Influences
- Reagan, Thatcher
- Increasing migration to secondary cities
- Glasnost, perestroika
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Explore the topics below to learn more about the urban development history featured in this timeline.
1980s
Influences | Policies and Programs | Institutional Roles | Methods, Tools, and Practices | Lessons and Outcomes
Summary
Government as Enabler
Donors and governments begin to shift emphasis to the private sector, free markets, deregulation, and trade liberalization. Decentralization and empowerment of local government gain ground while nongovernmental and community-based organizations achieve prominence.
Policy-based sector and programmatic approaches emerge, with increased emphasis on housing and infrastructure finance. Methodologies evolve for urban development assessments, and donors measure progress toward strategic objectives. Computers and satellite imagery allow increasingly sophisticated planning and financial analysis. Environmental impacts become a factor in design. Technical assistance focuses on building local government capacity in budgeting, capital investment planning, and management of urban services. Secondary cities grow in size and importance. Public-private partnerships for land development and urban services become accepted tools. Micro-enterprises and small developers take root, along with housing banks and local development finance corporations like the HUDCO and the Housing Development Finance Corporate in India.
Policies and Programs
- Renewed faith in the private sector: free markets - deregulation - trade liberalization
- Debt crisis and structural adjustment
- Policy-based sectoral or programmatic approach emerges with increased emphasis on housing and infrastructure finance and seconda
- International shelter programs
- International Year of Shelter for the Homeless
- Global Report on Human Settlements (1987)
- Global Shelter Strategy for 2000
- Regional differentiation of programs required: Jamaica/Jordan Housing Strategies; Indonesia National Urban Development Strategy; Kenya/Nepal Municipal Development; Cochabamba, Bolivia; Curitiba, Brazil
Institutional Roles
- Government plays small role in New World Order
- Significant expansion in role of private sector, including multinationals and small and micro- enterprises, in housing, land, an
- Enterprise zones
- Regional development funds and inter-governmental grant mechanisms
- Beginning of local government empowerment
- Nongovernmental and community-based organizations gain prominence
- India's Housing Development Finance Corporation
Methods, Tools, and Practices
- World Bank/UNCHS/USAID housing and urban indicators
- World Bank and USAID Urban and Land Policy Guidelines
- World Bank Integrated Urban Development project methodology
- USAID Urban Development Assessments
- Concept and structure planning methodologies
- Link top-down/bottom-up
- Small "down market" urban development (e.g., Thailand)
- Tools of the trade: personal computer - dot matrix printer - spreadsheet - word processor - database - satellite imagery - post-it notes - facsimile - kilobytes
Lessons and Outcomes
- Structural adjustment blamed for severe social problems
- Projects of the international finance institutions and parastatals lack market orientation and stakeholder participation
- Lack of environmental enforcement and awareness
- Local governments lack financial autonomy, capacity, creditworthiness
- Enlightened leadership makes the difference
- Economic and environmental carrying capacity in rural areas often exceeded
- Eliminate bureaucratic dysfunction in shelter sector
- Slum upgrading is a process: start with the basic infrastructure and services and work up
- Rural-urban migration has increasing impact on secondary economic centers