Keywords

The world urban population has been growing rapidly over the past fifty years. Over the next decade, two-thirds of the demographic expansion in the world’s cities will take place in Asia. By 2020, 2.2 billion of the world’s 4.2 billion city dwellers will live in Asia. Nine out of the ten largest megacities and fourteen out of the top twenty megacities of the world are already in Asia. Population growth in intermediate and small-sized cities is even faster. Africa too is urbanizing rapidly. By 2050, Africa’s population will more than double, from 1.2 billion to more than 2.5 billion.

Urbanization has contributed to economic development though expanded economic opportunities. However, it has also led to increasing urban poverty and inequality, deteriorating quality of urban environment and unequal access to urban services such as water supply and sanitation, shelter, waste management, energy, transport, and health care. Specifically, slum household suffer from insecure land tenure, unreliable power supply, intermittent water availability, insufficient treatment of wastewater, flooding, and uncollected garbage. In view of the above, the need for equal access to economic and political opportunities in cities and to urban services was recognized in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development endorsed by the World’s Heads of State and Government. The Agenda consists of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), including SDG11 to promote inclusive, participatory and resilient cities, SDG 16 on accountable institutions and justice and SDG 5 on gender equality (UN 2016). The New Urban Agenda adopted by the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (HABITAT III) endorsed the central role of cities and urban governance in achieving inclusive and sustainable development.

This chapter presents main conclusions and policy implications of collaborative studies on how processes of participation, accountability and transparency in local governance affect access to urban services in cities, especially for marginalized groups. It is based on research conducted by a group of national research and training institutions in nine cities in five Asian countries—India (New Delhi and Bangalore), Indonesia (Bandung and Solo), China (Chengdu), Vietnam (Hanoi and Ho Chi Min City), and Pakistan (Lahore and Peshawar)—as well as concept papers by leading scholars on access, participation, accountability and gender equality and a regional review of access to urban services in Africa. These conclusions and policy implications are also informed by regional dialogues organized with the support of the Swedish International Center for Local Democracy (ICLD). This chapter discusses key issues and implications that were applicable across countries and cities.

1 Deficits in Urban Services and Citizens’ Perceptions

There are alarming deficits in urban services in Africa and Asia (Chaps. 7–12 in this volume). National reviews, household surveys of the residents of slums and squatter settlements in Asian cities and regional survey of urban areas in Africa also show an increasing dissatisfaction of urban residents about performance of national and local governments in terms of access to urban services.

Deficits in access to urban services are the highest in Africa (Rocca and Fernandez 2020).

Electricity: In 2016, 75.7% of sub-Saharan Africa’s urban population had access to electricity which is much lower than 98.1% in South Asia. Nine African countries with lower than 50% access were Burundi (49.7%), DRC (47.2%), Sierra Leone (46.9%), Malawi (42.0%), Central African Republic (34.1%), Liberia (34.0%), Chad (31.4%), Guinea-Bissau (29.8%) and South Sudan (22.0%).

Sanitation: In 2015, 41.7% of sub-Saharan Africa’s urban residents used at least basic sanitation services compared to 82.0% at the global level; and 7.4% of sub-Saharan Africa’s urban population practiced open defecation compared to 0.2% in the Middle East & North Africa region and 2.2% globally.

Waste Management: About 50% of the collected waste is disposed of through uncontrolled landfills; 15% is processed through unsafe and informal recycling.

Housing: In 2014, 55.3% of sub-Saharan Africa’s urban population lived in slums (compared 30.4% in South Asia), with three African countries with more than 90% of their urban dwellers living in slums: Sudan (91.6%), Central African Republic (93.3%) and South Sudan (95.6%).

Urban transport: Because of lack of affordable and accessible alternatives, most urban trips in Africa are still made by foot or bicycle.

Citizen perceptions indicate high level of dissatisfaction of urban dwellers about overall performance of central and national governments in terms of access to urban services. The 2018 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG), for examples, shows a growing citizen dissatisfaction in terms of provision of some of the most essential public services. Satisfaction with Education Provision and Satisfaction with Basic Health Services, two Afrobarometer-sourced perception-based indicators, have shown a negative trajectory over the past ten years (−9.0 and −6.7, respectively). Of the 34 African countries for which data was collected, only 11 have improved their score in Satisfaction with Education Provision, and 14 have experienced an improvement in Satisfaction with Basic Health Services (MIF 2018).

The UN HABITAT Report on The State of Asian and Pacific Cities 2015 shows exclusion of a large percentage of the urban population from access to urban services (UN HABITAT 2015). For example, in 2012, the number of urban residents living in slum conditions in Asia was 35% in Southern Asia. In the Least Developed countries of the region, less than 15% of the urban population relies upon unimproved sources of drinking water (with the exception of Lao (UN HABITAT 2015). In nine countries of the region, the share of urban population relying on unimproved sanitation facilities (e.g. septic tanks, pit latrines, buckets and open defecation) ranges from 53 to 34%. In ten countries, 0% of wastewater is treated. In other ten countries, it ranges from 5 to 19%. The urban household use of solid fuels for cooking in ten countries in the region ranges from 91 to 18%.

