Urban development in mega-cities in developing countries : potentials of citizen participation in planning and managing urban development

Abstract

Continuing urbanization and especially the growth of large cities are going to be among the most important challenges for developing countries in the future. This paper develops a model for citizen participation in planning and managing the development of mega-cities in developing countries. The approach chosen is furthering the argument that citizen participation in management and planning of urban affairs is a key prerequisite for effectively and efficiently responding to the challenges of fast growth. Any approach to management and planning within the fast changing and manifold environment in mega-cities in developing countries has to be able to accommodate a high level of complexity, fragmentation, dynamic and uncertainty; and therefore has to be flexible and adaptable in order to accommodate every mega-city s uniqueness and special changing context. The paper emphasizes that current management and planning techniques are not able to respond to the challenges properly and identifies them as part of the problem. Current techniques are suffering most from inadequate informational input, functional and departmental silos, unequal access to decision making, rigidity, are impeding civic interaction and are for all these reasons insufficient to deal successfully with their complex environment. In sharp contrast to the techniques in place, the model developed here is relying on a new approach towards urban management and planning which is envisioned as a continuous, flexible process which is open to change. In a first step the paper defines the main concepts (urban planning, management and development, as well as citizen participation and mega and world cities) and sketches their main shortcomings and problems. The following section criticizes the still mainly technocratic model of steering cities and mirrors its shortcomings with the merits of participatory urban planning. Participatory urban planning is rooted in deliberative democracy, seen from a communications theory point of view (Habermas). The following section develops a participatory planning and management model, which integrates elements of the policy cycle, different actors and functional coordination. The advantages of such a model are presented and the practical feasibility of such an approach is highlighted by the example of the participatory household of Porto Alegre (Brazil).

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