“Inclusive Cities and Access to Land, Housing, and Services in Developing Countries,” Urban Development Series: Knowledge Papers, February 2016, No. 22. World Bank’s Social, Urban, Rural & Resilience Global Practice, 2016

Abstract

The Institute for International Urban Development produced a research paper between 2014 to 2016 titled “Inclusive Cities and Access to Land: Housing and Services in Developing Countries.” The World Bank supported project addressed how global disparities in income, wealth, and opportunity experienced worldwide have contributed to social exclusion and spatial segregation in cities in the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America, Central America and Western Asia.

The Final Report—authored by Dr. Mona Serageldin with I2UD staff, and published in 2016 by The World Bank—documents examples of successful inclusionary policies, programs, and initiatives by public agencies and NGOs with a special focus on cities in Latin America and the Middle East. The reports discussed the difficulty in organizing integrative projects. It underscored the shortcomings arising from acting on one dimension of inclusion—while ignoring others.

Documents include a workshop presentation from January 2014, with a final draft from April 2014. The Final Report from was published by The World Bank as:

Urban Development Series: Knowledge Papers, February 2016, No. 22, Mona Serageldin, Contributors: Sheelah Gobar, Warren Hagist, and Maren Larsen. “Inclusive Cities and Access to Land, Housing, and Services in Developing Countries.” World Bank’s Social, Urban, Rural & Resilience Global Practice, World Bank, 2016.

Excerpt

[Excerpt: Index for the Final Report: “Inclusive Cities and Access to Land, Housing, and Services in Developing Countries.”]

The Growing Importance of Inclusion in Urban Areas
1.1 Defining Inclusion
1.2 Measuring the Dimensions of Exclusion: São Paulo’s Exclusion/Inclusion Indicator Mapping

2. Trends Affecting Social Inclusion in Urban Areas
2.1 Demographics
2.2 Mobility and Migration

3. Infrastructure and Public Services: A Powerful Tool to Promote Social Inclusion
3.1 Rethinking the Approach to Slum Upgrading and Regularization of Informal Settlements
3.2 South Africa’s Municipal Infrastructure Grant Program (MIG)
3.3 Access to Public Services: Social Missions in the the República Bolivariana de Venezuela

4. Restoring the Social Function of Public Space
4.1 Rio de Janeiro’s Favela Bairro Program

5. Access to Land: A Critical Factor at the Core of Inclusion and Exclusion
5.1 Regularizing Tenure in Informal Settlements: Impacts on Social Inclusion
5.2 Impacts of Property Registration on the Inclusion of Informal Settlers
5.3 Integrated Projects to improve the Living Environment: The Role of State Agencies 16
5.4 Egypt’s Informal Settlements Development Facility (ISDF)

6. The Erosion of Inclusive Options for Affordable Housing
6.1 Affordable Housing and Spatial Segregation in Chile
6.2 Looking to Rental Markets as Instruments of Inclusion

7. Generating Revenues to Finance Urban Improvements: Land-Based Financing
7.1 Cuenca’s Improve Your Neighborhood Program

8. The Right to the City
8.1 Implementing the Right to the City in Brazil
8.2 National Legislation and Local Implementation: Colombia’s Policies of Decentralizing the Improvement of Lower Income Settlements
8.3 An Emerging Urban Agenda in the Middle East
8.4 Recife, Brazil (ZEIS)

9. NGOs and CBOs as Strategic Partners in Driving the Implementation of Inclusionary Programs
9.1 Grassroots Initiatives: A Rights-Based Approach
9.2 SEWA
9.3 CODI, Thailand

Concluding Remarks
References
Appendix 1: Indicators of Urban Exclusion and Inclusion in São Paulo, Brazil
Appendix 2: Property Tax and Registration in Middle Eastern Countries
Appendix 3: Statistical Appendix
Appendix 4: Resources

