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                                       October, 2004

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Unleashing the Potential Of Cities: Key Lessons from Cities Alliance 2004 Annual Report 

The Cities Alliance 2004 Annual Report has just been published. The report focuses on the challenges of changing how international development agencies work with cities: 'Instead of debating the contribution of cities to development, more energy needs to be spent on unblocking it'. The report also illustrates how by working directly with cities, Alliance funded activities are helping to engage local authorities in the national policy dialogue, as well as encouraging them to be proactive developers of urban infrastructure by mobilising domestic capital. 

Below are some of the key lessons captured in the report. The full report can be downloaded from the Cities Alliance website at www.citiesalliance.org

Realising opportunities for growth 
"Sustained economic growth is always accompanied by urbanisation, because cities are the most efficient locations for service delivery and productive growth. However, the mere physical concentration of people and firms does not guarantee a well-functioning city, let alone a liveable one. Realising cities' economic and social advantages require good public policy and investments in infrastructure and service delivery, along with an institutional environment characterised by accountability."

The benefits of migration
"Migration has proven to be one of the most effective coping strategies for the rural poor. It is therefore critical, especially to the populations in rural and on fragile land in Africa, that domestic migration remain unrestricted so that individuals can make their own location decisions. In addition, remittances by urban-based migrants are also both an increasingly important source of nonfarm income, and spread the benefits of urban markets throughout the country. In Karu, Nigeria, where 80 percent of the inhabitants are migrants from other regions, studies undertaken in connection with the Karu city development strategy confirmed that the direct economic contributions of these migrants reached 24 of the country's 36 states."

The informal economy and economic growth 
"The real story of production and growth especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, and in many other developing and transition countries, lies in the informal economy. Estimates for Africa indicate that the informal economy workforce accounts for an extraordinary 78 per cent of nonagricultural employment, 61 per cent of urban employment, and 93 per cent of all new jobs created. Figures for Asia and for Latin America are also significant, albeit lower. For women in Sub-Saharan Africa, the informal economy represents an estimated 92 per cent of all job opportunities outside agriculture, overwhelmingly as self-employment or own-account work. Indeed, local governments have considerable scope to create a more conducive climate for the informal sector, which would also help it grow in scale and develop linkages with formal firms." 

Cities and poverty
"Whether cities actually provide a ladder for escaping poverty or dig a deeper hole for those at the bottom depends on two main factors: first, whether a city's potential to create jobs is liberated or is hamstrung by institutions and policy conditions; and second, whether city residents have effective access to land and housing, education, health care, and security even if they have erratic incomes, few powerful connections, and unrecognised status in the city."

Good governance and sustainable finance
"The major indicator of a well-functioning city, as well as its major determinant, is the quality of its governance and its financial management. Running a city showcases local governance because the linkages—for better or worse—between public expenditure, local public goods, quality of services, and quality of life are hard to miss."

Financing City Investment Needs
"Cities in developing countries need to be proactive developers of urban infrastructure, rather than just passive providers of services. Limited financial assistance from national budgets, as well as the lumpy nature of urban investments, especially for water and sanitation projects, makes long-term debt a vital option for local governments. From the cities' standpoint the ability to demonstrate both community consent and a clear revenue stream would provide a greater voice when negotiating for increased devolution of responsibilities. 

The need for national-level policy actions to enable the creation of a new market for private capital to finance public infrastructure in a sustainable fashion is now a pressing policy issue. National governments must provide a regulatory framework for municipal debt, issue transparent rating criteria, remove fiscal distortions, and encourage tradability of debt.

From the international community's perspective, the need to invest in making domestic capital markets work for cities' financing needs, especially for the provision of cleaner water and the treatment of wastewater, is increasingly well understood. The MDGs, the Kyoto Water Conference, and the Camdessus Report's recommendations on access to
debt by small and medium cities have affirmed the need to address the financing challenges and develop suitable work plans."

Anticipating the growth of cities and peri-urban areas 
"Of the 1.4 billion people who will be added to the world's cities by 2020, virtually all of them in developing countries, approximately 45 per cent, or 630 million people, will live in peri-urbanising areas.