There are wide variations in the extent of deficits in urban services among the Asian countries examined in this study. In China, improving public services has been the focus of governments in during transition to state-led market economy and mechanisms for service delivery have undergone significant changes. The Municipality of Chengdu, for example, invested heavily in improving such services as public safety, transportation, food and drug safety, ecology and the environment, health care, compulsory education, recreational activities, legal services, and agricultural security. This is reflected in satisfaction of urban dwellers as shown in surveys undertaken in Chengdu as well as selected low-income settlements (Qin and Yang 2020). Yet, low-income floating migrants lacking local urban household registration (urban hukou) do not have adequate access to services as a result of their household registration (hukou) status. Vietnam too has achieved high levels of access to urban services including almost 100% to electricity, 67% for clean water and sanitation, and 90% in primary education. Household survey results show high level of satisfaction with the government programs (Chap. 11). As in the case of China, Vietnam’s residence-based social policy (Ho khau) has also created many barriers for migrants and other marginalized groups to access urban services including water and sanitation, health, education, and other socio-political rights enjoyed by permanent residents.

In India, 70.6% of the urban households are covered with tap water; 19% either have no toilet within their premises or defecate in the open; and 13% households have no bathing facilities within the home. These conditions are worse in the slums where 17.4% of the urban population lives. Household survey of selected slums in Delhi and Bangalore showed very low level of satisfaction with the overall performance of different levels of government, including quality of services, transparency, and gender sensitivity (Kundu 2020).

In Pakistan, the household survey in selected slums and squatter settlements in Lahore and Peshawar showed high levels of deficits in access to services as well as low level of the satisfaction of the residents about over-all performance of government related to different aspects of service delivery (Javed and Farhan 2020). The survey shows that only 52% of respondents have access to safe drinking water, 42% to community level sanitation and waste disposal, 58% to primary health care facilities, 76% to education, 47% to food, 65% to electricity and 42% in terms of restrooms. In terms of overall assessment of respondents about institutional features of local governance, 57% of the respondents think that politicization of service delivery is high; 41% respondents said that corruption is high; nearly half thought that work efficiency of local government departments and equity in resource distribution is low; Other aspects of overall performance that were rated low by respondents were transparency of activities (81%), responsiveness to special needs of marginalized groups (83%), quality of service (40%), and resource mobilization capacity (43%).

The case studies in Asia show that access to urban services can be improved in both multi-party democratic systems as well as one party systems as long as, among others, citizens are engaged at the local level, decentralization policies and programs are clearly designed and implemented, public officials at the local level are accountable and sufficient investments are made to improve living conditions of residents of low-income urban settlements. Local political context, however, determines mechanisms and processes of citizen engagement, local accountability and fiscal and political decentralization.

2 Factors Influencing Access to Urban Services

Chapters 2–12 in this book show that there are a number of factors that have influenced successes and failures in effectively coping with access to urban services for residents of slums and squatter settlements: local government resources and capacity; agency overlaps and coordination; local participatory mechanisms; accountability and transparency; access of migrants, women and minorities; replicating innovations and good practices; information and communication technologies; and peri-urbanization. The chapters have attempted to provide a road-map to influence urban policies and programs to ensure equitable access to urban services for inclusive development.

2.1 Local Government Resources and Capacity

Distributing resources equitably to urban local governments and strengthening their planning and management capacity are essential for ensuring access to urban services.

Cities in Asia are financially dependent on higher tiers of government that control the bulk of tax revenues and are often reluctant to share with urban authorities—despite the strained budgets and unmanageable service loads that come with increasing urban density. In a contemporary governance context, the need for problem solving and interaction across actors, agencies, levels of government, and sectors means there must be mechanisms for resources to flow to the urban local governments that are best situated to identify and respond to deficits in services. Equally important is the need for more investments to strengthen planning and management capacities of local governments.

In Asia, four different approaches to urban decentralization have been adopted to expand powers and capacity of local governments.

In India, for example, political powers have been decentralized to local governments through constitutional amendments. In practice, however, the ability of urban local governments to raise resources continues to be weak. This requires capacity development programs to make local governments as catalyst for urban development in cities and towns (Kundu 2020).

The “big bang” decentralization in Indonesia has transformed the central-local relations. The policy is aimed at improving public services, increasing community participation and ensuring the accountability of local governments. It has led to greater weight to devolution than deconcentration, shift from vertical to horizontal responsibility and the provision of increased allocation of funds from central to local governments (Salim and Drenth 2020).

Through the 1980s and the early 1990s, China implemented a series of reform to decentralize its fiscal system so as to provide more incentives for local governments to promote economic growth. As Qin and Yang (2020) point out in Chap. 9, it led to local governments accounting for 51.4% of the national expenditure in 2006. China’s remarkable economic performance since 1978 has been attributed in part to the country’s fiscal system.

