- Email: [email protected]
Meaning of urban management
Ciries 199411 (3) 201-20s
Reply Meaning of urban management In order for the idea of urban management to become a reality, those who would perform it must be given a clearer view of its meaning and substance. If use of the term is meant to signal a fresh approach to urban affairs, something more than the repackaging of old concepts is wanted. A new approach takes shape when emphasis is given to the exercise of responsibility inherent in the management concept, and when urban activities are identified as the objects managed. Instilling a sense of responsibility for managing, and achieving an adequate understanding of the duties which this entails, then become prerequisites to making urban management effective.
What is urban management? In his recent Cities article (Stren, 1993) Richard Stren observes that the concept is strangely lacking in content and definition and that the central core of meaning attached to it has been surprisingly elusive. His history of its use in the field of urban affairs illustrates how the phrase has served to mean many things to many people. To the World Bank. urban management was a busmess-like approach to government, one which might make more efficient and effective use of its loans, Decades earlier, it had been equated by an 4frican scholar with more effective urban government. The concern of both of these ideas was the way in which public sector organizations are operated. Sometimes urban management was seen as the implementation of policy, that is, as public administration. At other times, it was defined as implementation with a specific character which took it beyond mere administration, such as greater involvement of the private sector, or taking an active role rather than just a passive part in achievmg the development of a town. It has been said necessarily to involve progressive action and holistic, systematic thinking. Recently, urban management became a tool with which to orient governments to the urban agendas of the World Bank and United Nations, and so the concept was defined in terms of its objectives. Stren himself implies that relevance to urban planning is part of the essence of management. Altogether, his
account of the history of the concept brings to mind the fable of the blind each trying to describe an men, elephant by what little he could separately touch, hear and smell. The phrase is applied to other ideas in the literature and in professional discussions. There is urban management as project management: a concern to carry out urban projects effectively. There is urban management as development or growth management: tackling the demands of cities and towns which are expanding and rebuilding with policies for land use, structures, and service networks. It is used as a term for public finance management or for environmental management. It is there as public service management: to operate the public services which are the chief concern of local governments satisfactorily. This confusion is not helpful. Is urban management just about local government? Does it deal only with those functions usually given to urban authorities’? Must it be separated from planning? Or from policy making? If Stren is right that the confusion has served to maintain an ‘unanalysed abstraction’ which has provided the benefits of political and administrative flexibility in the short term. he is also right in suggesting the time has come to pin down the substance of urban management. The consequences of ambiguity are overshadowing whatever advantages remain. But it is not the challenge for research which is so important, as Stren concludes. A direct impact is badly needed upon the quali-
0264-2751/94/03/0201-OS0 1994 Butterworth-Heinemann
Ltd
ty of urban life everywhere, which, if it is not poor, is declining. The value of an idea called urban management lies in its ability to arrest this decline. A clear concept has practical value for current actions. For example, the Urban Management Program of the World Bank and United Nations does not have good boundaries and signposts with which to mark out what is most valuable among the experiences it has gathered, because the Program is not certain about the nature of urban management itself (World Bank et al, 1991). Moreover, it lacks a suitable basis on which continually to revise its activities. Although concern for the environment and poverty were added to the three original agenda items (land, infrastructure, and municipal finance and administration) as the Program learned by doing, it is still without an overall concept which will identify other gaps and which will strengthen the logic underpinning the priorities advocated by the Program. A clear concept might point the Program more squarely at the local economy, for instance. A clearer notion of urban management could move it high on political agendas. There is not a strongly focused public outcry for better urban management, even though it is a public service. Better performance of it can be expected if the public so demands. For this to happen, citizens must be able to conceive of this urban management service and what it involves. They must know who is, or should be, performing this service. Yet something more than clarity is wanted. Although agreement on one of the several meanings at hand can achieve clarity, the result is only to dress an old idea - such as public administration or urban policy implementation - in new clothes. Surely the application of the term management to urban affairs signals a search for something new, something additional? If not, then an important opportunity may be missed, as Stren suggests. A meaning for urban management The uses of the term in the past imply, at first, that more can be brought to
201
Repb bear upon urban affairs by combining qualities which have been separated in previous approaches, such as physical (town) planning, project management, public administration, and business organization management. Chief among these qualities are the following: Being concerned about urban affairs. Though each may have its unique preoccupation, such as the wish of the World Bank to obtain more from the projects it funds, the various parties with an interest in urban management are all driven by a desire to improve human life in settlements. It is changes in urban living which are wanted, not just changes in the behaviour of urban governments or the performance of projects. Taking a comprehensive perspective. It is common knowledge that urban matters demand this. The spread is across investment sectors, running through the several levels of public administrations and covering their various departments, involving actors and actions from the private and community sectors as well as government. It embraces policies and programmes as well as projects, maintenance as well as construction, policy formulation as well as the administration of policies, programmes, and projects, and the delivery of goods and services as well as planning and building. Pursuing objectives. Management needs reasons for its actions. Objectives define those problems and opportunities to which management gives its attention. Objectives are also essential if there is to be a basis for assessing efficiency and effectiveness. A second, more optimistic, view is that a new combination of old ideas is not all that has been sought under the flag of urban management. The word management sometimes carries with it the sense of looking after, or having concern for, or caring for. Here is the implication of a sense of responsibility, the idea that someone voluntarily takes charge. This meaning of respon-
