|
METROPOLITAN ECONOMIC STRATEGY
Economic Development in a Flat World: Global
Trade, Technology, Investment, Incomes, Employment, Education,
and Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century
Thomas L. Friedman
This article focuses on what sort of policies developing
countries need to undertake in order to create the right environment for
their companies and entrepreneurs to thrive in a flat world, although
many of the things I am about to say apply to many developed countries
as well. When developing countries start thinking about the
challenge of flatism, the first thing they need to do is engage in some
brutally honest introspection. A country, its people and leaders alike,
has to be honest with itself and look clearly at exactly where it stands
in relation to other countries and in relation to the 10 flatteners. It
has to ask itself, "To what extent is my country advancing or being left
behind by the flattening of the world, and to what extent is it adapting
to and taking advantage of all the new platforms for collaboration and
competition?"
more
Growing out of Poverty: Urban Job Creation
and the Millennium Development Goals
Marja Kuiper and Kees van der Ree
This article
explains how improvements in infrastructure, housing, and services would
be much more sustainable if supported by the simultaneous promotion of
decent employment opportunities to reduce urban poverty. Employment
provides households with the financial means necessary to ensure access
to adequate housing, essential services, and basic needs. A decent
living requires decent work. The challenge is twofold: not only are
many more jobs required to absorb the ever-growing urban workforce but,
equally important, strategies are also needed to enhance the quality of
urban work in terms of returns to labor productivity, workers’ incomes,
and working conditions.
more
Leveraging Private Financing and Investment
for Economic and Community Development
Marc A. Weiss
In this article I will address the specific issue of leveraging
private financing and investment for economic and community
development, primarily in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods that
are not generally thriving through the normal operations of
private market activity. These are communities that need
some additional public assistance to promote new investment in
business growth and job creation, affordable housing and
homeownership, transportation and infrastructure, stores and
services, schools and safety, environment and amenities, and all
of the other features that generate, sustain, and enhance
economic prosperity and quality of life for everyone.
more
Expanding Local Government Resources for
Capital Projects through Municipal Borrowing and other
Market-Based Financing
Charles J. Billand
An exciting paradigm shift is emerging
in developing and transitional economies. With increased
decentralization and urbanization, local governments have taken on
greater responsibility in the provision of basic municipal services. To
help fund education, solid waste management, water and sanitation, and
other economic development projects, municipalities have turned to
innovative financing mechanisms to meet local demand. Since central
government support cannot finance the service needs of most
municipalities, local governments are increasingly turning to: (1)
own-source revenues such as taxes, licenses and permits, user fees for
services, and municipal assets; and (2) borrowing from private capital
markets. This article provides an overview of the paradigm shift that is
occurring in many developing countries and the movement towards
market-based municipal financing, and serves to assist public officials
in designing strategies that increase the supply of local government
resources to finance infrastructure, housing, health care, education,
economic development, and other services.
more
The Seattle Region’s Study Mission to Dublin:
Learning from Ireland’s Success in Competing for Employment and
Income Growth in the Global Economy
William B. Stafford and Sam Kaplan
International trade
is a vital part of the economy of the Puget Sound Region centered around
Seattle, Washington. This globalized economic perspective is the
foundation for the Greater Seattle International Study Mission program
initiated in 1992. Annual delegations composed of metropolitan
Seattle’s leaders from government, business, education, communications
media, labor, and the non-profit sector, visit dynamic urban regions in
other countries for an entire week, to learn from their successes and
failures. Seattle’s most
recent International Study Mission in May 2005 was to Dublin. Ireland
is a particularly interesting example for the Puget Sound Region.