This often chaotic pattern of growth produces a monumental public agenda, especially as the importance of peri-urban areas in poverty alleviation and prevention is even greater than the demographics suggest. Bold thinking and new policy approaches are urgently required to anticipate this growth and focus on the economic and social opportunities it presents, as well as to prevent the growth of the next generation of slums.

Policymakers need to pay more attention to anticipating flows by those trying to escape rural poverty who potentially become additional urban poor. This means accepting and anticipating urbanisation by supporting peri-urban migrants' access to information
networks, employment, and skills training. It requires access to land and to affordable, rapid public transportation systems to enable peri-urban residents to access larger employment and housing markets. It also means ensuring that those who are enveloped do not lose their assets, particularly land, without adequate compensation."

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Cities Alliance Evaluation Exercise Highlights Important Lessons for Cities and Partners

This past fiscal year Cities Alliance embarked on an ongoing internal evaluation of its activities to assess their impacts and garner lessons, both substantive and in terms of the Alliance's own grant procedures. Most of the activities evaluated last year involved the Alliance's first generation of activities, many of which were approved within the framework of its 2000 – 01 work programmes. Desk reviews of these activities were supplemented by two on-site evaluations, namely, the upgrading of informal areas in Egypt's Ismailia Governorate, and the scaling up of poverty-focussed CDSs in the Philippines.

Activities were primarily assessed against their original stated objectives and the Alliance's core criteria, in particular: assuring the commitment of local and national authorities, ensuring participatory involvement by local stakeholders, having cross-sectoral co-ordination and collaboration among agencies and donors, following up on investments, focusing on institutionalisation and replication, and scaling up to citywide and nationwide levels. 

Although each of these activities has unique features and has generated its own lessons, it is nonetheless possible to clearly identify common themes. 

• Urban development challenges need to be confronted from the perspective of the city and its citizens.

• Leadership from within the city and country is key to sustaining and scaling-up developmental impacts. Accordingly, the Alliance has moved purposefully to promote city-owned, generated and designed initiatives, with consistently positive results: there is no substitute for the clarity with which the Mayors of cities like Addis Ababa, Amman, San Fernando and São Paulo have set their own developmental priorities.

• Despite the continued expansion of processes of democratisation and decentralisation, national governments are still often markedly reluctant to share developmental responsibilities with local government, leading to a mismatch between local government risk and responsibility. Those national governments that still prefer to treat local government as administrative extensions of the centre, rather than autonomous but complementary parts of a single integrated system, lose all of the benefits of leveraging innovation, shared responsibility and accountability from local governments. 

• Basic failures in the engine room of government – of policies, institutions, procedures and administration – contribute directly to the underdevelopment of cities, the perpetuation of slums, and the creation of a political and social underclass. The same policy failures constrain slum dwellers' natural inclination to improve their own lot and act as a strong disincentive for private sector investment.

• The evaluations also reinforce the importance of mobilising the resources of all the partners at the local level: those of the city government, the domestic private sector, and the poor urban communities.

• They also highlight the interconnections between slum upgrading and poverty-oriented CDSs, especially in those cities in which a large proportion of the population already lives in slums. In such cases citywide upgrading strategies are hardly plausible without a fundamental rethink of the manner in which the cities are being run – the Cities Alliance's two platforms necessarily merge into a single, citywide strategy. This is clearly the case in the strategies that have been adopted in São Paulo, Hyderabad and Johannesburg, or those still emerging from Tetouan, Lagos, or Mumbai, where slum upgrading is but one of a number of reforms that are being addressed as part of a longer-term citywide strategy.

• And the importance of a sustainable financial strategy, both in terms of a city's budget, and in terms of investment in addressing urban development challenges. While there is often an important and catalytic role for donor support, it is mobilising domestic capital that should be the main focus of city managers. The evaluations highlight the need for local governments to create conditions that help investors and residents alike to take a longer term view and invest in both their own and the city's future.

