Chapter 1 Introduction
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are multiple of how migrants are helping to build cities, provide services and generally resuscitate the socioeconomic life of cities in decline, including some mid-size cities in the United States such as Dayton, Ohio, where Turkish migrants initiated cooperation with city authorities on a housing project. The authorities of such enterprising cities as Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Indianapolis, Lansing and Saint Louis have embarked on similar immigration-focused urban development experiments. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of networking initiatives among city authorities, urban practitioners, civil society leaders, business development communities and migrant/diaspora groups to discuss urban integration issues and foster participative economic growth. It is important to know to what extent these activities have been translated into effective urban policies to create “opportunity structures” for sustained and inclusive economic growth that empower both locals and newcomers. For successful integration and community development, both cities of origin and destination are reaching out to each other. For example, Kavarna in Bulgaria concluded bilateral agreements with the four Polish cities where the majority of Roma from Kavarna were employed. These agreements give the Roma the right to work, register companies and facilitate tax collection. The Roma use their savings for improving their conditions of living, especially housing in Kavarna. In their destination cities, the Roma’s economic success has changed the way they are perceived by the local population. Their new status as a prosperous group has improved inter-ethnic relations. Urban governance in developing countries can be strengthened through city-tocity cooperation, particularly (but not only) with partner countries in the developed world. For example, the City of Rotterdam maintains strong partnerships with cities of the countries where most of Rotterdam’s migrants come from, including Turkey, Morocco, Suriname, the Netherlands Antilles and Cabo Verde. In particular, Rotterdam also works on issues of water and climate change with their partner cities of Izmir, Istanbul and Casablanca. Similar initiatives have been developed over the past decade and are increasingly gaining popularity. Global initiatives such as the Rockefeller Foundation’s Resilient Cities programme and IBM’s Smarter Cities programme view cities as drivers of sustainable national, regional and global economic growth to engage city governments, civil society and private sectors in partnerships on the ground and encourage cities to become smart to better respond to city and global challenges. The World Bank’s Project Greenback 2.0 identifies and works with “remittance champion cities” to improve transparency in the market for remittance services and to leverage the development effects of remittances. However, many such public and private sector initiatives do not take full account of migrants as key players in city development, growth, resilience and sustainability. Migrants themselves can make significant and essential contributions to the economic, social and cultural development of their host countries and their communities back home. Yet oftentimes these contributions go unrecognized or at best are measured only in terms of the remittances they manage to send back home. As reflected in the Declaration adopted at the UN High-level Dialogue (HLD) on International Migration and Development in New York in 2013, migrants need