Abstract
This chapter focuses on providing the theoretical and contextual framework regarding urbanization, the complexity of urban development and the importance of urban governance in addressing urban issues and challenges. The concept of rapid urbanization with its impacts and consequences such as informal settlements is explored with a focus on developing countries and mid-sized cities, especially in Asia. The related concept of urban governance including its technical, political, cultural and institutional dimensions are disentangled, argued as a necessary component of urban management given urban governance is a wider and more encompassing concept than ‘government’. The chapter argues that the role of urban governance in providing basic urban services in developing countries is complex and multidimensional, cutting across key planning and management constructs such as formal, informal and hybrid governance arrangements. In many contexts, urban governance has co-evolved from formal arrangements led by the government, with local nuanced urban governance emerging from local stakeholders devising and using their own innovative planning, development, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.
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Notes
- 1.
Urbanization is defined as ‘growth in the proportion of persons living in urban areas’, which includes urban area expansion (Stilwell 1995), population increase and increasing economic and social activities (Firman et al. 2007). Other literature suggests seeing urbanization as ‘a force that has changed ways of thinking and acting, ways of using space, lifestyles, governing, and solving disputes, social and economic relations, and consumption and production patterns’ (New UN Urban Agenda 2014, p. 3).
- 2.
Developed countries experienced urbanization in several ways: by economic growth, increasing population in urban areas and social development in and surrounding the cities (McGee 1991). Cities have replaced agricultural regions as a centre of economic production and attracted more population to move into the cities for jobs and better incomes. An increasing number of migrants reside in the growing cities, especially in city centres. Urbanization has also detached the social life of urban residents from farmland and the embedded values which emphasize communal arrangements. Urbanization has prioritized the importance of housing proximity to the centres of production and has highly valued competitiveness and individualism (Ibid).
- 3.
The Economist: A Summary of the Liveability Ranking and Overview August 2016.
- 4.
A mid-sized city, often called an intermediate city, is an urban area which is rapidly progressing in terms of developing urban structures.
- 5.
Globalization is defined as ‘the process of expansion and deepening of the global market for commodities and goods, finance and services, which was greatly facilitated by the rapid development of transportation and communication technology and later by trade liberalisation’ (see Willis 2005 in Firman et al. 2007).
- 6.
Physical elements within informal settlements express the nature, drivers and processes that develop on-site over time in specific contexts. These include: houses types/styles, access ways/connectivity, building materials/fabric, public/private interface and the role of setbacks, service and infrastructure and ‘order’ which includes governance, rules and regulations.
- 7.
The word village in this context emerged from the British colonial period as it embedded European values, norms and perceptions on indigenous residents often forced to live in ‘colonial’ settlements. The definition of a village implies an imperative and coercive effort to control and maintain order upon the colonies and their defined contained settlements. These include resettlement of native people to places so called a ‘village’ constructed by colonial authorities, as well as imposing negative perceptions on the socio-cultural and economic matters carried out by local people, to suppress the idea of independency and self-esteem.
- 8.
Government provides several functions in terms of governance (Stoker 1998, p. 24), including: ‘(de)composition and coordination; calibration and steering; integration and regulation’. However, Stoker (1998) emphasizes the difference between government and governance in terms of the imposition of rules and regulation as well as mechanisms deployed in the system. Government has more rigid, decisive, and coercive approaches in its system. While governance as a ‘governing mechanism’ is ‘… not imposed and resulted from interactions of multiplicity of governing and each other influencing actors’ (Kooiman 2003). Governance also allows the development self-governing networks as a self-organized system that comprises different actors, which is more informal compared to the government structure.
- 9.
The actors and organizations include:‘… local councils, neighbourhood councils, mayor and aldermen, urban district coordinators, higher level co-government, civil service departments, ombudspersons, audit committees, housing corporations, welfare organizations, community work agencies, municipal advisory councils, chambers of commerce, residents’ organizations, neighbourhood management companies, individual citizens…’ (Hendriks 2014, p. 557).
- 10.
Aspects of institutional dimension including (World Bank 1991): public sector management, the legal framework, expenditure on defence, institutions, participatory approaches and human rights. The emphasis is on the effectiveness of public service delivery, whether it cover all elements of the society. Healey (2004) states that the institutional dimensions of urban governance are not those structured in formal organizations, hence are the ‘…values, norms and ways of acting which shape the realm of collective action—the relations between citizens, the regulation of individual behaviour in relation to wider social norms and the organization of projects of collective endeavour’ (p. 92).
- 11.
There are several issues regarding informal governance, including the low level of internal accountability (Stoker 1998). As the networks consist of members of various interests and backgrounds, they will aim at achieving their particular objectives rather than overall networks.
- 12.
Heylighen (2010) defines the term ‘agents’ to represent molecules, cells, organism, individuals, organizations or society at large.
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Suhartini, N., Jones, P. (2019). Urbanization and Urban Governance in Developing Countries. In: Urban Governance and Informal Settlements. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06094-7_2
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