Metropolitan Dublin and the Republic of Ireland have experienced recent
success and now must confront new competitive challenges in an
increasingly globalized world.
more
FACING THE
ENVIRONMENTAL
CHALLENGE
Producing Environmentally Sustainable Olympic
Games and ‘Greening’ Major Public Events
Tom Roper
This article will
concentrate on the pluses and minuses of major events including sports,
entertainment, conventions, and conferences. In particular, the article
focuses on the drive for environmental sustainability, carbon
neutrality, and reducing potentially harmful ecological impacts of major
events. The 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, placed the
environment on the sporting world’s agenda. For the first time
comprehensive environmental action was planned and implemented at a
large-scale sports event. Sport is a vehicle for
capturing the public’s attention, and therefore can be important for
helping to change public attitudes. The legacy and knowledge gained
from one major event can become the minimum standard for future events
so that learning curves can become less steep, and even further progress
can be encouraged. Replication, adaptation, and innovation are the
touchstones for initiating a long-term cycle of continuous environmental
improvement. There is no reason why any major public event, from its
planning to execution, should not be sustainably “green”.
more
Urban Transportation and the Millennium
Development Goals
Walter Hook
The initial
recommendations for transport that came out of the UN Millennium
Project, an effort to clarify the implementation goals for the MDGs,
were written by people unfamiliar with the transport sector. They were
heavily focused on increasing governmental spending on new road
construction, and included targets for miles of new roads to be
constructed. Experts from the World Bank and NGOs lobbied only
partially successfully to change this approach, with the result that the
final recommendations of the Millennium Project also make little mention
of transport. While glad that a misdirected approach has been avoided,
no clearer, better targeted program has yet emerged. This article is an
effort to set clearer targets and goals for transport interventions that
will help meet the Millennium Development Goals. It is focused on urban
transport interventions, but similar goals also should be set for rural
transport.
more
Financing Urban Housing: United Nations
Global Report on Human Settlements
Donatus Okpala, Naison Mutizwa-Mangiza, and
Iouri Moisseev
More than 2 billion people will be added to the number of urban
dwellers in the developing countries over the next 25 years.
This implies an unprecedented growth in the demand for housing,
water supply, sanitation and other urban infrastructure
services. This new challenge exists in a context of already
widespread poverty and inequality in cities, with millions of
people living in slums without adequate basic services.
Providing these services to new residents will be essential if
this additional population is not to be trapped in urban
poverty, poor health and low productivity. It is an urban
problem with significant macroeconomic consequences. This
Global Report examines the urgent challenge of financing urban
shelter development over the next generation. Part I
presents the macro-economic, shelter policy and urban finance
contexts of financing urban shelter development. Part II
describes and assesses recent global trends in shelter finance,
including mortgage finance, financing for social housing,
shelter microfinance and shelter community funds. Part III
provides an overall assessment of the shelter financing systems
analyzed in Part II and examines policy directions towards
sustainable shelter finance systems. The Epilogue in Part III
examines the implications of the report’s findings on
sustainable urban shelter policy.
more
Encouraging Sustainable Urban Development in
the United Arab Emirates
Habiba Al Marashi
Taking up the cause of sustainable urban
development, the Emirates Environmental Group (EEG), a leading
non-government organization based in Dubai, has emerged as
one of the most active civil society organizations in the United Arab Emirates.
EEG, as it is popularly known, has been a pioneering force behind the
mainstreaming of such potent issues as education for sustainable
development, waste management, and separation of recyclable materials at
source, the three R’s (reduce, reuse, recycle), water and energy
conservation, renewable energy production, sustainable transportation,
public transit, combating desertification by expanding urban green
spaces, promoting recourse efficient green buildings, and encouraging
corporate social responsibility. EEG’s operations are targeted at
building effective outreach among key stakeholders including
governments, businesses, communities, and civil society groups. EEG’s
vision is to facilitate a green and sustainable UAE.
more
Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Indonesia
Emiel A. Wegelin
Early in the
reconstruction process, the Indonesian government in its strategy notes
acknowledged the pivotal importance of rebuilding housing as part of the
overall redevelopment strategy. The government’s approach to rebuilding
housing embraced rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts in shelter
and community infrastructure by the surviving victims themselves in
the location where they lived before the Tsunami, and the need to
support these community efforts as the core approach to
government and international community support. Indonesia’s
Reconstruction Master Plan set two core standards for tsunami victim
household support: 1) that each surviving household would be entitled to
grant funds to rebuild their houses, with amounts of about US$3,000 per
house if it needed to be rebuilt from scratch, and 2) about US$1,000 for
damaged houses that could still be renovated. Grant funds also were
allocated for repair and reconstruction of community infrastructure.
