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Written evidence submitted by the Development Planning Unit, University College London
1. INTRODUCTION 1.1. The Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College London, is an international centre with over 50 years experience of addressing issues related to urban and regional development, and urban development policy and planning in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Our mission is to strengthen the knowledge and capacity of professionals, institutions and citizens at local, national and global levels to design and implement innovative and sustainable policy and planning for urban and peri-urban areas. 1.2. The DPU's work on urbanization and poverty draws upon synergies across our research, postgraduate teaching, practice-based work, and knowledge sharing and advocacy. Our research is action and policy oriented, interdisciplinary and builds on South-North and South-South partnerships and learning alliances. In carrying out its activities, the DPU has worked with DFID, UN HABITAT, UNDP and other agencies in the UN family, the Commonwealth Secretariat, and all major donors involved in urban development. 1.3. The DPU, along with others in the development field, has actively promoted critical views of urbanization and poverty, among which the following two ideas are of key significance for policy and planning. Firstly, urbanization is a positive process serving as an "engine of economic growth" and as an arena for the diffusion of innovation and progressive collective action to address poverty and inequality. In particular, the concentration of urban population give rise to opportunities for economy of scale, while the diversity and multi-cultural character of urban populations is a positive factor promoting creativity. Secondly, slums and informal settlements contribute positively to the socio-economic and political life of cities and urban areas, and governments should seek to support and build on the energy and endeavours of poor women and men, girls and boys, instead of treating them as illegal, stigmatising them and creating obstacles to their development.
2. FACTUAL INFORMATION 2.1. Framing the issue of urbanisation and poverty 2.1.1. In framing this evidence, it is important to recognise that the term 'cities' be understood in a sense which reflects the enormous variety of cities and urban areas that are found in the urban continuum. Recognition of this diversity is crucial because in the last two decades, the fastest urban growth has occurred not in large cities, but in medium-sized and small urban centres. Moreover, any understanding of urbanisation and poverty must crucially recognise the socio-economic and political importance of both urban-rural linkages and changes in the 'peri-urban interface' In the 1980s and 1990s DFID-supported research contributed greatly to elevating the importance of both in development debates. 2.1.2. Furthermore, the term 'slums' disguises the enormous heterogeneity of the places and conditions under which poor women and men, girls and boys live in cities and urban areas. Areas defined as 'slums' often comprise diverse populations on the basis of class (not all slum dwellers are poor), gender and lifecycle, ethnicity, religion and disability. In addition, depending on the context, poor people can be located in different areas of the city that may not be labelled as 'slums', for example, in historic city centres, in recently occupied areas on the periphery of cities, as well as in central city slum tenements. An understanding of this diversity provides a unique opportunity to address difference and equality in the promotion of peaceful and secure cities. 2.1.3. Recognition of this diversity also calls into question the dominant understanding of property rights only as titled ownership. The variety of land and housing situations in cities and urban areas indicates a much broader range of forms of secure tenure from outright titled ownership, to right of use, leasehold, as well as to collective forms of tenure. A focus on property titling in policy to secure property rights, has been a source of market driven evictions when not put in a wider policy framework which protects the rights of the poor to housing and land. 2.1.4. With its promotion and adoption of the sustainable livelihoods approach, DFID has provided a good basis to build on and embrace the contribution that poor people in a variety of spatial, socio-economic and political conditions can make to cities and urban areas. A recognition of the assets of poor women and men, girls and boys in their diversity, opens up new paths for understanding urbanisation and poverty, and possible policy and planning directions, which a needs approach often disguises.