202
sibility aims at the basis of many persistent weaknesses in efforts to improve urban conditions: actors who are not concerned beyond their assigned duties, who are not interested to coordinate with one another, who are content to perform old routines according to old agendas, who avoid taking initiatives, who ignore the difficult problems which should claim priority, and who are afraid to try. If management is about responsibility, the need for its clear definition is even greater. To be taken on, a responsibility must be recognized. Then, for there to be a continuing commitment to exercise it, the nature of the responsibility must be understood. Finally, understanding its specific requirements is essential if the responsibility is to be carried out. The confusion surrounding urban management hinders recognition by potentially key actors that the responsibilities are there to be taken on board and performed. It may well be that local governments, mired in their old attitudes and routines, are unable to respond to the call for better urban management simply because they do not know what it means to perform it. How then might a concept of urban management with all of these qualities be defined? They can be found in the idea - simply stated - that management is taking sustained responsibility for actions to achieve particular objectives with regard to a particular object. This responsibility is to determine what needs to be done, to arrange that it be done, and then make certain that it is done.
The object which is managed In business, which has provided the model for some views of urban management, the object of concern is not just the corporation’s organization, but the larger entity embracing the company’s activities which create wealth. Thus markets and sources of financing and materials are managed, along with the company’s corporate organization. Most uses of the term urban management appear, in a parallel way, to be concerned with urban life. Although it is common to relate
management to urban areas, it is not space alone that is of interest - as though urban management were some sort of urban housekeeping-but what goes on in the space of cities and towns. In that case, the object managed is the collection of activities which take place in an urban area. To the extent that government is one of those activities, and that it is also an organization which can carry out management, government can be part of this object. However, when government is seen as the totality of what is managed, urban management is limited. Then it is only organizational management. Similarly, most current applications of the term suggest management of only part of what urban management could deal with. Managing urban growth implies leaving out the needs of the city which already exist; managing public sector projects neglects policies, programmes, services, and probably all activities outside of conventional government duties. To aim urban management at development alone would seem to ignore the everyday needs of the present. And so on.
Objectives of urban management Objectives give meaning to management. Without them it is not possible to define problems or opportunities, for they establish what is wanted and why it is wanted. They determine what is of concern about the activities taking place in a city or town. They provide the measures to judge the products and progress of managing and therefore performance. There is nothing intrinsic to the concept of urban management which predetermines its objectives. Logically, good management is measured by assessing results against objectives, and it is not judged by the nature of those objectives. Consequently, the poor conditions in so many human settlements may not, in fact, be signs of bad management, because they may not actually figure in the management objectives which exist in the minds of those who govern. For example, in terms of the objectives of apartheid, the cities of South Africa were
Cities 1994 Volume II Number 3
possibly well-managed, despite the deplorable circumstances of the majority of their people. In response to the obvious deterioration of services, there has been much concern to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the urban governments who provide them. But efficiency and effectiveness do not themselves provide objectives for managing urban areas. Both beg for a purpose. Efficiency in using resources for what output? Effectiveness in achieving what with those resources? To look no further than the two is to act unquestioningly and probably means accepting the status quo. Good governance, in terms of transparency and accountability in government operations and decision making, has also been offered as an objective for better urban management. This too is not sufficient, for it fails to consider what good urban governance would work to achieve. More participation in management by the parties who make a city is advocated ;IS a means to good governance and to improve management. While the increase in transparency and accountability can work to improve efficiency and effectiveness, the concept of participation in decision making raises the question of whose interests - among those participating and not participating .- establish the purposes of efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, accountability, and good governance? Moreover, the ability of greater participation to reduce efficiency by delaying decisions illustrates how some of these objectives can be at odds with one another. There are a variety of objectives which could drive the managment of a city or town. Those of improving urban productivity, alleviating poverty, and protecting the urban environment feature in the World Bank’s Policy Paper (World Bank, 1991). UNDP advocates improvement of living conditions in the urban areas of the developing countries, especially by improving the provision of public goods and services to the growing number of poor (UNDP, 1991). These same organizations and others have called for sustainability in improvements, which in urban areas is not so much a concern for ecological sus-
Cities 1994 Volume II Number 3
tainability, but the ability to support actions continuously with adequate resources (UNCHS, 1991). Through their endorsement of such statements, most national governments - both those offering and receiving assistance - have taken public positions in support of one or another of these aims, even if such aims have not always been honoured in the actions of these governments.
