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An Urban Monitor as support for a participative management of developing cities
2 Participation and information management for the implementation of good
governance
2.1 Urban good governance
« Governance is defined as the way of exerting power in the social and economic resources
management of a country for the development. And good governance, following the World
Bank, is synonymous of judicious management of the development » (World Bank, 1992).
At the beginning of the nineties, the state of development after a decade of structural
adjustments is not satisfactory, even disastrous in several African countries. The main reason
2 Republic of Senegal : loi portant code des collectivités locales du 22 mars 1996.
invoked is not having taken into account all the institutional and social factors that are
influencing the implementation of macro-economic policies. The strategy of adjustments is
then refocused on the complementary implication of the governments, which should create the
favorable conditions for the neo-liberal reforms. It follows three focuses: offer an efficient
public service, establish free trade rules and correct the economic and social crisis.
The observers of the development have established the complementary strategy of good
governance 3 following the principle of double negation 4 . Starting from empirical analysis, the
symptoms of bad governance have been analyzed: bad public service management, lack of
legal framework or its arbitrary application and lack of information and transparency.
Two paradigms complete these analyses: the first one can be called the political
liberalization. It postulates that the political participation, the democratic systems and the
economic and social development are reinforcing each other mutually. The second assumes
that a strategy centered on the society is more efficient. It is based on the idea of social groups
representative of their members, which are establishing and negotiating the policies. They can
be identified as the economical and political stakeholders groups, the professional and
employer’s associations, and the community associations.
On these bases, the good governance proposes an agenda of measures to be implemented in
parallel with the structural adjustment, which should improve the conditions of development.
Evan if the new agenda is not definitively set, it can be synthesized in five points: good
management of public services, constitutional state, political liberalization, participation and
information, and economical liberalization.
2.2 Systems of actors: the unavoidable participation
Beyond the leading policies, it is interesting to focus on the implementation of an effective
management of the development. In the particular context of urban areas in developing
countries, it clearly appears that the management of the system of actors governs the efficiency
of all the processes in term of urban management. It is neither the town executive, focused on
politics, nor the administrative services, with their sector-based point of view, who will have a
sufficiently complete knowledge to plan the development. It is all the political, economic and
social actors, through the extremely complex relationships they have, who are organizing the
development of the space and of the activities. In that direction, the observers are often
recognizing the limits of the planners to manage the city or the territory (Bolay, 2000,
Latouche, 2001, World Bank, 1992). Oppositely, the experiences resulting from the
collaboration of the actors of the development are presenting convincing results. This theory is
supported by Gaye (1996) who proposes the self-development of the city based on popular
initiative and good management by the public authorities; by Bolay (1995) and Friedman
(1996) who are basing the good urban management on the consideration of an actors’ trio:
authorities, intermediaries and community groups; also by UN-HABITAT who in a synthesis
of experiences (Mehta, 1997) proposes a new paradigm with the management of the
development shared between the state, private sector, NGO sector and community
representatives.
Concerning the operational plan, guaranteeing the functioning of an urban management
system requires three key conditions:
- The first one is the participation of all the different actors. Their consultation from the
first strategic planning stages until the implementation limits the risks of a later refusal
of the proposed solutions. If an efficient partnership does not have a priori established
rules, the synthesis of experiences shows that it is necessary to pay attention to the
following points: Firstly, direct implication of the citizen, through information and
consultation processes and possibilities for peoples’ initiatives. Secondly, the guarantee
of the participation of the community associations, even to the point of the co-
responsibility of the presented results. Thirdly, the decentralized authorities must be the
driving force of these partnerships; the observed trend of excluding them in favor of the
third-party organizations has generally hindered the good coordination of the different
intervention sectors and actors, as well as the adaptation of the public strategies.
- The second condition is the skills of each of the actors in his specific field. In the first
place, authorities and public administrators must have a clear perception of the interests
and hindrances in order to propose policies and ensure their implementation, in a
perspective of continuity. This requires the development of transparent and appropriate
funding systems, competent administrators, and the regulation and coordination of the
different sectors of activity. Then, the civil and private associations must also bring their
respective competences, technical or lobbying. Finally, citizenship can bring out the sum
of all the individual abilities, in particular through the popular initiative. Beyond the
specific fields, it is important to guarantee each actor access to a knowledge base that
allows the understanding of the points of view and analyses of the other actors. This
base requires large information and the specific training of some targeted actors.