More results from these ongoing evaluations will be posted on the Cities Alliance website at www.citiesalliance.org as they arise.

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India's Urban Poor Impact Outcome of National Elections

A National Election Study by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) Delhi has shown that the winning Congress party and its allies led by Sonia Ghandi won in urban areas on the basis of strong support from the ' poor' and the 'very poor'. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) led by 7 percentage points amongst the lowest 'very poor' group, but trailed by 7 points among the upper middle class in towns. 

The UPA also led in large cities by 42 percent amongst 'very poor', as compared to 25 percent for the rival National Democratic Alliance (NDA). However, the NDA managed a 15 percentage point lead over the UPA among the urban 'upper middle' class. The tables below are representative of the voting pattern:

Table 1: Pattern of Voting in Cities
(above one lakh population) Figures in percentage

Table 2: Pattern of voting in Towns
(up to one lakh population) Figures in percentage

The CSDS conducted the post-poll survey of 26,983 respondents randomly selected from 2,380 locations spread over 420 parliamentary constituencies. Of these 74 are predominantly urban constituencies.

The UPA has already released a Common Minimum Programme (CMP) focused on deepening decentralizstion, housing and urban renewal, infrastructure and drinking water. The CMP document for Housing And Urban Renewal pledges : "The UPA government commits itself to a comprehensive programme of urban renewal and to a massive expansion of social housing in towns and cities, paying particular attention to the needs of slum dwellers. Housing for the weaker sections in rural areas will be expanded on a large scale. Forced eviction and demolition of slums will be stopped, and while undertaking urban renewal, care will be taken to see that the urban and the semi-urban poor are provided housing near their places of occupation".

For more information on this study contact the Editors, Nagarpalika Update, Institute for Social Sciences, New Delhi, India. Email: iss@nda.vsnl.net.in

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Indian Slum-Dwellers Empowered by Own Newsmagazine

The magazine also covers issues from human rights violations in slums to government apathy in implementation of slum development programmes. "We give information to slum-dwellers," says Suresh, the computer-savvy subeditor of the magazine. "For example, we tell them about the various government-aided projects and the budget allocated for slum development." The magazine is apolitical and does not seek financial support from any organisation.

"We don't want to be a slave to anybody or get exploited. Our views are independent and free," says Selva, recalling the magazine's land-grab exclusive involving politicians. He is outraged by the couldn't-care-less attitude of a local software industry that breeds hundreds of millionaires who chill out in posh high-rise apartments. This hi-tech hub is also home to over 700 slums.

"Forget about support from the IT industry, they don't want us around," says Selva. The magazine may not be known in the tech world but Selva has plans to take his project online. "We will use technology to spread information fast across the state. Internet access has become affordable even for those living in the slums."

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Organization of American States (OAS) to join the Cities Alliance as an Associate Member


The Organization of American States (OAS) is joining the Alliance as an Associate Member. Associate Members of the Cities Alliance provide significant opportunities to share information and resources on development for productive networking among members. Membership of the Alliance in turn, provides Associate Members with opportunities for attending key Cities Alliance meetings and reaching broader audiences. 

Established in 1948, the OAS brings together 35 countries of the Americas to strengthen cooperation and advance common interests under its mission, which is an unequivocal commitment to democracy, as expressed in the Inter-American Democratic Charter: "The peoples of the Americas have a right to democracy and their governments have an obligation to promote and defend it." 

Building on this foundation, the OAS works to promote good governance, strengthen human rights, foster peace and security, expand trade, and address the complex problems caused by poverty, drugs and corruption. Through decisions made by its political bodies and programmes carried out by its General Secretariat, the OAS promotes greater inter-American cooperation and understanding.

In 2000, the OAS established a development arm, the Inter-American Agency for Cooperation and Development (IACD) to promote new and more effective forms of cooperation to fight poverty and promote social and economic development. With the support of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), a Cities Alliance Member, and the Andean Development Corporation, IACD has been able to focus on the issues of cadastre/land registry and e-government in the Latin American and Caribbean region. 

