This paper illustrates Chapter 4 of DPU Working Paper No:163/60: Urban Public Housing Strategies in Developing Countries: Whence and Whither Paradigms, Policies, Programmes and Projects¹ that should be read together with it (DPU60 WP163)

FOREWORD

The paper reviews two prominent, but very different, examples of government support to participatory enabling (‘self-help’) approaches to the procurement of affordable urban housing, services and infrastructure by the lowest income groups, both of which are well known to the DPU, which was closely involved with both of them:

1)The Urban Housing Sub-programme of the Sri Lanka Million Houses Programme (MHP) through the conduct of extensive training with the National Housing Development Authority (NHDA) for the implementation of the sub-programme -1983-89; and

2) the Rio de Janeiro Favela Bairro programme through two evaluative research projects funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) -1999 & 2004.

Nigel Harris earlier on this website analysed what he saw – and many others also have provided analyses (notably Negri and Hardt’s notion of ‘Empire’) – of the ‘transition’ of the global economy (and maybe of life generally) over the past few decades from a series of national and regional economies to a global economic machine that States (or anyone else) have the power or the political will to control and that seems to have a momentum and direction all of its own. All national governments and, indeed, the global population, have been captured in the flow of globalization that we might say is both economic and more broadly (problematically) a way of understanding what life should be all about, as a result of the opinions and more deeply the lifestyle visions forged and disseminated by the modern media (Atkinson, 2014).

Following an inspiring life fully committed to the promotion of land reform, social justice, legal education and institutional modernisation in developing and urbanising countries, Professor Patrick McAuslan passed away on 11 January 2014, after a short illness. Through his inseparable academic and policy-making work, he left a unique legacy.

Nigel Harris wrote that the charge of “imperialism” has served the Left for a very long time as a supreme accusation against the political order of the world. The term implies not that strong States invariably try to bully weaker ones, nor that “imperialism” is just a fancy name for Washington, but that there is a world political order embodying systemic relations of domination. However, while once there might have been relatively robust theoretical underpinnings to this approach (in Lenin's popularization of the combination of Hobson and Hilferding¹), the thesis has long since been shown to be doubtful². On the other hand, imperialism's opposite, “national self-determination”, seems equally of doubtful validity in conditions of economic globalization. Indeed, these theoretical difficulties become even sharper when it is recognized that Washington, the supposed global hegemon, is itself trapped in an apparently insoluble crisis in the global economic order – the political agenda comes apart from the economic. What follows are some notes for discussion on an alternative approach to characterizing the world order.

In 2012, Adrian Atkinson published an article entitled "Urban social reconstruction after oil" in which he started with an exposé of what is being done currently to alleviate urban problems under present circumstances, focusing predominantly on the South. He then went on to expand a little on the nature of the challenges ahead before exploring ‘solutions’ that are appropriate to the real future that can be expected, post oil. The analysis here followed on from earlier expositions and speculations that he conducted from 2006 to 2008, published in a series of papers under the general title of Cities after oil (Atkinson 2007b, 2007c, 2008). This article took some of the key arguments of his previous analysis a step further.

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.

Before his untimely death in February 2014 (see Patrick McAuslan MBE, 1937 – 2014: an Appreciation (by Edesio Fernandes) Professor McAuslan reflected 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.