2.2. DFID's remarkable and now diminished international contribution 2.2.1. In the 1980s and 1990s DFID was a leading actor in the urban development arena, playing a prominent role among international aid agencies. Since 2000 this role has largely been eroded and its international presence is much less influential.[1] Although DFID's work on issues such as urban/rural linkages, sustainable livelihoods and community driven financial facilities for housing and infrastructure has made a valuable international contribution, the dispersal of urban expertise and the resulting loss of any institutional entity to address the specific issues of cities and urban areas, has hindered DFID's capacity to maintain this leading role. This is a crucial issue, in the light both the limitations of some of the policies of international agencies and the considerable current and future challenges facing the urban developing world. 2.2.2. Goal 7, Target 11 of the MDGs, as recognized in the House of Commons call, does not respond to the scale of urban residents living without secure tenure, adequate housing and infrastructure, only addressing approximately 10%of this need. It is widely recognised that even this target is unlikely to be met by 2015. In addition, in the slum index set up to measure Target 11, the fifth sub-index on security of tenure and evictions has been dropped, excluding a key variable in the assessment of progress. Furthermore, while recognising the importance of the measurement of targets and outcomes, it could also be argued that the MDGs have diverted attention from creative and innovative local initiatives under way in many contexts at the city and community scales, as well as from the structural and causal dimensions of poverty. 2.2.3. Goal 7, Target 11 of the MDGs plays an influential role in the 'Cities Without Slums' campaign run by Cities Alliance, an alliance set up in 1999 by UN HABITAT and the World Bank housed in the World Bank. While 'Cities Without Slums' might be a catchy slogan, it is neither feasible nor desirable in some of its consequences. Slums play an important role in the growth and development of cities, and if adequately supported by governments, they will upgrade and consolidate to maximise the human potential of its dwellers. The slogan has also been manipulated by some governments to justify slum clearance and forced evictions. 2.2.4. The Community Led Infrastructure Finance Facility (CLIFF), financed through Cities Alliance and coordinated by Homeless International of which DPU is a founding member, has demonstrated how successful community-driven processes in slum upgrading can be when the right kind of capital and technical support is provided. DFID has been the lead donor for CLIFF and will hopefully continue to support its expansion into other countries 2.2.5. The United Nations Housing Rights Programme (UNHRP) launched in April 2002 as a joint initiative by UN-HABITAT and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), is a positive initiative for secure tenure which goes beyond the narrow concept of property rights, and could be strengthened with donor support. 2.2.6. The newly launched Slum Upgrading Facility (SUF) is an innovative programme for the development and support to Local Finance Facilities for slum and settlement upgrading. DFID has been a major funder and supporter of SUF, and the facilities that it has created will continue to need additional capitalisation and support in the future if the model is to spread more widely.
2.3. Future challenges for urbanisation and poverty 2.3.1. The DPU would like to highlight three critical challenges that are particularly relevant for urbanization and poverty, and that we have encountered in our recent work. These are: hunger and the urban food crisis; disasters caused by climate hazard; and forced and market-driven evictions. 2.3.2. Hunger and urban food crisis: Planning currently continues 'as if' energy and finance are plentiful and the effect of emissions can be neglected, while city marketing focuses on attracting the finance sector and tourism, on the assumption that a trickle-down effect will improve conditions for the poor. All these assumptions must now be called into question, and policy must face up to fundamentally different realities in the coming period. The urban poor are particularly vulnerable to such uncertainties: as the sustainable livelihoods methodology shows, their livelihoods hover close to a tipping point where their networks may collapse and be difficult to reconstitute. Worrying trends include a growing insecurity in the provision of water to the urban poor and rising food prices. Reasons for the latter include a shift of speculative investment from property to the food market in the current economic crisis, and the increase of biofuel plantations and the new tendencies for wealthier countries pre-emptively to buy up large tracts of food producing land, for example in Africa. This suggests that a major food security crisis is in the offing, but urban strategies continue as if unaware of it, even though it would have a devastating effect on the poor, given their endemic problem of lack of entitlements and their precarious livelihoods. 2.3.3. Disasters caused by climate hazards: The ecology is now entering a period of increasingly unpredictable and extreme events, the ill-effects of which will tend to be concentrated disproportionally in poorer urban districts with the least adequate provision for protective infrastructure and services. The principal driver of increasing loss of life as well as social and economic vulnerability is poverty (limiting individual, household and community investments) and exclusion (limiting public investments and services). Climate change not only exacerbates existing risks but also reveals new hidden vulnerabilities as more urban and peri-urban locations are exposed to more intense floods and storms. 2.3.4. Forced and market driven evictions: There is evidence that over the last three years forced evictions in cities and urban areas have increased dramatically in frequency, number, level of violence and often in scale, involving hundreds of thousands and even millions of people in at least 60 countries. [2] They are gradually becoming an insidious common practice in lieu of progressive long-term urban planning and inclusive social policies. Each year they affect the lives of millions of children, women, men and the elderly, most of them poor, destroying homes, livelihoods, social networks and political capital. They also jeopardise the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals. At the current pace, 60 to 70 million people will have been evicted between 2000 and 2020, a dramatic number when compared with the Target 11 objective of improving the living and housing conditions of 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2020. This is a central challenge for our urban future[3]. Despite the devastating effects of forced evictions, local initiatives taken at various levels and by different actors do indicate that solutions are possible and that evictions not only must but can be averted and addressed in a suitable way to realise Human, Land and Housing Rights.
