The periurban interface in the metropolitan context

1

• The peri-urban interface in the metropolitan
  context
• Julio D Dávila
• Development Planning Unit
• University College London
• Regional Workshop for Sub-Saharan Africa and Arab
  Region
• Nairobi, Kenya, 7 and 8 March 2005

2
Case study areas

• Chennai
• Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
• Giza, Egypt
• Milpa Alta, Mexico City
• Tuy Valley, Caracas, Venezuela

3
Rationale for the project focus

• Why concentrate on water?Approx. 20 of the
  worlds population lacks access to improved
  water supply and approx. 40 lack access to
  improved sanitation
• Pressure on metropolitan areas Large consumers
  of water putting pressure on natural resources
  and on equitable access to those resources
• Role of peri-urban areas areas of great
  importance for the conservation and management of
  vital resources for urban and rural development
• Governance The demand from different sectors on
  the use of resources generates conflict between
  different actors demanding a common framework for
  action

4
Some features of the peri-urban interface in
metropolitan areas 1

• The PUI is where urban and rural activities meet
• Definition of urban, rural, peri-urban (or
  semi-urban) often vague, shifting, subject to
  perceptions
• Implications of political and administrative
  definitions and changes in these (e.g. upgrading
  or degrading of townships creation or abolition
  of metropolitan areas) fiscal and human
  resource electoral managerial

5
Some features of the peri-urban interface in
metropolitan areas 2

• B. In environmental terms
• A heterogeneous mosaic of natural, agrarian
  and urban eco-systems
• Affected by material and energy flows demanded
  both by rural and urban systems
• Close relationship between socio-economic and
  environmental processes

6
Some features of the peri-urban interface in
metropolitan areas 3

• C. Dynamic and socially economically
  heterogenous
• Often subject to rapid change (e.g. land use,
  population)
• Co-existence of groups with different and often
  competing interests, as well as different
  practices
• Constant change makes difficult to create stable
  and legitimate long-term institutional structures

7
Some features of the peri-urban interface in
metropolitan areas 4

• D. Political and institutional fragmentation or
  even vacuum
• Issues of definition and perception have
  administrative, fiscal and human resource
  implications
• Roles are often ill-defined or non-existent
• Conflict between customary and non-customary land
  tenure and water rights
• Private appropriation of large (and
  environmentally valuable) spaces without adequate
  state regulation (gated communities, golf
  courses, quarries, forests)
• All this requires a new conceptual and
  methodological framework

8
Processes of change in the PUI
9
Water and sanitation

• Inadequate urban supplies in the world 173
  million lack improved water (6) 403 million
  lack improved sanitation (14)
• Past 20 years shift from a concern with
  technical improvements to the institutional
  aspects of service delivery and access
• Consensus about state unable to supply services
  on its own
• Search for processes of cooperation among agents
  rather than competition

10
Overview of the five metropolitan area/regions
under study
Source based on Dattatri (2004a), El-Hefnawi and
Aref (2004a), Cariola and Lacabana (2004a), Kombe
and Lupala (2004a) and Torregrosa y Armentia et
al. (2004a).
11
Governance and management of water and
sanitation systems in the PUI

• Focus on technical organisational dimensions,
  at the expense of political, cultural
  environmental dimensions
• Deleterious long-term effects of supply-led
  policies providing networked services often with
  inadequate pricing policies
• Case usually made for limited government
  intervention (merit goods, market failure),
  private service provision and use of market
  principles
• Alternative forms of provision/access (community,
  informal) discouraged
• Regulation crucial to privatisation, but State
  often too weak
• The poor are rarely disaggregated (gender,
  ethnicity, age, location)
• Little/no attention to peri-urban context

12
Urban governance

• The sum of the many ways individuals and
  institutions, public and private, plan and manage
  the common affairs of the city. It is a
  continuing process through which conflicting or
  diverse interests may be accommodated and
  cooperative action may be taken. It includes
  formal institutions as well as informal
  arrangements and the social capital of citizens
  (UNDP, 1997)

13
Cooperative vs. hierarchical governance of WSS

• Governance not viewed simply as good
  government, but as a complex set of interactions
• We argue for a society-centred approach to
  governance which looks at the co-ordination of
  the various forms of formal and informal types of
  public-private interaction
• Agents (public, private, community) seen to
  cooperate and compete around WSS
• The rest of the workshop uses the somewhat
  artificial division between these three