In Pakistan, the 18th Amendment has decentralized numerous important Ministries previously held by the Federal Government. The Amendment provides a legal framework for the structural reshaping of the state into a decentralized federation, with the Provinces, the second tier of the federation, taking over legislative and policy making power in key areas such as health, education, and social welfare. However, local governments, the third tier of the Federation, still suffers from inadequate resources and capacities due to reluctance of Provinces to decentralize powers to local governments (Javed and Farhan 2020).

Urban local governments in African countries also face obstacles related to their powers and resources, their capacity to provide urban services, and effectively implementing decentralization policies and programs to bring government closer to citizens. Africa’s sub-national government revenues, both as percentage of total public revenues and of GDP, are the second lowest after the Middle East & West Asia region (Rocca and Fernandez 2020). However, as Rocca and Fernandez (2020) point out in Chap. 12, there are some good examples such as the Inter-Governmental Relations Framework Act (Act 13 of 2005) in South Africa which provides for collaboration among different levels of government through specific mechanisms to settle intergovernmental disputes; capacity development programs in Liberia and Ghana; and ensuring performance in public service through the use of performance contracts between the central government and local governments in Rwanda. In 2017, Tanzania devolved 21.8% of public revenues to its subnational governments, followed closely by Uganda and Mali (18.2% and 14.0%, respectively). The African experience suggests that disaggregated data (e.g. by area, gender, age, income, employment status) at the city level are essential to design, monitor and implement pro-poor policies and programs that can reach the residents of low-income urban settlements. For local governments are to succeed in “leaving no one behind”, policy makers and planners avoid the “tyranny of averages” (MIF 2018).

At macro-level, resources and capacities of urban local governments have been influenced by decentralization policies adopted by government around the world. With the evolution in thinking about development and governance and the rapid pace of democratization, the concepts and practices of decentralization too have changed over the past few decades (Cheema and Rondinelli 2007).

In developing countries, debates over the structure, roles, and functions of government focused on the effectiveness of central power and authority in promoting economic and social progress. Decentralization efforts, thus, focused on deconcentration of government functions from central to local levels and delegation of some of the functions to semi-autonomous development authorities and enterprises. The second wave of decentralization beginning in the mid-1980s broadened the concept to include political power sharing, democratization, and market liberalization, expanding the scope for private sector decision-making. During the 1990s, decentralization was seen as a way of opening governance to wider public participation through the organizations of civil society. With democratization of the political systems, governments were pressured to decentralize by political, ethnic, religious, and cultural groups seeking greater autonomy in decision-making and stronger control over national resources. In Africa, for example, the tribal minorities and economically peripheral ethnic groups sought decentralization of decision-making (Mawhood 1993). Pressures for decentralization increased partly due to the inability of central government bureaucracies to effectively deliver services (Smoke 1994).

To position cities better to provide services efficiently and equitably, reform agendas should prioritize the devolution of financial resources and authority to cities, investments in urban social economies and local enterprises, and implementation of participatory budgeting processes. Reform should also focus on securing tenure for slums and squatter settlements, and working with other progressive cities and non-governmental organizations to scale up service delivery and access programs.

2.2 Agency Overlaps and Coordination

To ensure access to urban services, institutional arrangements in cities should be restructured to promote collaborative governance and inter-agency coordination.

A large number of entities and agencies are responsible for providing urban services in Asian cities. These include urban local government, offices of national ministries and departments, offices of state (sub-national) governments in federal systems, semi-autonomous government organizations providing infrastructure, civil society organizations, and the private sector. The management of urban services in Asia often suffers from lack of coordination, as sectoral departments (e.g. health) of central government based in cities compete with urban local governments. This is one of the factors for “bureaucratic dysfunction” that impedes access of citizens to urban services (De Jong and Monge 2020). As Kundu (2020) argues in Chap. 8, one of the factors negatively affecting access to services is a lack of coordination among multiple agencies from the national, state and local levels to perform their tasks, leading to roads and pavements dug up and remade several times and delayed agency responses to service delivery in slums.

There is a critical need for institutional alignment, particularly with regard to land-use allocation and regulation and developing a risk-reduction orientation in planning around disaster management and climate change adaptation. Challenges to coordination at the policy level include the absence of legal, regulatory, and institutional systems; fragmented mandates; and haphazard and sprawling urbanization complicated by ambiguous urban boundaries. Promoting better coordination is the major task to ensure marginalized groups’ access to services. Furthermore, urban planning and organizational coordination can help integrate a broad array of interests within and beyond the city scale for policymaking and implementation.

