bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Urban poverty and transport: a case study from Karachi
Authors:   Urban Resource Centre
Published: May 2005

This paper examines the role of transport provision on the lives of low-income groups in Karachi. It draws on interviews with 108 transport users living in one central and four peripheral neighbourhoods, and on interviews and focus group discussions with bus owners and drivers. It describes the large distances that most poor groups have to travel to get to and from work, and the costs; most bus users spend more than 10 per cent of their income on bus fares. It describes the time spent travelling (most people spend more than two hours a day travelling), the overcrowding and sexual harassment on the buses, the absence of schedules, the limited hours of operation and the high rate of accidents. The government authorities have failed to provide the framework needed for an integrated system, any bus terminals and other facilities - resulting in road encroachment by bus-related activities. It also describes how minibuses are acquired by entrepreneurs, and the informal payments they have to make to be allowed to operate.
Evaluating sanitary quality and classifying urban sectors according to environmental conditions
Authors: Milroy Craig A. , Borja Patricia C. , Barros Fernando R. , Barreto Mauricio L.
Published: May 2005

This paper describes how principal components and cluster analyses were used to quantitatively score and rank sanitary conditions in 30 areas of Salvador (Northeast Brazil) and to identify groups of areas with similar environmental quality prior to a programme to improve sanitary infrastructure. In collecting data, street by street, a broad definition of sanitary quality was used, encompassing type and quality of housing, paving, water supply, sewage disposal, drainage and household waste disposal. All variables used in the principal components analysis were coded to reflect the absence of infrastructural elements that contribute to health and environmental quality. Summary variables generated by the analysis were used to score the sanitary quality of each of the areas, and cluster analysis identified four groups of areas, representing high, intermediate, poor and very poor sanitary quality. Higher rates of parasitic infection among children aged 7-14 years of age were found in areas with the worst sanitary conditions, with prevalences increasing progressively from the group with the best sanitary quality to the group with the worst sanitary quality. This kind of analysis provides a method both to appraise the needs of each community (including being able to prioritize areas most in need and identify areas with special sanitation needs) and to score baseline conditions that later allow the impacts of interventions to be assessed.
Savings and loans; drawing lessons from some experiences in Asia
Authors: Boonyabancha Somsook
Published: May 2005

This paper describes the role of community-managed savings and loan schemes in poverty reduction and how these are best supported by external agencies. It draws particularly on the last ten years work of the Thai government’s Urban Community Development Office including how the 1997 financial crisis and the difficulties this brought to low-income savers was turned into an opportunity to rethink how to support savings groups. Community savings and loan schemes bring people together, helping them learn how to develop and manage their own resource base. They reduce individual vulnerability by providing an immediate lending facility the poor can access. They strengthen community processes so that other key issues can be addressed - for instance, developing plans for housing and negotiating with external agencies for land and infrastructure. If savings groups are supported to learn from each other (through community exchanges), networks develop, creating stronger, larger groupings of the urban poor with a greater capacity to negotiate with external agencies and develop a common fund. The possibilities for collaboration with government increases greatly as these networks demonstrate cheaper, more effective ways of addressing housing problems. Thus, community savings and loan schemes can reduce the poor’s exclusion from formal political and financial systems by providing a bridge between these and the informal systems from which most of the poor draw their living. They can also become the means by which the urban poor obtain good quality, well-located, secure housing with basic services, without the need for large subsidies.
Deep democracy: urban governmentality and the horizon of politics
Authors: Appadurai Arjun
Published: May 2005

This paper describes the work of an alliance formed by three civic organizations in Mumbai to address poverty - the NGO SPARC, the National Slum Dwellers Federation and Mahila Milan, a cooperative representing women’s savings groups. It highlights key features of their work which include: putting the knowledge and capacity of the poor and the savings groups that they form at the core of all their work (with NGOs in a supporting role); keeping politically neutral and negotiating with whoever is in power; driving change through setting precedents (for example, a community-designed and managed toilet, a house design developed collectively by the urban poor that they can build far cheaper than public or private agencies) and using these to negotiate support and changed policies (a strategy that develops new “legal” solutions on the poor’s own terms); a horizontal structure as the Alliance is underpinned by, accountable to and serves thousands of small savings groups formed mostly by poor women; community-to-community exchange visits that root innovation and learning in what urban poor groups do; and urban poor groups undertaking surveys and censuses to produce their own data about “slums” (which official policies lack and need) to help build partnerships with official agencies in ways that strengthen and support their own organizations. The paper notes that these are features shared with urban poor federations and alliances in other countries and it describes the international community exchanges and other links between them. These groups are internationalizing themselves, creating networks of globalization from below. Individually and collectively, they seek to demonstrate to governments (local, regional, national) and international agencies that urban poor groups are more capable than they in poverty reduction, and they also provide these agencies with strong community-based partners through which to do so. They are, or can be, instruments of deep democracy, rooted in local context and able to mediate globalizing forces in ways that benefit the poor. In so doing, both within nations and globally, they are seeking to redefine what governance and governability mean.
Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI) - foundations to treetops
Authors: Patel Sheela , Burra Sundar , D’Cruz Celine
Published: May 2005

