Plays Host to World Bank Course on Urban and City Management by Darren Byers ocal authorities everywhere face the challenge of making their cities liveable for people in the midst of dwindling resources. In both developed and less developedcountries, elected local officials and city managers are forced to discover creative and innovative solutions to this dilemma.
Solutions often come with varying degrees of success.
During May of 1999, Toronto played host to the World Bank's inaugural course on Urban and City Management. To the untrained eye, it might have appeared to be impossibly broad. Yet such breadth is what local authorities around the world must deal with on a daily basis, and the lessons provided in the course allowed participants to make the connections that are often missing between these topics. Consider the case of transit subsidies. In the sessions focussing on financial management, participants discussed the principle that the users of a given service ought to pay for the full cost of providing it.