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Contributions from
the Column
Focus
Local politics is the cornerstone of democracy
Don’t plan cities, negotiate them
Working with Pakistan’s civil society
Street law: crime and policing in a South African township
Sources of conflict: water provision in Bolivia
8-9/2006 |
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Don’t plan, negotiate
Many people consider informal, unplanned urban development a problem. Actually, it is a part of the solution in most agglomerations. Even poor peopel have roofs over their heads. More often than not, they contribute to building whole districts.
[ By Hans-Christian Voigt ]
Urbanisation figures are staggering in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The expanding cities, towns and urbanising villages have one thing in common: their expansion is unplanned. Mass poverty is hardly seen to go down – and will not, as long as populations continue to grow.
Planning experts raise their hands in despair. “What can we possibly do?” a German planner asked at a recent conference. “In terms of population, big German cities are the size of just one district of agglomerations such as Delhi or São Paulo. What is more, our population is shrinking and getting older.” Accordingly, he said, the urban challenge in Germany is one of downscaling. German planners, the speaker went on, were not familiar with the problems of fast-growing mega-cities with multi-million populations. Cities like Karachi or Lagos will soon – or may already – be home to as many people as all of Germany’s eastern Länder put together. That point hit home.
But there is an answer to his question. What is needed nowadays is not urban planning. It is far too late to do that. What matters now is urban negotiation. And that is where German experts can offer valuable advice. In Germany, despite rather different scenarios, mediation has also become an important tool of municipal policy-making.
In Egypt, we spent months talking to people living in poor neighbourhoods. Afterwards, we advised the Minister of Planning and Local Development. We suggested he plan as little as possible, and instead listen to people more closely, and negotiate as seriously as possible. Cairo and the Nile Valley towns have expanded in ways which are very different from what planners intended. Neither settlement bans nor heavy penalties worked. Land markets have run out of the rudder of the centrally-managed economy. People do not do as they are told. They have no choice but to live where they see the chance of a future for themselves.
After decades of failed central planning, however, we can also see patterns in the chaos that has ensued. We know today that programmes do not have an immediate effect – and that the impact they have is often different from what was anticipated. There are delayed impacts, remote impacts and side-effects. Often, success is not seen until considerable time has gone by. After all, developments in complex systems are not linear, and action often has unexpected consequences.
It follows, that a planning ministry cannot really plan anything properly. But it should prepare for seizing those opportunities that do arise. What matters in urban development is the ability to respond rapidly to events – and sometimes even to engineer opportunities. Negotiation helps to identify the most urgent problems and crises, it also helps to find scope for compromise. On that basis, government agencies can offer incentives for remedial action.
What we have learned is this:
– Official urban planning has fundamentally failed in many cities. Even better methods and smarter urban and financial planning can do nothing to change that.
– Informal, unplanned urban development is not just a problem; on the contrary, it is a part of the solution. It means that new city-dwellers – including most of the poor among them – have a roof over their heads. They even contribute to building whole districts.
– What is needed today are better public services: schools, training/educational opportunities, work for the growing number of young people, health services, clean water, waste disposal services.
– The rule of law is particularly important because it narrows the scope for corruption and makes administrations accountable.
– It is now too late for urban planning. People are already living in the city – and a steady stream of others is following in their wake.
What needs to be done is to establish a dialogue between the various actors – including all implementing administrations. The ministries are massive, and their complex divisions remote from real life. They operate along sectoral and hierarchical lines. There is not normally much contact between them. Local administrations work within a framework of obsolete, often contradictory regulations – but without any concept. Their departments answer to line ministries and there is little communication between them. They rarely talk to city councils, which, in turn, often have no real democratic legitimacy.
The local private sector does not want to cause a stir. Businesses mostly operate on an informal basis. Laws on the prohibition of child labour, on taxes, minimum wages or accident insurance are not necessarily observed. Many NGOs, too, are not formally constituted. The man in the street does not trust the administration, and the government does not trust the people.
Many poor people are not heard in public life. Tenants and subtenants are only two examples. Others without a say include female heads of households, living in a single room with half a dozen children and a couple of aunts. Countless youngsters have neither work nor prospects, even though they may hold university degrees. If their needs and strengths are not considered, there can be no viable solutions for the future.
Why advice matters
Foreign advisers can raise unexpected and perhaps even awkward questions. We can skip hierarchies and establish unusual connections. In doing so, we repeatedly succeed in prompting innovation – or serve as lightning rods. We can help negotiate new social contracts – with mandatory rights and responsibilities for all involved. Much more is at stake than blueprints and project designs.
Our business includes creating trust and balancing interests. Even playing soccer on a local wasteland can contribute to such aims. The issues we address include right of abode, decentralisation of administrations, local taxes, corruption and misguided subsidies. Where consultation matters are complex, the success or failure of foreign development agencies only becomes apparent at a very late date, sometimes unexpectedly. This is in the nature of development cooperation. Our partners need to find their own ways to use ideas and suggestions.
Development consultants can and should create “open spaces”. What matters is to listen carefully and to probe from inside systems that are undergoing change. New roles and rules need to be designed, tested, negotiated, and formally agreed upon. That is necessary and possible. But one should not rely on tenable new social contracts being forged straight away. By the time that stage is reached, the consultants may have long disappeared from the scene – and the ultimate arrangement may differ from what the advice-giving experts initially had in mind.
“Progress is so slow,” we hear in Cairo’s allies. “You’re making too much haste,” others tell us. But what matters most to all our partners – whether they be jobless youths, mayors or ministers – is that the German advisers should not only appear for a brief spell, during which they design and implement a project.
Rather, the foreign experts need to remain available for mediation in case difficulties arise in the longer run. The fact that our bilateral team in Cairo draws on experience that members gathered in Brazil, India and Senegal helps us to respond flexibly to new challenges and to cope with setbacks.
We know today that it is possible in quite different societies to get decision-makers, administrators, NGOs and poor people around one table. Such meetings are valuable in political and economic terms because they often result in astonishingly practicable solutions, which generally are much cheaper than what urban and financial planners or even donors would have dreamt of.
Hans-Christian Voigt
heads the “Participatory Development Programme in Urban Areas (Egypt)“, supported by German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and KfW Entwicklungsbank.
Hans-Christian.Voigt@gtz.de
http://www.egypt-urban.de
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