& URBAN SERVICES FOR THE POOR Number 85 /July 2004 Community Driven Development in Urban Upgrading This note is part of a series that considers the linkages between CDD and urban operations. We would welcome your feedback. Box 1: What is CDD? Introduction Poor people are often viewed as the target of poverty This note is a brief review of community-driven reduction efforts. CDD approaches, by contrast, treat development (CDD) in World Bank-assisted poor people and their institutions as initiators, as collaborators and as resources on which to build. urban upgrading projects. The purpose of the note CDD is broadly defined as giving control of is to help identify how CDD approaches have decisions and resources to community groups. CDD been applied in such projects, and it does not frameworks link participation, community intend to be, nor is it conducted as an evaluation. management of resources, good governance and decentralization (World Bank, 2003). The review focuses on a small sample of urban With a view to generate sustainable and wide- upgrading projects that adopt CDD approaches, ranging impacts, CDD operations and regional strategies have increasingly embraced two important and draws from a combination of desk review and pillars of sustainability and scale: linking interviews with relevant Task Team Leaders. It communities to private sector and local briefly describes the projects, their CDD governments. approaches, and concludes by highlighting emerging issues for future discussion. Box 2: What is Urban Upgrading? Background Urban upgrading is broadly defined as physical, The rate of urbanization throughout the world is social, economic, organizational, and environmental steadily increasing, and by 2015 more than 49% improvements undertaken cooperatively among citizens, community groups, businesses, and local of the population in developing countries is authorities to ensure sustained improvements in the expected to live in urban areas (UNDP, 2000). quality of live for individuals. (Cities Alliance, Rapid urban growth has been accompanied by 2003). More specifically, the primary goals of upgrading projects are to provide secure land tenure in informal and often illegal areas, and to improve basic infrastructure and service delivery (Gulyani and Connors, 2002). increasing poverty and proliferation of slums,1 minimum disruption and loss of physical and thereby placing enormous social assets. burdens on municipal governments charged with Urban Upgrading projects through the lenses managing cities and their peripheries. The of CDD Millennium Development Goal 7 recognizes this trend and sets the Target 11 to achieve by 2020, a Over the last three decades, the Bank has been significant improvement in the lives of at least involved in a number of urban upgrading projects, 100 million slum dwellers (MDG, 2003). which have demonstrated that quality of life in slums can be improved through realistic policies, Slums are unplanned and under-served investments and implementation processes2. neighborhoods typically settled by squatters without legal recognition or rights. These CDD Approaches in Urban Upgrading ­ the neglected urban areas are the result of poor or Beginnings. Since the 1970s, community and absent urban policies and dysfunctional land and public participation has been practiced in Bank- housing markets. They are often located in high- assisted urban upgrading projects as a means to risk and barely habitable sites, such as hill-sides, enhance the achievement of project objectives. garbage dumps and river banks. Very often, slum Community involvement in this initial form was residents are deprived of several or all of the most often limited to project implementation and basic municipal services, such as water supply, generally dependant upon the preexisting sanitation and solid waste collection, and they willingness, cohesiveness and organizational frequently lack access to social services (e.g. capacity of the targeted communities. Even if not schools, clinics and community centers). necessarily encompassing all the types of CDD approaches as defined today, in most of the cases National, state/provincial and city governments participation in early urban upgrading gave all over the world have attempted to address this communities a high degree of direct control over problem in various ways, and one of them is implementation decisions. This experience greatly urban upgrading. At its most basic level, urban contributed to lay the foundations for more upgrading involves enhancing living conditions in sophisticated forms of CDD approaches in slums and bringing basic services to their subsequent urban upgrading projects. dwellers. This includes improving and/or installing basic infrastructure such as water, In this regard, particularly relevant is the case of sanitation, solid waste collection, access roads projects such as the Kampung Improvement and footpaths, storm drainage, lighting, public Program (KIP) in Indonesia3, a long-term urban telephones and other community services. upgrading program, in which the degree of Upgrading also deals with regularizing security of residents' involvement greatly varied from one land tenure and housing improvements, as well as Kampung to another, ranging from decision- improving access to social services (e.g. health, making in implementation of small infrastructure education) and municipal services. Thus, urban projects, to simply witnessing the construction upgrading aims to develop the existing activities. Over the years of implementation, the community by its inclusion into the social and KIP experience showed that the early service fabric of the wider, formal city, with involvement of communities in project design and preparation helped in joint decision-making and was critical to determine future sustainability of the urban upgrading interventions. 