Actions of urban management If urban management means taking sustained responsibility for actions to achieve particular objectives with regard to human settlements, the appropriate actions will differ from time to time and from place to place. A particular social, economic, political, and physical context will contain its own needs for action when viewed in terms of the objectives of managing the circumstances found in a city or town. Thoughtful application of these objectives can determine those actions which it is most important to perform. These are the priority actions for which good management must take responsibility. It is useful to place actions into two groups. The first - which may be called tasks - affect the activities going on in cities and towns and therefore affect the conditions, goods, and services which these activities produce. The second - which may be called processes of management - cut across and through these tasks. There is a wide range of possibilities for tasks. Take social and economic development objectives as a reference, for example. Then the key actions which must be done to sustain improvement in living conditions and in productivity are likely to include the provision of health and education services as well as water, power, and drainage. A comprehensive view of managing urban areas will usefully spread responsibility to tasks beyond the ordinary. If a local government typically feels an obligation to provide water, drainage, waste disposal, fire-fighting (and perhaps police and ambulance services), health care in various forms (including inspection of some food
processing), possibly some public transport, street lighting, building and planning regulation, and even some housing, why should a concern to manage the city not encompass those actions of other levels and agencies of government which typically include provision of education and telecommunications? Often the need to create employment is considered. Provision of electricity is a common concern so why not the general provision of energy to the city? Energy is fundamental to urban life and production. So is food. Yet ensuring their availability is rarely recognized to be a challenge requiring the attention of urban management. Virtually no effort is made to ensure adequate present and future supplies of energy for manufacturing and services, nor for the unmet needs of residents, especially the large majority of poor. The provision of food is similarly neglected. This is so, even though malnutrition within Third World cities and towns is common and even when shortages of basic foodstuffs occur with regularity. These possibilities illustrate how clarity in the concept can not only define tasks but also define boundaries for responsibility which are possibly new. Processes can be present in all the tasks which circumstances may make important. They are necessary to carry out the tasks. They may be categorized as developing, operating, maintaining, providing resources, and planning. Like tasks, these processes of management can be given different degrees of emphasis in different circumstances. Unfortunately, it is common for both planning and maintenance to be neglected. Planning orients policies to management objectives and to the future; it interrelates policies so that the highest priority actions can be identified. It coordinates by scheduling tasks and arranging for the various organizations involved to act in concert. Providing resources secures commitments of money, materials, facilities, personnel and institutions to intended tasks. Developing employs some of the resources to build the physical facilities, pools of equipment and social and administrative organizations which the
203
tasks require. It sometimes, as when constructing housing, provides capital goods to urban residents. Operating uses other resources to perform services through the physical facilities and organizations created. Maintaining directs resources to nurturing personnel, physical facilities and organizations, so that they can perform continuously. Although developing can create systems and facilities capable of sustained action, proper resourcing and maintaining are critical if the tasks which bring improvements to urban conditions are to be sustained.