3. RECOMMENDATIONS 3.1. Policy recommendations for DFID 3.1.1. Urban issues need to be mainstreamed and made more visible in the organization. At the same time, there is a need for a specific "centre" within DFID where resources and knowledge can be brought together, in order to catalyze changes, mainstream urban activities, liaise with UK constituencies, sectors, geographic regions and international agencies actively involved in urban related issues and finance aid projects addressing the challenges of urbanization and poverty. An effective way to address these challenges therefore is to establish an urban entity at a high decision making level and with a significant level of resources. Even if the format of this entity draws on lessons from past experience at DFID, it does not mean a "re-opening" of the previous institutional format. 3.1.2. An urban development policy is urgently needed. It could be a two-pronged policy to support both central and local governments. With respect to the latter, cities and local governments are a crucial and emerging actor to address the challenges of poverty and urbanization. There is a need to strengthen DFID's engagement with local government. Localizing aid through strong support to local governments is important, not only to support community led initiatives or to improve the access to basic services for the poor, but more importantly to strengthen democratic governance and the construction of well planned, rights based cities, which are respectful of citizens' diversities. 3.1.3. Support to central governments is important (i) to promote a decentralization process from central to local and regional/provincial governments, and (ii) to redistribute wealth between rich and poor cities and regions. In doing this, the difficulties for poor cities associated with municipalisation of education, health and housing need to be addressed. The support to decentralization of power, based on the principle of subsidiarity should not necessarily mean the full transfer and de-concentration of education, health or housing responsibilities from the central to the local level. 3.1.4. Support to local governments and to the international organizations networking local governments is important to (i) strengthen institutional capacities to address the challenges resulting from a growing decentralization that brings a new set of responsibilities; (ii) finance programmes and projects, primarily to address the issues mentioned previously; (iii) support the municipal programmes and facilities that are in turn fostering community-driven initiatives; (iv) support initiatives to develop a unified and organized voice through provincial, national and regional networks or associations of cities and local governments, such as UCLG-Africa, who could be key DFID partners; and (vi) provide matching resources with UK cities that are engaging in aid projects in priority fields to be determined in a newly drafted DFID Urban Policy. 3.1.5. Just as it did in the 1980s and 1990s, DFID should once again play a leading and progressive role in the global urban agenda and arenas of debate. This could be achieved through various channels and definition of priorities: (i) being pro-active with respect to the United Cities and Local Governments, the recently established political and technical voice of cities and governments in the world; (ii) increasing its active engagement, primarily with UN HABITAT Programme, and with other specialized organizations in the UN system on specific issues such as the Advisory Group on Forced Evictions, or Urban and Municipal programmes; and (iii) establishing a more permanent dialogue with and support to the Development Dialogue Committee of the OECD
3.2. A proposed research and development agenda for DFID 3.2.1. To document the innovations from local governments, local communities and local alliances of actors in successfully addressing unemployment, disasters, evictions, hunger, discrimination and other dimensions of poverty. This experience should be analysed in order to deepen our understanding of how these innovations can be scaled up or down as cities implement partial or full responses to current challenges. They should also explore the opportunities of initiatives building collective rights, which go beyond participation of individuals or households. Current documentation efforts are weak and inadequate relative to the scale and wealth of the responses which are constantly being created locally, and a more systematic documentation would be an important step towards the production of knowledge and effective methods of intervention. A permanent observation system should be put into place and some of the existing urban observatories should be supported. 