On the basis of
these grant fund commitments, a housing reconstruction program for
85,000 new houses and 17,000 houses to be renovated was planned at a
total price tag of US$280 million (not including community
infrastructure), to be carried out over a period of three to four
years. Given the generous financial assistance pledges for post-tsunami
reconstruction coming from international donors, the Indonesian
government believed that sufficient resources would be available to
support the housing reconstruction program.
more
Innovative Methods of Financing Public
Transportation
Dave Wetzel
The income from fares is usually
insufficient to pay for both the capital costs and operating expenses of
a modern mass transit system.
Public transportation managers strive to provide safe,
efficient, affordable, reliable, comfortable, clean, and convenient
journeys for passengers. The service provided not only enables millions
of people to travel but also has wider economic, social, and
environmental impacts on urban life. When planning for new public transportation investments,
wider economic benefits are usually cited as an important reason for
governments to provide subsidies towards the costs of construction and
maintenance. Apart from people who use public transportation systems,
international studies over many years have shown that there is an
additional beneficiary who plays no direct part in contributing to
transportation financing, but who gains a disproportionate share of the
economic benefits arising from building and operating rail and bus
lines. It is no fault of the public transportation industry that
governments choose to ignore private windfall property value gains
generated by public investment. No longer should transportation planners go hat in
hand to governments for subsidies to fund new projects or maintain and
renew existing lines. As long as large numbers of people are riding the
trains, then we now know that in addition to revenue from fares, the
railway can generate its own finances from the increased land values.
more
TREATING PEOPLE AND
COMMUNITIES AS ASSETS
Informal
Settlements and the Millennium Development Goals: Global Policy
Debates on Property Ownership and Security of Tenure
Alain Durand-Lasserve
Building on Accomplishment: The Microcredit
Summit Campaign’s Future Challenges for Global Poverty Reduction
and Economic Empowerment
Sam Daley-Harris
Instead of business
as usual, what is required is a revolution in the way we fight poverty.
Grameen Bank Managing Director Muhammad Yunus gave an example of the
revolutionary action required when he was asked about his strategy for
creating the Grameen Bank. “I didn’t have a strategy,” Professor Yunus
replied, “I just kept doing what was next. But when I look back, my
strategy was, whatever banks did, I did the opposite. If banks lent to
the rich, I lent to the poor. If banks lent to men, I lent to women.
If banks made large loans, I made small ones. If banks required
collateral, my loans were collateral free. If banks required a lot of
paperwork, my loans were illiterate friendly. If you had to go to the
bank, my bank went to the village. Yes, that was my strategy. Whatever
banks did, I did the opposite.” If we are to end
poverty, we not only need to make way for the revolutionaries, but we
must also follow their lead. All too often, however, the move within
the field of microfinance is to be more like banks, often with the
unintended consequence of once again failing to provide financial
products and services to the very poor, once again denying them tools
they need for a dignified route out of poverty. One thing the
Microcredit Summit Campaign and many of the microfinance practitioners it supports
worldwide have learned is that microfinance is an incomplete solution
for many poor people and that its impact can be magnified if used in
combination with complementary strategies. If a family raises its daily
income from US$0.50 to US$1.50 through microcredit, its members might
still be no more knowledgeable about basic health topics and other life
skills such as the importance of vaccinating children against
preventable diseases or learning how to prevent HIV/AIDS. This lack of
knowledge and the resulting illnesses can swiftly undo the improvement
in a family’s economic situation.
more
The Role of Urban Grassroots Organizations
and Their National Federations in Reducing Poverty and Achieving
the Millennium Development Goals
Celine d’Cruz and David Satterthwaite
This article is
about the current and potential role of what the United Nations terms
“slum dwellers” and their own organizations, in achieving significant
improvements in their lives and thus in contributing to Target 11 of the
Millennium Development Goals (to achieve significant improvements in the
lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020). The work of the
urban poor and homeless federations in Asia and Africa is perhaps the
most significant initiative today in these regions in addressing urban
poverty – both in terms of what they have achieved and in terms of what
they can achieve, given appropriate financial and administrative
support. In at least 12 nations, these federations are engaged in
many community-driven initiatives to upgrade slums and squatter
settlements, to develop new housing that low-income households can
afford, and to improve provision for infrastructure and services
(including water, sanitation, and drainage). They also are
supporting their members to develop more stable livelihoods, and working
with governments to show how city redevelopment can avoid evictions and
minimize relocations. Comparable federations are expanding in
other nations. The foundations for these federations are thousands
of savings groups formed and managed by urban poor groups. Women
are particularly attracted to these groups because they provide
emergency credit quickly and easily; their savings also can accumulate
and help fund housing improvements or employment generation. These
savings groups are the building blocks of what begins as a local process
and develops into citywide and national federations.