1The term "slum" has many connotations. It often refers to settlements illegally occupying land and lacking in basic services. Slums can vary from high density, squalid central city tenements to spontaneous squatter settlements without 2For a more detailed discussion on urban upgrading and legal recognition or rights. While some slums are more than slums, see the Urban Notes No. 2 and 3 of the Thematic 50 years old, others are land invasions just under way. Slums Group on Urban Services to the Poor, available at are given various names in different contexts (such as . and Asentamientos Umanos), yet they share the same poor 3Four consecutive projects spaced over 7 years, from 1974 quality of living conditions. to 1981, for a total of 18 years of urban lending. 2 Flexible and Incremental Approach to CDD in participation as a way to ensure sustainability and, Urban Upgrading. The Bank's experience also over time, develop a more complex urban demonstrates that a flexible and incremental upgrading process using CDD approaches. approach to CDD in urban upgrading not only Notably, this is producing important spin-off enhances joint decision-making, but also effects well beyond the life of the project, in contributes to develop ownership of project terms of local government-community-private deliverables and their sustainability. The Bombay sector partnerships for the provision of services Sewage Disposal Project (BSDP, India), active (e.g. maintenance of public spaces and garbage from 1995 to 2003, is one of such examples. The collection); local economic development (e.g. main objective of BSDP was to improve the opening bank accounts, and training courses for sewerage system of the city and to strengthen the youth and women); paradigm change in the use of capacity of the Municipal Corporation to provide CDD approaches (e.g. from empowerment as a sewerage services. The project also included a means to implement the project, to empowerment pilot Slum Sanitation Program (SSP) component as an end to achieve sustainability); new to test possible solutions to the sanitation problem institutional frameworks to scale up the use of of slum dwellers, who constituted 55% of the total CDD approaches; an increased sense of belonging 14 million population of Bombay/Mumbai among slum dwellers, and their better integration (World Bank, 1995). into the wider social fabric of the city. In its original formulation, the SSP only provided Structured Approach to CDD in Urban a conceptual framework for implementation, Upgrading. In several countries in the Latin based on a demand-driven and participatory American region, similar early experiences (most approach, and adopted a phased strategy. The of them in the 1970s and 1980s) 4 led to the initial learning phase of the program was very development of a more structured approach to the useful in demonstrating the power of an application of CDD in Bank-assisted urban innovative partnership between the municipality upgrading projects. and communities, and in developing appropriate mechanisms to deliver sanitation services to One such project is the Caracas Slum Upgrading slums in a sustainable manner. The second phase Project (Venezuela), active since 1998. In its focused more on the practical challenge of design, the project recognized that the absence of formalizing the partnership through adequate collective action mechanisms to provide public institutional arrangements for scaling up. goods was a key factor hindering the development of barrios, and therefore outlined from the onset Over the years, BSDP demonstrated that a an enabling framework that would allow the slum partnership between the poor communities and dweller communities to effectively express their other key stakeholders, particularly the local demands and participate in the relevant decision- government, is a key to success. Such partnership making processes5. In order to do so, it followed a did not occur overnight but required investment over a lengthy initial learning and demonstration 4Important examples are the upgrading of El Mezquital phase (which lasted about five years), in which (Guatemala), where cohesive and autonomously driven stakeholders learned to understand, trust and work squatter communities initiated an upgrading process which with each other. The implementation process was was later on formalized by a World Bank project (Guatemala paralleled by incremental modifications to Municipal Development Project, 1988), and El Salvador (1974) where the project built on the experience of an NGO- relevant regulations ­ from procurement to the led initiative (Fundasal) and, in a rare example, even used the mainstreaming for the formal registration of NGO as implementing agency. A unique example of an early community-based organizations (CBOs) ­ to suit Government-Community partnership is the experience of and support community initiatives, and to Villa el Salvador in Lima (Peru), where the partnership also benefited over time from the World Bank Urban Sites and facilitate replication and scaling up (Nitti and Services Development project (1976). Also see Imparato and Sarkar, 2003). Ruster (2003). 