Multi-stakeholder partnerships are also essential to promote a coherent approach to provide urban services and infrastructure. As Dahiya and Gentry (2020) argue in Chap. 4, government, business and civil society have their respective overlaps, weaknesses and assets in terms of service delivery and access. Therefore, Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) with active engagement of civil society can promote collaboration and coherence in providing urban services and infrastructure. Important features of successful PPPs are: individual champions who can serve as drivers to bring different individuals from various organizations to forge partnerships to achieve shared objectives; creating “partnership space” in different contexts based on shared rewards, and shared investments; and the establishment of different structures and processes ranging from fully public to fully private with varying degrees of civil society engagement in accordance with the tasks to be undertaken. Another mechanism is for government to work with private sector service providers in a manner that allows two or more private firms to compete against each other in different parts of a city, thereby providing incentives to perform better than the competition.

To enable innovative institutional arrangements and reorientation of policy and practice necessary to promote access to city services, countries need to formulate coherent national urbanization frameworks; streamline institutional roles, responsibilities, and coordination both horizontally and vertically; and strengthen collaborative governance in urban local governments with the engagement of civil society. Equally important is the need to pursue public-private partnerships for providing services; organize local communities; and establish flexible models for post-disaster resilience.

2.3 Local Participatory Mechanisms

Local participatory mechanisms, including elected local governments and engagement of civil society, are essential to get local stakeholders fully engaged in service delivery and access.

As cities grow in population and wealth, the burden on service delivery increases and ensuring adequate access becomes increasingly important. Local governments and municipal service providers can be ill equipped to work with residents and civil society organizations to meet this growing demand in an inclusive fashion. In low-income and most middle-income nations, reducing most of the deprivations associated with urban poverty depends on changes in approach by city and municipal governments. Most of the measures needed to address such deprivations in urban areas fall within the responsibilities of local governments, even if these governments so often lack the capacities to meet them. One key aspect of the needed change in approach is shift in local government relations with their citizens living in informal settlements and working in the informal economy.

If we review the examples of where local governments have changed approaches and become more successful at reducing poverty and providing better service delivery and access, four paths can be identified—although in many cities, there is evidence of more than one path.

The first is through democratization and decentralization within national government, so urban governments get more power and resources and structures that are more accountable and transparent—for instance as mayors and city councils are elected. This is most evident in political and financial devolution in Indonesia and India’s 73rd and 74th amendment that specified roles to be played by community based organizations and women in local organizations. These changes were certainly driven by citizen pressures and demands and urban poor organizations and movements had considerable importance in this.

The second path is from changes in local governments (and governance) driven by the organizations formed by urban poor groups. These include specific local examples such as a group of waste pickers and recyclers negotiating a contract with the local government so they become part of the formal waste management system, a savings group formed by homeless women who negotiate a plot of land on which they design and build homes, and partnerships formed between the police and resident committees in informal settlements to provide policing there.

The third path is the government-led provision of basic urban services within a highly centralized political system led by one party. In Vietnam, for example, public services are provided by “public service companies” and “state non-business organizations”, which are established under state agencies such as the government Ministries, Departments, and People’s Committees. Similar pattern is followed in China.

The fourth path is proactive roles of national and urban local governments in engaging local communities in the process of planning, monitoring and implementing service delivery and related local urban development programs and projects. In Indonesia, for example, “Musrenbang” is a tool for participatory development. It refers to the process of community discussion about local development needs. This bottom-up process is participatory in nature as it attempts to give communities a voice and a chance to influence the development planning that will be implemented. The process was introduced to replace Indonesia’s former centralized and top-down government system. The Regional Development and Empowerment Program in Bandung is aimed to increase the community participation in the development process. It is implemented by the entire local government organization and through community institutions.

To sustain partnerships with local governments, urban poor’s organizations need to be established and policymakers should be prepared to deal with what are often slow processes that do not produce perfect outcomes. Even when senior government officials are supportive of partnerships, promised support for initiatives can take a long time to come—or face unexpected blockages due to vested interests at the local level.

2.4 Accountability and Transparency Mechanisms

Local accountability and transparency mechanisms are needed to promote effective service delivery and access.

Effective accountability in local governance is the single most important vehicles for establishing a country’s economic and social priorities within the scarce resources to ensure that benefits of government’s initiative and local development programs reach urban residents, especially of slums and squatter settlements. There is no simple formula for the proper sequencing of accountability enhancement activities. Sequencing should be developed in response to the particular constraints identified. Sequencing of reforms should be designed to enhance the credibility of the leadership, to ensure early tangible results and to strengthen the constituency for accountability reform.

Local government accountability should not be viewed in isolation, but as part of the broader issue of governance and public management. The international community’s recognition in the late 1990s of the corrosive effect of inadequate accountability at the all government levels is a logical extension of the link between governance and development created earlier in the decade. While progress has been made in a number of areas toward local government accountability with the establishment of public sector budget frameworks, much remains to be done to enhance and sustain these reforms.

What can be done to better achieve these outcomes? One mode of reform is targeting more equitable distribution of resources in cities through developing collaborative approaches between citizens and municipal governments. Such collaborations should be premised on building new capacity and political will to reform outdated practices. The poor and marginalized citizens should be directly engaged in planning processes to better understand their needs and the most appropriate delivery mechanisms for providing essential services.