This paper describes the formation and development of Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI), an international people’s organization which represents member federations of urban poor and homeless groups from 11 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It also describes the evolution of these national federations and how they grew to challenge conventional development thinking and to develop new, community-directed precedents for poverty reduction. These federations and the NGOs with whom they work formed SDI to support the many ways in which the federations (and their member groups) learn from and help each other, and to ensure that global institutions and events became more useful and relevant to the urban poor. The paper also describes SDI’s experiences with international agencies, including its involvement in the Global Campaign for Secure Tenure and the measures taken to ensure that its work and experience of the global provides benefit to and strengthens the local, adding value to the plans of the urban poor.
Building an urban poor people’s movement in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Authors:   Asian Coalition for Housing Rights
Published: May 2005

This photo-essay shows how the urban poor and their organizations are working with government agencies, NGOs and international donors in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, to develop homes and neighbourhoods and income generation and, where needed, to manage relocation schemes. It also describes how the city’s urban poor developed their own Solidarity and Urban Poor Federation, drawing on the advice of similar federations from other countries. The process was much helped by the interchanges between urban poor groups within the city and by the visits by urban poor representatives and city officials to projects managed by urban poor federations in other countries. The Federation’s work centres on linking and supporting community savings groups that develop their own schemes. The Federation also supports community-mapping and surveys to document conditions in the city’s many low-income settlements. The essay emphasizes the strengths and resources that the urban poor can bring to developing housing and jobs if external agencies allow them to do so and support their organizations.
Out of the frying pan into the fire: the limits of loan finance in a capital subsidy context
Authors: Baumann Ted , Bolnick Joel
Published: May 2005

This paper describes the difficulties that the South African Homeless People’s Federation has had to face, as the government housing subsidies to which its members are entitled have not been forthcoming. The Federation’s members are entitled to a housing subsidy of around US$ 1,500 - and there are housing developments all over South Africa built by Federation savings and loan groups that have demonstrated their capacity to build good quality homes with this. Because of the time taken to obtain housing subsidies, a special fund (the uTshani Fund) was set up to provide bridging loans so that members could start building their own homes. The Fund was to be sustained, as members obtained housing subsidies and repaid the loan thus making more funds available for other bridging loans. But most members who took out loans never received the subsidy and many now face difficulties in repaying these loans. This paper describes how the problem arose and how the Federation and its support NGO, People’s Dialogue on Land and Shelter, are seeking to address it. In doing so, it discusses the difficulties that movements of the urban poor face in reconciling the immediate needs of members (including access to housing) with strategies to obtain the long-term political changes that would allow such needs to be met sustainably.
Community-based organization and participatory planning in south-east Mexico City
Authors: Moctezuma Pedro
Published: May 2005

This paper describes the experiences of community-based organizations in settlements and municipalities in south-east Mexico City in participatory planning and in the development of local projects and new employment opportunities. In order to do so, popular groups joined forces with students and professionals. They sought to demonstrate new models of urban and peri-urban development that met their inhabitants’ needs while avoiding the chaotic informal processes by which most low-income settlements develop. They also sought to ensure good natural resource management and the protection of their rich and diverse cultural heritage. Last but not least, they searched for new approaches to community-based organizational replication in harmony with the environment. This paper describes the many projects implemented in San Miguel Teotongo, Cananea and Sierra Nevada which included new schools, health centres and community museums, settlement lay-outs with planned and installed infrastructure, markets, the protection of green areas and historic sites and the development of new agricultural products and eco-tourism. It also included community-based mapping of municipalities to allow better management of natural resources. The paper also describes how these initiatives have developed over the last 20 years and their role within Mexico’s complex political changes, including their relations with different political parties.
Of liquid dreams: a political ecology of water privatization in Buenos Aires
Authors: Loftus Alexander J , McDonald David A
Published: May 2005

