overall project is expected to employ 150,000 people.

To attract investors, the MSC offers high-technology

companies tax-free status for ten years, tax exemptions for

equipment, relaxed immigration rules for expatriates, and

other economic incentives. In addition, in response to initial

concerns by investors, the Malaysian government created a

ten-point Multimedia Bill of Guarantees to apply within the

corridor, providing for strong intellectual property protection, rights for corporate ownership, freedom from on-line

censorship, and other concerns.The government also agreed

to develop a more comprehensive national framework for

electronic commerce, and among the laws drafted or already

passed are ones dealing with digital signatures, electronic

contracts, computer crime, data protection, and electronic

government.

The government also has identified seven application

areas that investors would have to work on in order to qualify for economic incentives: electronic government,

telemedicine, research and development, remote manufacturing, borderless marketing centers, multimedia funds

transfer, and “smart” schooling. By 1998, the government

had also added schools, universities, and company training

facilities to the list of institutions that would qualify for

MSC status.

Although the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s

slowed the development of the MSC, the government had

received 176 applications from companies by early 1998 to

locate in the MSC and had approved 103 of them. European

companies made up the largest number of investors, followed by those from the United States and Japan.This testbed approach to a nation’s entry into cyberspace will be

interesting to watch. If Malaysia can succeed in building an

advanced infrastructure and attracting investment to create

jobs, while at the same time preventing cyberspace from

affecting other aspects of national life, other nations will

attempt the same thing. But the genie of the Internet, once

let out, will be difficult to contain.

NATIONAL PROGRESS AND INTERNATIONAL

COOPERATION ON THE AFRICAN

CONTINENT

At first glance,Africa’s entry into the information age would

appear to be a pipe dream. As Jay Naidoo, South Africa’s

Minister of Posts, Telecommunications, and Broadcasting,

has pointed out, a few months “before the dawn of the new

millennium, we have 14 million telephones in Africa, less

than you would find in New York or Tokyo.” That is only

one telephone line for every two hundred people—and

many of those are concentrated in urban South Africa,

whose telephone system still evidences the legacy of

apartheid. Moreover, the breakdown of civil society in

countries like Rwanda and Sierra Leone makes any thought

of Internet development seem impossible.

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR

15

Internet Policy and Digital Development 

in Malaysia and Africa

LESLIE DAVID SIMON

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Harare, Zimbabwe
Moreover, many African governments have not encouraged the growth of media in general, let alone the Internet.

As one university professor in Cameroon notes,“Since independence, the majority of Africans, who are mainly rural,

have not had any meaningful access to the mass media:

radio, television and the print media have been free and

accessibly only in principle. Governments have seen and

continue to see in information a weapon too powerful to be

made accessible to the powerless masses.”

Fortunately, many educated young Africans are optimistic and reject both political and economic barriers. On

the question of the lack of infrastructure, some see this as an

advantage: “Africa’s lack of infrastructure may be seen as a

disadvantage. But on closer examination, this can be turned

into an advantage....African countries are not encumbered

by extensive networks built on obsolete technology that will

require an evolutionary process of replacement.The technological inertia is thus quite low. The push therefore should

be for the cutting edge.”

With this kind of spirit, African ministers responsible for

economic and social development and planning met in Addis

Ababa, Ethiopia in May 1995 under the auspices of the

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and passed

a resolution, “Building Africa’s Information Highway.” This

resolution called for a group of African technical experts to

draw up a detailed plan for moving Africa into the information age within one year.The group of experts did their work

and presented the results—the African Information Society

Initiative (AISI) to the ministers’ conference the following

year.The AISI was endorsed by the Organization of African

Unity Council of Ministers in Yaounde, in July 1996.

The AISI envisioned that Africa could develop an information society by 2010 by focusing on a number of key

areas:

• Creating value-added information networks for education, health, environment, trade, tourism, finance, commerce, and other areas;

• Creating a continent-wide information and communications network allowing wide dissemination of information to individuals and businesses;

• Fostering a new generation of Africans by improving

education systems and enhancing human resources

with state-of-the-art technologies; and

• Allowing the inflow of new technologies and the

export of intellectual products and services to the rest

of the world.

The AISI called on national governments to build elements of the plan into their national economic and social

plans and programs, and to adopt a five-year implementation

plan. Among the items for government consideration were

liberalization of telecommunications, and building a policy

framework for electronic commerce, including intellectual

property and digital signature laws.The AISI also identified

efforts that would be of particular importance in Africa,such

as improving food production with better information to

provide crop-planting guidance, building tourism information systems, and preserving and communicating Africa’s

cultural heritage.

While the AISI started with good intentions and lofty

aims, it lacked a key element: funding. Organizations such as

the United Nations Development Program, the World

Bank’s InfoDev program, and the Canadian International

Development Research Center have helped, but lack of

funding has been a major hindrance.Additionally, privatization and liberalization of telecommunications is not popular

in many countries, because of the loss of power and control

it would bring for political elites and because of the shortterm unemployment effects it would produce. Today, in

most of sub-Saharan Africa, government is still the sole supplier of telecommunications. Prices remain high and services remain backward. There are, however, some signs of

progress. Uganda has deregulated in some areas and allows

some foreign investment in telecommunications. Sudan has

privatized telecommunications and Ghana is selling off 30

percent of Ghana Telephone to private investors.

According to two researchers at the University of

Botswana, “Fourteen countries have achieved live Internet

public access services: [including] Algeria, Morocco,Tunisia,

Egypt, Senegal, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe,

Namibia, Mozambique, Mauritius and of course South

Africa, which is among the top 20 countries in the world

ranked by number of Internet nodes....Full Internet access

has now been achieved in Botswana, Lesotho and Namibia.

Projects are under way for full Internet access in Burkina

Faso, Eritrea, Cote d’Ivoire, Malawi and Swaziland.”

Whether or not Africa can achieve the goals of the AISI

will depend on the organizational ability of the African

states, the willingness of governments to allow the private

sector to operate freely, and the help of international agencies. With its own more advanced infrastructure, South

Africa is helping, not only by providing a model of activities

in telecommunications in its own Reconstruction and

Development Plan, but also in its regional leadership in

southern Africa. South Africa’s “Green Paper on

Telecommunications Policy” identifies specific regional

undertakings, such as telecommunications training and standards development, as well as the building of terrestrial networks, through which the country can begin to assist its

neighbors along the information highway.•

Leslie David Simon is a Senior Policy Scholar at the

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in

Washington, DC. He is the author of NetPolicy.Com:

Public Agenda for a Digital World, published in 2000 by

the Woodrow Wilson Center Press.The above article is adapted from the book and reprinted with permission.

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

16
Significant territorial disparities, as measured by

income and unemployment, exist today within the

economies of the member nations in the

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

(OECD).While national differences in income and unemployment remain stable and narrow, the differences between

urban regions are much greater. While policies to address

sub-national differences are not a new phenomenon, recent

work on territorial policies has focused on the benefit that

could be drawn from a more systematic approach. Sound

macroeconomic policies will not be sufficient to deal with

new and more intense regional problems. Globalization,

while increasing the interdependence of nations, is forcing

the modification of the traditional policy instruments

through which governments influence the process of economic and social change. Moreover, traditional territorial

policies, concerned with the equitable geographical redistribution of resources, are not the appropriate answer to the

new conditions engendered by globalization.

In the past two decades, most OECD member countries,

regions, and localities have undertaken significant reforms

while several have completely overhauled their territorial

policies. Lessons from the experience of these countries and

regions may facilitate development of more effective general economic services to address territorial disparities.What

follows is a brief summary of these key lessons.

POLICY OBJECTIVES

There is a new focus on trying to improve the “competitiveness” of regions, and to understand the key elements that

differentiate types of regions, distinguishing those that

appear to be performing well from those that are not.

Resources from existing subsidies are being diverted to programs that focus on support for investment in human and

social capital, diversification of economic activity by industry and employment, and the related creation of new enterprises, key infrastructure, the environment, and innovation.

POLICY INSTRUMENTS

In an effort to reinforce the efficacy of regional development policies, by using indirect aid such as services for general economic expansion rather than targeted subsidies, the

primary focus is on policy instruments that promote:

• Business assistance and infrastructure, networks of

knowledge and expertise, diffusion of new technologies and innovation-oriented research and development, inter-regional and international business networks, and vocational training (including an important

emphasis on entrepreneurial skills);

• Local products based on local identities and aimed at a

specific market niche; these are usually linked closely to

local natural and cultural assets, including development

of quality labels and guarantees linking products to

places, and particular production techniques;

• Attractiveness of cities and rural areas, both directly

through capturing the economic value of “amenities”

for recreation and tourism, and indirectly through the

promotion of conditions likely to favor a better quality of life in both cities and the countryside; and

• Capacity-building for policymakers at local levels,including

the increased use of program monitoring and evaluation

procedures both as a control and a learning mechanism.