See related I2UD projects below

Project Year:	2014-2016
Project Type:	Research Paper
Geographic Regions:	^{Latin America and Middle East / Venezuela / Recife and São Paulo, Brazil / Chile / Colombia / Mexico / Syria / Egypt / Morocco / Tunisia / South Africa / Thailand}
Reports:	Inclusive Cities: Final Report, February 2016) — Inclusive Cities: (Workshop Presentation, January 2014) Inclusive Cities: (Final Draft, April 2014)
Authors:	^{Sheelah Gobar; Warren Hagist; Maren Larsen; Dr. Mona Serageldin;}
Sponsors:	The World Bank
Categories:	Informal Settlements and Urban Upgrading

ID:	2014_04_001

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“Inclusive Cities and Access to Land, Housing, and Services in Developing Countries,” Urban Development Series: Knowledge Papers, February 2016, No. 22. World Bank’s Social, Urban, Rural & Resilience Global Practice, 2016

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“Development Corridors and Urban Development Strategies” and “Slum Improvement Strategies and Social Inclusion,” Presentations by Dr. Mona Serageldin, 11th United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, São Paulo, Brazil, 2004

Abstract

Dr. Mona Serageldin authored a presentation, “Development Corridors and Urban Development Strategies,” for the 11th UN Conference on Trade and Development in June 2004 held in São Paulo, Brazil. Her speech addresses the challenges affecting urban management and development at national and local levels.

Additionally, Dr. Serageldin presented a slide presentation on “Slum Improvement Strategies and Social Inclusion” on a panel titled “Metropolitan Policies, Urbanization and Regularization of Informal Settlements” at the 11th UN Conference. This presentation details a case study from South Africa, reviewing slum upgrading efforts, details of national expenditures, and housing patterns. Photography depicts people and neighborhoods, economic enterprises, and housing in South Africa. Continues with detailed images of people, neighborhoods, city housing and housing density in urban places from around the globe.

Excerpt

[Excerpt: “Development Corridors and Urban Development Strategies,” pages 1, 2, 4-5.]

1.0 Positioning Cities in the Increasingly Complex and Competitive Global Economy
“Europe took an early lead in exploring the urban configuration that would result from unification and economic restructuring. The French National Planning Agency produced, in the late eighties, a landmark study ranking cities according to indicators of strength in the high-tech and high-value added sectors. The resultant diagram delineated the major economic regions and growth nodes in Western Europe. The main transportation corridors linking the larger centers, act as the backbone of the system, structuring networks of interlinked cities and channeling development along their alignment.

1.1 Structuring Development Corridors
Throughout the decade of the 90’s, globalization reshaped patterns of production, leading to the emergence of interlinked clusters of entrepreneurial businesses working through strategic alliances. Looking at Montpellier, France and the region around the technopole as an example shows that each economic cluster has its own pattern of spatial interconnections and dispersion based on functional, physical and virtual links. Technological innovation and fierce international competition are constantly reshaping these patterns, adding and eliminating whole categories of businesses and redirecting the flows of private investment to new and more advantageous locations.”

….

2.0 Coping with unprecedented mobility and large migratory flows
“Attempting to slow the growth of the metropolitan areas in order to divert population and activities to lagging regions is ill advised. Such policies have met with little success at a very high cost to the nation. Their wisdom is to be questioned at a time when unprecedented mobility has multiplied the capacity of the larger centers to contribute to the development of by-passed regions and economically distressed areas. Commuting from surrounding villages and towns, migration from rural areas and small provincial towns, lifts people out of poverty and contributes to channeling large flows of remittances to these lagging regions.”

Project Year:	2004
Project Type:	Presentation
Geographic Regions:	São Paulo, Brazil
Reports:	Development Corridors and Urban Development Strategies (URBIS Report, 2004) Slum Improvement Strategies and Social Inclusion (URBIS Presentation, 2004)
Authors:	Mona Serageldin
Sponsors:	^{11th United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, June 2004, São Paulo, Brazil}
Categories:	Informal Settlements and Urban Upgrading

ID:	2004_06_001

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“National Urban Policies in Arab States,” Regional Assessment and Case Studies on NUPs in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Sudan, 2014

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“Sustainable Improvement Strategies for Lower Income Urban Communities,” Upgrading Policy Plans for Amman and Aqaba (Jordan), Cairo (Egypt), and Karachi (Pakistan), 1990

Abstract

In 1990, the Unit for Housing and Urbanization undertook a project, “Sustainable Improvement Strategies for Lower Income Urban Communities,” focusing on upgrading strategies for low-income neighborhoods in Amman and Aqaba (Jordan), Cairo (Egypt), and Karachi (Pakistan).