As a result, IACD has been able to develop strong partnerships with key municipalities in the region as well as most of the municipal organisations. 

For more information on the OAS, please visit their website at: http://www.oas.org

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>> Partnership News

United Cities and Local Governments Welcomes Ground Breaking Cardoso Report

The report suggests that the paradigm shift is already underway. The traditional intergovernmental process, with governments negotiating a global agreement that UN agencies and member states then implement is being supplemented by "global policy networks" that bring together constituencies such as local governments, civil society and business, along with central governments, in joint initiatives for policy analysis and action. 

It singles out United Cities and Local Governments as "an important conduit for representing people at the local level in the system of global governance" and proposes that the UN regard United Cities and Local Governments as an advisory body on all governance matters. It goes on to propose the adoption of a resolution affirming and respecting local autonomy as a universal principle. 

The Presidents of United Cities and Local Governments have called on governments to adopt these recommendations when they are debated in the UN General Assembly and have pledged to work closely with the UN to implement them.

For more on the Cardoso Panel and Report please click here: http://www.un.org/reform/panel.htm

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Cities Alliance  nationwide slum upgrading session at the second World Urban Forum

The Cities Alliance hosted a networking meeting on Wednesday 15th September at the second World Urban Forum in Barcelona, with a focus on nationwide upgrading approaches to slum upgrading. The audience was presented with details of three nationwide programmes – the first presentation was made by Moulay Cherif Tahari from the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism in Morocco, who explained the country's Villes Sans Bidonvilles (Cities without Slums) programme, which had been launched by the King in July 2004. Thailand's Baan Mangkong programme, in which community based organisations play a very active role in partnership with the Government, was presented by CODI director Somsook Boonyabancha. Finally, Raquel Rolnick of the Ministry of Cities made a comprehensive presentation of the approach to urban upgrading that is being spearheaded by cities throughout Brazil. The session was chaired by Jean Pierre Elong Mbassi, member of the Cities Alliance Policy Advisory Board, who ably summarised the differences and demonstrated the linkages between the three national programmes.

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Cities Alliance Session at the IADF Conference on "Financing Municipalities and Sub-national Governments"

The Cities Alliance organised a panel discussion on "Local Governments: Facilitating Framework and Enabling Policies for Accessing Debt Finance" as part of the Second International Conference on Financing Municipalities & Sub-National Governments, held in Washington DC, on September 30 and October 1, 2004. The two-day conference was organised by the International Association of Development Funds (IADF) in collaboration with the IADB, USAID and the World Bank and was attended by investors, mayors, treasurers, bankers and managers of public and private sector financial institutions that are involved with local government finance in developing countries to discuss ways to improve the financing of infrastructure in cities and towns. 

Moderated by Dr. K. Rajivan, Cities Alliance's Sr. Urban Finance Advisor, the panel discussion looked at the financing opportunities and options available to linking city financing needs with domestic capital markets, focusing on two policy themes, namely city and national level actions to highlight the complimentary roles to be played by city and national governments in fostering the development of a municipal credit market. 

Speakers included:

• Mark Hildebrand, Program Manager, the Cities Alliance, who explained the Cities Alliance was focusing its work on municipal finance from the perspective of cities and the strategic role which United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) would be playing in engaging networks of mayors in the process. 

• Roland Hunter, Executive Director (Finance), City of Johannesburg, South Africa who presented the experience of the City of Johannesburg in issuing its highly successful municipal bonds recently. 

• Eleoterio Codato, Manager, Urban Department, the World Bank, whose presentation discussed in detail the role and the successful experience of Municipal Development Funds in enabling cities to access debt finance. 

• Alberto Angulo, Director (Revenue), State Government of Michoacan, Mexico, who described the State of Michoacan's recent efforts to mobilise capital for funding its infrastructure programmes. 

• Brad Johnson of Resource Mobilization Advisors, Washington DC, who spoke on the enabling legal and regulatory framework that is necessary for the development of a municipal credit market.