The privatization of water and sanitation in Buenos Aires has been hailed by its neo-liberal proponents as an unprecedented success. This paper takes a deeper and more critical look than many of these accounts. It looks at political and economic changes within Argentina in order to explain the troubling findings regarding the performance of Aguas Argentinas, the private company that won the concession for most of Buenos Aires. The paper begins with a brief overview of the political and economic context in Argentina before describing the process involved in the water privatization in Buenos Aires. It then discusses the outcomes, including changes in coverage and charges to end users as well as impacts on labour and the environment. The paper describes how the promised reduction in water tariffs did not materialize (in fact the opposite occurred) and how agreed-upon targets for expanding sewerage connections and sewage treatment were not met. It also describes how the national government intervened to support the water company in conflicts with the regulatory agency and even by-passed the regulatory agency when the water company wanted to renegotiate the contract. Finally, the role of international financial institutions in this process is discussed.
Moving towards Local Agenda 21 in Rufisque
Authors: Gaye Malick , Diouf Loly , Keller Nicola
Published: May 2005

This paper describes the consultation processes in Rufisque, Senegal that have laid the foundations for a Local Agenda 21. These consultations have helped to establish new relationships between municipal government, community organizations and the private sector and have encouraged a range of initiatives to address local economic and environmental problems. New community-level and district committees have developed to bring different stakeholders together to identify problems and develop responses. The success of a development committee formed in Chérif, a district within Rufisque, has led to a similar approach being extended throughout Rufisque. There are also various community-based and NGO programmes underway to address environmental problems and improve health care and education, and various initiatives by local businesses to help address environmental problems. The paper also describes how decentralization in Senegal has encouraged this, although local authorities remain weak because the decentralization of responsibilities has not been accompanied by measures to ensure local financial capacity to meet them. In addition, local authority staff still need to recognize the validity of work undertaken by other groups locally and to learn how to work in partnership with them.
Street food and income generation for poor households in Kinshasa
Authors: Iyenda Guillaume
Published: May 2005

This paper describes the role of street food production and sale in the livelihoods of 256 food sellers in Kinshasa, including who within each household undertakes the work, the incomes received and profits gained, and the role of the income in households’ livelihoods. It also describes the context in which increasing numbers of people have had to turn to self-production, with the decline in formal sector employment and cuts in government jobs (and incomes). Most street food enterprises were the sole livelihood source for households. For virtually all women sellers, their husbands were unemployed, sick, disabled or dead. Many men sellers turned to street foods because they had lost jobs in the formal economy. Most street food enterprises produced low incomes but allowed households to meet their basic consumption needs.
Locating cities on global circuits
Authors: Sassen Saskia
Published: May 2005

This paper discusses the cities that have the resources which enable firms and markets to be global. It considers the new intensity and complexity of globally-connected systems of production, finance and management which may disperse production, yet need (relatively few) networks of cities to provide their organizational and management architecture. This produces new geographies and hierarchies of centrality - particular cities and regions that have key roles in globalization. Many such cities become far more closely linked to the global economy than to their regional or national economies - and this can have harsh consequences locally, pushing out firms and people that are not within the internationalized sector. The paper discusses why certain cities retain such importance, when production is so dispersed and when telecommunications and rapid transport systems have limited the advantages of spatial concentration. It also considers the dependence of global cities on each other; a crisis in one key centre often brings problems rather than opportunities for others.
Cities in a globalizing world: from engines of growth to agents of change
Authors: Vliet Willem van
Published: May 2005

This paper describes the key role that city authorities and their civil societies should play in mediating the relationship between economic globalization and human development so that cities act not only as engines of growth but also as agents for greater social justice and environmental sustainability. In a globalizing and urbanizing world, urban governments have a much more important role in guaranteeing that citizen needs are met and citizen rights are respected. This is not a conventional public-sector-led, professionally determined role but one more rooted in participatory democracy and partnerships with citizens, both to redress the limits of market mechanisms and to ensure urban livability.
Loot: in search of the East India Company, the world’s first transnational corporation
Authors: Robins Nick
Published: May 2005

This article charts the growth of the world’s first transnational corporation, the East India Company, and the resonance this has for today’s globalization agenda. Starting as a speculative company to import spices, the East India grew to rule onefifth of the world’s population. The paper also discusses the implications, for India and Britain, of its profit-driven development achieved through trade, taxes and conquest. It also describes how the Company’s wealth allowed it to manipulate and even bring down governments.
The Bhopal gas tragedy 1984 to? The evasion of corporate responsibility
Authors: Dinham Barbara , Sarangi Satinath
Published: May 2005