3.2.2. Managing urban growth: The urbanization of poverty in developing countries is an indication of the inability of governments to manage urban growth. To effectively address this, it is necessary to strengthen poor households' assets while ensuring pro-poor economic growth at the city level. More applied research at city level is necessary to explore the linkages between strategies promoting pro-poor economic growth, the role of local governments in guiding growth and the livelihoods of poor women and men. 3.2.3. Understanding the changing nature of slums, informal settlements, inner cities poor neighbourhoods, in all their diversity. This understanding is still limited and partial. Changes are continuous and occur at an extremely rapid pace, reflecting an extraordinary capacity of poor women and men and their organizations to find ways to survive in extremely difficult environments. Understanding these changes is necessary to tailor pro-poor policies to the specific realities of urban dwellers. For instance, poverty in a decaying inner city area might primarily affect old people living alone whereas in a recently formed slum youth employment might be the priority. 3.2.4. Understanding the urban planning necessary to mitigate risks of disasters in the context of climate change. In managing such risks, there is a significant overlap between disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation, though these agendas have evolved independently until now. DRR can deal with current climate variability and be the first line of defence against climate change, being therefore an essential part of adaptation. Conversely, for DRR to be successful, it needs to take account of the shifting risks associated with climate change and ensure that measures do not increase vulnerability to climate change in the medium to long-term. Embryonic work on the integration of urban planning, DRR and climate change adaptation at urban level needs to be strengthened. More understanding is necessary of how to manage risks and uncertainties for all shocks and stresses in a coherent locally driven framework in which adaptation measures are rooted in the particulars of each local economic, social, political and ecological context. In response to these challenges, the key must be resilience. Because the crisis is complex, the best form of resilience is diversity. Aid policies, focusing on building a diverse range of strategies, should recognise that, inherently, the urban poor have a capacity for finding solutions, and for self-management. This will be particularly important in the area of resource management. Proven methodologies such as participatory budgeting municipal levels should be emphasised. 3.2.5. Understanding the causes and the mechanisms of forced evictions. Evidence from the field indicates that the causes of forced evictions in urban areas are often multiple and are changing through time. Insufficient attention has been paid to market driven processes that fuel massive and often ruthless evictions. The same holds true, but to a lesser extent, for gentrification processes that affect primarily historic and heritage cities and neighbourhoods, and for the social and economic cost of sometime consensual relocation faced by the urban poor after eviction.. An understanding of the causes and of the underlying mechanisms is essential to design preventive approaches and address the roots of the problem.
3.3. City to city decentralized cooperation 3.3.1. More can be done to strengthen the 3.3.2. Cities that would engage in decentralization cooperation could get matching resources from DFID and/or other relevant government departments. The mechanisms and procedures of operation could draw from successful experiences from European cities and countries [1] The case for a focus on urban development was clearly made in the DFID Strategy Paper on 'Meeting the Challenge of Poverty in Urban Areas', one of 8 papers sub-titled 'Strategies for Achieving the International Development Targets', DFID, 2001. The acknowledgements noted the "Substantive contributions have been made by a Drafting Group led by the Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College London". [2] Estimate by the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) and the
International [3] The DPU's Prof Yves Cabannes is currently the Chair of the UN Advisory Group on Forced Evictions, established in 2004 by UN HABITAT. Recent evidence of forced evictions wordwide is reported in the Executive AGFE Report, 2007 |