Many aspects of poverty reflect exclusion from government processes, whether within a democratic or authoritarian state. In some cases, such exclusion is related to the fact that the residents of informal urban settlements may not be entitled to be on the electoral roll, as they might lack a legal address or the required documentation. But the core problems are more substantive. As an outcome of the deficiencies in provision for essential urban investments and services, clientelist relations between politicians and local communities are commonplace. Such relations may deliver some public investments or services that partly address needs—for instance communal water taps may be installed, and concrete pathways provided, but such investments do little to address the scale of need. The outcomes of these relations do not provide long-term comprehensive investment because clientelism is based on managing resource scarcity in the interests of the political elite and, in some cases, government officials.

One of the prominent approaches to combine citizen involvement and state accountability in delivering public services is participatory budgeting (PB) which started in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil and spread throughout the world. PB can facilitate citizens’ access to information and voice their needs and demands, ensure that citizen needs and public services can better match each other, and enhance well-being of people. As Blair (2020) in Chap. 2 argues, participatory budgeting can serve as an engine for accountability. He uses as a lens the World Bank’s principal-agent model of state accountability for public service delivery. He discusses relationship between participatory budgeting and social accountability, and its implementation in Kerala and some of the other Indian cities. He argues that PB has been successful in Kerala but its implementation has not been sustainable in other Indian cities and that essential ingredients of success of are strong state support, CSO engagement, competitive politics and educated populace.

Other Asian countries have also promoted transparency in local governance. In Indonesia, for example, the introduction of elected local governments and mayors after decentralization of government and access to information legislation provided an institutional framework for transparency. Specifically, several mechanisms and tools have been used to ensure that local leaders and public officials are transparent in providing services. They include website of government agencies such as Provincial Development Planning Agency, presence of government agencies on social media, Bandung Planning Gallery and Information Management and Documentation Office.

There are a number of instruments of accountability and transparency that can facilitate access to urban services: local leadership commitment to accountability and transparency, effective anti-corruption bodies, and transparent and accountable systems of public procurement. Other instruments are participatory budgeting and auditing, engagement of civil society in local decision-making, right-to-information legislation, and the promotion of ethics and integrity among local public officials at all levels across public agencies.

2.5 Access of Migrants, Women and Minorities

One of the core issues in access to services is addressing challenges faced by marginalized groups including migrants, women, and minorities.

Urbanization in Asia has led to an unprecedented diversity and social change including different forms of social exclusion in cities and towns of the region. For every international migrant, there are many domestic migrants (UNDP 2016). Yet, greater humanitarian assistance tends to be offered to those crossing international borders. Even if one is solely concerned with international migration, it should be remembered that a large proportion of international migrants begin as domestic ones, as crossing borders is sometimes a consequence of a failure to integrate into new domestic host communities. Urbanization represents the most widespread form of voluntary internal migration. Most commonly, rural youths are drawn to the excitement and perceived opportunities of urban life, relocating to cities and sometimes sending remittances to rural families.

Migrant workers constituting the majority of China’s floating migrant population, for example, are low-income residents. Because they do not enjoy access to urban minimum living allowances as a result of their unique legal status, their situation is more dire than is the case for a city’s local low-income residents. Migrant workers in China totaled 280 million in 2016, of which 110 million were specifically migrant workers from within a given province, while 170 million of them were migrant workers from outside a given province. These urban poor are at the bottom of the society, left behind in the accelerating achievements since the Chinese opening reforms of the late 1970s (Qin and Yang 2020). They are to this day facing the risk of being further marginalization due to the institutional and structural mechanisms that leave them at a disadvantage.

The household registration system in Vietnam, which was used as a tool for social control in the pre-1986 period, proves to be one of the major barriers that discriminates migrants from non-migrant population (Thanh et al. 2020). The general social exclusion and isolation of migrants from rural areas is evident in several ways: difficulties in finding employment, low and unstable income, poor living arrangements, home sickness, poor healthcare and labor exploitation.

The volume of migration is significantly higher in Delhi and Karnataka than in many other cities in India because of availability of better employment opportunities, educational institutes, health and other facilities (Kundu 2020). In case of tenure status, the percentage share of house ownership among the non-migrant households is expectedly higher (62% for urban India in 2002) than migrants (14.6% for urban India in 2012). Similarly, the percentage share of the non-migrant households who owned toilet facility was higher in comparison to migrant households in 2002. In 2012, 11.2 and 3.9% of migrant households in Karnataka and Delhi had no drainage facility at their living place.

Gender equality is focus of the Sustainable Development Goal #5 in the 2030 Agenda for Development. As Björkdahl and Somun-Krupalija (2020) argue in Chap. 5, the need is to translate global ideas into local practices. However, this continue be a challenge in different local and national contexts. Based on their review of the global framework to implement SDG5, and case study of Bosnia and Herzegovina, they analyse institutional mechanisms and tools to change perceptions and behaviour, mainstream gender equality processes, and cooperation for gender equality. They argue that obstacles to the implementation of SDG #5 include inadequate political will, lack of adequate funding to implement relevant activities, inadequate awareness of SDGs, patriarchal structures and instruments, and ineffective strategies for gender mainstreaming.