This paper describes the inadequacies in the response of the Union Carbide Corporation to the accidental release of the highly toxic gas, methyl isocyanate, from its plant in Bhopal, India in 1984. Over 20,000 people are estimated to have died from exposure to this gas since 1984, with some 120,000 chronically ill survivors. Union Carbide fought to avoid compensation or to keep it very low. The long, much delayed process of distributing compensation focused on minimizing payouts to victims. The corporation tried to blame the accident on a disgruntled employee, whereas key parts of the safety equipment designed to stop the escape of the gas were not functioning or were turned off. The corporation has always sought to underplay the health effects and has refused to release its research on the health impacts of the gas (which could have helped develop more effective treatment). In addition, the medical services in Bhopal have failed to develop a health care service that offers sustained relief and treatment to the communities most affected. This paper also describes the work of the Sambhavna Trust, a charitable body set up to work with the survivors, and its programme to develop simple, more effective, ethical and participatory ways of carrying out research, monitoring and treatment. Its programmes combine traditional and western systems for health care and it ensures that individuals and communities are actively involved in all aspects of public health.
Export processing zones and the quest for sustainable development: a Southern African perspective
Authors: Jauch Herbert
Published: May 2005

This paper discusses why export processing zones (EPZs) provide little prospect for addressing Southern Africa’s economic problems while also threatening not only labour standards but also greater regional cooperation. It describes the “race to the bottom” as governments in the region compete for foreign investment by lowering labour standards, often restricting union rights and offering incentives to foreign firms that are so costly that they greatly limit the net benefits of the new investments to the national or local economy (while providing considerable benefits for foreign investors and shareholders). The paper then examines in more detail the costs and benefits of Namibia’s EPZs which, despite generous concessions and controls on labour unions, produced only 400 new jobs in the first three years compared to the 25,000 anticipated. It also explains how the granting of EPZ status to mining companies and refineries will diminish government revenues, and describes the heavy investment and costly incentives offered to attract a new textile company.
Local responses to globalization and peripheralization in Luanda, Angola
Authors: Jenkins Paul , Robson Paul , Cain Allan
Published: May 2005

This paper questions the likely benefits of globalization for Luanda by considering how global political and economic forces affect the lives of its 3.4 million inhabitants. Most live in informal, self-constructed settlements which lack basic infrastructure and services. Most receive little benefit from the nation’s oil and diamond exports, while many have had their livelihoods eroded by the collapse of the local economy and the contraction of the state. The paper also describes how the city has always been shaped by external forces - as a port serving the slave trade or colonial export agriculture - and what the role of external forces has been in creating and perpetuating the long-running civil war. International organizations have criticized the state for not creating basic conditions of development but in fact rarely provide funds to help it do so. The key globalization issue for Luanda (and Angola) is not how to ensure a more effective trickle-down of benefits from export-led growth, but how more people can be productively engaged in the development process. In relation to this, the paper describes the growing role of civil society within Luanda and how, with appropriate support, this can help achieve the broader development objective.
Democratic governance - fairytale or real perspective? Lessons from Central America
Authors: Barten Françoise , Montiel René Perez , Espinoza Eduardo , Morales Carlos
Published: May 2005

This paper examines the concept of democratic local governance and its relevance for health development in Central America, a region which was torn apart by conflict in the 1980s. Peace-building has been taking place since the 1990s in a difficult macro-level context, as stabilization and structural adjustment policies in the postwar period have led to drastic state reforms with high social costs for the marginalized population. Innovative experiences and strategies in health have also developed in the region over the last decades, based upon local participatory governance, contributions to public health policy, development and peace-building at the local level. This article describes two of these municipal health development processes, the SILOS (Local Health Systems) in the northern zone of San Salvador, El Salvador and the municipal health process in León, Nicaragua. The paper examines the relevance and sustainability of these local initiatives and the importance of democratic local governance for (health) development. It also analyzes the extent to which macro-level reform policies have enabled the development of these processes and the perspective for sustainability of democratic local governance in countries confronted by serious lack of governability. Whilst the imperative for reform/change is beyond doubt, as well as the advances booked in terms of local democratic governance and health, the authors underline the need to address the incoherence in global reform policies and - in the current situation - the impossibility of achieving democratic governance and equity in health within the confines of the city. Finally, the authors question the relevance of a development paradigm that does not address democratic local governance and existing structural (political, social, economic) inequalities.
Buenos Aires: fragmentation and privatization of the metropolitan city
Authors: Pírez Pedro
Published: May 2005