more
A Home in the City: UN Millennium Project
Report on Improving the Lives of Slum Dwellers
Pietro Garau, Elliot D. Sclar, and Gabriella
Y. Carolini
These issues have not
been given the attention they deserve, and without significant urgent
action and reforms, the situation will worsen. Indeed, inaction may
exacerbate social instability, urban violence, and crime. At the same
time, by neglecting these issues, we lose the opportunity to benefit
from urban growth and wealth creation. This urban challenge
dictates a much broader and more ambitious approach than the improvement
of a portion of the world’s estimated slum dwellers summarized in target
11 and subsumed under Goal 7. Slum upgrading, improved urban planning
and design, and the provision of adequate alternatives to new slum
formation must become core business for local and national governments
alike and supported by international development agencies. Ample evidence over the
past 20 years shows that the urban poor themselves can provide the
central impetus for change toward good governance. Governments,
especially local governments, have also demonstrated that they can
develop the capacity to use their mandates and resources for sound and
participatory urban development policy, if such policies are rooted in a
political leadership that is committed to a democratic and equitable
vision of civil society in all spheres of government. What is needed is the
vision, the commitment, and the resources to bring all actors together
and to do the sensible things that are the tasks of well governed cities
— providing political and economic opportunity, improving services and
the quality of public space, planning for future needs, expanding local
sources of revenue, attracting investment — in active cooperation and
dialogue with all citizens, especially slum dwellers, both women and
men.
more
Local Government Actions to Reduce Poverty
and Achieve the Millennium Development Goals
Mona Serageldin, Elda
Solloso, and Luis Valenzuela
The cases reviewed in this article
document the range and diversity of local government initiatives that improve the lives of slum dwellers.
Acting on a range of challenges requires a multifaceted approach.
Infrastructure is a dominant component. This reflects the priority
placed on access to services. Water supply is a particularly
important issue for women and girls who in many cultures have
traditionally been assigned the task of fetching water for the family.
Concern with sanitation among slum dwellers increases in parallel with
the deterioration of conditions in the settlements, as densities rise
and overcrowding becomes the norm with multiple families on the same
lot, sharing highly inadequate facilities. Adequate access
roads, drainage, and transport are essential to integrate peripheral and
marginalized settlements in the urban fabric and economy. In the face
of growing disparities and economic downturns, promoting local
development has to include the necessity of opening up employment and
income generation opportunities for impoverished populations. The case studies reflect the growing
importance of local initiatives to support small businesses and
micro-enterprises, with and without outside support. Housing is addressed
through a variety of mechanisms ranging from subsidized credit to
providing accommodations, to resettling populations living in
environmentally hazardous zones, to developing serviced sites and
housing for lower income groups. The importance placed on living
conditions by slum dwellers can be gauged from the speed at which home
improvements are initiated after security of occupancy is granted and
settlements regularized. All wage earners in the household contribute
cash, building materials and supplies, labor, and furnishings.
more
The Role of the Public Sector in Promoting
Affordable Housing
Peter
Marcuse
Two general concepts
stand out from a review of the housing practices that have been used to
address the problems of slum dwellers: one is that the provision of
appropriate land is the key to any further improvement, and that the use
of government power is essential to that provision; the other is that no
serious improvement can take place without significant costs, which can
ultimately be paid for through government resources.
