Capacity Development

Guidelines on why and how to develop integrated plans and projects were a key output from European countries participating in Habitat II in Istanbul in 1996.  Now, in the build up to Habitat III in 2016 it is useful to ask “What happened?”

The story begins in Istanbul.  At the Habitat conference in Istanbul in 1996 many member states had urban departments in their develop co-operation organizations.  During the conference they came together and decided that they should promote an integrated urban approach for development cooperation from the EC.  The result of this was an initiative to develop a policy together with guidelines on how it could be implemented.

Which should come first?   The urban development policy or the guidelines?  The practicalities dictated that it was better to first develop draft guidelines.  A team of development institutions were commissioned to develop the outline.  These included Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, in Netherlands, the Development Planning Unit in United Kingdom and  HDM at Lund University in Sweden.  I was  the  team leader,  which is why I have kept an interest in their progress.

Integrated urban development is very important.  Everyone recognises this, but it is difficult to implement.   European development aid has tended to be sectoral.  It is easier to manage large infrastructure projects than complicated integrated programmes.   The challenge was to try to develop a framework to encourage integrated “urban” approaches where synergies could be developed and conflicts minimised.  The approach had to be simple enough to be understandable, had to make sense and also had to fit with the procedures of European development aid.  Not an easy assignment!   Interestingly, during development of the guidelines it turned out that an overlapping work was being written on  urban environment.  It was agreed to integrate the two  – a rare case of  synergistic thinking and flexibility!

The draft guidelines went through a number of formats, were tested in regional workshops and in  EC projects.  They were finally made available in 2001 on  World Habitat Day.

Cover of 2001 version of the guidelines

Reorganization within EC meant that the guidelines disappeared from view.   They were re-discovered and  updated as Consultative Guidelines for Sustainable Urban Development Cooperation.  These were introduced for discussion early 2012.    The current status is no clear.   They are updated but are largely the same as the original work.  If you want to look at them they  are available for download via the above link.

I think that the guidelines still provide a very useful guide to thinking through integrated approaches, especially linking planning, infrastructure development  and governance.  They also show how to connect  these to the project cycle management used by EC and other agencies for development projects.

If you find this publication useful, or have any comments, please let me know – but  also it is very important to give feedback to EC on their Capacity 4 Dev page.  A direct link is  here.

Key diagram of the guidelines