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR

17

Regional Territorial Policies and Urban Economic

Development in OECD Countries

MARIO PEZZINI

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

... investment in human and social 

capital, diversification of economic 

activity by industry and employment,

and the related creation of new 

enterprises, key infrastructure, the 

environment, and innovation.

Portimão, Portugal
GOVERNANCE OF POLICY

There have been improvements in the central coordination

of a wide range of policies affecting citizens through institutional arrangements of departments and ministries,

including “policy proofing” to ensure that all such policies

contribute to the overall goals and that actual or potential

policy conflicts are minimized. New institutional arrangements at local and regional levels have been attempted to

more precisely define policy objectives,priorities,and strategies, and to effectively implement policies and programs at

the level of regional and local governance. In addition, such

new approaches involve partnerships between governmental

and non-governmental entities in ways that better integrate

and coordinate their activities, and draw on local and

regional knowledge and other resources to increase the participation of citizens, small businesses, and community-based

groups. Local capacities are being built to act through grassroots leadership, community development initiatives, and

empowerment of local actors—i.e., a better matching of

responsibilities and powers.

In many cases, these refinements and innovations are

recent and limited in scope to certain OECD countries.As

such, they have not been comprehensively evaluated.

Additional work will be needed to ascertain the durability

and transferability of these initiatives on a wider international scale. Nevertheless, this brief survey lends support to

the argument that economic services of general interest have

now gone beyond the experimental phase, both providing a

complement to macroeconomic policies and offering new

trajectories of economic development for urban regions.•

Mario Pezzini is Head of the Territorial Reviews Division

for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and

Development (OECD) in Paris, France.

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

18

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Patmos, Greece
Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival,

by Paul S. Grogan and Tony Proscio, Westview Press,

285 pages, $25.00 (USA).

I

n Comeback Cities, Paul S. Grogan and Tony Proscio make

the case that ordinary people can “change, create, and

make use of market forces to alter the fundamental economics of their neighborhoods.” They offer a well told and

hopeful story of grassroots activity breathing new life into

cities—even in such blighted areas as New York’s South Bronx.

Their focus is on the work of community development

corporations (CDCs).“With government support, and a minimum of regulations,” the authors say, CDCs “are among the

most effective vehicles for public investment in the inner city.”

The authors draw on the success of the national organization Grogan headed for 13 years, the Local Initiatives

Support Corporation, or LISC. (Grogan is now an executive

at Harvard University;Proscio is a former journalist and government official who is a consultant to non-profit organizations.) Founded more than two decades ago by the Ford

Foundation to provide financial and technical support for

community development groups, LISC has played a major

role in encouraging CDCs in their efforts to attract investment, jobs, and people back to struggling neighborhoods.

Comeback Cities is an elaboration of Life in the City, a 1997

study by LISC and the Center for National Policy. In turn

the book follows paths blazed in the mid-1990s by the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

under Secretary Henry Cisneros, including the 1996 HUD

report Comeback Communities:The Revival of America’s Cities.

Grogan and Proscio provide many examples of what

CDCs can do. For instance, in Newark’s Central Ward,

which was the site of riots in 1967, there has been an “amazing turnaround” led by the New Community Corporation

(NCC). Founded by Father Bill Linder, a Catholic priest,

the NCC has developed more than 3,000 homes and apartments, and a supermarket-anchored shopping center.There

are day care centers and a nursing home, a job-training-andplacement center, an elementary school, a credit union, and

a newspaper. Now private developers are building marketrate housing nearby. “What the community organization

created was not just a string of successful projects for its residents to take pride in,” the authors say.“It created a market,

in which other enterprises found ways of adding value,

making money, and widening the recovery in ways that

needed little or no civic or philanthropic prodding.”

There are many links that make such public-private partnerships work: the federal, state, and local governments are

instrumental (together they pumped literally billions of dollars into the South Bronx alone during the past two decades).

Banks and other private lenders and investors—moved both

by the “carrot” of the federal Low-Income Housing Tax

Credit and the “stick” of the federal Community

Reinvestment Act—are key. And retail chain stores and real

estate developers, lured by the prospects of new inner-city

markets,are important.As well,some CDCs have played a role

in supporting urban anticrime efforts based on communityoriented policing, and in sponsoring public charter schools

geared to improve career opportunities and to retain and

attract working families as neighborhood residents.

Comeback Cities is less impressive when the authors stray

from their direct knowledge of CDCs and range into

national policy. Chapters on public housing and welfare

reform, “deregulating the city,” and “the ‘third way’ in city

hall” are the weakest.And factual errors crop up throughout

the book. CDCs have sprung up across the nation—but

how many? There are “more than 2,500” on page 56 and

“more than 3,600” on page 69.Atlanta’s Techwood—which

was not, as they report,“America’s first public housing” (that

distinction belongs to New York City’s First Houses)—got

its $42-million federal grant in 1993, not 1994. The law

requiring local public housing authorities that receive federal funds to demolish one “slum dwelling” for every new

public housing unit built was passed by Congress and signed

by the president in 1937, not 1949.

Those may be minor points, but this one isn’t: Most of

the major public housing reforms of recent years were first

proposed by President Clinton and Secretary Cisneros in the

Housing Choice and Community Investment Act of 1994.

That legislation passed the House but was blocked in the

Senate. Grogan and Proscio incorrectly state that the impetus for such changes came from the Republican takeover of

Congress in 1995 and that Cisneros was merely responding

to the hostility of congressional conservatives. Such misinformed research and inadequate fact-checking undermine

the authors’ credibility as national policy experts.Their book

does a service, though, in spreading the news about the

many wonderful accomplishments of grassroots efforts and

public-private cooperation to revive American cities.•

Dr. Marc A.Weiss is a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow

Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

He was Special Assistant to the Secretary of the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1993 to

1997, and is author of The Rise of the Community

Builders and The Economic Resurgence of Washington,

DC, and coauthor of Charter of the New Urbanism and

Real Estate Development Principles and Process. This

book review first appeared in the March 12-26, 2001 issue of

The American Prospect, and is reprinted with permission.

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR

19

Non-Governmental Organizations and 

Community-Based Economic Development

MARC A. WEISS

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
PROPERTY RIGHTS AND SECURE TENURE

When Manuel Perez, a shirt manufacturer in Lima, Peru,

wanted to expand his business, he could not obtain formal

credit. Even though he owned real property, the commercial banks in Lima would not accept his house or his land

as collateral for a loan, because his property rights were not

formalized or secure. Insecure real property rights affect the

structure of financial services and can impede the supply of

formal credit, especially to potential low-income borrowers. As the Perez case illustrates, insecure property rights,

coupled with the expectation that these rights will remain

insecure in the future, make the use of land or buildings as

collateral impractical for millions of low- and modestincome property owners. In cases where real property is

used as collateral, it has low value; loans are very expensive

because banks face high transaction costs for providing

credit and collecting collateral, and thus they charge steep

interest rates. Because bank loans to low-income people are

typically smaller and riskier, the absence of a formal property rights system makes such lending generally unprofitable. This in turn generates a vicious cycle of historical

exclusion from formal lending, affecting many potential

customers. If property rights are insecure, neither property

owners nor credit providers have an incentive to use real

property as a capital asset.

Because of inefficient, burdensome, poorly defined institutions and often-corrupt bureaucratic systems, a great mass of the

world’s population is prevented

from fully realizing the value of

existing property or being able to

acquire secure property rights. In

developing countries, the main

issue is that property claims by

these people, while acknowledged

within their communities, too

often go unrecognized by the government.As a result, these informal

owners, who account for more

than 50 percent of all property

holders in most developing countries, lack access to the social and

economic benefits provided by

secure property rights. For many of

these struggling families and entrepreneurs, their land and homes are

their only assets. Without clear

ownership rights,they are unable to

sell their land, use it as collateral to

borrow money, start a business or

build a home, or even to pass it on to their children.

Real property is the foundation upon which citizens

build their participation in both the community and in civic

and public life.When low-income and middle-income people own property in a secure and recognized fashion, they

are more likely to keep jobs, attend school, seek medical

care, invest in land, protect the environment, and build social

harmony. Secure and formal property rights are part of the

fundamental institutional infrastructure of a market-based

economy.They stimulate both investment and the creation

of formal and efficient markets. Nonetheless, many developing countries lack a well-defined institutional framework for

property rights, resulting in a very informal delineation of

property ownership.

Secure property rights foster confidence in the economy.

Formalization of real property ownership rights directly

stimulates significant investment. In the case of urban property, owners may initiate home improvements such as

adding indoor plumbing, reinforcing existing construction

with more durable materials, or constructing additional

floors and rooms. Entrepreneurs invest with greater confidence in buildings and equipment,thus fostering the growth

of small urban-based businesses. In the case of rural property, formalization encourages investments that increase the

productivity of agricultural land, including permanent irrigation and crop processing. Moreover, secure property rights

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

20

Do Property Rights Matter? 

An Urban Case Study from Peru

ELENA PANARITIS

The World Bank

Lima, Peru
help optimize the use of land by encouraging the consolidation of efficiently sized agricultural units.