The project was in collaboration with the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDC) in Jordan and the Department of Community Health at the Aga Khan University in Karachi. Co-funded by the Ford Foundation and UNICEF, the study assessed projects in Jordan and Egypt that demonstrated successful approaches to improving environmental quality in urban neighborhoods.

The assessments focused on determining the potential for empowering lower income households to improve their economic conditions and living environments through the provision of appropriate infrastructure services. In Karachi, the Unit funded a survey of low-income communities (see “Issues Checklist”).

Documents include an Overall Summary of the study components, and a Working Paper on “Sustainability of Public Spaces” prepared by Howard Trett for the Unit in December 1990. Following are three Full Reports by region: “Sustainable Improvements for Low-Income Communities” — with a Pakistan Component, an East Wahdat and Jofeh Amman, Jordan Component, and Amman, Cairo, and Karachi Components.

Supporting documents are an outline of the Research Agenda, a quality of life “Issues Checklist for the Reassessment of Common Spaces,” and a Background Report on HUDC Municipal and NGO Support Options for urban development assistance to the studied regions.

Excerpt

[Excerpt: “Summary of Overall Study Components,” p. 1-2]

PROBLEM DEFINITION
“The World Health Organization estimates that 5 million deaths and 2 to 3 million cases of permanent disability are caused yearly by contaminated water, poor sanitation, air pollution and overcrowding. The cumulative impact of these conditions is the most severe for children in low income urban neighborhoods. It is estimated that a child born in a squatter settlement is 40—to-50 times more likely to die before the age of five than a child in an industrialized country. According to the UN, efforts to alleviate these conditions through conventional upgrading and sites-and-services projects, has reached only ten percent of the urban poor. This investment has been concentrated in 150 projects which sought to achieve replicability through lower standards and higher levels of cost recovery.”

“These projects, which necessitate central government subsidies in one form or another, are increasingly becoming unaffordable to nations burdened by heavy foreign debts at a time when decentralization policies are shifting the responsibility of providing services to local governments.”

“Municipalities in developing countries are attempting to cope with their new obligations by redefining their land development strategies, reorganizing their institutional structures and finding new methods of generating the financial resources necessary to provide and maintain urban services.”
…
“The ability of local government to respond to needs, and the effectiveness of the responses are linked to the capability to formulate and implement affordable improvement strategies which are also sustainable without a continuous infusion of public resources.”

PROJECT GOAL
“The research project seeks to identify, define and test strategies and methods to enable government authorities with private sector participation, to develop sustainable approaches to upgrading and maintaining urban environments in limited income communities. Special emphasis will be placed on defining strategies which have beneficial impacts on the quality of life for children and youths.”

PROJECT OBJECTIVES
– “Identify and select pragmatic approaches to sustaining environmental quality in low-income urban neighborhoods with particular emphasis on the needs of children and youths.

– Identify, select and define appropriate monitoring and evaluation criteria to appraise prevailing levels of urban environmental quality including health and sanitary conditions.

– Develop guidelines for sustainable improvement programs to be implemented by public authorities and non-government organizations.

– Train public officials and members of community organizations in assessment techniques and implementation of action programs for improving and maintaining environmental quality.”

See related I2UD projects below

Project Year:	1990-1992
Project Type:	Policy Plan
Geographic Regions:	Amman and Aqaba, Jordan / Cairo, Egypt / Karachi, Pakistan
Reports:	Summary of Overall Study Components Summary of Cairo Sustainability and Community Management of Public Space (Reassessment Study and Field Test) Full Report on “Sustainable Improvements for Low-Income Communities, Pakistan Component” (October 1991) Full Report on “Sustainable Improvements in Low-Income Communities: Reassessment Phase of Assessing Sustainability in East Wahdat and Jofeh Amman, Jordan” (September 1992) Summary of “Sustainable Improvement Strategies for Lower Income Communities: Amman, Cairo and Karachi Components” (March 1991) Progress Report on “Sustainable Improvement Strategies for Lower Income Communities: Amman and Cairo Components (May 1991) — Preliminary Outline of Research Agenda Issues Checklist – Reassessment of Common Spaces Background Report: HUDC Municipal and NGO Support Options
Authors:	^{John Driscoll; Mona Serageldin; Howard Trett; François Vigier;}
Sponsors:	^{Ford Foundation; UNICEF;}
Categories:	Informal Settlements and Urban Upgrading;