Asian countries have adopted various policy instruments to promote engagement of women in political and economic activities—including electoral quotas for women in Pakistan, gender mainstreaming through administrative and legislative reforms in Cambodia, and mobilization of political support to cope with gender discrimination in Indonesia. Family Hope Program in Indonesia, for example, is a social protection program that involves conditional cash transfers to very poor households that have a pregnant or breastfeeding mother, and/or children aged 0–18. The recipients of the program receive help on the condition that the children go to school, go to a clinic when necessary and the recipients ensure that the children and pregnant mother have adequate nutrition and a healthy lifestyle. The goal of the program is to break the cycle of poverty that many poor families experience because they cannot afford health services and education for their children.

After the devolution of women’s development to the provinces under the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan, the Punjab Commission for the Status of Women was conceived as an oversight body to ensure policies and program of the government to promote gender equality in Punjab. The Punjab government has launched various programs for the systematic inclusion of women in all tiers of governance and economic life. The Commission’s objectives are stated to be the elimination of discrimination against women in all forms and the empowerment of women.

Yet, access to urban services continues to be an issue of serious concern in low-income urban settlements. Widowed, separated and unmarried single household women in urban India, for example, are economically poorer and live in precarious conditions. Level of asset ownership among women is either absent or negligible. Most women in these categories who participate in economic activities are reported to draw income from informal sector work, characterized by job insecurity, low and irregular wages and poor working conditions. Women tend to engage as casual wage labors with extremely low payments or are self-employed in petty business.

The way forward must include strengthening mechanisms to enable the genuine participation of all segments of the population including migrants, women and minorities in the co-production of public services and urban planning, the evaluation of public policies and decision-making, and in ensuring the accountability of governments at all levels. Desirable results in relation to equity include development and integration of methods for citizen dialogue, handling complaints and securing the participation of women and vulnerable groups. Community mapping and participatory budgeting result in more informed and appropriate budget allocations and have been a vital tool in addressing critical needs of all groups in cities.

2.6 Replicating Innovations and Good Practices

Cities have been laboratories of experimentation, innovations and good practices to improve service delivery and access. Recent surveys have highlighted a number of innovations and good practices in terms of their content, rationale and impact on urban residents.

In Chap. 2, De Jong and Monge (2020) discuss innovations that have dealt with “bureaucratic disfunction” and improved access to urban benefits in cities. To empower people to access elementary education in Mumbai, for example, the Balsakhi program for remedial elementary education worked to deal with the entrenched inequalities in the Indian education system. An NGO, Pratham, in collaboration with municipal governments, hired women from local urban communities to teach basic skills to children in upper elementary school who still needed help with their reading and math. Due to this, the costs were kept low and community was engaged. The Balsakhi method was easily replicated and spread to 20 cities in India, leading to improvement in children’s learning.

In Quezon City, the Philippines, in 2016 the city hall passed a law establishing a fine of up to 200 US dollars and jail sentences of up to a year for sexual harassment in public spaces. To generate support in the process of program design and implementation, the initiative was launched in partnership with UN Women and women’s groups, community groups, and training of frontline workers such as policemen. Also, a media and awareness campaigns were launched about the impact of fear on women’s mobility.

To bring services closer to citizens, the Bahia State Government in Brazil established Citizen Assistance Service (SAC) Centers, which were designed as “one stop shops” in partnership with federal, state, and municipal agencies as well as private companies. These centers were located in shopping malls, public transportation centers and low-income neighborhoods to make it easier for citizens to access services. The Centers improved relations between state authorities and citizens and led to a new level of professionalism in access to public services. This innovation was adopted in 22 out of 26 states in Brazil as well as in Portugal and Colombia.

Another approach to examine innovations and their replication is to focus on different aspects of sustainable and inclusive development: (1) leadership, new competencies and changing mindsets of public servants at all levels; (2) institutional and organizational arrangements; (3) partnership building and people’s engagement; (4) knowledge sharing and management; and (5) digital transformation (Alberti and Senese 2020).

For example, in Colombia “Cambia Tu Mente…Construye Paz (change your mind… build peace)” promotes dialogue among members of rival gangs to change the mindset of young people in neighborhoods of Manizales to address armed conflict. The initiative provides support from public and private entities such as employment and university placements. In Singapore, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) emphasizes consultations with stakeholders in public and private sectors, and in-house capacity building programs to create a culture of data driven and evidence-based decision-making. With new skills and techniques of data analytics, the URA staff have been able to collaborate with more agencies, enabling them to strengthen the culture of digital planning and partnerships. The provincial government of Chungcheongnam-do Province, Korea, created an online fiscal information system on its website to strengthen the disclosure of its revenues, budget, expenditure and settlement information to the public. Fifteen local governments in the province signed an agreement to disclose their current revenues and expenditures including information on all contract methods, and parties. This initiative promoted transparency and accountability in urban development. Melbourne, Australia is promoting innovations across the city by engaging the community residents, workers, businesses, students and visitors to design, develop and test the best ways to live, work and play in Melbourne. In the Netherlands, the City of Amsterdam has invested in public-private partnerships, which has allowed the city to be transformed into an open source urban lab, where new solutions aimed at improving the quality of life for citizens and tourists are developed.