This paper describes how Buenos Aires has been affected by changes in political structures and economic orientations that are linked to globalization, including the removal of trade barriers, privatization and “reduced” government. In the absence of any democratic decision making at the metropolitan level, key decisions are left to market forces, especially to the powerful economic actors, including developers and private companies now controlling privatized “public” services. The only true “planning” occurs within large private developments, including the gated communities in which half a million people now live. A growing spatial fragmentation accompanies growing levels of inequality. The metropolitan area fails to provide an arena for its citizens, which means that any general public interest is lost as the built environment is reshaped and constructed in response to private demands.
Beyond evictions in a global city: people-managed resettlement in Mumbai
Authors: Patel Sheela , d’Cruz Celine , Burra Sundar
Published: May 2005

This paper describes a resettlement programme in which 60,000 people moved without coercion to make way for improvements in Mumbai’s railway system. It also describes the resettlement sites and the attention given to minimizing the costs for those who were relocated. This resettlement programme was underpinned by strong levels of community organization among the population that was to be relocated; their involvement in the whole process included preparing the baseline survey of households to be moved, designing the accommodation into which they moved and managing the relocation process, including the allocation of units. The paper also outlines the difficulties that the relocation process created and the measures taken to address these. It suggests the factors that must be in place to protect low-income groups from the impoverishment that usually accompanies population displacements caused by infrastructure investments and central city redevelopment.
Sustaining markets or sustaining poverty reduction?
Authors: Mitlin Diana
Published: May 2005

This paper suggests that too much attention may be given to financial sustainability within projects whose objective is to reduce urban poverty. External agencies might usefully recognize the long history and remarkable persistence that charitable giving and state redistributive processes have shown whilst markets sometimes fail. Experience suggests that poverty reduction - higher and more stable incomes, stronger asset bases, secure adequate-quality homes with basic infrastructure and services and protection from the law - may best be achieved by increasing the capacity of urban poor groups, individually and collectively, to draw on the market, the state and charitable finance (including grants or soft loans from international and domestic sources) to reduce their poverty. It is support for this capacity of urban poor groups that needs to be sustained. Market mechanisms can play important roles - as shown by the key role of savings and credit schemes organized and managed by the urban poor themselves. But these are a means, not ends in themselves. And market mechanisms may be most easily and readily used by those who are not the poorest.
Durban’s Local Agenda 21 programme: tackling sustainable development in a post-apartheid city
Authors: Roberts Debra , Diederichs Nicci
Published: May 2005

Durban’s Local Agenda 21 programme has been at the forefront of the Local Agenda 21 movement in Southern Africa since the mid-1990s. This paper describes the first four phases of the programme, 1994-2001. The paper also outlines the difficulties faced in localizing the sustainable development concept in Durban. Key amongst these challenges was the initiation and development of the programme during a period of local government transformation and restructuring. The perception that Local Agenda 21 has a “green” focus and is “anti-development” (due to its location within an environmental department) has also resulted in a lack of proactive and sustained political support. These problems have been exacerbated by limited human and financial resources, which have restricted the programme’s capacity to build support and consensus amongst stakeholders. Durban’s Local Agenda 21 programme has, however, helped keep sustainable development on the city’s agenda and has provided a mechanism through which local stakeholders can interact with local government around environmental management issues. The paper concludes with a section on the lessons learned and factors required to ensure future progress.
Maternal mobility across the rural-urban divide: empirical data from coastal Kenya
Authors: Molyneux C S , Mung’ala-Odera V , Harpham T , Snow R W
Published: May 2005

This paper describes the mobility patterns, rural-urban linkages and household structures for a low-income neighbourhood on the outskirts of Mombasa, Kenya’s main port, and a rural settlement 60 kilometres away. Drawing on interviews with a sample of mothers resident in each location, it documents their perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of rural and urban life, and shows the continuous interchange between the two areas. It also highlights how most rural to urban migrants are familiar with urban environments before moving and how, having moved, many maintain strong rural ties. The ways in which households are split across rural and urban areas is influenced by intra-household relations and by household efforts to balance the income-earning opportunities in town, the relatively low cost of living in rural areas and future family security. This produces dramatic differences between and among rural and urban mothers and suggests a need for policy makers and planners to recognize diversity and to build upon complex livelihood strategies that span the rural-urban divide.
The role of NGOs for low-income groups in Korean society
Authors: Ha Seong-Kyu
Published: May 2005