The formalization of real property rights expands property-based markets and makes them more efficient.

Reducing the price distortions of informal markets will lead

to positive growth of property values. Also, the use of real

property as a capital asset can introduce new actors to the

credit markets—borrowers who previously had no credit

history but deserve an opportunity to obtain loans, invest

capital, and repay their debts. Moreover, security in property rights benefits workers by increasing their ability to

become homeowners. By making the value of their homes

more easily marketable, it also improves labor mobility and

economic efficiency.

A TRADITION OF INFORMALITY

There are various reasons that explain the informality of

property systems in the developing world. In many countries, a tradition of informality has evolved because of the

lack of appropriate institutions that foster formal property

rights. The absence of institutional depth has been reinforced by insufficient economic incentives for defining and

applying property rights. Existing institutional structures

have been deeply rooted for many years, often for several

generations. Old attitudes are embedded in government

agencies, educational systems, and professional practices.

In the case of real property, many developing countries

exhibit an interest in establishing a formal property rights

system.Yet most of these countries have not been able to

overcome the problems posed by poorly defined institutions, such as cumbersome bureaucracies, voluminous legal

and administrative requirements, high transaction costs, and

the presence of more than one agency responsible for the

provision of property titles. These countries face the challenging task of establishing a reform program that tackles

these inefficiencies, but also creates adequate, sustainable,

cost-effective institutions.

FORMALIZING PROPERTY RIGHTS IN PERU

The Peruvian program, supported by the World Bank, is

designed to establish formal and secure property rights by

applying a comprehensive approach to property formalization, addressing all aspects of this elemental issue in civil

society. Property rights reform is based on seminal work by

Hernando de Soto, internationally recognized author of

The Mystery of Capital, and his Instituto Liberdad e

Democracia. It departs from traditional concepts of titling

and registration by building instead a low-cost, user-friendly property market system.Traditionally, attempted reforms

of real property rights have been too narrow in scope.

Mainstream property rights reform efforts generally emphasize purely technical and administrative issues without transforming major public and private institutions, which are in

large part responsible for the malfunctioning property rights

system. For reform to be successful, governments must

simultaneously address multiple issues surrounding the legal,

economic, and organizational deficiencies of the existing

system.The ultimate goal should be to facilitate creation and

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR

21

Lima, Peru
promotion of formal markets for real property that are not

simply based on blindly copying systems from other countries or establishing computerized technology for land

titling.

Peru’s Urban Property Rights Program goes beyond the

more traditional “technical” applications of property-based

reform by addressing the issues of transaction costs, applying

cost-benefit technologies, and holistically building social

integration and trust between communities and governments. The program transforms informal market “onlookers” into active players in capital markets. In doing so, it

increases the base and scope of capital markets and enables

property-related institutions such as real property registries

to work in a more effective and efficient manner.

PERU’S URBAN PROPERTY RIGHTS

PROGRAM: IMPACTS AND OUTCOMES

Peru began to initiate legal reforms for the establishment of

property rights in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These

activities laid the groundwork for implementing major

reforms in selected urban areas by the World Bank in 1992

- a $500,000 pilot project financed by a Japanese Technical

Assistance Facility. Peruvian land reform continues today

with assistance from a $37 million loan made by the World

Bank in 1997. By August 2000, the Urban Property Rights

Program had assisted close to 7 million Peruvians in securing land title, introducing more than $4 billion of previously informal real estate assets to the organized capital markets.

Since the beginning of the program, property values for the

newly formalized urban land increased by more than $1.7

billion. Preliminary results from a baseline household survey

suggest that there is a direct correlation between property

formalization, perception of tenure security, and willingness

to increase investment. A significantly higher proportion of

property owners with formalized rights enter the credit

markets and increase the value of their assets by obtaining

financing to make physical improvements.

Key to the program’s success is the careful analysis of citizens’ needs, by studying the specific circumstances and listening to people’s concerns. In the early 1990s, a public

hearing was held to discuss needs and the next steps for

resolving the problem of informal ownership. As a result of

this meeting, two essential new laws were passed as the basis

of the new property rights system: one law created the

Registro Predial, the property registry, which drastically

reduced transaction costs; the other law consolidated the

functions of 14 agencies into one titling agency, the

Commisión para la Formalización de la Propriedad

Informal (COFOPRI). The cost for registering and titling

property was reduced overnight from $2,000 to $50, and the

length of time necessary for registering and titling property

dropped from 15 years all the way down to 6 weeks or less.

PROPERTY RIGHTS REFORM—A NEW

DEVELOPMENT PARADIGM

Formalization of property rights is not just an isolated technical exercise in defining the ownership of tangible assets.

More importantly, it is a process that integrates the assets of

the informal sector into the legal and economic system of

modern society.By integrating low-income families into the

fabric of modern life, it creates rights and obligations that

permit small property owners to develop a greater sense of

partnership with the government and private sector,

enhances property values, and leverages financial resources

for generating economic growth and prosperity.

Although the design of property rights reform must

always consider specific circumstances within each individual nation, two important lessons can be drawn from failed

past attempts:a) reforms should be demand-driven and useroriented; and b) governments should match their resources

to their capabilities.The institutional framework of a formal

property rights system consists of three necessary elements:

(i) the legal framework that defines property and guides the

behavior and incentive structure of property-related transactions; (ii) the agencies that implement and administer property rights; and (iii) the institutions responsible for property

rights enforcement. Reform of the property rights system in

Peru successfully focused on the three main fundamentals of

formalization: 1) establishing appropriate legislation;

2) building effective organizations; and 3) creating suitable

enforcement mechanisms.

Formalizing property rights is both a social and political

goal, and clearly can be used to promote a more competitive and sustainable economy.The holistic approach in Peru

is a cross-sector strategy for creating free real property markets, where transaction costs are minimized, rights and obligations are enforced, and most importantly, a modicum of

trust between the people and their government begins to

be established.•

Elena Panaritis is a Private-Public Management Specialist

at The World Bank in Washington, DC, and initiator of the

Urban Property Rights Program in Peru.

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

22

Lima, Peru
SOCIO-ECONOMIC CHALLENGES FACING

METROPOLITAN MANILA

Issues of urban governance are crucial to the future of metropolitan Manila because the current situation in the region poses

tremendous challenges.For one,this mega-region is continuing

to urbanize and grow very rapidly.While inner-city communities like Escolta and Binondo have deteriorated and are losing

population,suburban areas like Pasig City and Taguig are growing at an annual rate of 4.65 and 7.11 percent respectively.

Metropolitan Manila is an administrative intergovernmental

jurisdiction formed in 1975 encompassing the City of Manila,

3 other major cities,and 13 municipalities.Today it accounts for

28 percent of the total urban population of the Philippines and

contributes 15 percent of the urban poor nationwide.

The main challenges facing metropolitan Manila are

the lack of sufficient affordable housing, and inadequate

urban services. Innovative approaches such as community

upgrading of sites and services have been carried out since

the 1960s, but these have failed to adequately respond to

the needs of the bottom 20 percent of urban low-income

families. The Zonal Improvement Program, and the Slum

Improvement and Renewal programs have made safe

drinking water, flush toilets, paved pathways and other

basic needs accessible to many of the poor, but demand for

decent quality affordable housing still far outstrips available

supply. The Community Mortgage Program has enabled

some low-income families to buy the land upon which

their shanties are built, but this initiative has been plagued

by insufficient land and government financing.

Meanwhile, the private housing sector has mainly focused

its attention on market-rate, middle-income housing –

building thousands of new subdivision developments on

the urban periphery and, sometimes, siphoning off funds

earmarked for the poor and investing it in building homes

for a more affluent population.

Metropolitan Manila’s nearly 11 million residents generate

over 6,000 tons of solid waste per day,10 percent of which ends

up polluting various rivers and canals. Nearly all of the trash

dumps and landfills in the metropolitan region are already filled

to capacity.During 1999,a mountain of garbage in Payatas collapsed and buried more than 200 scavengers,leading to the closure of the entire facility.The passage of the Clean Air Act in

1998 outlawed the use of incinerators to burn garbage. As a

consequence, metropolitan Manila now relies exclusively on

open dumps or sanitary landfills.However,a strong not–in-mybackyard (NIMBY) attitude among local governments has created huge problems in finding new dump sites.

About 42 percent of all motor vehicles in the Philippines

are registered in metropolitan Manila. Thus the region is

perpetually caught in traffic gridlock – the average vehicle

speed on a major thoroughfare such as Epifanio de los

Santos Avenue rarely exceeds 12 kilometers per hour. Motor

vehicle traffic continues to increase, despite the construction

underway on the second phase of the metropolitan rapid

transit system. One-third of the more than 18 million vehicular trips per day rely on low capacity private vehicles, while

another 45 percent of these daily trips are by unscheduled

jitneys and buses. Air quality in metropolitan Manila is so

bad that some officials fear there may be harmful health

effects on children from mercury and other air pollutants.

