capacities and administrative procedures of local governments frequently restrict the introduction and expansion of innovative participatory
ment process aimed at providing space for lasting citizen participation in urban governance.
upgrading practice and planning methods. As a consequence, previously, development actors often operated outside the legal, institutional and operational frameworks of national and local governments, without a systematic long-term strategy to encourage governments to facilitate and apply bottom-up upgrading processes on a large scale.
Therefore, the two-pronged approach at policy level aims to, (a) improve urban governance through decentralization of power and transfer of resources from central to the local government, (b) institutionalize participatory strategies and methods as the mainstream process of urban upgrading and (c) build human, institutional and organizational capacities of governments.
Lastly, considerable constraints to upscaling participatory strategies derive from the legal status of most deprived urban areas in developing countries. According to Schübeler (1996), “…the fact that high proportions of the residents of informal residential areas do not possess legal title to their plot constitutes an important constraint to their participation. As service provision amounts to defect recognition of property rights, it is a step which the technical agencies responsible for housing and urban service provision are neither willing nor authorized to take.” (p.11-12)
And at the project level the strategy is to empower communities through, (a) recognising them as a legitimate part of the city, (b) their structural mobilization and organization and (c) capacitybuilding of community members. This two pronged approach is thus the most effective strategy, which allows isolated projects to be expanded or replicated on a large scale (see figure 1).
Considering the above mentioned potentials and constraints, gaining political support for decentralization and policy reform, including the willingness to transform informal settlements into officially recognized neighbourhoods, the citywide empowerment of marginalized communities and the building of human and institutional capacities, have become the greatest challenges in upscaling participatory upgrading strategies. FUNDAMENTALS OF UPSCALING As the increased scale of participatory projects and programmes emphasizes the role of the government and the need to connect isolated participatory upgrading initiatives of external development actors to the institutional planning procedures and operational practice of governments, the scalability of participatory upgrading processes mainly depends on three factors: (i) the institutional capacity and culture, (ii) the degree of national decentralization of power and resources to lower levels of governance, and (iii) a viable strategy to empower a large target population. Hence, it is imperative to empower marginalized communities not just in nonreplicable isolated local projects but in a long term develop54
Figure 1. Fundamentals for upscaling Source: By the author UPSCALING AT PROJECT LEVEL A large and growing majority in less developed countries lives and works informally. Due to the illegal nature of their living spaces and activities, and the incapability of governmental planning statutes to deal with informality, they are barely recognized in the provision and distribution of infrastructure and urban services. As the state has the power to determine the legal status of human settlements, the first step of empowering marginalized communities is to transform informal parts of the city into officially recogni-
zed neighbourhoods. This process is fundamental as it enables informal dwellers to become legal citizens with a right to organize and participate in decisions that shape their lives. Second, if participatory programmes are to be expanded, a well-defined strategy to mobilize and organize a large target population is crucial to ensure a broad-based representation of the target communities in the long term. This is particularly important in order to enable marginalized communities from different parts of the city to speak with a common voice when entering negotiations with the government on a city-wide level. Third, in order to enable the beneficiary communities to participate constructively and make meaningful choices during the upgrading process, the mobilization and organisation of the target communities needs to be accompanied by capacity building measures. In particular, this usually involves awareness raising and the training of beneficiary communities on the use of participatory methods and tools. In Mongolia, the Community-led Ger Area upgrading in Ulaanbaatar City Project (GUP), which was designed by UN-HABITAT to assist the Municipality of Ulaanbaatar in the realization of city-wide participatory upgrading strategy, has shown a viable approach to empower a large target population in five project areas of the capital city. The capability of the beneficiary communities to participate in the project implementation and act collectively as a community was built through a structural mobilization and organization of
the beneficiary households, in a hierarchical well-defined institutional structure. As figure 2 illustrates, this structured comprised of primary groups (representing 10-20 households living in physical proximity on the neighbourhood level) and community development councils (on the micro-district and sub-district level), with elected community representatives, representing the primary groups in the next higher level.
Figure 2. Social Mobilization and Community Organization Steps Source: Toolkit for Community Action Planning (UN-HABITAT Mongolia Office, 2010), edited by the author This establishment of an institutional structure, following a similar structure as the administrative breakdown of the city, has proven an effective way of guaranteeing a broad-based representation of a large target population. Throughout the project the 12,093 beneficiary households were organized into 206 Primary Groups, 47 community development councils on micro-district level and 5 community development councils on sub-district level, with the latter being legally registered as non-profit entities with their own bank accounts, and independent and accountable for their own operations (UN-Habitat Mongolia office, 2012). As the community mobilisation and organisation was considered to enable the beneficiary communities with the opportunity to fully engage Gunther Jürgen Stoll | 55