This paper describes the increasingly important role of NGOs within South Korea in demanding better conditions for low-income groups in urban areas, and the links that this new role has with the democratic movement of the 1980s and the Saemaul Undong movement that started in 1970. The paper focuses in particular on NGOs that opposed the government’s large forced eviction programme in Seoul during the 1980s and early 1990s, and that have helped to promote changes in government housing policy towards an “enabling framework” rooted in democratic and participatory government structures. The paper also discusses new directions that NGOs are taking or need to take to become more effective.
The right to water versus cost recovery: participation, urban water supply and the poor in sub-Saharan Africa
Authors: Jaglin Sylvy
Published: May 2005

This paper reviews the reforms that have directly and indirectly affected water services in urban areas in sub-Saharan Africa over the last two decades and discusses the difficulties of reconciling a commitment to universal provision with a market-oriented approach where all those served must pay full costs. It then describes the measures that have been taken that seek to reconcile these, including different forms of “user participation” and greater reliance on informal reselling of water to improve provision to low-income households. This demonstrates how most “participation” is about transferring costs from water companies to low-income households. It also highlights how relying on informal resellers may constrain the extension of better-quality services to low-income neighbourhoods and how community-based schemes fail to raise the capital needed to extend water mains to unserved peripheries. Whilst many participatory schemes can, under certain conditions, help towards the aim of ensuring wider access to water, they are in no way a miracle solution and there is a considerable risk of institutionalizing two-tier services which lock low-income groups into more inconvenient, poor-quality services.
“Insight, creativity and thoughts on the environment”: integrating children and youth into human settlement development
Authors: Chawla Louise
Published: May 2005

This paper discusses the benefits of involving children in planning and managing human settlements both for the children, as they learn the formal skills of democracy, and for the wider community, as young people contribute their knowledge, energies and perceptions about local environments, and remind adults of their rights and their special needs and vulnerabilities. Children learn active and responsible citizenship through opportunities to practise it - but this requires formal channels to incorporate children into school- and community-based programmes for evaluating, planning and caring for local environments. This paper reminds governments of the commitments they have made to such an approach in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Agenda 21 and the Habitat Agenda. It also discusses what underlies effective children’s participation in development planning, drawing on the author’s work as coordinator of the Growing up in Cities programme and on other innovative policies and practices. This includes a realistic sense of what can be accomplished; supportive adults; and particular efforts to involve girls, the youngest and those from marginalized groups.
Economic growth, poverty and children
Authors: Minujin Alberto , Vandemoortele Jan , Delamonica Enrique
Published: May 2005

This paper discusses the different dimensions of poverty, with a particular focus on non-monetary aspects, and describes the limitations and inaccuracies inherent in the US$ 1 a day poverty line now widely used in cross-country comparisons. It highlights how little attention is given to the aspects of poverty that most affect children and explains why addressing these issues is an effective approach to poverty reduction. The authors discuss why economic growth during the 1990s failed to produce the hoped-for decline in the incidence of poverty in most nations and report, for example, on the existence of disparities as well as on the advantages of extending provision of basic services to all. Whilst on the one hand, economic growth has not necessarily reduced the incidence of (monetary and non-monetary) poverty, on the other, reductions in poverty have been achieved in some cases without waiting for economic growth. Countries with comparable per capita incomes, for instance, can show considerable variation in under-five mortality rates.
Child friendly cities: good governance in the best interests of the child
Authors: Riggio Eliana
Published: May 2005

This paper describes the features that make a city “child friendly”, and the legal, institutional, budgetary and planning measures needed to underpin them. It explains how the concept of child friendly cities developed, and its key role in ensuring the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in each city. The principles and practices of a child friendly city are illustrated by examples from Spain, the Occupied Territories of Palestine, Croatia, Ecuador, Brazil, India, Bangladesh, Sweden, Lebanon, Albania and the Ukraine.
Developing citizenship among urban youth in conflict with the law
Authors:   Safer Cities Programme of UN-HABITAT, Shaw Margaret , Tschiwula Lullu
Published: May 2005