more
BUILDING GENDER EQUALITY IN URBAN LIFE
Taking Action to Empower Women: UN
Millennium Project Report on Education and Gender Equality
Caren Grown, Geeta Rao Gupta, and Aslihan
Kes
How can the global community achieve the goal of gender
equality and the empowerment of women? This question is the focus of
Goal 3 of the Millennium Development Goals endorsed by world leaders at
the UN Millennium Summit in 2000 and of this report, prepared by the UN
Millennium Project Task Force on Education and Gender Equality. The report argues that there are many practical steps that
can reduce inequalities based on gender, inequalities that constrain the
potential to reduce poverty and achieve high levels of well-being in
societies around the world. There are also many positive actions that
can be taken to empower women. Without leadership and political
will, however, the world will fall short of taking these practical steps
— and meeting the goal. Because gender inequality is deeply rooted in
entrenched attitudes, societal institutions, and market forces,
political commitment at the highest international and national levels is
essential to institute the policies that can trigger social change and
to allocate the resources necessary to achieve gender equality and
women’s empowerment. Many decades of organizing and advocacy by women’s
organizations and networks across the world have resulted in global
recognition of the contributions that women make to economic development
and of the costs to societies of persistent inequalities between women
and men. The success of those efforts is evident in the promises
countries have made over the past two decades through international
forums. The inclusion of gender equality and women’s empowerment as the
third Millennium Development Goal is a reminder that many of those
promises have not been kept, while simultaneously offering yet another
international policy opportunity to implement them.
more
Gender Equality and Urban Development:
Building Better Communities for Everyone
Monika Jaeckel and Marieke van Geldermalsen
When looking at cities from a gender perspective, one of
the main differences affecting the use of urban space is in terms of
female and male care-giving roles and responsibilities. Due to the
gender-specific division of labor, women do most of the direct
care-giving work within families and communities. As such, women are
central to urban planning and development, both as key users of urban
space in their role as home managers, and as key producers of
residential environments in their role as community leaders and
initiators of neighborhood networks. The current development of urban infrastructure and the
built environment needs to be redesigned to promote greater gender
equality in the use and benefits of urban space. Many of the past and
present trends in urban planning and development reflect the male
perspective regarding the role of women as primary caregivers. Viewing
families, communities, towns, cities, and regions from a gender
perspective requires a radical shift both in thinking and in actions. This article summarizes basic principles that can inform
urban planning, policies, and programs in the process of redesigning and
redeveloping urban areas to be more gender-sensitive, inclusive, and
responsive to everyone’s needs.
more
Protecting the Victims of Human Trafficking
Bianca Jagger
Three years ago,
I went to India to support and learn about Sanlaap, an organization
working in the red-light areas in and around Calcutta. Its work
includes preventing the trafficking of children for sexual exploitation.
At one of its shelter homes, called Sneha, I met 48 girls aged between
10 and 18 who had been rescued from enforced prostitution. An estimated
400,000 children are being trafficked and forced into prostitution for
sexual exploitation in India. Typically, they suffer unspeakable
levels of violence, cruelty and betrayal — they are beaten, burnt by
cigarettes, repeatedly raped, and forced to endure sex without condoms.
Many contract HIV/AIDS and die. A few are offered a lifeline. Sneha, meaning
affection, is exactly that lifeline. At the shelter, the girls receive
healthcare and counseling. They are taught skills to equip them for
work away from the violence and servitude of the city's brothels. I
firmly believe that the Sneha project has something to teach the west,
not least Britain, about dealing with the trafficking of women and
children into prostitution, slavery and even death. Britain needs to
stop treating women forced into prostitution as criminals. They are
automatically criminalized. They are seen as "illegal immigrants" first
and victims of crime second, if at all. We need to start seeing them as
deeply vulnerable victims of a global "trade" that is reckoned to earn
the criminal underworld more revenue than any except drugs or arms. It
is a vast money-spinner and the commodities are female bodies.
more
Building Bridges with the Grassroots:
Empowering Low-Income Women Through Information and
Communications Media Technology
Theo Schilderman and Otto Ruskulis
Visits to two
informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya identified that women’s groups,
largely very informally organized, undertake neighborhood improvement
activities and waste management, and function as self-help and action
groups. The impact of the women’s actions is constrained by their lack of status in their own
communities, remoteness from decisionmaking processes, limited contacts
outside their own group, and
inadequate access to information. Access to
information is becoming increasingly important to people’s everyday
lives throughout the world. The development of new information and
communications technologies (ICTs) such as the internet, email, and
CD-ROM has been a significant factor in this accelerating trend. Much
of the information disseminated through new ICTs, however, is in written
format and often in English or another European language. The women’s
groups in the informal settlements in Nairobi had gained little from the
development of new ICTs. Many of the women had limited or no literacy
and did not use English. Video was therefore
chosen as a new ICT medium that could be made more accessible to the
women’s groups as literacy is not a primary requirement to make videos.
