2000s
Summary
Government as Partner
The population of the world becomes half urban, with more people living in cities than there were on the planet in the 1950s and more than 1 billion people living in urban slums.
With more than 1 million people being born in or moving to cities each week, housing and slums come dangerously close to crisis at a time when failed states and terrorism are a global preoccupation.
Based on targets outlined at the world summits in the 1990s, Millennium Development Goals represent a global partnership designed to respond to the world’s main development challenges: poverty, need for education, lack of prenatal care, gender inequality, and child mortality, AIDS, and other diseases.
While management of urban growth is not recognized at the global level, improving the lives of 100 million people living in slums by 2015 is adopted as a target.
Will we reach that target? Is that enough? ...to be determined.
Influences
- Terrorism, natural disasters, and other transnational threats
- Internet enables "24-7" access to developing and transitional skills and comparative advantages throughout the global economy
- UDT country timelines and case study knowledge modules presented at World Urban Forum III
- Economies boom and global trade surges
- Clean revolution in industrialization and urbanization
- Globalization brings more cities into world markets
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Policies and Programs
- Priority urban programs: China - South and East Asia - Sub-Saharan Africa - Balkans and Caucasus - Central and South America
- Enabling frameworks for local government empowerment, democratization, and good governance established
- Millennium Development Goals
- Youth Empowerment Programs and Programs for Shelter aim to reduce civil strife
- Development of mass transit systems: Manila and Bangkok
- Pandemic preparation: AIDS, avian flu
- Making Cities Work, USAID
- UN Habitat Program addresses public safety issues
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Institutional Roles
- International financial institutions, donors, and governments reinvent themselves and create alliances with development partners
- Decentralization: local government takes more responsibility
- Millennium Challenge Corporation
- Empowered cities act as incubators for political leadership and good governance
- Governmental resources shift from development to security
- Private and local investment as core element of assistance, Development Credit Authority, International Finance Corporation/Municipal Funds
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Methods, Tools, and Practices
- City-to-city exchanges diffuse successful urban management models and partnerships
- Models emerge for municipal leadership, entrepreneurs, and good governance; sustainable growth management; clean industrialization and urbanization
- City Development Strategies, City Alliances, and Global Development Alliance
- Hernando de Soto Regulatory Land Issues
- Smart Growth: linking transit with work and education
- Environmental cap-and-trade programs (market approaches)
- Office of Transition Initiatives shelter kits in Bosnia
- Cities without slums: Casablanca
- Land and real estate assess diagnostic tools
- Cash-for-work after crisis: Baghdad, Afghanistan
- Women as drivers of development, Grameen
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Lessons and Outcomes
- Local governments prove to be incubators for political leadership
- Transitional countries are part of world order
- Local capital markets emerge for housing and infrastructure finance
- Cities master growth management and improve urban services
- UDT development analysis help "investors" make decisions on the best development returns
- Environmental improvement can be achieved through rising per capita income, technology transfer, stakeholder pressure, and better urban management
- Lack of attention to urbanization leads to decline in basic services and decreased public safety
- Community participation is important in disaster reconstruction
- Partnerships between governments, international financial institutions, and the private sector prove successful
- Change from supply- to demand-driven long-term investments and municipal funds
- Microfinance
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