Metropolitan Manila suffers from acute water shortages

during the summer months, along with substantial flooding

during the monsoon season. Manila’s waterworks system was

first installed in 1878 and has not kept up with the city’s population growth. In May 2000, it was estimated that only about

63.5 percent of the fresh water supplied by the system was

accounted for, with the rest being lost to leakage of various

kinds.Over 50,000 households have no access to sanitary facilities.The metropolitan sewer system covers only 20 percent of

the total population,with the other households relying on septic tanks or disposal of waste water in canals and rivers.

During the rainy season, metropolitan Manila is frequently flooded. Over 44 square kilometers — 7 percent of

the land in the metropolitan region — are frequently prone

to substantial flooding. Since metropolitan Manila is hit by

almost a dozen typhoons each year, considerable damage is

caused by floods.The situation is made doubly hazardous by

the fact that the city’s sanitary sewers and storm drainage

systems are combined, posing serious health threats of

cholera, hepatitis and other water-borne diseases during

floods. The Pasig River, the Marikina River and other

waterways in metropolitan Manila are biologically dead.Fish

and shellfish from Manila Bay are not safe to eat because of

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR

23

Metropolitan Manila: People’s Participation and Social

Inclusion in A Global City-Region

APRODICIO A. LAQUIAN

University of British Columbia

Manila, Philippines
contamination and the periodic outbreaks of red tide disease

that occur during the summer months.

From 1987 to 1992, metropolitan Manila suffered from a

severe shortage of electrical energy. Curtailment of electricity

service — “brownouts”— took place almost daily, causing

huge losses in production and commerce. President Ramos

was granted emergency powers to solve the energy crisis,

which he addressed mainly by importing additional secondhand electrical generating equipment, along with massive

quantities of foreign oil.The privatization of some of the electricity distribution lines has introduced increased efficiency to

the grid system,but the National Power Corporation,a major

government-owned energy supplier, is saddled with a huge

financial debt that makes it unattractive to private investors.

In spite of the above-mentioned challenges faced by metropolitan Manila, there is room for optimism in the future

because regional cooperation and collaborative action is

becoming more viable as a solution to dealing with major

problems. The current expansion of the metropolitan rapid

transit system promises to help ease motor vehicle traffic congestion. The construction of toll roads and skyways linking

metropolitan Manila to other urban centers also will alleviate

some local traffic congestion.A computerized traffic management and monitoring system is now operating at a metropolitan level, improving regional cooperation. Experimental

approaches, such as limiting the number of vehicles operating

in the central city on certain days and times, should also help

reduce urban congestion. Greater use of traffic aides by the

Metropolitan Manila Development Authority to promote

stricter enforcement of traffic laws may have a positive

impact, although inadequate driver education along with

widespread corruption in the issuance of drivers’ licenses and

the “fixing”of traffic tickets continue to be serious problems.

Residents of metropolitan Manila also can look forward to

better water services.The completion of the Umiray Dam

will provide adequate water supplies for the next 21 years.

Privatizing the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage

Authority may produce more efficient service.Under the privatization agreement, which is in effect until 2021, the total

integrated water,sewers,and sanitation system involves investments of $7.5 billion of which $4.5 billion is allotted to the

West Zone. In the West Zone alone, which covers over 540

square kilometers, these new private investments would pay

for 1,000 kilometers of new water pipes, 200,000 new water

connections, and replacement of 200,000 water meters.

Strategic planning and coordinated regional action are also

likely to enable metropolitan Manila to control and regulate

urban sprawl. Philippine government officials now see the

merits of a comprehensive development plan for the Manila

region that encourages development of peripheral urban

commercial and residential growth poles that are closely and

efficiently linked to the central city through transportation

and telecommunications infrastructure. Metropolitan Manila

has recently gained access to the excellent infrastructure and

facilities of the former American military Navy base at Subic

Bay and Air Force base at Clark.To further the regional development strategy, these former military bases have been converted into Special Economic Zones devoted to promoting

the growth of export-oriented businesses. Subic Bay, for

example, now employs more than twice the number of

Philippine workers than were formerly hired by the

American military. Increasing numbers of Philippine workers

are now employed by high-tech companies, recreation and

tourism enterprises, and a wide range of business and consumer services. Similar success has been achieved at Clark in

attracting the electronics and tourism industries. These two

Special Economic Zones are being linked by efficient transportation systems to metropolitan Manila and other urban

centers. Soon metropolitan Manila’s rapid transit lines will be

extended to Subic Bay and Clark, and the Philippine government is considering a proposal to develop Clark as the

nation’s main international airport.

All in all, regional planning and governance are slowly

starting to improve conditions in metropolitan Manila.The

privatization of some services has helped improve efficiency

in metropolitan service delivery. A continuing obstacle has

been the previous legacy of decentralization to small and

weak local government units. If metropolitan Manila is to

effectively meet its development challenges, broader regional governance mechanisms are needed, and must obtain support and gain cooperation from advocates of local autonomy and decentralization.

PARTICIPATORY APPROACHES TO

GOVERNANCE

The particular nature of Philippine society, including the

commitment to democracy and strong belief in the importance of civic participation, has translated into growing pressure for citizen involvement in urban governance.

Interestingly, the abuses of the Marcos dictatorship seem to

have fueled the formation of non-governmental organizations,

people’s coalitions and movements, and other civil society

groups.The power of such citizen groups reached its zenith

during the 1986 “people power” revolution that toppled the

Marcos dictatorship.At present, there are at least 58,000 nongovernmental organizations of various types nationwide that

are officially registered with the Philippine Securities and

Exchange Commission, and many more that remain unregistered.These civil society groups are involved in practically all

aspects of governance. Many are nationally coordinated

through a confederation of non-governmental organizations

called the Caucus of Development NGO Networks.

The 1987 Philippine Constitution officially recognizes

the importance of civil society groups in the following provisions:

• The State shall encourage non-governmental, community-based, or sectoral organizations that promote the

welfare of the nation (Article II, Section 23).

• The State shall respect the role of independent people’s

organizations to enable the people to pursue and protect, within the democratic framework, their legitimate

and collective interests and aspirations through peaceful and lawful means (Article XIII, Section 15).

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

24
• The right of the people and their organizations to

effective and reasonable participation at all levels of

social, political and economic decision-making shall

not be abridged (Article XIII, Section 16).

Pursuant to the Constitution, sectoral organizations were

mobilized in the 1998 presidential and local elections to elect

representatives to the Philippine House of Representatives.

Similar campaigns were also waged to elect sectoral representatives to local government councils.This initial election

process faced many difficulties, including the confusion in

differentiating genuine citizen groups from governmentsponsored organizations and surrogates for political parties.

Yet a number of genuine grassroots representatives actually

got elected to the national legislature and local councils.

The Local Government Code of 1991 also provided for

the participation of community-based organizations and

other citizen groups in the formal structure of legislative

bodies, such as city and municipal councils. It urged that

civil society groups be included as joint venture partners

with private and public sector entities in carrying out development projects. The government also was authorized to

provide funds to non-governmental organizations and other

civic groups to enhance their capabilities for contributing to

economic, social, and community development.

At present, active participation in local governance by

non-governmental organizations and other groups can take

the following forms:

• Collaboration in policy setting and plan formulation: Elected

sectoral representatives in the national legislature and in

local government councils officially participate in policy setting and plan formulation. For example, the passage of the “Integrated Ecological Solid Waste

Management Act of 2000” was partly attributed to the

effective lobbying efforts of organizations such as the

Eco-Waste Management Coalition, the Recycling

Movement of the Philippines, Mother Earth,

Greenpeace, and Zero-Waste Management.

• Collaboration in program and project implementation: National

and local government agencies are required to involve

civil society groups in program and project implementation as well as monitoring and evaluation. Such participation includes non-governmental organizations providing training for citizens to prepare for project involvement; the actual subcontracting of project implementation to local groups as is done with the Community

Mortgage Program; joint financing of development projects; and project monitoring and evaluation of program

impacts. Non-governmental organization representatives

have been appointed to governmental councils such as

the Philippine Council for Sustainable Development.

• Participation in public information and dissemination activities:

Many government agencies find non-governmental

organizations and other civil society groups very effective

in gathering and disseminating information.For example,

efforts to inform the public about key issues during elections have been carried out by such citizen and community-based networks. Civil society groups also have participated actively in mass media campaigns, public dialogue,and even street demonstrations enabling their voices to be heard.Although some of these grassroots activists

have been criticized by some public officials for being

confrontational and antagonistic, many ordinary people

rely on them as objective sources of information that

otherwise would not be available from government agencies or established media outlets.This “alternative press”

movement has been very active in providing useful information and education to the general public.