Responsibility The scope and depth of the kind of responsibility which takes charge will be defined by the object and objectives of that responsibility. A realm of responsibility will be encompassed which is greater than one defined by delegated powers, assigned duties, or tradition. The difference is not only in what is managed but through whom it is managed. Managing in this way is seeing that actions - the tasks and processes - appropriate to the objectives and circumstances are carried out. Those who manage need not perform these tasks and processes themselves. Although managers will have resources with which to act, their responsibilities can extend beyond to the resources and actions of others. Management can mean bringing about the performance of certain actions by others. Forcing them or controlling them are not the only ways. They can be led or guided to act; they can be persuaded, or motivated; they can be given incentives, or involved in initiatives as partners. Earlier it was suggested that a local government might, through better management, expand its concerns to the provision of telecommunications or electrical power. These days, economies of scale make a nonsense of creating a telephone system or generating electricity by a municipality. Nevertheless, a managing agency which has taken charge with the local public interest in mind can usefully set about influencing how national or regional authorities or companies provide these services in its city.
204
Responsibility for an urban area logically exists as long as the city or town itself. Actions initiated by such a management approach are wanted as long as they are needed. Responsibility thus extends to sustaining these actions. Consequently, sustainable urban management is not only continually concerned to bring about the achievement of its objectives, it is concerned that the actions necessary will be continuously carried out as long as their effects are desirable. It is taken for granted that government carries out the management of urban areas, to the extent that it is actually performed. Organizations in the private sector will not be motivated beyond profit, while those in the community sector will not pursue much more than the special purposes for which they are created. Government’s concern for the public interest is most often associated with the need for management. Yet the public sector is not a single managing entity. Partial responsibilities to manage urban functions can be found in a number of central government ministries, public service authorities and corporations, and local governments, plus, in some countries, an intermediate level of provincial governments. They will not share a unified view of management objectives for a particular urban area, and they will see different tasks as important and as having different priorities. At the same time, there are others in the private and community sectors who are actively concerned to make cities work in particular ways. They may pursue these ends independently or in partnership with one another. They use their own resources and at the same time they seek to enlist help from one another. With whom, then, does the responsibility of managing the city truly lie? The answer, of course, is: with those who take it. As defined here, urban management cannot actually be assigned. The qualities of responsibility involved must be accepted voluntarily. They go beyond legislated duties and powers. They are selfmotivating. If several agencies are motivated to attempt partial management of a city,
the result may not be as focused, coordinated, or comprehensive as if there was a single managing entity. But this may not be an urgent issue. Even though duplication and overlap occur, their objectives may be different, and who is to say which objectives are the best? Rather, it is of greater concern that there be attempts to manage in the first place, and secondly, that there be objectives which are widely acknowledged as important and towards which even incomplete or inefficient management is directed. This surely is the basic concern of efforts such as those of the Urban Management Program of the United Nations and World Bank. If so, a strategy to improve the way in which urban areas are managed should launch itself first at the failure of appropriate agencies to accept responsibility for what is taking place - and not taking place - in cities and towns. It is wrong to assume that this requirement can be skipped over.
Conclusion After many years of uncertainty, a clear meaning for the term urban management is wanted. Definition of the concept can point out the qualities which a manager must develop if the degree of management is to increase. It identifies what cities can expect and demand of their institutions. It points out where assistance can best be directed in order to foster these qualities. Chief among these qualities may be a sense of responsibility, a selfmotivating, broadly reaching concern to make the city work better by orchestrating as much as possible the various key expenditures and human efforts. To be responsible means to care that urban areas function well, as judged by chosen objectives. This is a concern which is sustained, which strives even when powers are limited and results meagre, which oversees even those relevant responsibilities which are competently assumed by others. It is a resonsibility whose first aim is to bring about beneficial actions, rather than to be the one performing these actions.
Cities I994 Volume I1 Number 3
Reply The zall for urban management can be heard as a call for someone to take responsibility for affecting activities and colrditions in cities and towns. This is remarkably different from upgrading the quality of public administration or achieving a better record of policy rmplementation, or any of the other limited concepts of urban management which now prevail. Consequently. it may be that the critical challenge in urban affairs - one which
Cities 1994 Volume II Number 3
has been overlooked - is not so much to give institutions better skills and greater knowledge, but to get them to understand and accept responsibility.