Copies of all the presentations can be downloaded from the IADF website at http://www.developmentfunds.org/fall04.htm. Or contact Steve Thomas, Executive Director, for a CD copy with all the presentations.

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Lessons learned so far:

• Small is beautiful. It is easier to start with a small, visible project rather than a large one. These projects can then be leveraged with donors or other partners in order to scale up the intervention.
• People are much more motivated to volunteer when they see that those who are asking them to volunteer are also contributing something.
• It is often necessary to work on changing the concept of volunteerism within the community. The project teams have all had to make an effort to move the idea of volunteerism from a charity-based social activity to a participatory community development activity.
• The building of local capacities that has resulted from the project is just as important (if not more) than the actual physical works. Women in Amran have received training (by volunteers) on labor and human rights, fishermen in Jamaica have increased their organisational capacities, and neighbourhoods in Esmeraldas have received workshops in strategic planning. 

The Caring Cities methodology is in the process of being replicated throughout the region. Through the project hub in Quito, Ecuador, and thanks to a series of methodological tools created by the project's Senior Adviser, Berta Brusilovsky, "municipal volunteer offices" based in the Esmeraldas model are being replicated in various cities in Ecuador and soon in other neighbouring countries.

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>> Events

Cities Alliance Public Policy Forum and Consultative Group Meeting, eThekwini, November 1 to 5, 2004 

Plans are in full gear for the annual Consultative Group Meeting and Public Policy Forum of the Cities Alliance being held this year in eThekwini (Durban), South Africa, from November 1 to 5, 2004. The Public Policy Forum (PPF) provides a platform for debating key international policy issues affecting city governance.

The theme of the Forum is, "Making City Development Strategies Come Alive in South Africa," and will aim to unpack the issues arising out of the implementation of city development strategies by the nine member cities of the South African Cities Network. Focusing, in particular, on the provision of shelter, the promotion of economic development, and the financing of city strategies, the Forum will address both the opportunities and the challenges in implementing city development strategies.

Mayors and city officials from African cities and from partner cities around the world are expected to attend, in addition to South African city officials and community leaders. The PPF event will be kicked off by a welcome address by the Mayor of eThekwini, Councilor Obed Mlaba. This will be followed by a keynote address by Dr. Lindiwe Sisulu, South Africa's Minister for Housing and Urban Development. 

Plenary sessions will include presentations and discussions on three major issues:

• CDS and Economic Development
• CDS and Slum Upgrading, and 
• Sustainable Finance Strategies. 

The Nigerian Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Mrs. Mobolaji Osomo is expected to chair a session on Sub-national finance for development. Side activities include an eThekwini showcase, as well as the launch of a book, "Making our City Strategy Come Alive: Lessons from eThekwini, Durban, South Africa", by the Durban city officials. 

The Cities Alliance Secretariat team is looking forward to seeing you all in Durban for what promises to be a very exciting week. Click here for a full Agenda of the Public Policy Forum.

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Conference on "City Development Strategies: From Vision to Growth and Poverty Reduction, " Hanoi, November 24 to 26, 2004

An international conference on City Development Strategies (CDS), will be held in Hanoi, from 24 to 26 November 2004. Hosted by the Government of Vietnam the Conference is jointly sponsored by the Japan Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the Vietnam Ministry of Construction, the World Bank, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Kingdom Government Department for International Development, and the Cities Alliance. 

Mayors from around the world and many of their development agency partners are expected to attend to learn from the experience and impacts of CDS. Over the last five years the Cities Alliance has supported over 100 cities in carrying out CDS, where Alliance members have supported mayors and civic leaders to develop long term visions for their city, and implementation and financing plans to realise their priorities. 

The Conference will review different approaches to CDS taken by cities around the world, examine strengths and weaknesses to highlight lessons learned, and also focus on sustainable municipal finance strategies as an outcome of CDS. Local government associations will also share how they have taken up the challenge of institutionalising CDS in their countries and regions. Participating bilateral and multilateral development agencies will consider how they can more effectively use CDS to scale-up solutions promoted by local authorities and the urban poor themselves, and as a framework to improve the coherence of external support to these local efforts. 