Thousands of civil society groups in metropolitan Manila

and other parts of the Philippines have achieved many successes through their active participation in governance as

policy advocates, lobbyists, and joint venture partners with

state institutions in carrying out programs and projects.The

passage of the Urban Development and Housing Act of

1992 shows the power of local groups in influencing national legislation.The driving force behind the vigorous advocacy campaign was a coalition called the Urban Land

Reform Task Force, made up of a wide variety of business,

professional, faith-based, and reform organizations including

the National Congress of Urban Poor Organizations, the

Foundation for Development Alternatives, the BishopsBusinessmen’s Conference, and the National Urban Poor

Movement for Urban Land Reform.

This broad-based grassroots movement succeeded in

winning passage of the 1992 Urban Development and

Housing Act by pursuing several key strategies. First, the

groups engaged in coalition building that harmonized their

education and advocacy efforts and strengthened their base

of support.This was not easy because the groups were made

up of very different orientations, ranging from the radical

Socialist Party of the Philippines to the conservative churchbusiness coalition of the Bishops-Businessmen’s Conference.

Second, the civil society groups engaged in horizontal and

vertical linkages, combining the efforts of mass-based urban

poor groups with elite forces in the religious and civic communities.Third, the civil society groups tapped the support

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR

25

Manila, Philippines
of power brokers such as key legislative leaders, the Cardinal,

groups of lawyers, and the religious orders. Fourth, these

groups waged an active media campaign, aided by journalists

and editors sympathetic to their cause, that kept the issue on

the front pages until the law was passed.Finally,the civil society groups did not neglect their technical work.They were

deeply involved in formulating the legislation, conducting

research, and mobilizing sound data as the basis for strong

arguments. They effectively utilized such well-documented

arguments for housing and urban land reform by learning

the intricacies of parliamentary techniques and debate and

applying them to good use by working together with their

allies in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Despite the acknowledged involvement in urban governance by non-governmental organizations in metropolitan

Manila, there are numerous points of contention. Some civil

society leaders feel that the government is not sincere in inviting them to participate more actively in governance – that a

primary goal of government leaders is simply to co-opt local

groups into supporting the government’s preconceived agenda. On the other hand, some government officials accuse

community activists of primarily organizing opposition

movements rather than genuinely collaborating with public

policy. This uneasy tension between government and civil

society is a carryover from the period of the Marcos dictatorship, when many of the non-governmental organizations

were established explicitly as opposition groups for democratic reform.

Civil society leaders categorize non-governmental

organizations (NGOs) and people’s organizations (POs) in

the Philippines on the basis of their autonomy or dependence on governmental resources. One humorous version of

such classification by a prominent community activist

includes the following:

• GUAPOs, or Genuine Autonomous People’s

Organizations are truly independent and shun the support of government, business groups, and people with

vested interests.

• DJANGOs or Development, Justice and Advocacy

Non-Governmental Organizations are autonomous

organizations that provide support services to the poor.

Many of them receive support from international organizations but they insist on their functional independence.

• TANGOs or Traditional Non-Governmental

Organizations are more likely to be charitable, welfare

and relief organizations usually formed by upper and

middle-income people to help the poor.

• GRINGOs or Government Run or Initiated NonGovernmental Organizations are usually set up by state

organizations to pursue activities in support of government functions. They are similar to GRIPOs or

Government Run and Initiated People’s

Organizations, that are set up mainly to receive funds

and other resources from the government (The term

“gripo” in Tagalog literally means “faucet”).

• BONGOs or Business-Organized Non-Governmental

Organizations are set up by the private sector to

achieve specific benefits such as land acquisition

through public authority, tax reductions, or mechanisms for quelling labor unrest.

It is obvious from the nomenclature of organizations

mentioned above that the main criterion for classification is

their goals and objectives, the nature of their funding support, and their relative autonomy from various special interests. Some community activists in metropolitan Manila are

highly critical of citizen groups that act primarily as advocates for the government, the private business sector, or

other funding sources.The cynicism that is apparent in the

classifications noted above creates tension among the groups

themselves. Although the Caucus of Development NGO

Networks has tried to achieve harmony and cooperation,

there continues to be considerable disagreement.

Despite the competition and suspicion among civil society groups in metropolitan Manila, there is widespread consensus that a united front should be set up to avoid potential manipulation or divide-and-rule tactics by the government. Local groups often have united to oppose governmental efforts that impose greater regulations on their activities. For example, some non-governmental organizations do

not want to submit to formal accreditation and registration

with the Securities and Exchange Commission.They object

to fiscal requirements that they should officially account for

the funds they receive.They feel that these control mechanisms are designed to diminish their power and independence. Government agencies, in turn, argue that it is irresponsible for local groups to receive funds without adequate

public accounting. Even in the case of funds that come from

international organizations, public officials insist that full

financial disclosure should be the rule.

Many observers of the Philippine situation have commented favorably about the increasing management professionalization in civil society groups. Widely recognized

NGOs, such as the Philippine Rural Reconstruction

Movement, Philippine Business for Social Progress, and the

Caucus of Development NGO Networks, are led by highly

trained and competent managers who have had long careers

as executives for such organizations. In the case of many

small and struggling grassroots groups, however, their leaders are too often engaged in a constant search for operating

funds just to survive. Most of these organizations simply

cannot afford to pay the salaries for full-time professional

management. Indeed, some community leaders fear that

their organizations may become too big and bureaucratized,

which could diminish the political effectiveness and grassroots accountability of their groups and movements.• Dr.Aprodicio A. Laquian is Professor Emeritus of Community

and Regional Planning and former Director of the Centre for

Human Settlements at the University of British Columbia in

Vancouver,Canada.This article is adapted from a paper delivered

at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars,Urban

Governance Workshop, December 6-7, 2000,Washington, DC.

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

26
Mexico, like many countries around the world, faces

a severe shortage of affordable housing.As a result,

the Mexican government established Fondo de

Operación y Financiamiento Bancario a la Vivienda (FOVI)

in 1963, a trust fund administered by Banco de México, to

help provide homeownership financing for low-income

families and increase the supply of affordable housing in

Mexico. Recognizing FOVI’s need to establish a sustainable

source of housing funds, FOVI-Banco de México consulted

Fannie Mae to help refine FOVI’s strategic financing plan.

In an attempt to address housing finance issues, the

Mexican Government has made substantial institutional and

legislative changes with support from the international

housing finance industry. In the late 1990’s, FOVI-Banco de

México began to adjust financing procedures and overall

scope to match housing needs more closely, looking to

Fannie Mae because of their expertise in housing finance in

the United States. As a large secondary mortgage market

institution with over five decades of experience, Fannie Mae

offers significant knowledge of important issues in the

development of a sound national housing finance industry,

such as the use of leading edge technology, and managing

credit, interest rate, and operational risk.

Fannie Mae, responding to a large number of requests by

international entities and foreign governments, established a

department called International Housing Finance Services

(IHFS) more than a decade ago. The IHFS mandate is to

share Fannie Mae’s experience with foreign governments

and private financial institutions worldwide. By working

abroad, Fannie Mae is able to keep abreast of new ideas and

best practices from outside the United States that could foster greater housing affordability for families in America.

FOVI-Banco de México is not unique in its desire to tap

into U.S. expertise. Addressing the needs of both emerging

and developed markets, Fannie Mae has shared its knowledge, including missteps and mistakes, with more than 30

countries over the past 10 years. This work encompasses

designing market-driven mortgage products; establishing the

conceptual design of consumer education programs; creating geographic risk and credit risk modeling in South

Africa; assessing the potential for developing a mortgagebacked securities market in Japan; and assisting in the development of business, operational, and technology infrastructure to help a secondary market conduit in Hong Kong

securitize and issue debt. Drawing on U.S. technological

expertise, Argentina has embarked upon the creation of a

secondary mortgage market. Jordan’s attempts to develop an

efficient primary home mortgage lending market resulted in

a seminar that included workshops on loan product development and marketing, credit underwriting, mortgage servicing, risk management and pricing, and portfolio management. In addition to on-site tailored training programs,

Fannie Mae hosts a semi-annual training Symposium at its

Washington, DC headquarters.The meeting takes place over

an entire week, with delegates from all over the world sharing and learning from expert housing finance professionals.

A key component in the discussion of primary and secondary mortgage market development is the need to create

sound land registry as a building block for generating robust

housing markets.A sustainable housing finance system must

be founded on an established system of property rights,

property titling, and clear, consistent legislation. It is upon

this foundation that a standardized primary mortgage market can be built. When these building blocks are in place,

then the country can begin to explore alternative sources of

market-based housing finance.While this may sound simple,

most countries around the world are still grappling with

establishing basic institutional frameworks.

Like many economies in development, Mexico continues to work on fostering a healthy housing market that will

create sustainable funding sources for affordable homeownership. Mexico has been building brick-by-brick each element of its housing finance system.While there are still formidable challenges ahead, Mexico is moving forward with

the commitment that the foundation it is building will serve

generations to come. As a leading organization in the U.S.

housing finance system, Fannie Mae will continue to support this process in Mexico and around the world.•

Soula Proxenos is Director of International Housing Finance

Services at Fannie Mae in Washington, DC.