Also, as the medium is largely visual, and it is the images that leave
an impression on the viewer, the commentary can be added in the language
of the intended audience. The Women’s Information and Communications
Technology (WICT) project was a small pilot project looking at how ICTs can effectively be used
by poor marginalized women to strengthen their largely oral skills to
communicate their need for improved livelihoods.
more
Toward Universal Primary Education: UN
Millennium Project Report on Education and Gender Equality
Nancy Birdsall, Ruth Levine, and Amina
Ibrahim
Countries that are
unlikely to achieve the goal of universal primary education by 2015 face
two challenges: they must simultaneously address shortfalls in access
and in quality. They must significantly accelerate the enrollment of
children and improve their ability to keep children in school, and they
must achieve major improvements in learning outcomes and educational
attainment at a level required to have an economic and social impact.
Increasing access and improving quality are mutually reinforcing; if
schools cannot offer a good-quality education, parents are far less
likely to send their children to school. Higher levels of
enrollment and longer retention in school can be stimulated in three
ways: focusing on specific interventions to reach out-of-school
children, increasing the educational opportunities (formal and nonformal)
for girls and women, and increasing access to post-primary education.
All of these approaches take into account the powerful demand-side
influences that affect the propensity of parents to send their children
to school. Two major strategies
can be used to address these challenges: getting out-of-school children
into school and creating better institutions and more favorable
incentives. The first strategy involves overcoming both demand- and
supply-side constraints to enrollment and retention. The second
requires successfully addressing serious and pervasive institutional
shortcomings, many of which are linked to dysfunctional incentives for
administrators and teachers.
more
CELEBRATING OUR URBAN HERITAGE
Innovative
Strategies for Urban Heritage Conservation, Sustainable
Development, and Renewable Energy
Luigi Fusco Girard
Heritage
conservation should be an important part of a more general urban
economic development strategy of city, as well as a spatial development
strategy. At the same time, it must also be part of an energy
conservation and renewable resources utilization strategy. For example,
“solar city strategies” can promote closer integration of the economic
and ecological systems, such that urban environmental economics can be
implemented to foster sustainable prosperity and quality of life. A
strategy based on renewable energy can positively affect the physical
structure of a city, both its form and its building architecture. Strategies for
conserving the built environment are designed to preserve and enhance
cultural, historic, and artistic values, and more importantly, to
provide a set of economic and social benefits and contribute to
improving the quality and sustainability of the urban ecology. Urban
planning and spatial development policy can be both economic and
ecological if the overall systems are balanced, starting with energy
production and consumption. Conservation of urban heritage can be
genuinely sustainable to the extent that it revitalizes communities by
creating a dynamic, growth-oriented mix of new functions that regenerate
economic and social life, while at the same time reducing energy
consumption and increasing the use of renewable resources.
more
Can the Creative Arts Strengthen Regional
Economies?
Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson
Can New England’s
creative arts help to sculpt the region’s economy for the century? Five years ago the
business-led New England Council, executives from such fields as
manufacturing and banking, took a bold step. In a special report, they
celebrated the region’s growing “creative economy.” They saw that the
region's fine arts, music and drama fields were not only growing but
inspiring such other fields of imaginative design as architecture,
photography, film and web design. The resulting 245,000-job sector,
they reported, was growing twice as fast as New England’s overall
economy. If there were skeptics
back then, there are many fewer today. In our interviews, no one claimed a
creative economy solves all problems. But we found growing numbers
focusing on the arts as key to their lives and livelihoods in what’s
become a bleak season for traditional manufacturing, lumbering and
fishing.
more
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Return to top |
