A response by Michael Mattingly to the terms of reference provided by an international organisation for the design and delivery of an integrated training package on land governance, gender, and grassroots mechanisms.

Drawing on his experience and recent work with ILO, Adrian Atkinson reviews the underlying issues of local economic development (LED) in urban and peri-urban areas and makes the case for a re-thinking of support to local enterprise and employment, linking them directly to the macro-economic crisis approaching many cities as a result of ‘peak oil’.

Caroline Moser has published reflections and analysis of a quarter of a century’s longitudinal research on the struggle out of poverty of three generations of families’ who started life squatting over tidal mangrove swamps in Guayaquil, Ecuador. [A review article from ‘The Guardian’ (UK national newspaper) and extract from the book’s Prologue].

Continuing to manage natural resources helps peri-urban people to shift from rural to city-based livelihoods. Natural resource management can continue to be important to rural people while an expanding city or town engulfs them. Michael Mattingly and Pam Gregory present this message in the October 2009 issue of Local Environment (Vol. 4, No. 9). The article arose out of Gregory's analysis and synthesis of 10 years of research on peri-urban livelihoods that was financed by the Natural Resources Systems Programme of the UK's Department for International Development and monitored by Michael Mattingly on behalf of the DPU.

Patrick McAuslan reflects on some of the challenges and pitfalls involved in acting as a consultant in the field of law and development, with particular reference to his area of expertise of land.

In 2008, Patrick Wakely started a part-time contract with the GTZ Syrian-German Sustainable Urban Development Programme to help develop a municipal policy and implementation strategy for informal settlements (IS) in Aleppo. This is linked with the development of a broader-based City Development Strategy (CDS) also being assisted by GTZ, (German Agency for Development Co-operation, the implementing agency of the German Ministry for Economic Co-operation), and the Cities Alliance. The early stages of this on-going programme have already raised interesting issues around government, governance, decentralisation and participation in the context of a country in transition to a social market economy and administration at the national, municipal and local levels.

In International Development Planning Review (vol 31, no 1), Michael Mattingly has speculated on how land policy might reduce the negative impacts of cities on the livelihoods of peri-urban farmers who tend to be poor and especially vulnerable to change. Using the findings of 10 years of research on peri-urban livelihoods in developing countries, financed by the Natural Resources Systems Programme of the UK Government Department for International Development which he advised, he assembled evidence of how land can figure in the changes to rural livelihoods.

In November 2008, Anna Soave and Mona Khechen (DPU 2000) completed a 6-months assignment for the Aga Khan Trust for Culture / Historic Cities Programme (AKTC/HCP), funded by the Italian Trust Fund for Culture and Sustainable Development (ITFCSD), to assist the World Bank in its urban heritage-related activities in Afghanistan.

Desmond McNeill has recently published a new book, co-authored with Asun Lera St Clair, critically assessing what multilateral organisations say and do in the realm of ethics and human rights. (Global Poverty, Ethics and Human Rights: the role of multilateral organisations, 2009).

In February 2009, Patrick Wakely, Babar Mumtaz, and Sheilah Meikle conducted a series of workshops on the decentralisation of the planning, management and upgrading of informal settlements for some 40 professionals and technicians from four of the five Governorates of Greater Cairo. They also ran a parallel course of seminars for the staff of the GTZ (German Technical Cooperation) Participatory Development Programme in Urban Areas (PDP) in Egypt. Both events raised interesting issues concerning the implementation of national decentralisation policies and strategies for participation.

Seconded in 2003 by the DPU to the Aga Khan Trust for Culture / Historic Cities Programme (AKTC/HCP), Anna Soave has been working in Kabul for 5 years as an urban planner engaged in hands-on planning in the low-income and war-affected areas of the Old City, in support of AKTC’s on-going rehabilitation programme in Afghanistan.