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR

27

Developing New Financial Instruments in Mexico and

Other Nations to Expand Affordable Homeownership

SOULA PROXENOS

Fannie Mae

Mexico City, Mexico
Urbanization is relentlessly sweeping across the globe.

Regardless of the reason—be it the hope of gaining

employment, receiving better health care, or enjoying a more secure livelihood—the rapid demographic shift to

urban centers is redefining global development challenges for

the 21st century. In the past, international, governmental, and

non-profit development assistance organizations targeted

rural areas as locations in which to reach the poor.Today they

must rethink many programs to include the growing population of impoverished and disenfranchised urban residents in

developing countries. The U.S. Agency for International

Development (USAID) in late 1998 launched its Making

Cities Work strategy that sets forth its plan on how to address

urbanization as a development issue.

The Making Cities Work strategy aims to improve the

management of urban growth in the areas of governance,

infrastructure development, local economies, health, and the

environment. By focusing on these issues, the U.S. Agency

for International Development assists cities to:

• Promote participatory democracy and high levels of

citizen satisfaction with local institutions;

• Provide basic infrastructure and housing to serve all

their inhabitants;

• Generate robust economic growth, with ample opportunities for employment; and,

• Offer safe and healthy places to live and work, within a

sustainable environment.

In the 1990s, developing countries struggled to accommodate an astonishing 150,000 new urban dwellers each

day. During the first decade of the new millennium, this

number is projected to rise to 180,000 people daily, or more

than one million people moving into cities each week.The

impacts of such rapid growth in urban centers are complex,

and require moving beyond traditional development assistance strategies that focus separately on single-sector concerns such as economic growth, population and health,

democracy and governance, agriculture, and the environment. The Making Cities Work strategy recognizes that

urban problems must increasingly be addressed by comprehensive, multi-sectoral approaches in order to be effective.

Moreover, urban centers provide a valuable entry point

through which development programs can be broadened to

expand their effectiveness.The following examples illustrate

the Making Cities Work approach.

INDONESIA

To capitalize on the synergies that exist in cities, USAID’s

urban program in Indonesia combined environmental infrastructure and participatory governance by providing technical assistance to city governments. Over the five-year life of

this urban program, 26,000 neighborhood-based environmental infrastructure projects were developed and implemented, including sewers, communal solid waste facilities,

culverts and drainage ditches, public water supply reservoirs,

and community bathing and toilet facilities. Millions of lowincome urban residents benefitted from an improved built

environment and increased employment. These “micro”

projects were highly cost-effective for USAID.

As an important aspect of infrastructure project development, USAID provided technical assistance to city government officials in order to facilitate opening up the planning

and community development process to active citizen participation.The Indonesian Ministry of Home Affairs adopted this participatory planning model as a best

practice in city management, and is promoting

its use nationwide. USAID’s Indonesian urban

initiative is an example of how multi-sectoral

approaches – in this case combining environmental improvement and participatory governance - can effectively leverage resources, foster

community involvement, and improve the quality of life for low-income families in urban

neighborhoods.

SOUTH AFRICA

In addition to encouraging multi-sectoral development approaches, the Making Cities Work

strategy emphasizes the importance of building

alliances with public and private development

partners to coordinate investment efforts and

maximize overall program impact. In Durban,

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

28

Making Cities Work: The Urban Strategy of the 

U.S. Agency for International Development

DAVID PAINTER

U.S. Agency for International Development

Urban Population Projections for 2025

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Africa Asia Europe North

America

South

America

2000

2025

Percentage of Urban

Source: United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat)
South Africa, USAID—working in close collaboration with

the Malaysian Government, the Kasigo Trust, Oxfam

Canada, and South African Regional (local government)

Councils—co-funded the Kwazulu-Natal Project

Preparation Trust. The Trust collaborated with a private

South African development finance corporation to increase

low-income families’ access to formal credit. Through this

innovative international partnership, the Trust successfully

leveraged a substantial amount of private sector loan financing. In addition to targeting low-income families, the Trust

also reached out to female-headed households. A majority

of the 56,000 credit recipients are women.

USAID’s program in South Africa also focuses on

improving affordable housing and the urban built environment for Durban’s poorest residents, including increasing

homeownership opportunities. Approximately half of the

loans went toward building and renovating housing, while

the remaining loans were targeted to improving sanitation

facilities, roads, and storm water drainage. By enabling urban

residents to gain access to private credit markets and to invest

funds in what they identified as their most urgent needs, the

entire City of Durban benefited from creating healthier and

more attractive living conditions and a better environment.

In partnership with private businesses, non-governmental

organizations, and government agencies, USAID helped

expand the availability of private financing for many lowincome South Africans and generate positive multi-sectoral

impacts on economic growth and quality of life.

In today’s world of 6 billion people – nearly half of

whom already live in urban centers, cities will increasingly

play a major role in economic development.The challenge

is to ensure that low-income families and communities fully

benefit from the urbanization process.The U.S. Agency for

International Development is committed to helping meet

that global challenge by implementing its Making Cities

Work strategy. To learn more, visit our Web site at

www.makingcitieswork.org. • David Painter is a Foreign Service Officer and Director of the

Office of Environment and Urban Programs at the U.S.

Agency for International Development in Washington, DC.

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR

29

Four regional associations of planning schools, the (USCanadian) Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning

(ACSP), the Association of European Schools of Planning

(AESOP), the Asian Planning Schools Association (APSA)

and the Australian and New Zealand Association of

Planning Schools (ANZAPS), are jointly organizing the

first-ever World Planning Schools Congress (WPSC) 2001

to be held in Shanghai, China, on July 11–15, hosted by

the College of Architecture and Urban Planning of Tongji

University. The World Planning Schools Congress 2001

follows the successful experience of two previous ACSPAESOP Joint International Congresses in 1991 and 1996

and marks the beginning of a more global perspective on

urban planning and development issues. 

“Planning for Cities in the 21st Century: Opportunities

and Challenges” is the broad theme of the World

Planning Schools Congress 2001, covering a wide range

of topics that planning educators and other planning professionals will face in the coming era. Topics include; the

role of cities and regions in globalization; public participation, urban governance, and public policy; housing and

community development; gender, race, and social exclusion; telematics and application of information technology in planning; sustainability of urban and regional development; planning theory and history; land use, transportation, and growth management; urban design and

physical form; infrastructure planning; planning for

tourism and recreation; planning education; historic cities

and urban heritage; planning for developing countries;

transnational planning; and planning and law. Global

Outlook will be organizing a special session, including

papers by co-editor Marc A. Weiss on metropolitan economic strategy, and co-editor Alven H. Lam on homeownership and property rights. 

The selection of Shanghai as the location for the World

Planning Schools Congress 2001 reflects the view shared

by the four international planning schools associations

that the influence of the WPSC would be greatest if held

in one of the world’s fastest growing cities and nations,

where both the opportunities and challenges are large,

and the need for urban and regional planning is vital. 

The Organizing Committee of the WPSC 2001 has

received nearly 700 paper abstracts from over 60 countries. For detailed information on the conference program

and related activities, visit the WPSC on-line at

www.caup-tongji.org/wpsc2001. 

Dr. Zhao Min is Dean of the Department of Urban

Planning at Tongji University in Shanghai, China. Dr.

Zheng Shiling is a Professor in the College of Architecture

and Urban Planning at Tongji University in Shanghai,

China.

The World Planning Schools Congress in Shanghai, China, 

July 11–15, 2001

ZHAO MIN and ZHENG SHILING

Tongji University, Shanghai, China

The Urban Development Timeline is a research and design project currently being developed by the Planning and Development Collaborative

International (PADCO), a for-profit consulting firm headquartered in

Washington, DC. The timeline is a comprehensive, multimedia technology, information management tool for international urban development

planning. It will grow and deepen as various public and private partners

contribute their knowledge and financial support to produce this unique

training tool, comprised of a multimedia Internet site on the World Wide

Web; a library; a CD-ROM/DVD series; a traveling exhibit; a seminar

series; and other related products, services, and program initiatives to

realize the full potential of the Urban Development Timeline as a learning

tool for the global urban community. 

The content of the Urban

Development Timeline reflects

ideas and experiences from

the past five decades of urban

development, 1950 to 2000.

Within each decade there are

five separate tracks: 1) benchmarks and trends; 2) polices

and programs; 3) institutional

roles; 4) best practices and

lessons learned; and 5) tools

and methodologies.

PADCO is creating the initial

framework for the timeline

and developing guidelines for

its use by professionals,

teachers, and organizations.

Themes and issues will be

prepared that review the

experience of individual

nations, and that cover a

wide historical range of

urban development strategies, case studies, and other

data. As the project evolves,

additional modules will be

added for each decade tracking other important trends,

including successes and failures, to help improve public

and private decisionmaking

for urban policy, planning,

and development projects.

Continually updated versions

of the Urban Development

Timeline can be viewed on

PADCO’s Web site: 

www.padcoinc.com.

Shari Kessler is Director of

Corporate Communications

for the Planning and

Development Collaborative

International (PADCO) in

Washington, DC.