Michael Matting/y Development Planning Unit University College London
Stren, Richard (1993), ‘Urban management in development assistance’, Cities, 10 (2) 125-138 UNCHS (1991), People, Senlemenfs, Environmenf and Development, Nairobi: UNCHS UNDP (1991), Cities, People and Poverfy. New York: UN World Bank, UNCHS and UNDP (1991), Revised Prospectus, Washington. DC: World Bank World Bank (1991), Urban Policy and Economic Development, Washington, DC: World Bank
20.5
Reply Meaning of urban management In order for the idea of urban management to become a reality, those who would perform it must be given a clearer view of its meaning and substance. If use of the term is meant to signal a fresh approach to urban affairs, something more than the repackaging of old concepts is wanted. A new approach takes shape when emphasis is given to the exercise of responsibility inherent in the management concept, and when urban activities are identified as the objects managed. Instilling a sense of responsibility for managing, and achieving an adequate understanding of the duties which this entails, then become prerequisites to making urban management effective.
What is urban management? In his recent Cities article (Stren, 1993) Richard Stren observes that the concept is strangely lacking in content and definition and that the central core of meaning attached to it has been surprisingly elusive. His history of its use in the field of urban affairs illustrates how the phrase has served to mean many things to many people. To the World Bank. urban management was a busmess-like approach to government, one which might make more efficient and effective use of its loans, Decades earlier, it had been equated by an 4frican scholar with more effective urban government. The concern of both of these ideas was the way in which public sector organizations are operated. Sometimes urban management was seen as the implementation of policy, that is, as public administration. At other times, it was defined as implementation with a specific character which took it beyond mere administration, such as greater involvement of the private sector, or taking an active role rather than just a passive part in achievmg the development of a town. It has been said necessarily to involve progressive action and holistic, systematic thinking. Recently, urban management became a tool with which to orient governments to the urban agendas of the World Bank and United Nations, and so the concept was defined in terms of its objectives. Stren himself implies that relevance to urban planning is part of the essence of management. Altogether, his
account of the history of the concept brings to mind the fable of the blind each trying to describe an men, elephant by what little he could separately touch, hear and smell. The phrase is applied to other ideas in the literature and in professional discussions. There is urban management as project management: a concern to carry out urban projects effectively. There is urban management as development or growth management: tackling the demands of cities and towns which are expanding and rebuilding with policies for land use, structures, and service networks. It is used as a term for public finance management or for environmental management. It is there as public service management: to operate the public services which are the chief concern of local governments satisfactorily. This confusion is not helpful. Is urban management just about local government? Does it deal only with those functions usually given to urban authorities’? Must it be separated from planning? Or from policy making? If Stren is right that the confusion has served to maintain an ‘unanalysed abstraction’ which has provided the benefits of political and administrative flexibility in the short term. he is also right in suggesting the time has come to pin down the substance of urban management. The consequences of ambiguity are overshadowing whatever advantages remain. But it is not the challenge for research which is so important, as Stren concludes. A direct impact is badly needed upon the quali-
0264-2751/94/03/0201-OS0 1994 Butterworth-Heinemann
Ltd
ty of urban life everywhere, which, if it is not poor, is declining. The value of an idea called urban management lies in its ability to arrest this decline. A clear concept has practical value for current actions. For example, the Urban Management Program of the World Bank and United Nations does not have good boundaries and signposts with which to mark out what is most valuable among the experiences it has gathered, because the Program is not certain about the nature of urban management itself (World Bank et al, 1991). Moreover, it lacks a suitable basis on which continually to revise its activities. Although concern for the environment and poverty were added to the three original agenda items (land, infrastructure, and municipal finance and administration) as the Program learned by doing, it is still without an overall concept which will identify other gaps and which will strengthen the logic underpinning the priorities advocated by the Program. A clear concept might point the Program more squarely at the local economy, for instance. A clearer notion of urban management could move it high on political agendas. There is not a strongly focused public outcry for better urban management, even though it is a public service. Better performance of it can be expected if the public so demands. For this to happen, citizens must be able to conceive of this urban management service and what it involves. They must know who is, or should be, performing this service. Yet something more than clarity is wanted. Although agreement on one of the several meanings at hand can achieve clarity, the result is only to dress an old idea - such as public administration or urban policy implementation - in new clothes. Surely the application of the term management to urban affairs signals a search for something new, something additional? If not, then an important opportunity may be missed, as Stren suggests. A meaning for urban management The uses of the term in the past imply, at first, that more can be brought to
201
Repb bear upon urban affairs by combining qualities which have been separated in previous approaches, such as physical (town) planning, project management, public administration, and business organization management. Chief among these qualities are the following: Being concerned about urban affairs. Though each may have its unique preoccupation, such as the wish of the World Bank to obtain more from the projects it funds, the various parties with an interest in urban management are all driven by a desire to improve human life in settlements. It is changes in urban living which are wanted, not just changes in the behaviour of urban governments or the performance of projects. Taking a comprehensive perspective. It is common knowledge that urban matters demand this. The spread is across investment sectors, running through the several levels of public administrations and covering their various departments, involving actors and actions from the private and community sectors as well as government. It embraces policies and programmes as well as projects, maintenance as well as construction, policy formulation as well as the administration of policies, programmes, and projects, and the delivery of goods and services as well as planning and building. Pursuing objectives. Management needs reasons for its actions. Objectives define those problems and opportunities to which management gives its attention. Objectives are also essential if there is to be a basis for assessing efficiency and effectiveness. A second, more optimistic, view is that a new combination of old ideas is not all that has been sought under the flag of urban management. The word management sometimes carries with it the sense of looking after, or having concern for, or caring for. Here is the implication of a sense of responsibility, the idea that someone voluntarily takes charge. This meaning of respon-