5When the project started in 1989, president Carlos Andrés The experience of BSDP demonstrates how a Pérez introduced a program of decentralization and electoral single-sector infrastructure intervention can use reform . In the last four years, Venezuela has witnessed a process of re-centralization which has inverted this process. 3 three-tier approach including: (1) the a context where the legal framework for urban establishment of Local Co-management Groups, development and management is weak, and has comprising professional staff and community not yet been adapted to the decentralization leaders, to manage upgrading activities; (2) the reforms introduced since 1986. In Mauritania, preparation of Neighborhood Improvement Plans, community participation in decision making and a coordination tool for the delivery of a selected in the provision of urban infrastructure and package of services, and (3) the implementation services is in its infancy. of a Social Assistance Outreach program to mobilize communities at all stages of The Mauritania project is based on the recognition implementation. that the rate of urbanization in Mauritania has exceeded the capacity of both national and Over time, the implementation of the enabling municipal governments to provide the necessary framework suffered due to the country's re- infrastructure and services as well as employment centralization trend, and the lack of social generation for the country's expanding urban intermediaries who could work with communities centers. While promoting partnerships with local independently from the government influence. communities, the project supports central and But the project implementation has demonstrated local governments in their efforts to improve the that certain unplanned (or accidental) aspects can living conditions of the poor, generate add to the strengths of a project. For example, employment opportunities in the main cities and since the functioning of planned Local Co- towns, strengthen institutions and build capacities management Groups was proving difficult in for urban and land management. larger neighborhoods, Neighbor Inspectors were appointed instead, who effectively function as The urban upgrading component is integrated by community representatives responsible to an `Urban Communities sub-component' which supervise construction works in the barrios. The promotes the use of CDD approaches. As such, it project also developed a gender focus by way of a aims to support: (1) strengthening of the legal change in the leadership of the implementing framework governing CBOs and the formalization agency. This enhanced project performance and of their links with local governments; and (2) greatly contributed to the general improvement in building the capacity of CBOs for organization the living conditions of slum dwellers by creating and management, self-regulation and active new income-generating opportunities for the participation in decision making and service women. delivery. CDD in Urban Upgrading and Governance Other new-generation urban upgrading projects in Structures. The above examples show that CDD Africa are also based on the understanding that improves slum upgrading wherein institutional urban upgrading and related CDD approaches frameworks allow governments to systematically are only viable within a relevant institutional engage with communities. But there are contexts framework that provides for local government in which such governance structures and restructuring, e.g. in Tanzania and Nigeria. functions are weak and/or underdeveloped, if not In Tanzania, local governments suffer from completely absent, as is the case in many capacity constraints, have limited budgets, and are countries in Africa. In such situations, the still undergoing a process of restructuring. Within utilization of CDD approaches in urban this framework, the Tanzania Local Government upgrading goes hand in hand with the Support Program (World Bank, 2002a) combines strengthening, if not restructuring, of governance (1) capacity building for local governments and a structures, often together with decentralization6. capital grant facility for local investment in Such is the case of the Mauritania Urban infrastructure, with (2) a pilot Community Development Program (World Bank, 2001) set in Infrastructure Upgrading Program targeted to upgrading low-income, unplanned settlements in 6New-generation urban upgrading programs in Mauritania, Dar-e-Salaam. The latter supports local Tanzania, Ethiopia and Nigeria link urban development with governments in engaging with communities in a local government restructuring and mostly fiscal decentralization. participatory process to prioritize, design and 4 implement Community Upgrading Plans. Thus, In addition, CDD approaches in urban upgrading the program recognizes that (1) the community enhance post-project sustainability. This is and local governments need to work in achieved through shared/joint