A number of innovations in service delivery and access have emerged in Pakistan over the past few years. These include: Lahore Waste Management Company which signed an agreement with the Lahore City District Government to plan, implement and manage different public-private partnership programs to provide solid waste management services to Lahore City; Government of Punjab has developed an ICT based system of “Citizens Feedback Monitoring Program CFMP” which works on a simple mechanism of reaching proactively to all the users of public services; and Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi which is community designed and managed urban sanitation project in one of the largest low-income settlements in the world.

Replicating any of these good practices and innovations in service delivery and access entails major shifts—from small pilot projects to widespread implementation or from one aspect of the governance process to the systemic level. This poses many challenges, including the opposition of various groups with vested interests in the status quo, lack of political support at national and subnational levels, and local power structures that often impede the implementation of equity-oriented service delivery initiatives. There are, however, several ways to promote the replication of innovations. The first is to ensure that the content, process, and results of the innovation are regularly documented and disseminated among stakeholders—especially the decision-makers at local and national levels. Other approaches include training and capacity development programs to educate stakeholders about the content and process of an innovation, identification of constraints and opportunities to promote replication, and mobilizing the support of champions of an innovation to build consensus about the need for replication at systemic level.

2.7 Information and Communication Technology

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) can help provide effective solutions to challenges of service delivery and access.

Information and communication technology (ICT) is used to enhance quality, performance and interactivity of urban services, to reduce costs and resource consumption and to improve contact between citizens and government (Goldsmith and Crawford 2014). Smart city applications are developed to manage urban flows and allow for real-time responses. For example, the Integrity Pact of Seoul Metropolitan Government was designed to ensure transparency in procurement. The Public Record of Operations and Finance (PROOF), for example, was launched in Bangalore, India in 2002 to monitor the financial performance of the City Corporation in Bangalore. The Bandung Command Center was launched by Bandung City Government in Indonesia, to monitor the conditions of the city including traffic congestion and street vendors and reviewing bureaucratic performance in making decisions. The Center is connected with the city surveillance (CCTV) cameras installed in 80 strategic locations. In 2015, Municipality of Surakarta, Indonesia, launched a public complaint service with a website-based electronic system called the Unit Layanan Aduan Surakarta (ULAS) to improve government performance through a web-based complaint system, increasing the effectiveness of services to the community, which enabled the community to monitor the response of the government unit to a complaint (Salim and Drent in Chap. 7).

A number of “smart city” initiatives have emerged in both the developed and the developing countries. The use of ICT and smart city methods and approaches have gone through three phases: “smart cities 1.0” which is technology driven such as Songdo in South Korea and the on-line service delivery system in Singapore; smart cities 2.0 which is led by city leadership but is enabled by technology solutions such as Rio’s initiative to create a sensor network to reduce the role of landslides in hillside favelas (slums), the Integrity System in Seoul to promote on-line procurement and combat corruption and the Dengue Activity Monitoring System in Lahore, Pakistan to combat the deadly infectious disease; and smart cities 3.0 in which citizens are partners and are fully engaged such as in Medellin to promote growth with equity and social inclusion.

Smart city initiatives are taking place at two levels. The first level is specific project or service such Beijing’s Monitoring Devices and Equipment for City’s Drainage System with Central Control Panel for analysis and decisions; and Shanghai’s Smart Education Data Center. The second level aims to transform the city to use ICT solutions to cope with all urban challenges including the environment, service delivery and access, public safety, sustainable livelihoods and transportation system. Beijing is leading the efforts to apply technology in operationalizing the smart city principles in such areas as transportation, electronic medical records, and the environment and security systems.

In China, the concept of Smart Cities and a Smarter Planet has been developed since around 2008 when underlying technologies including RFID sensors, wireless connectivity, electronic payments, and cloud-based software services enabled new approaches to collaborative solutions for urban challenges based on extensive data collection. Urban infrastructure projects, including significant Smart City elements in their construction, have been implemented since 2010. In January 2013, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) formally announced the first list of national pilot Smart Cities. By April 2015, there were over 285 pilot Smart Cities in China, as well as 41 special pilot projects.

The Government of Gujrat in India launched the School Mapping—Innovative use of GIS Technology in Access to Education in order to ensure universal enrolment and retention in schools. The State also introduced the Migration Card initiative to track students who were migrating along with their parents for seasonal employment. The main objective was to avoid dropout and ensure the continued education of children during the period of migration. Participatory budgeting was initiated in Pune in 2006 for citizens to directly make suggestions to the urban local bodies for projects, developmental work or any other civic services enhancement. Public Grievance and Redressal System was launched with the aim to strengthen service delivery mechanisms in urban local bodies in Karnataka through enhanced community participation in governance. Through this mechanism, citizens can register their grievances and as well as track the progress of redressal (over the internet or through a phone call) using a complaint number generated by the “Helpline” at the time of registration of grievance. The Provincial Government of Punjab in Pakistan has developed an ICT based system of “Citizens Feedback Monitoring Program CFMP” which works on a simple mechanism of reaching proactively to all the users of public services.