202
sibility aims at the basis of many persistent weaknesses in efforts to improve urban conditions: actors who are not concerned beyond their assigned duties, who are not interested to coordinate with one another, who are content to perform old routines according to old agendas, who avoid taking initiatives, who ignore the difficult problems which should claim priority, and who are afraid to try. If management is about responsibility, the need for its clear definition is even greater. To be taken on, a responsibility must be recognized. Then, for there to be a continuing commitment to exercise it, the nature of the responsibility must be understood. Finally, understanding its specific requirements is essential if the responsibility is to be carried out. The confusion surrounding urban management hinders recognition by potentially key actors that the responsibilities are there to be taken on board and performed. It may well be that local governments, mired in their old attitudes and routines, are unable to respond to the call for better urban management simply because they do not know what it means to perform it. How then might a concept of urban management with all of these qualities be defined? They can be found in the idea - simply stated - that management is taking sustained responsibility for actions to achieve particular objectives with regard to a particular object. This responsibility is to determine what needs to be done, to arrange that it be done, and then make certain that it is done.
The object which is managed In business, which has provided the model for some views of urban management, the object of concern is not just the corporation’s organization, but the larger entity embracing the company’s activities which create wealth. Thus markets and sources of financing and materials are managed, along with the company’s corporate organization. Most uses of the term urban management appear, in a parallel way, to be concerned with urban life. Although it is common to relate
management to urban areas, it is not space alone that is of interest - as though urban management were some sort of urban housekeeping-but what goes on in the space of cities and towns. In that case, the object managed is the collection of activities which take place in an urban area. To the extent that government is one of those activities, and that it is also an organization which can carry out management, government can be part of this object. However, when government is seen as the totality of what is managed, urban management is limited. Then it is only organizational management. Similarly, most current applications of the term suggest management of only part of what urban management could deal with. Managing urban growth implies leaving out the needs of the city which already exist; managing public sector projects neglects policies, programmes, services, and probably all activities outside of conventional government duties. To aim urban management at development alone would seem to ignore the everyday needs of the present. And so on.
Objectives of urban management Objectives give meaning to management. Without them it is not possible to define problems or opportunities, for they establish what is wanted and why it is wanted. They determine what is of concern about the activities taking place in a city or town. They provide the measures to judge the products and progress of managing and therefore performance. There is nothing intrinsic to the concept of urban management which predetermines its objectives. Logically, good management is measured by assessing results against objectives, and it is not judged by the nature of those objectives. Consequently, the poor conditions in so many human settlements may not, in fact, be signs of bad management, because they may not actually figure in the management objectives which exist in the minds of those who govern. For example, in terms of the objectives of apartheid, the cities of South Africa were
Cities 1994 Volume II Number 3
possibly well-managed, despite the deplorable circumstances of the majority of their people. In response to the obvious deterioration of services, there has been much concern to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the urban governments who provide them. But efficiency and effectiveness do not themselves provide objectives for managing urban areas. Both beg for a purpose. Efficiency in using resources for what output? Effectiveness in achieving what with those resources? To look no further than the two is to act unquestioningly and probably means accepting the status quo. Good governance, in terms of transparency and accountability in government operations and decision making, has also been offered as an objective for better urban management. This too is not sufficient, for it fails to consider what good urban governance would work to achieve. More participation in management by the parties who make a city is advocated ;IS a means to good governance and to improve management. While the increase in transparency and accountability can work to improve efficiency and effectiveness, the concept of participation in decision making raises the question of whose interests - among those participating and not participating .- establish the purposes of efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, accountability, and good governance? Moreover, the ability of greater participation to reduce efficiency by delaying decisions illustrates how some of these objectives can be at odds with one another. There are a variety of objectives which could drive the managment of a city or town. Those of improving urban productivity, alleviating poverty, and protecting the urban environment feature in the World Bank’s Policy Paper (World Bank, 1991). UNDP advocates improvement of living conditions in the urban areas of the developing countries, especially by improving the provision of public goods and services to the growing number of poor (UNDP, 1991). These same organizations and others have called for sustainability in improvements, which in urban areas is not so much a concern for ecological sus-
Cities 1994 Volume II Number 3
tainability, but the ability to support actions continuously with adequate resources (UNCHS, 1991). Through their endorsement of such statements, most national governments - both those offering and receiving assistance - have taken public positions in support of one or another of these aims, even if such aims have not always been honoured in the actions of these governments.