ID:	1990_01_001

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“The Development and Morphology of Informal Housing,” Research Paper, Published with Aga Khan Award for Architecture Seminar Proceedings, Dr. Mona Serageldin, 1988.

Abstract

Dr. Mona Serageldin authored this research paper in 1988 for the Unit for Housing and Urbanization at Harvard University, published as part of the proceedings of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture Seminar on the “Architecture of Housing” held in Zanzibar, Tanzania in October 1988.

The paper relates the history of housing development processes (1950s-1980s) in the Middle East, North Africa and East African regions, in cities including Tunis (Tunisia,), Damascus (Syria), Cairo (Egypt), Zanzibar (Tanzania), and Sana’a (Yemen). It compares the makeup of circumstances and populations, and describes housing units in each location — covering design and construction, with requirements for designing suitable housing units.

Excerpt

[Excerpt: I. Background: Mona Serageldin]

“The involvement of architects and planners with housing for lower income groups began in the 50’s and 60’s when national governments in the post colonial era embarked on slum eradication programs. Slum dwellers were to be rehoused in public housing estates. To the designers of these first projects, the overriding concern was decent shelter and sanitary conditions and not affordability. That their vision was influenced by prevailing international norms was the natural outcome of their professional training. Their failure to foresee the implications of demographic and economic trends over the next 2 decades invalidated their approach. Their efforts were overwhelmed by population growth, surplus labor, and an influx of rural migrants which could not be checked.

“Throughout the 60’s housing shortages increased and slums proliferated. Frustrated authorities turned to legislative controls, a politically expedient short-term remedy. The longer term impacts were devastating. Stringent controls accelerated the deterioration of the regulated stock, distorted private production, undermined the tax base, hampered residential mobility and warped occupancy patterns.

“The low cost shelter solutions advocated in the 60’s and 70’s produced a variety of expandable core housing prototypes to meet the needs of the urban poor. They were valid models in parts of Africa and Asia where the process happened to coincide with local practices as in Khartoum and Dakar. Elsewhere, the lack of enthusiasm among housing authorities for these approaches stemmed from an accurate perception of their unsuitability as a housing solution for the middle classes, the only client group of political consequence. Leverage and funding from international agencies launched projects in many countries which otherwise might have never experimented with minimal shelter programs. The improvements provided were on a scale too small to be meaningful in relation to the magnitude of the problem or noticeable in the midst of sprawling chaotic cities. By the mid 70’s their demonstration effect had lost its significance.”

“The shock waves in world economics and the resultant movements of labor and capital transformed the character of urban growth throughout the third world. By 1981, 15 million expatriate workers funneled between 25 and 35 billion dollars of foreign exchange back to their home countries. As the bulk of these remittances found their way into real estate, the urbanized area of cities doubled or tripled in extent shaped by uncontrolled housing construction on an unprecedented scale. Functionally defective and aesthetically chaotic environments became the dominant feature of cities, those annual rate of expansion of 4% to 7% outstripped the capacities of municipalities to provide urban services. As a result, their efficiency was impaired and there has been a sharp deterioration in the quality of life.”

See related I2UD projects below

Project Year:	1988
Project Type:	Research Paper
Geographic Regions:	^{Cairo, Egypt / Damascus, Syria / Tunis, Tunisia / Sana’a, Yemen / Zanzibar, Tanzania}
Reports:	The Development and Morphology of Informal Housing: (Mona Serageldin, September 1988)
Authors:	^{Mona Serageldin; Samir Abdulac; Oussama Kabbani; Richard Khan;}
Sponsors:	^{Aga Khan Award for Architecture}
Categories:	Urban Planning

ID:	1988_09_001