Settlements along Bangkok’s canals (photo: Alex Berger/Flickr.com)
Slum upgrading and housing policies have also proved to be particularly effective when there is enhanced vertical coordination. As regards local-national cooperation, The Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI) in Thailand is a national government agency that supports community-driven upgrading at scale and support for this from local governments and utilities. From 2003 to 2011, the CODI approved 858 projects in more than 1,500 communities in 277 urban centres covering more than 90,000 households. The CODI also helped formalize and institutionalize community-driven solutions within local governments. International cooperation is often as important: the Asian Coalition for Community Action has supported over 1,000 small community led upgrading projects working in 165 cities in 19 different countries.65 A number of countries have made progress in reducing or stabilizing slum growth rates in the last 15 years, including Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, Morocco,66 South Africa, Thailand and Tunisia. Success is attributed to political commitment at central and local government levels to large-scale upgrading and service provision for the poor. More promising programmes on urban upgrading tend to combine investments in basic infrastructure with social programmes. Although many initiatives focus on physical aspects of living conditions, to the neglect of economic, social and institutional aspects, more recent action in Brazil, Jamaica, Vietnam and Iran, among others, are incorporating these dimensions (e.g. employment, crime, violence, childcare, health, etc.).67 Finally, it is important to highlight the need to include the voices of the disadvantaged in the design of effective policies, including slum upgrading. This can be done effectively through participatory governance, e.g., institutional arrangements that allow citizens and community organizations to influence political decision-making, and right based approaches that extend entitlements to those who lack them, particularly low-income groups and those living in informal settlements.68 The effectiveness of local governments in achieving the goals of the 2030 Agenda, the New Urban Agenda and the Paris Agreement will also depend significantly on the quality of their relationship with low-income groups. Most successful ‘slum’ upgrading schemes succeeded because urban governments worked closely with the ‘slum’ dwellers and their organizations and other civil society groups in designing and implementing the upgrading.
65 In each city, the community organizations undertaking initiatives present their work to city government and this often leads to a joint working group established at the city level to provide a platform for community networks, city governments, civic groups, NGOs and academics to plan and to manage the upgrading and city development fund process and identify responses to land issues. Community development funds have been established in 107 cities. See Archer (2012) Finance as the key to unlocking community potential; savings, funds and the ACCA programme, Environment and Urbanization, 24(2), 423-440, for more information. 66 Morocco, in particular, has implemented from 2004 to 2014 the Villes sans bidonvilles programme for the eradication of informal settlements in Moroccan cities. The programme involved over 380,000 households in 85 cities and fostered about 3 billion euros in public investments (about 30% of which coming directly from the central government). In its 10 years of application, the programme improved the livelihood of over 1.3 million people. 67 More information in Baker (2008) ‘Urban Poverty: A Global View’. Urban Sector Board: World Bank. 68 See also Mitlin and Satterthwaite (2013) Reducing urban poverty in the South. London: Routledge.
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