WHAT IS THE CHALLENGE?

In many countries, urban governance systems are currently unfit for purpose and need critical reforms to enable sustainable and inclusive urban development. They have institutional frameworks that prevent urban governments from fully delivering on their responsibilities through inadequate decentralization, insufficient resources, poor capacity and weak frameworks for engagement with residents, civil society and other key stakeholders. Most countries, especially in the Global South, also suffer from ill-defined distribution of responsibilities between different levels of governments, leading to the duplication of roles and gaps which can lead to institutional wars. The net effect being that common citizens suffer from poor public service delivery and they end up procuring these services from informal, expensive yet unsafe channels. These ineffective multilevel governance arrangements also compromise planning processes, risk backlogs in budget spending, lead to higher transaction costs and create wider economic inefficiencies, as well as compromising the principles of transparency and accountability. Community engagement and participation in public-decision making needs to promote more productive and inclusive interactions to better include women, youth, ethnic minorities, migrants, the urban poor and other disadvantaged groups such as people with disabilities in decision-making processes. Furthermore, inequalities, insufficient access to basic services, lack of decent housing, job insecurity and informality also continue to shape spatially fragmented and socially segmented cities while the expansion of metropolitan areas and the burgeoning gap between them and intermediary cities pose serious challenges to urban governance.