The New Urban Governance-Who should do what and for whom?

 Sanjay Pradhan

Worldwide cities are growing at a rate of 2 percent annually. While in 2000 about half of the world’s population lived in cities, almost 2/3 will reside in urban areas in 2030. Especially African, Asian and Latin American cities are characterized by high urban growth rates caused by natural population growth and rural urban migrates as well as by the underlying pull and push factors such as the lacking infrastructure in rural areas and the hope for employment in the cities as a result of uncontrolled growth of cities many problems related to health and environment arises. People in Third World cities encounter a wide spectrum of population ranging from lack of sanitation (with exposure to human excrement and unsafe drinking water) to exposure to hazardous synthetic organic chemicals in their air food and water. The main reasons for unsuccessful urban sanitation/ environmental programme is local government in urban areas lacks the resources and commitment to counteract problems in inner urban areas that are associated with poverty, overcrowding and haphazard urban growth. The influential middle classes and upper classes have relocated to new, leafier, suburbs. In the atmosphere of indifference both corruption and incompetence flourish. Secondly, there is no manifest political threat from the illiterate, fragmental, relatively powerless, urban poor. Corruption is a major limiting factor in a government’s capacity to deal effectively with urban problem. It is as prevalent in local government as in central government and it hurts the poor the most. They are offered fever job-opportunities, denied proper education, and health care when money is diverted into the wrong people’s pockets.

          The complexities of urban problems particularly in Third World cities are intensifying. The traditional systems of bureaucratic and top-down decision-making are now completely inadequate to core with these challenges. As a result there has been a more towards new governance system where decision-making is shared between all the stakeholders in the city. The global campaign for good urban governance promoted by UNCHC (Habitat) focus explicitly on sustainable urban development. This new form is governance is emerging as enabling tools to make our cities more inclusive, safer and healthier places in which to live. Sustainability has become the principle behind current development thinking and good urban governance is perceived as a possible means of achieving it. Governance is normally described as involving government, civil society and the private sector. In the urban context, this means that the responsibility for managing a city’s affairs is not limited to local government, but includes a wide variety of stakeholders including: national and regional (provincial and state) governments; the private sector; non-governmental and community based organization, the media professional associations and other members of civil society. The good urban governance is characterized by sustainability, subsidiary, equity, efficiency, transparency and accountability, civil management and citizenship, and security. Good governance is a powerful tool in helping to make cities better place in which to live and work. More specifically it is seen to assist in fighting corruption maintaining democracy; improving the quality of life; providing opportunity for people to manifest their desires and wishes in life; promoting security, equity and sustainability. For urban development in general and poor/ vulnerable groups implement environment planning and management, ensure access to decision making process, resources and basic services, organize regular and open consultations of citizens on all matters concerning environment issues, encourage participatory approaches to environmental policy, empower people to fight for their basic rights through information campaigns and sensitizations, strength existing and new people’s movement to facilitate participation of people in environmental issues, implement local environmental planning at the sub-urban level based on dialog with the affected people.

*****