The Urban Development Timeline Project

SHARI KESSLER

Planning and Development Collaborative International
Over the past 30 years, the world’s urban population

has more than doubled, increasing by 1.5 billion

inhabitants. In the next 30 years, most of the world’s

population growth will take place in urban areas of the

developing world, which may gain as many as two billion

inhabitants, increasing from 1.9 billion in the year 2000 to

3.9 billion by 2030. Much of this rapidly burgeoning urban

population lacks basic fresh water supply, sanitation, adequate

housing, education, and health services. These people bear

the brunt of deteriorating urban environments and are

exposed to cumulative risks—dirty air and water, insufficient

waste removal, crime, traffic, and economic insecurity. Cities

which two decades ago had 30 neighborhoods and one million people are likely today to have 130 neighborhoods and

millions more people, all with basic needs to be satisfied.

Each of these urban communities also requires institutions to

assure their orderly governance and to meet the difficult

demands and pressures that will come with rapid change.

A major reason why urban governments in many developing countries have not coped successfully with urban population growth is that they simply do not know what is happening within their local jurisdictions. Population data are severely lacking in most of the large cities in the developing world.

Most large cities in developing countries also lack sufficient,

accurate, and current data on patterns of land conversion and

infrastructure deployment.Urban maps are frequently 20 to 30

years old and lack any description of entire sections of cities,

and particularly of the burgeoning peri-urban areas.Moreover,

records and information systems maintained by municipalities

and utilities throughout the developing world are generally

poor.In most of these cities,each municipal agency or department typically maintains its own database, often using differing standards, and rarely sharing its data. Computerization of

such data is still relatively uncommon.

With the spread of democratization and decentralization

throughout much of the world in recent years, local governments are increasingly being required to operate with

the speed and efficiency of private businesses, while facing

ever more complex political and regulatory issues. Local

governments must digest an immense amount of information to perform their duties in a fair and sound manner.

While not a panacea, Geographic Information Systems

(GIS) are becoming powerful planning and management

tools in meeting long term strategic planning and management challenges, and in performing the diverse functions of

local government. Geographic Information Systems can

process data from a wide range of sources, including information obtained from maps, images of the earth from space

satellites, videos of the earth from low-flying aircraft, statistical data from published tables, photographs, data from

computer-aided design (CAD) systems, and data obtained

from archives by electronic transmission over the Internet

and other telecommunication networks—enabling urban

areas to be described and monitored in a much more accurate and timely fashion than was previously possible.

Data integration is one of the most valuable functions of

a GIS. A GIS uses geographic location to relate otherwise

disparate data and provides a systematic way to collect and

manage location-based information crucial to local governance. Because the spatial location of every item of information in a GIS database is known, geographic information

technology makes it possible, for example, to relate the quality of groundwater at a site with the health of its inhabitants,

or to compare development proposals with restrictions on

land use.This ability to overlay multiple location-specific data

sources gives GIS unique power in helping to make decisions

about places and to predict the outcomes of those decisions.

Linking location to information, for example, may help governments determine which parts of a city are most vulnerable to seasonal flooding or other natural disasters; or, to

decide where a city is growing the fastest and is most in need

of increased water, power, and telecommunication services.

Though GIS is a rapidly maturing technology, it is still at

an early stage of application in many developing countries.

Public sector managers in a number of developing-country

cities and metropolitan regions are beginning to employ

GIS technology for diverse tasks, including land use and

urban growth planning and permit tracking; economic

development planning; infrastructure and transportation

planning and management; crime tracking and law enforcement planning; educational planning; comparison of program effectiveness across local jurisdictions; taxation analysis

and record-keeping; public health risk analysis; site selection

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

32

Urban Applications of Geographic Information Systems

in Developing Countries

ELLEN BRENNAN-GALVIN

The United Nations

Lima, Peru
for service facilities; site selection for locally unwanted land

uses such as landfills; emergency management; environmental monitoring; and public information services.

One such example of a fully integrated GIS is in the State

of Qatar, which has been at the forefront of geographic information technology in the developing world. Qatar’s GIS

activities began in 1988, and the entire country is now covered by a high resolution, digital topographic database. In one

particularly successful application, the availability of digital

land parcel and building data for the entire country allowed

the Central Statistical Organization to conduct an extremely

comprehensive General Housing and Population Census in a

single day. Qatar’s successful application of geographic information technology cannot be easily replicated, however, since

many of the factors behind its success are relatively unique.

Such factors include the country’s small size, high-level political support, authority to mandate and enforce uniform standards, outstanding technical leadership, adequate funding,

centralized public sector institutions, and little previously

existing GIS activity to impede coordination efforts.

In terms of developing GIS technology, perhaps the other

extreme is Africa. Spatial data have always been available in

various forms in most countries in Africa, especially in map

form. However, information technology in general, and the

geo-spatial data industry in particular, is quite undeveloped

in most African countries.A major problem is that laws and

administrative regulations give exclusive mandates to government departments, even when they lack the capacity to

satisfy the needs of the expanding community of data users.

The major sources of spatial information are the national

mapping agencies. Many municipal authorities also gather

spatial data, mainly land boundaries and property ownership

records. Efforts have been under way in a number of African

countries to create digital databases through conversion of

existing maps into digital format. In Botswana, for example,

the Department of Town and Regional Planning has developed a digital database to support land use compliance in

Gaborone. Likewise, in Lesotho, the Mapping Agency has

been engaged in large-scale digital mapping for urban areas.

In most countries, however, meta-data—sets of organized

spatial data and information about those data—are in rudimentary stages,making it difficult for potential users to know

what data is available.Whereas the most effective data conduits are computer networks and the Internet, these are not

yet well developed and reliable on the African continent.

Most of the developing world lies somewhere in between.

In India, for example, a high level of knowledge of computerization has fueled explosive demand for digital geographic

data in recent years. For example, the new land use plan for

the Greater Mumbai (Bombay) Metropolitan Region has

been transferred to village maps to enable citizens and other

concerned groups to understand the implications of the proposed land uses and to file objections and suggestions. In

Chennai (Madras),the government has developed a GIS database for expanding and upgrading the road network, prioritizing links for improvement and providing the framework for

an integrated transportation information system. In

Bangalore, the Development Authority has utilized GIS

applications for route planning and tracking of 200 (and eventually 2,000) private buses—using the Global Positioning

System (GPS) to monitor the location of the buses.

Major uses of GIS technology include promoting public

safety, and reducing the impact of disasters through betterplanned evacuation and more efficient management of

emergency services. In Mumbai, the government is using

GIS technology to build a database and map the various

man-made and natural features in space that are directly

related to fire hazards, risk assessment, and service delivery.

Likewise, the government of Hyderabad has been developing a GIS/GPS-based integrated emergency response management system for Hyderabad City. This project involves

the overlay of maps depicting land use, road networks, and

various aspects of emergency response, such as journey

speeds on all road links, and location and number of fire and

police stations and water filling points.

Elsewhere around the world there are many other innovative applications of GIS technology for urban management.The Kuwaiti Ministry of Public Works has launched a

large-scale, computerized, in-house Kuwait Infrastructure

Maintenance Management System to assist in the maintenance of the public works infrastructure—including roads,

bridges, sanitary and storm sewers, and street right-of-way

features. The Water Authority of Jordan has employed GIS

technology to restructure and remodel the water supply network in the capital of Amman. Under the aegis of a $250

million capital investment program, this project involves

completely redesigning the water supply system in the city’s

congested, densely populated core. In Dhaka, the

Government has been utilizing GIS technology to study

drainage in Dhaka City.A digital elevation model was established for the catchment area; inundation maps were then

produced and various flooding scenarios of the past were

modeled.The government of Dhaka has found this technology to be very cost efficient, enabling it to develop sustainable flood alleviation schemes.

For most local governments, in developed as well as

developing countries, GIS technology is still in its beginning

phases. GIS is typically a single agency operation, mainly

within the planning or engineering department.Although its

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR

33

Buenos Aires, Argentina
potential has not been fully realized in many urban settings,

GIS technology makes data sharing among departments possible so that, under ideal circumstances, local government

agencies can work together on coordinated activities.

In the not too distant future, with improvements in the

usability of GIS technology,the number and types of GIS uses

and users are likely to expand exponentially. For one thing,

the expansion of GIS technology will mean that it need not

continue to be associated mainly with “hard” infrastructure

and engineering applications. Indeed, planners interested in

social issues, who typically have not had the technical skills to

use current GIS technology, will be far more capable of using

what might be called “second-wave” GIS.

On the negative side, many urban governments throughout the developing world have spent large sums of money

— whether their own or from international donors – on

GIS technology, with little to show for it, partly because of

insufficient training and various bureaucratic obstacles.