Actions of urban management If urban management means taking sustained responsibility for actions to achieve particular objectives with regard to human settlements, the appropriate actions will differ from time to time and from place to place. A particular social, economic, political, and physical context will contain its own needs for action when viewed in terms of the objectives of managing the circumstances found in a city or town. Thoughtful application of these objectives can determine those actions which it is most important to perform. These are the priority actions for which good management must take responsibility. It is useful to place actions into two groups. The first - which may be called tasks - affect the activities going on in cities and towns and therefore affect the conditions, goods, and services which these activities produce. The second - which may be called processes of management - cut across and through these tasks. There is a wide range of possibilities for tasks. Take social and economic development objectives as a reference, for example. Then the key actions which must be done to sustain improvement in living conditions and in productivity are likely to include the provision of health and education services as well as water, power, and drainage. A comprehensive view of managing urban areas will usefully spread responsibility to tasks beyond the ordinary. If a local government typically feels an obligation to provide water, drainage, waste disposal, fire-fighting (and perhaps police and ambulance services), health care in various forms (including inspection of some food
processing), possibly some public transport, street lighting, building and planning regulation, and even some housing, why should a concern to manage the city not encompass those actions of other levels and agencies of government which typically include provision of education and telecommunications? Often the need to create employment is considered. Provision of electricity is a common concern so why not the general provision of energy to the city? Energy is fundamental to urban life and production. So is food. Yet ensuring their availability is rarely recognized to be a challenge requiring the attention of urban management. Virtually no effort is made to ensure adequate present and future supplies of energy for manufacturing and services, nor for the unmet needs of residents, especially the large majority of poor. The provision of food is similarly neglected. This is so, even though malnutrition within Third World cities and towns is common and even when shortages of basic foodstuffs occur with regularity. These possibilities illustrate how clarity in the concept can not only define tasks but also define boundaries for responsibility which are possibly new. Processes can be present in all the tasks which circumstances may make important. They are necessary to carry out the tasks. They may be categorized as developing, operating, maintaining, providing resources, and planning. Like tasks, these processes of management can be given different degrees of emphasis in different circumstances. Unfortunately, it is common for both planning and maintenance to be neglected. Planning orients policies to management objectives and to the future; it interrelates policies so that the highest priority actions can be identified. It coordinates by scheduling tasks and arranging for the various organizations involved to act in concert. Providing resources secures commitments of money, materials, facilities, personnel and institutions to intended tasks. Developing employs some of the resources to build the physical facilities, pools of equipment and social and administrative organizations which the
203
tasks require. It sometimes, as when constructing housing, provides capital goods to urban residents. Operating uses other resources to perform services through the physical facilities and organizations created. Maintaining directs resources to nurturing personnel, physical facilities and organizations, so that they can perform continuously. Although developing can create systems and facilities capable of sustained action, proper resourcing and maintaining are critical if the tasks which bring improvements to urban conditions are to be sustained.
