Future of cities
David Satterthwaite, Senior Fellow, Human Settlements, International Institute for Environment and Development, United Kingdom
Where cities are today in regard to urban poverty?
The general trend at the moment is for urban poverty to increase in most nations - although its true extent remains hidden, because of the way that poverty is defined and measured. In most nations, poverty is measured by setting income-based poverty lines. But these poverty lines make little allowance for the cost of non-food necessities such as housing, transport, keeping children at school, health care and water and sanitation - even though these are usually major expenses for low-income groups in cities.
My first recommendation: That those who set poverty lines should have to live for a week in a major city and survive on the income that they say is enough to avoid poverty
There are two scenarios for the future with regard to urban poverty. Both are possible, both are backed by trends evident in the last ten years.
The first is that urban poverty continues increasing, as the world continues to urbanize. Much of this poverty is created by government inaction or inappropriate government action. As cities expand and governments seek to attract new investments, so poorer groups are bulldozed to make way for infrastructure and businesses. City governments continue to regard the urban poor as the problem. Cities become even more polarized as the rich and powerful live, work and play in gated communities and other areas from which the poor are excluded. There is a strong empirical evidence of current trends in this regard - look at the reports of evictions by the Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions and the UN Advisory Group of Evictions. See also the recent reports from UN Habitat on the proportion of city dwellers lacking provision for water and sanitation. Far more city dwellers lack good provision for water and sanitation today than thirty years ago.
A second scenario for the future is of urban poverty diminishing because of far more effective models of intervention that are widely applied.
These new models of intervention are the result of real partnerships between city governments and their low-income population. One of the quickest ways for a city government to start reducing poverty is to open a dialogue with its low-income citizens. One key part of poverty is being excluded from all discussions about city futures.I was at a networking event yesterday organized by federations of the urban poor - federations of grassroots savings groups - about their partnerships with governments. There are now federations formed by slum and shack dwellers, by pavement dwellers, by homeless people in fifteen nations. Comparable federations are developing in many more nations. At their base are savings groups, mostly organized by women. Many of these national federations have hundreds of savings groups, some have thousands. All these federations are actively engaged ininitiatives to reduce poverty - building homes, when they can get land or upgrading their existing settlement, improving services. All these federations are also offering city governments partnerships. Yesterday, we heard of partnerships between these federations and city governments in Mumbai and Pune, Windhoek and Gobaris, Blantyre and Lilongwe, Manila, Kampala, Nairobi, and many others. These partnerships were described not only by federation representatives but also by officials from these cities or from national government agencies.
Where city governments support these grassroots federations, the scale of what can be done increases exponentially.
We have strong evidence of this approach reducing urban poverty in many cities. A few national governments have recognized this so national policies and funding systems also support this - for instance in South Africa and Thailand.
I would hope that everyone in this room would be committed to this second scenario. So what will it take to make it happen? To make it the future of cities?
1: Give more space to representative organizations formed by the urban poor in every neighbourhood, city, nation and international forum.
This has to be more than allowing their representatives a few token minutes in one or two sessions in forums such as this. Whenever there are discussions about poverty reduction, these representative organizations of the urban poor have a right to be at these discussions. More than this, they have the right to influence how these discussions are structured.
2: We have to listen a little harder to what these federations say; look more carefully at what they do.
I have heard a lot of academic sniping at these federations. This sniping says that these federations are not really representative. Or that they have been co-opted by governments. Recent books about city futures such as the book Shadow Cities and the book Planet of Slums criticize these federations without knowing what they do.
I must admit that these federations are very dangerous to us academics and professionals because what they do challenges our analyses, our recommendations, our legitimacy. Now that these federations are becoming successful, perhaps we feel obliged to criticize them. Nothing wrong with a critical engagement with them but this must be based on what they actually do. Having had the chance to visit and talk to many of these federations, to watch how they learn from and support each other, to see what they achieved, to talk to government officials who work with them, I think their programmes, their strategies, their tools, their partnerships are the most significant innovation in urban poverty reduction.
3: Change international funding structures so they can also support grassroots organizations and their federations.
What saddens me about most international funding agencies is their incapacity to have any relationship with grassroots organizations. These funding agencies were set up to fund national governments. Most have moved ever further from funding local initiatives - in the name apparently of efficiency but more often because of administrative convenience. Its much easier for funding agencies to manage a single two hundred million dollar contribution to budgetary support than to support ten thousand local initiatives, each needing 20,000 dollars. But it is the ten thousand local initiatives that need 20,000 dollars external support that are really going to drive this new model of poverty reduction. Jockin Arputham calls for a world urban poor fund to support this. This is certainly needed. It needs no more than one thousandth of current global development assistance - around 60 million dollars a year.
Funding agencies need to learn how to support the initiatives of grassroots organizations and their federations. Then they need to support the partnerships that these grassroots organizations develop with their local governments. Going to scale will never be by replication but by multiplication. A hundred locally-designed and managed initiatives in which the urban poor have a central role in a city rather than one huge initiative. Will all such initiatives work? No. But my bet is that their record of success will be far far higher than initiatives in the last 20 years.
So in the end, what is the indicator of success.
Everyone has their indicator list. What one might call the measuring and monitoring disease. My fourth recommendation may sound like that of a Californian psycho therapist so please excuse me. But my favourite indicator would try to assess the quality of the relationship between local government and grassroots organizations. Of course, this needs reviewing in all aspects of government - the relationship between the urban poor and schools, health care centres, water and sanitation providers, government officials, elected politicians, the police, the planning office....
5: Final point.
Does this second scenario for the future of cities need huge increases in international funding as demanded by the Make Poverty History campaign or by the MDG taskforce? There is no point in channelling more funding to urban poverty reduction unless these relationships between the urban poor and their governments change. If these relationships do change - and we have seen them change in many places - the effectiveness of urban poverty reduction multiplies greatly. And then, increased funding becomes important.