Plenary sessions will focus on:

• Strategies for moving CDS to scale;
• Economic Growth and Employment: Investment Links of CDS;
• CDS as Local Poverty Reduction Strategies;
• The Missing Link: Sustainable Municipal Finance Strategies;
• Supporting Urban Development. 

Cities Alliance looks forward to seeing you all at this conference and to the sharing of ideas and knowledge which will hopefully result in a renewed approach for achieving our vision of cities without slums. 

For more details on the CDS Conference please go to the Conference website at http://www.cdshanoi2004.org.

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Founding Congress of the Council of Cities and Regions of Africa (CCRA), Tshwane, May 15 to 18, 2005 

The Founding Congress of the Council of Cities and Regions of Africa (CCRA), will be held in the City of Tshwane, Pretoria, Republic of South Africa from 15 – 18 May 2005 at the Tshwabac Events Centre. The theme for the Founding Congress will be: "Towards a unified voice for sustainable local government development in Africa". 

The CCRA Founding Congress is in line with the mandate given to the Presidency of the Interim Management Council of the CCRA elected by over 700 African Mayors present at the Constitutive Assembly of the CCRA. This Constitutive Assembly was held at the Africities 3 Summit in Yaoundé, Cameroon on 5 December 2003, the outcome of which was a Mayors Declaration which resolved that such a Founding Congress be held in 2005. The CCRA Presidency comprises Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, Mayor of Tshwane as the President, Badreddine Senoussi, the Secretary General of the francophone UVA, as First Vice President, and the former Mayor of Maputo as well as the Vice President of the African Chapter of UCCLA, Artur Hussene Canana (who has since been replaced by the new Mayor of Maputo, Eneas Comiche) as Second Vice President.

Father Mkhatshwa will be hosting the CCRA Founding Congress in the City of Tshwane in his capacity as President of this new Pan African organisation. Over 10,000 participants including mayors and their officials, associations of local government, government politicians and officials, international organisations, partners in development, non-governmental organisations, the civic society, the private sector, universities and research institutions, as well as all other key stakeholders in local government will be invited to participate at this Founding Congress.

The CCRA is the result of a merger of the three major associations which represent local authorities in the African continent, namely the anglophone African Union of Local Authorities (AULA), the lusophone Unao do ciuadades y capitais lusophono Africana (UCCLA), and the francophone Union des villes africaines (UVA). The CCRA is the African Chapter of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), to which Father Mkhatshwa is President, along with the Mayor of Paris (France) and the Mayor of São Paulo (Brazil).

For more details on the CCRA contact Lilian Dodzo at Founding Congress at is ccracongress@tshwane.gov.za. Further details of the Congress will be posted on the CCRA website as they develop.

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Nairobi to host fourth Africities Summit in 2006

Nairobi city council has won the bid to host Africities 4 in 2006. This was announced by the Political Committee of Africities at its meeting in Tshwane, South Africa on 28 June 2004. The date for the official launch of the summit will soon be announced by Nairobi city council in collaboration with the Kenya Government, in order to kick off the preparatory process. MDP in collaboration with CCRA hopes to be able to issue a calendar for the preparatory process after the official launching ceremony.

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>> Publications Announcement

A City Tailored to Women: The Role of Municipal Governments in Achieving Gender Equality – 2004 Edition. Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the City of Montreal's Femmes et Villes (Women in the City) Program, June, 2004

This publication, a collaboration between the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the City of Montreal's Femmes et Villes Programme, is a significant addition to the growing body of knowledge on the life of women in cities.

Cities belong to both the men and women who live in them and citizenship begins primarily at the neighbourhood and city levels. But women experience city life differently from men, because established norms and traditions have given them different roles and responsibilities. For example, women are experts in day-to-day living, a large majority of them having to juggle jobs and domestic duties. They often have less time than men for political involvement or participation in consultations or decision making.