This paper summarizes the outcome of an international conference on addressing the issue of urban youth in conflict with the law in Africa. It discusses the most effective responses to youth crime and violence which centre on prevention and inclusion (especially of youth in government) rather than exclusion, punishment and incarceration. It also highlights the key role for local governments in developing effective local responses that draw in and support all key local actors (parents, schools, police, businesses).
Citizenship knows no age: children’s participation in the governance and municipal budget of Barra Mansa, Brazil
Authors: Guerra Eliana
Published: May 2005

This paper describes the development of a children’s participatory budget council in the city of Barra Mansa (Brazil), to which 18 boys and 18 girls are elected by their peers to ensure that the municipal council addresses their needs and priorities. This council determines how a proportion of the municipal budget (equivalent to around US$ 125,000 a year) is spent on addressing children’s priorities, and its child councillors are also involved in other aspects of government. Each year since 1998, more than 6,000 children have taken part in discussions and assemblies to elect their child councillors and discuss their own priorities. The elected children learn how to represent their peers within democratic structures, to prioritize based on available resources, and then to develop projects within the complex and often slow political and bureaucratic process of city governance. This process has extended to children the concept of participatory budgeting that is now widely used in Brazil for increasing citizen involvement in urban governance. It is encouraging similar innovations in other cities in Latin America, as the example becomes better known and as more people visit Barra Mansa.
“We know something someone doesn’t know”: children speak out on local conditions in Johannesburg
Authors: Kruger Jill Swart , Chawla Louise
Published: May 2005

This article summarizes the findings of a four-site study of children’s needs and priorities, part of the process to transform Greater Johannesburg into a child friendly city. Applying the Growing Up in Cities model, it presents the voices of 10 to 14-year-olds from four diverse but representative areas of the city. For each of these areas, boys and girls describe their use of their local environments, the places they value or fear, the problems they face and their own priorities for making Johannesburg a better city. Based on these children’s experiences, a number of programme and policy responses are recommended, many of which will be relevant to other cities as well.
Child rights for urban poor children in child friendly Philippine cities: views from the community
Authors: Racelis Mary , Aguirre Angela Desiree M
Published: May 2005

This paper is an appraisal of the government and civil society actions that form child friendly city programmes in 27 neighbourhoods of five cities in the Philippines (Manila City, Quezon City, Cebu, Davao and Pasay City), along with case studies of four informal settlements (two with child friendly city programmes, two without). These programmes developed out of earlier urban basic services programmes, but with the basic services focus greatly expanded to include child protection and participation within a child rights agenda. The paper describes the concepts underlying these programmes and the sociopolitical context in which they emerged. Each city programme is assessed, based on 24 child rights indicators. The paper also includes a summary of children’s views with regard to priorities for basic services, problems of crime and violence, and the possibilities for children’s participation. It ends with recommendations on how to make the child friendly city programmes more effective.
Street life: youth, culture and competing uses of public space
Authors: Malone Karen
Published: May 2005

This paper examines city streets and public space as a domain in which social values are asserted and contested. The definitions of spatial boundaries and of acceptable and non-acceptable uses and users are, at the same time, expressions of intolerance and difference within society. The paper focuses in particular on the ways in which suspicion, intolerance and moral censure limit the spatial world of young people in Australia, where various regulatory practices such as curfews are common. The author reflects on the failures of the two main strategies that have been used in Australia to control the presence of young people, and concludes with some thoughts about the construction of streets and public spaces as diverse and democratic places.
The child friendly cities initiative in Italy
Authors: Corsi Marco
Published: May 2005

This paper reviews the strengths and limitations of different child friendly cities initiatives in Italy and the many measures by national, regional and local governments to support them. These measures include a new law, a national plan of action, more funds and an award available to the cities that achieve the most. City initiatives have sought to respond to the constraints that industrialization and urbanization have placed on children’s safe mobility, use of city space and participation. Many of the initiatives described have promoted children’s participation in city governance, often through children’s councils that developed proposals for city governments. Also described are special provisions by municipal authorities to ensure more attention to children’s issues, many of them involving environmental improvements that benefit children (for example, making children’s routes between home and school safer, expanding parks, creating bicycle tracks). The paper also describes children’s assessment of impacts, also their critical views of administrators who failed to keep their promises and teachers who were too controlling in participatory projects.
Participatory democracy and sustainable development: integrated urban environmental management in Porto Alegre, Brazil
Authors: Menegat Rualdo
Published: May 2005