Initiatives like these give cities tools to cope with urban challenges including environmental management, service delivery and access, public safety, and ensuring sustainable livelihoods and safe and efficient transportation.

2.8 Peri-urbanization

Peri-urbanization is a burgeoning issue in access to services for the urban poor. It can be defined as the process of transition and change from rural to urban. It is often attributed to urban population growth, price of rural vs urban land, mixed land uses, availability of labor, and to various forms of public policy interventions related to economic and employment structures, dispersal of manufacturing and spatial development. There are many definitions of peri-urbanization, reflecting the degree of emphasis on one or more of the above attributes.

Peri-urbanization, and planning practices to respond to this phenomenon, can be examined from three broad perspectives, as Johan Waltjer argues—spatial, functional and drivers of change. The spatial dimension emphasizes the transition or interface between cities and agricultural areas. The functional dimension focuses on uses and activities of space that trigger economic and social change. The third perspective emphasizes such drivers of change as investments and land use (Woltjer 2014).

Peri-urban areas occupy large portions of the national landscape in Asia and Africa and are home to hundreds of millions of people. Rural to urban migration without the residence registration system in China and Vietnam and proliferating peri-urban settlements in India and Indonesia have led to rapidly increasing population in these areas. One of the key challenges for urban planners and development practitioners is to effectively manage this physical, economic and social transformation to ensure inclusive and sustainable urban development. African experience, for example, shows that urban planning that does not reflect existing realities within a city results in social disparities and marginalizes the urban poor from spaces with roads, regular power supply and adequate infrastructure and amenities (Rocca and Fernandez 2020).

The growth of population in peri-urban areas can be attributed to low cost of agricultural land for shelter, interests and priorities of industry as sources of materials for urban life, and local governments to use these areas for infrastructural and industrial development programs. In Southeast Asia, for example, the expansion of peri-urban areas is taking place mostly beyond the core of the cities. The main determinants of peri-urbanization in the region are auto-centered transport systems that have transformed urban mobility, and hinterland acting as a resource frontier providing such inputs as water, food, building materials, labor, and land. In China, one of the reasons for the expansion of peri-urbanization and urban sprawl has been the tendency of local governments to convert agricultural land to urban uses to earn revenue from land sales and leases which has also benefitted developers and villagers.

Peri-urban areas are often characterized by marginalization, inequality, and exclusion. Specifically, they face enormous deficits in access to urban services and are often dumping grounds for various kinds of urban waste from city centers, leading to health risks. Depending upon the country context, a number of factors constrain their access to urban services. For example, their jurisdictions are sometimes undefined, resulting in institutional fragmentation and lack of coordination among sectoral agencies often organized for rural or urban functions. Furthermore, lack of comprehensive urbanization including fringe zones policy, low capacity of local government and local offices of government agencies to cope with social service delivery, and weak mechanisms for citizen engagement severely constrain access of residents of peri-urban areas to services.

To bring about change in peri-urban areas that leads to inclusive development, urban planners and development practitioners need to focus on establishing stakeholder partnerships with the private sector and other organization and formulate development strategies from a holistic perspective. To ensure access to services, the need is to change administrative boundaries and jurisdiction to formalize peri-urban areas as units of government and administration; strengthen the financial, administrative, and technical capacity of local governments in peri-urban areas; identify mechanisms for inter-regional coordination and inter-sectoral integration; and promote the process of citizen engagement in local-level planning and management. Another way forward is to support positive economic, social, and environmental links between urban, peri-urban, and rural areas by strengthening national and regional development planning.

3 Conclusion

Developing countries have many challenges and opportunities in establishing urban local governance systems that are participatory, accountable and transparent but are also effective in improving access to services for all segments of the urban society. Despite alarming deficits in urban services in Asia and Africa, cities provide opportunities to promote positive economic and political change through variety of ways they have been built and managed within the national context. This chapter has identified eight sets of factors and institutional reforms at national and local levels to fully utilize the potential role of cities in promoting political and social inclusion and access of residents of low income urban settlements to urban services: local government resources and capacity; inter-agency coordination; participatory mechanisms; accountability and transparency; engagement of women, minorities and migrants; innovations; information and communication technologies, and peri urbanization. At the global level, Sustainable Development Goal 11 and the New Urban Agenda have provided a framework and a road map for actions by national and local governments to promote inclusive and sustainable cities. The future of cities is in urban local governance reforms and experimentation with what works, realizing no one approach or blueprint will work everywhere, and that ongoing social learning will always be necessary as urban centers evolve.