Thus they often have little say in the planning of municipal services, installations and design and are often poorly served as citizens: inadequate day care services, rigid operating hours of municipal services, poorly adapted public transportation, unsafe public places, etc. The lack of access to services and resources also creates an obstacle to men's equal sharing in household and family tasks.

A generic one size fits all approach to the issue will not work. The approach that "whatever is good for men is automatically good for women" must be dropped because its apparent neutrality is misleading: it conceals the specific needs of men and women and prevents us from detecting and rectifying persistent inequalities.

ities, rather, need to institute gender specific policies and structures to ensure a women-friendly and a gender-equal municipality. These include:

• A Consultative Structure that would see the setting up of Women's /Gender Equality Commission or Advisory Councils made up of elected women representatives to determine the priorities of a gender policy and executing an annual action plan.
• A Municipal Gender Equality Policy, setting out goals, means and resources needed for carrying out an annual gender equality action plan. The Policy should be cross-sectoral by definition and will apply to all areas of municipal activity, including urban plan, housing, transportation and public safety.
• An Annual Gender Equality Action Plan outlining actions and goals, and executed by the municipal administrative structure in conjunction with women's groups, local community and public organisations, and women citizens. This will be subject to regular reviews to determine new priorities and any needed adjustments.
• An Administrative Structure that would see women in the City or Gender Equality Office in the office of the local authority chairperson. This will be replicated in every department and borough throughout the municipality.
• Participatory Structures with thematic task forces being set up to ensure the involvement of women's groups, community organizations and other public and private institutions in common interest initiatives. Plus Mechanisms for public consultation and the promotion of women's participation in municipal life.
• Communication and information mechanisms to make sure that women are adequately informed and in a timely manner about municipal services and urban development projects that have an impact on the quality of life in the neighbourhoods and throughout the city.
• A Gender perspective in Municipal Management or gender mainstreaming to ensure that the different realities and needs of women and men are taken into account with a view to reducing inequalities and optimising services to the population.

The book highlights case studies of gender specific achievements by cities from around the world, the processes involved and lessons learned. For example, the city of Montreal on February 26, 2002 unanimously adopted the IULA Worldwide Declaration on Women in Local Government and made a commitment to build on the accomplishments of the Femmes et Villes programme. A committee made up of representatives of women's groups and women municipal public servants ensures that these commitments are honoured. 

In El Slavador, the city of San Salvador's Gender Equality Policy integrates a gender perspective into all the plans, programmes and projects of its Master Plan for Local Development. The municipality has a number of institutional strategies at its disposal to concretise these plans including pinpointing gender constraints that prevent or threaten women's equal opportunities to enter or be promoted to leader ship positions at City Hall; and establishing partnerships with central government authorities and NGOs to mobilize institutional, human and material resources for the promotion of gender equality in the municipality.

In May 2000, the Bangkok Mass Transit Authority introduced bus services for women only. The Lady Bus was introduced in response to numerous complaints by women about safety, particularly during rush hours.

The book remains a significant resource that municipal governments can use to assess the impact of all their decisions on the quality of the life of women, and adjust their actions accordingly. A City Tailored to Women is available in English, French and Spanish. An online version is also available from the following websites: www.icmd-cidm.ca and www.ville.montreal.qc.ca/femmesville.

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The Urban Housing Manual: Making Regulatory Guidelines Work for the Poor. GPA Associates and UK Department for International Development, September 2004.

DFID Housing and Development consultants, Geoffrey Payne and Associates is pleased to announce the publication of "The Urban Housing Manual: Making regulatory guidelines work for the poor". The manual and its accompanying CD-Rom provide professionals, communities and administrators with the means to review the extent to which existing planning regulations, standards and administrative procedures constrain or facilitate access by the urban poor to new legal shelter or the upgrading of informal settlements in developing countries.

The manual is written by Geoffrey Payne and Michael Majale. It is written without recourse to technical jargon but covers a wide range of issues relating to housing and urban development. The manual is available from the publishers Earthscan, bookshops and on-line retailers.

Further information on the manual and the research can be found at www.gpa.org.uk.

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