decision-making partnership and take joint responsibility for processes and resource management, which in improving and maintaining community-level turn lead to community `ownership' of infrastructure and services (i.e. it is not just about project/program deliverables, creation of local community control); (2) it is important to build knowledge, better cost recovery, and ultimately capacity and create incentives for local improved operation and maintenance over time. governments and communities to work with each other; and (3) the infrastructure investments need Experience also shows that CDD in urban to be tied to city-level networks and systems. upgrading is a gradual process wherein communities and other stakeholders should be Similarly, the Nigeria Community Based Urban given the necessary time to learn to participate Development Project (World Bank, 2002b) aims and collaborate in development projects. to: (1) establish partnerships between local Furthermore, given flexible institutional governments and communities for jointly frameworks which allow and sustain community developing subproject proposals; (2) deliver basic participation, local governments and communities municipal services in poor urban settlements; and can move towards shared decision-making. The (3) demonstrate viable approaches to development of such institutional frameworks infrastructure development and service delivery which strengthen partnerships among within a framework of financial reform of the stakeholders clearly emerge as a key element of local governments. Overall, the project intends to CDD in the urban context. facilitate partnerships between poor urban communities and local Governments for decision- Last and most critical, scaling-up and replication making on public expenditures in slums, and to of urban upgrading interventions which adopt demonstrate the relevance of inclusive and CDD approaches are more likely to succeed if the replicable approaches for the sustainable delivery rules of the game for effective collaboration are of municipal services in poor un-serviced/under- defined within an enabling institutional serviced settlements. framework, which may include strengthening of governance structures at central, state/provincial Emerging perspectives and city government level. In fact, experience of Urban upgrading leads to physical, social, urban upgrading operations suggests that in the economic, organizational and environmental absence of such frameworks, project interventions improvements in the lives of slums dwellers. The remain limited to the selected areas or group of brief review of projects summarized in this note slum settlements. On the other hand, most demonstrates that these wide-ranging successful projects support the creation of improvements are not fully realized without the institutional frameworks which enable active involvement of communities within a CDD communities to effectively express their needs framework (see definition in Box 1). and demands, to participate in decision-making processes and exercise control over development Experience demonstrates that CDD approaches interventions which directly affect their lives. complement the process of urban upgrading, This approach contributes to increasing the which provides opportunities to all stakeholders ­ resilience of the implementation process in the local and higher-level governments, communities face of political changes and directly increases the and private sector ­ to contribute with their potential for replication and scaling-up of comparative advantage at the most appropriate successful initiatives. level of intervention, including long-term operation and maintenance. This does not References: undermine, and in some cases can strengthen, other forms of representation, e.g. through elected Cities Alliance, 2003, Cities Alliance website, representatives, but rather complements them. available at . 5 Gulyani, S. and Connors, G. 2002, Urban Upgrading in Africa: A Summary of Rapid Assessment in 10 Countries, World Bank Africa Infrastructure Department. Imparato, I. and Ruster, J. 2003, Slum Upgrading and Participation: Lessons from Latin America, World Bank Directions in Development Series. MDG, 2003, Millennium Development Goals website, available at . Nitti, R. and Sarkar, S. 2003, Reaching the Poor through Sustainable Partnerships: The Slum Sanitation Program in Mumbai, India, World Bank, Urban Notes Number 7. UNDP, 2000, Human Development Report, Nairobi. World Bank, 1995, India ­ Bombay Sewerage Disposal Project, Staff Appraisal Report. World Bank, 1998, Venezuela ­ Caracas Urban Upgrading Project, Project Appraisal Document. World Bank, 2001, Islamic Republic of Mauritania ­ Urban Development Program, Project Appraisal Document. World Bank, 2002a, Tanzania Local Government Support Program, Project Appraisal Document. World Bank, 2002b, Nigeria Community Based Urban Development Project, Project Appraisal Document. World Bank, 2003, Community Driven Development, available at http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/ESSD/essdext.ns f/9ByDocName/BasicConceptPrinciples. This note was prepared by Rosanna Nitti and Bharat Dahiya. You can contact the authors via e-mail: rnitti@worldbank.org , bdahiya@worldbank.org Additional copies can also be requested via e- mail: socialdev@worldbank.org 6