Responsibility The scope and depth of the kind of responsibility which takes charge will be defined by the object and objectives of that responsibility. A realm of responsibility will be encompassed which is greater than one defined by delegated powers, assigned duties, or tradition. The difference is not only in what is managed but through whom it is managed. Managing in this way is seeing that actions - the tasks and processes - appropriate to the objectives and circumstances are carried out. Those who manage need not perform these tasks and processes themselves. Although managers will have resources with which to act, their responsibilities can extend beyond to the resources and actions of others. Management can mean bringing about the performance of certain actions by others. Forcing them or controlling them are not the only ways. They can be led or guided to act; they can be persuaded, or motivated; they can be given incentives, or involved in initiatives as partners. Earlier it was suggested that a local government might, through better management, expand its concerns to the provision of telecommunications or electrical power. These days, economies of scale make a nonsense of creating a telephone system or generating electricity by a municipality. Nevertheless, a managing agency which has taken charge with the local public interest in mind can usefully set about influencing how national or regional authorities or companies provide these services in its city.
204
Responsibility for an urban area logically exists as long as the city or town itself. Actions initiated by such a management approach are wanted as long as they are needed. Responsibility thus extends to sustaining these actions. Consequently, sustainable urban management is not only continually concerned to bring about the achievement of its objectives, it is concerned that the actions necessary will be continuously carried out as long as their effects are desirable. It is taken for granted that government carries out the management of urban areas, to the extent that it is actually performed. Organizations in the private sector will not be motivated beyond profit, while those in the community sector will not pursue much more than the special purposes for which they are created. Government’s concern for the public interest is most often associated with the need for management. Yet the public sector is not a single managing entity. Partial responsibilities to manage urban functions can be found in a number of central government ministries, public service authorities and corporations, and local governments, plus, in some countries, an intermediate level of provincial governments. They will not share a unified view of management objectives for a particular urban area, and they will see different tasks as important and as having different priorities. At the same time, there are others in the private and community sectors who are actively concerned to make cities work in particular ways. They may pursue these ends independently or in partnership with one another. They use their own resources and at the same time they seek to enlist help from one another. With whom, then, does the responsibility of managing the city truly lie? The answer, of course, is: with those who take it. As defined here, urban management cannot actually be assigned. The qualities of responsibility involved must be accepted voluntarily. They go beyond legislated duties and powers. They are selfmotivating. If several agencies are motivated to attempt partial management of a city,
the result may not be as focused, coordinated, or comprehensive as if there was a single managing entity. But this may not be an urgent issue. Even though duplication and overlap occur, their objectives may be different, and who is to say which objectives are the best? Rather, it is of greater concern that there be attempts to manage in the first place, and secondly, that there be objectives which are widely acknowledged as important and towards which even incomplete or inefficient management is directed. This surely is the basic concern of efforts such as those of the Urban Management Program of the United Nations and World Bank. If so, a strategy to improve the way in which urban areas are managed should launch itself first at the failure of appropriate agencies to accept responsibility for what is taking place - and not taking place - in cities and towns. It is wrong to assume that this requirement can be skipped over.
Conclusion After many years of uncertainty, a clear meaning for the term urban management is wanted. Definition of the concept can point out the qualities which a manager must develop if the degree of management is to increase. It identifies what cities can expect and demand of their institutions. It points out where assistance can best be directed in order to foster these qualities. Chief among these qualities may be a sense of responsibility, a selfmotivating, broadly reaching concern to make the city work better by orchestrating as much as possible the various key expenditures and human efforts. To be responsible means to care that urban areas function well, as judged by chosen objectives. This is a concern which is sustained, which strives even when powers are limited and results meagre, which oversees even those relevant responsibilities which are competently assumed by others. It is a resonsibility whose first aim is to bring about beneficial actions, rather than to be the one performing these actions.
Cities I994 Volume I1 Number 3
Reply The zall for urban management can be heard as a call for someone to take responsibility for affecting activities and colrditions in cities and towns. This is remarkably different from upgrading the quality of public administration or achieving a better record of policy rmplementation, or any of the other limited concepts of urban management which now prevail. Consequently. it may be that the critical challenge in urban affairs - one which
Cities 1994 Volume II Number 3
has been overlooked - is not so much to give institutions better skills and greater knowledge, but to get them to understand and accept responsibility.
Michael Matting/y Development Planning Unit University College London
Stren, Richard (1993), ‘Urban management in development assistance’, Cities, 10 (2) 125-138 UNCHS (1991), People, Senlemenfs, Environmenf and Development, Nairobi: UNCHS UNDP (1991), Cities, People and Poverfy. New York: UN World Bank, UNCHS and UNDP (1991), Revised Prospectus, Washington. DC: World Bank World Bank (1991), Urban Policy and Economic Development, Washington, DC: World Bank
20.5