Porto Alegre is well known for its innovative social policies but less so for the environmental policies that are this paper’s focus. The paper begins by describing the city’s participatory budgeting system and the multiple interconnections it has with a wide-ranging environmental policy. Porto Alegre has the highest standard of living and the highest life expectancy of any Brazilian metropolitan centre. Virtually all its people have water piped to their homes and most have good-quality sanitation and drainage. The garbage collection system reaches virtually all households and has included a separate collection of recyclables since 1990; other programmes enforce industrial pollution control (including special provision in garages and petrol stations), keep down polluting motor vehicle emissions and ensure the re-utilization of organic wastes from parks and restaurants. The city has 14 square metres of green space per person and a million trees along its streets. This paper also describes the education and environmental information programme that underpins these policies, including changes to school curricula and the Environmental Atlas of Porto Alegre that provides the base information for environmental policy, environmental discussion and environmental education. The paper ends by discussing how sustainable development is impossible without good urban environmental management and how this, in turn, has to be built on democracy and participation.
After the Summit? Thoughts on the implementation of sustainable development
Authors: Rydin Yvonne
Published: May 2005

This paper highlights the scope for making progress towards sustainable development through changes in current practices and decision-making processes that do not need international agreements. It outlines seven key areas for improving implementation, including: using monitoring and evaluation (and the information these produce) to change attitudes and behaviour; participation that involves the public constructively; better use of “soft” instruments of persuasion and communication; and ensuring that funding flows are structured to achieve the desired changes.
Metropolization and the ecological crisis: precarious settlements in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Authors: Wust Sébastien , Bolay Jean-Claude , Du Thai Thi Ngoc
Published: May 2005

This paper describes two experiences with community-led upgrading programmes in precarious settlements in Ho Chi Minh City and discusses how and why these are more effective and appropriate than the city’s “redevelopment” and relocation programmes. Although rapid economic growth has meant improved material conditions for much of the city’s population, it has also had a negative impact on the environment and on the poorer groups whose living conditions are deteriorating, especially in the precarious settlements on vacant lots, along canals and on the city outskirts. The city has plentiful water, but large sections of the population are not reached by piped water and sewers. Although relocation programmes are better managed here than in most cities, many who are relocated suffer a drop in income, a steep rise in housing costs and a disruption to their social networks. The paper ends with some reflections on the changes needed in government attitudes towards citizens.
Experiences with surveying and mapping Pune and Sangli slums on a geographical information system (GIS)
Authors: Joshi Pratima , Sen Srinanda , Hobson Jane
Published: May 2005

This paper describes how the NGO Shelter Associates and an organization of women and men slum dwellers worked together to collect information on each household in slum settlements in Pune and Sangli and to map this, along with infrastructure and service provision and each slum’s position within the city. This permitted data on slums to be superimposed on these cities’ development plans using a geographical information system. This provides an important information base for improving infrastructure and services within slums and for integrating slums into city-wide planning. The paper also discusses the contrasting experiences in the use made by the two different city governments of this information (little interest in Pune, great interest in Sangli) and how communities, governments and NGOs can work most effectively together to ensure the inclusion of slums within city plans.
Differing interpretations of community participation in waste management in Bamako and Bangalore: some methodological considerations
Authors: Muller Maria S , Iyer Anjana , Keita Modibo , Sacko Bani , Traore Dionkounda
Published: May 2005

This paper contrasts two different approaches to community participation in developing more effective solid waste collection and management, illustrated by case studies from Bamako (where community participation was the objective) and Bangalore (where community participation was an instrument). A close look reveals that the two projects applied different methods despite using the same terminology. The achievements and problems faced by both case studies are discussed, along with a general discussion of how community-based schemes can contribute to more effective municipal solid waste management systems. It stresses how case studies can bring important general lessons but, for any city, these need to be applied within a strong understanding of local context.
The Proto-Genesis of the March for Jesusmovement, 1970–87
Authors: Ediger Gerald
Published: May 2005

March for Jesus emerged out of the charismatic and evangelical milieu of the UK in the 1980s. Its defining feature was the organization and conduct of street processions incorporating elements of praise and worship, witness and spiritual warfare. The movement is noteworthy for its sudden emergence and extraordinary initial growth, its rapid evolution into a global phenomenon, and its deliberate and planned cessation in 2000. March for Jesus also exhibits important features of charismatic spirituality and merits study as a possible example of a developing global charismatic culture. This analysis offers an introductory overview of the movement as a whole and then identifies five factors that contributed significantly to the initial formation and growth of the movement between 1970 and 1987.