Moreover, governments in many developing countries are

grappling with difficult concerns over intellectual property

rights, privacy issues, pricing policies, and so on. While a

local government can now buy a reliable GIS system and

obtain a great deal of GIS data through purchase or conversion, there has been no similarly reliable way to create the

organizational structures and experienced staff necessary to

support an effective GIS. Nevertheless, it is apparent that

Geographic Information Systems are beginning to change

how many urban governments throughout the world are

doing business, as both the complexity of societal interactions and the ease of data manipulation increases.The information age now makes it both possible and desirable to do

many things with geo-spatial data that were previously very

difficult, in order to gain valuable new insights on a variety

of urban planning, policy, and development issues.•

Dr. Ellen Brennan-Galvin is Chief of the Population Policy

Section of the United Nations Population Division in New

York City.

GLOBAL OUTLOOK

34

The University Consortium for Geographic Information

Science (UCGIS), in cooperation with the U.S. Department

of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has awarded

grants to five member universities to develop training

programs using spatial analysis tools with geographic

information systems (GIS) and indicators for measuring

urban quality of life in emerging nations. 

The five universities — University of Iowa, University

of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Virginia Commonwealth

University, West Virginia University, and University of

Wisconsin at Milwaukee – met in Washington, DC, on

February 6-7 to plan a research agenda for the year.

International partners with these five universities include

city governments and higher educational institutions in

China, Guatemala, Mozambique, Nepal, Senegal, and

South Africa, along with the World Bank and the United

Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat). 

These universities will spend the next several months

working with their international partners to identify the correct indicators, determine appropriate analytical strategies,

and design and test training materials. A second symposium will be held in Washington, DC during September,

2001, when the international partners will advise the five

U.S. universities on the relevance of each GIS research

project for solving urban problems in emerging nations. 

UCGIS is interested in identifying additional global

partners who are actively involved in working with the

United Nations. Through a cooperative effort with the UN

Centre for Human Settlements, the Environmental

Systems Research Institute (ESRI), a private company

affiliated with UCGIS, will be distributing state-of-the-art

software for Geographic Information Systems. ESRI’s

software can be used to assist local government officials

in identifying ways to improve quality of life through collection and analysis of data on urban indicators, and can

also be used to train urban officials and constituencies in

the use of Geographic Information Systems.

The University Consortium for Geographic Information

Science also hosted a Congressional Breakfast for

Members of Congress and their staff on February 8, at the

U.S. Capitol. Congressman Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania

and Congressman Jerry Lewis of California sponsored the

breakfast. Guests also included representatives from various federal government agencies, and UCGIS professional society affiliate members. Delegates from several

UCGIS member institutions demonstrated geographic

information technologies and their applications. Topics

included: creating livable communities, saving lives and

responding to emergencies, protecting the environment,

promoting economic development, helping businesses

deliver products and services, fighting crime, and supporting scientific research in related disciplines.

For more information, please contact the UCGIS at

execdir@ucgis.org.

Susan McDonald Jampoler is Executive Director of the

University Consortium for Geographic Information

Science (UCGIS) in Leesburg, Virginia.

UCGIS-HUD Global Urban Indicators Symposium and Congressional

Breakfast, Washington, DC, February 6-8, 2001

SUSAN MCDONALD JAMPOLER

University Consortium for Geographic Information Science
Tutu and Franklin: A Journey Towards Peace documents

the historic first encounter between Nobel Peace

Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu and

renowned historian and Presidential Medal of Freedom

recipient Dr. John Hope Franklin. On Goree Island, the

infamous former slave port off the west African coast of

Senegal, the two meet and discover surprising truths about

their personal and their nations’ struggles for racial peace.

Joined by an international, interracial group of 21 high

school students, together they engage in a series of candid

encounters on race and begin an emotional journey towards

racial reconciliation.

More than a documentary, Tutu and Franklin: A Journey

Towards Peace combines the wisdom of the elder statesmen and

the vitality of the next generation in unexpected ways to create a new vision for global racial healing.Produced by Wisdom

Works, a nonprofit, multimedia company, the two-hour program was shown on public television nationwide in the United

States on February 9, 2001 as part of Black History Month.

Executive producer Renee Poussaint, an Emmy awardwinning broadcast journalist, established Washington, D.C.-

based Wisdom Works with the goal of creating a better future

by bringing together the energy of the young with the wisdom of the past. Tutu and Franklin: A Journey Towards Peace

evolved from two projects focusing on race and reconciliation in the 21st century that took place on Goree Island.

In December 1998, Wisdom Works extended invitations

to Archbishop Tutu and Dr. Franklin to meet for the first

time.They agreed to the meeting and to participate in a series

of videotaped conversations for a documentary on issues they

have fought for their entire lives.To coincide with the historic

Tutu and Franklin meeting and to look at new ways to move

toward healing, Wisdom Works brought together a diverse

group of 21 high school students from the United States,

Senegal and South Africa to participate in a separate, intensive

week-long program on Goree Island. The program was

designed to encourage a new generation of young leaders to

focus on international issues of race and ethnicity.

Archbishop Tutu was head of South Africa’s Truth and

Reconciliation Commission, formed to help his country

move on from its painful legacy of racial separatism. Dr.

Franklin chaired President Clinton’s Advisory Board on Race,

set up to launch “a great and unprecedented conversation

about race” across the United States. Both commissions issued

their final reports in late 1998. Both men were called on to

present their respective presidents with concrete proposals for

racial healing—proposals that may shape the social realities of

their nations and much of the world in the 21st century.

Amid the sadness of Goree Island’s distressing past and

the beauty of Senegal’s sandy shores, Archbishop Tutu, Dr.

Franklin, and the students came together to share their personal stories, challenge long-held views, discuss their differences and discover common concerns.Throughout the documentary, personal moments on Goree between Tutu and

Franklin are captured and personal histories of the two

unfold. Tutu and Franklin:A Journey Towards Peace follows the

students across the emotional spectrum from their arrival in

Senegal to their final tour of Goree Island’s slave house with

its eerie cells and the “door of no return.” The documentary also explores the students’ personal lives, from Dakar,

Senegal, to Cape Town, South Africa; from upstate New

York, and Chicago, Illinois, to the Native American land of

New Mexico.

The Tutu and Franklin meeting, the student leadership

program,and their combined conversations are the foundation

of the documentary and the Journey Towards Peace Project.

This multi-year Project focuses on international, intergenerational, and interracial solutions to the difficult problems facing

us in this century. Programs include international satellite

video-conferences between the original 21 students and many

other students at public schools and post-secondary institutions; ongoing international Internet dialogues on race; community and youth-initiated projects; and the Tutu-Franklin

Fellows Program for International Student Race Leadership

Training.The Fellows Program includes a series of U.S.-based

student diversity conferences and a Tutu-Franklin Fellows

Summit to be held in Cape Town, South Africa.•

Douglas Spiro is a Producer at Wisdom Works in Washington,

DC, and served as Producer for the recent documentary film,

Tutu and Franklin:A Journey Towards Peace.

INTERNATIONAL URBAN RESEARCH MONITOR

35

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and United States

Professor John Hope Franklin Embark on an International

and Intergenerational Journey Towards Interracial Peace

DOUGLAS SPIRO

Wisdom Works

Dr. John Hope Franklin and Archbishop Desmond Tutu in Senegal
36

The Summit of the Americas is an institutionalized set of

meetings at the highest level of government decisionmaking in the Western Hemisphere. A major Summit is

being held in Quebec City, Canada, during April 20-22,

2001. The purpose of this Summit is to discuss common

issues and seek solutions to problems shared by the

nations of North, Central and South America. The United

States delegation is headed by President George W. Bush.

Since the first Summit of the Americas held at Panama

City in July of 1956, much has changed in the western

hemisphere. With the end of the cold war, the globalization

of economies, the development of the North American

Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and other major trends,

the nations of the Americas increasingly share a common

set of political, economic, and social goals. The previous

Summits at Panama City, Panama in 1956, Punta del Este,

Uruguay in 1967, Miami, U.S.A. in 1994, and Santiago,

Chile in 1998 have established a solid basis for cooperation throughout the hemisphere to enhance prosperity and

quality of life for all citizens in every nation. 

The 2001 Summit of the Americas will reflect the

steadily growing level of hemispheric consultation and

cooperation at many levels of government and across

many economic sectors. The Summit’s agenda will focus

on addressing collective challenges, especially promoting

a more equitable distribution of wealth through practical,

results-oriented actions. Strengthening democracy, creating prosperity, and realizing human potential have come

to be identified as the three main pillars of the work of the

Summit in Quebec City. 

Poverty and economic disparities persist in the

Americas, negatively affecting economic growth and sustainable development. The 2001 Summit will work on

improving the property registration framework first established during the Santiago Summit in 1998, by concentrating on regularizing “informal”ownership of real property. The process of formalizing property rights will

require governments to modernize their institutional and

legal structures so that a free property market can be created for all income segments of the population in each

country. Property rights and homeownership are important foundations for equitable, sustainable, and socially

responsible economic growth throughout the Americas.

Anja Graves is an Expert in the Office of International

Affairs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban

Development in Washington, DC.

The Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, Canada

ANJA GRAVES

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

US Department of Housing and Urban Development

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