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Contributions from
the Column
InWEnt News
Putting urbanisation on the agenda
Education programme fosters
public administration employees
Parliamentarians want to be involved
12/2004 |
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[ Urban sprawl ]
Putting urbanisation on the agenda
At the beginning of the 21st century, more people throughout the world live in the cities than in the countryside for the first time. A repositioning of the role of the cities in development cooperation is overdue. It should be concluded by 2006, when the UN conference Habitat III is on the international agenda.
[ By Michael Funcke-Bartz ]
In Latin America, more than three quarters of the people now live in cities. In Africa and Asia, the growth rate of the population in urban areas of, on average, two to three percent per annum is now causing a huge increase in the urban population, too. This is reflected above all in an expansion of the urban slums. It is becoming more and more difficult to govern such agglomerations, to provide the necessary infrastructure and to come to grips with the increasing environmental degradation. At the same time, the cities provide important social and economic development stimuli. In view of these trends, it is time to redesign the role of cities in development cooperation.
Globalisation has led to the urbanisation of poverty, social marginalisation and the division of cities. UN-HABITAT, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, estimates that a third of urban households worldwide live in absolute poverty. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that in achieving the Millennium Development Goals, a central role will be assigned to cities.
The significance of “urban development” in development cooperation is comparatively low (and not only in Germany). The main emphasis is on sectoral topics. They treat the problem of urbanisation as an interdisciplinary task and push it into the background. “Many years have been lost because of the anti-urban bias”, criticises Daniel Biau, Acting Deputy Executive Director of UN-HABITAT in the latest edition of “Habitat Debate”. Biau places the blame on governments trying to please their rural constituents and international agencies doing all they can to keep people in the countryside in the hope of achieving food security. “It is time”, appeals Biau, “to move from myth to reality and to give due priority to the urbanisation requirements of the least urbanised countries”.
In other words, urbanisation is an ongoing, unstoppable process. Wanting to apply the brakes to it is unrealistic and wastes resources that are urgently required for an active regional and urban development. If we do not succeed in getting a hold on the complex problems of the urban agglomerations which are growing bigger and bigger, there is an increased danger that the social gap will widen in the partner countries – with corresponding negative impacts on the political and economic stability in these countries.
The key role of the cities
Cities play a key role in sustainable development because they offer important potential for development. Due to the concentration of the population, the necessary infrastructure can generally be provided more cost effectively. This makes it easier to satisfy the basic needs of the poorest segment of the population. Urban centres are also the starting point for democratic participation and for new approaches to sustainable life. The above-mentioned edition of “Habitat Debate” does not talk of “cities as the engines of development” for nothing.
A sustainable, regional development with functioning small and medium-sized cities not only creates the demand for agricultural products, it also contributes to the integration of people who are forced into leaving rural areas due to increasing agricultural productivity. Against this backdrop, a sustainable urban and regional development must support decentralisation processes and interlock them with local economic development, better chances for education in small and medium-sized cities, and an integrated regional development which opens up both national and international markets. Innovative programmes that actively enlist the economy and civil society and contribute to poverty alleviation are needed.
Urbanisation
on the agenda
The merger of the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft (CDG) with the German Foundation for International Development (DSE) into Capacity Building International (InWEnt) gave the new organisation the chance to sharpen its profile. The establishment of the business segment “Regional development and urbanisation” as an interdisciplinary task set a clear signal for more intense consideration of the urban challenges and the interrelation between rural and urban areas.
InWEnt already supports processes in the urban area through capacity building, i.e. the development of staff and organisations, international dialogue and the establishment of global knowledge networks. The spectrum ranges from projects which strengthen the managerial competence of urban service providers, to greater efficiency of the public administration and more opportunities for the population to participate, to supporting decentralisation and integrated regional development.
In view of the complexity of the cause and effect relationships and the players involved, it is becoming increasing important to work across the sector boundaries, to introduce integrated methods of analysis and strategic planning, and to support the partners in developing their own realistic urban and regional development plans. Therefore, to gain sustainability, a far more important role has to be assigned to preventative strategies than to measures for environmental protection after the event.
With these kinds of planning and decision-making processes, cooperation between the public and the private sector and the participation of civil society become more important. Both require a high degree of readiness for dialogue and an ability to moderate. InWEnt considers it important to support cooperation between different interest groups and to not lose touch with the informal sector.
We also need to discuss what contribution InWEnt can make to support Germany’s efforts concerning the Millennium Development Goals. This also relates to issues like a poverty-oriented housing and settlement policy, concepts of overcoming social marginalisation in the cities, models of civil society participation in decision-making processes at the local level, or appropriate forms of cooperation between the public and the private sector.
Cooperation with UN-HABITAT
In order to interlock the work of InWEnt in the area of regional development and urbanisation even more strongly at an international level, InWEnt is planning close cooperation with the “Sustainable Cities” programme (coordinated by UN-HABITAT and the United Nations Environment Programme/ UNEP). The programme helps local authorities by introducing planning expertise. In Morocco the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and UN-HABITAT are setting a national Agenda 21 process in motion. It will be implemented locally in Agadir, Marrakech and Meknes. Tying in with these structures is an InWEnt project on infrastructure, which supports these local processes through human resources development.
Parallel to the process of concentrating on the German Development Ministry’s priorities and partner countries, a stronger concentration on selected cities is aimed for – as far as is practical and feasible. InWEnt wants to contribute to this by bundling the available expertise and by facilitating global learning from good examples. This benefits and promotes the South-South exchange and the North-South cooperation of German local authorities, as well as the internal development-related work.
Habitat III is just around the corner – in 2006 in Vancouver. Based on experience, such occasions help to put certain topics on the international agenda. A lot more convincing is needed in order to succeed with the problem of urbanisation.
Michael Funcke-Bartz
is a project leader in the InWEnt division “Sustainable technological, industrial and urban development” and coordinates the business segment “Regional development and urbanisation”. michael.funcke-bartz@inwent.org
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