- The third key condition is the development of an efficient coordination system. A
complex and efficient system is not based on the extraordinary competences of an
individual, but on the integration of the individual skills through a system of
coordination and communication. Communication must be effective at several levels,
from the technical information sharing to the consultation or negotiation processes.
2.3 Systemic modeling
In order to analyze the system of actors that manages the city, it is proposed to follow a
cybernetic analysis, on the basis of the meta-model proposed by Schwarz (1994) and its
adaptation to territorial modeling (Prélaz-Droux, 1995, Major, 1998). This approach is based
on the formalization of the joint and complementary modes of the different systems that make
up the territory, through three planes:
- a physical plane that contains the physical systems (or sub-systems), as well as the
human activities in the territory,
Fig. 1: meta-model systemic approach of the urban planning process
- a logical plane, made of communication, modeling and intervention methods in which
the relationships between the actors are central,
- and a holistic plane that represents the territory in its own identity and in its entirety.
A modeling of the city and its management is proposed in the figure 1, following this type
of approach. The physical plane contains all the components of the city: the economy, the
environment, and the social and physical realities. The logical plane is made up of the
relationships between the actors of the urban management, which are the vectors of
information transfer. For most developing cities faced with crisis situations, this relational
network is poorly structured: the spaces or mechanisms of formalized communication are
limited to some public stakeholders and through them, the transmission of information is
limited. Without any strong network for the good governance of the city, the projects and
actions of the actors are strongly independent of each other. They are often not coordinated and
not always coherent between themselves. Without any common vision of the city, of its
particular identity, and without any clear development strategy, a real city project is difficult to
formalize. But such a uniting project is essential to manage the actions towards a more
sustainable development. Therefore, working on all of the relations and on the transmission of
the information will allow this city project to emerge. According to the system modeling, the
logical plane must be worked on to let a real holistic plane appear.
2.4 Application and instruments
When the above meta-model is applied to urban management, as the one practiced in Thiès,
the resulting scheme is as presented in figure 2. The relationship network is quite unorganized
and can only transmit a limited amount and quality of information. The concept of the city
project does not exist, substituted by a strategic vision particular to each actor. Consequently,
numerous problems can be observed of inappropriateness between projects and needs (of the
populations and of the economy) and the development of informal sectors. And the public
service projects, when they are not blocked during the realization phases, are suffering from a
high failure rate.
Facing this analysis, it is essential to reorganize the urban management process on the basis
of the good governance principles and to promote a real city project, likely to motivate the
Fig. 2: systemic approach of the urban planning process applied to Thiès
actors to take part in a participative planning process and to unite the individual actions in a
coherent and sustainable way. The proposed solution is to act at two levels:
- On a better structuring of the actors’ network, through the implementation of
participative structures of exchange between the actors and through the animation of the
formalized consultation spaces.
- For a better quality of the information transmission. The potentialities given by the new
information and communication technologies are opening interesting opportunities.
Databases allow the integration of individual knowledge in an information base and its
restitution according to the demands of the actors. The uses of geographic information
systems and of aerial imaging are permitting the integration of a geographic component
in databases, necessary for land-use planning. Indicators and observatories are offering
synthesized and accessible information for the evaluation and the monitoring of the city.
These technologies have demonstrated their potential of application when sufficient
attention is paid to the interface between technology and users (who often don’t have
any technical education) and to the ease of operation and maintenance. To achieve these
aims, an interface call Urban Monitor has been developed and made available to the
actors’ network.
Figure 3 illustrates the resulting scheme of the implemented process on the meta-model.
The logical plane is strongly structured: the creation of a forum allows the formalization and
legitimatization of the relations between the actors by means of a common objective: the
elaboration of a city project.
The following chapters will present in detail the methodological process and the
instruments. Both illustrate that the relations between the actors are carrying information and
that their form, content, and distribution and communication modes evolve all along the
process. The initiated approach results in the development of a strategic plan, which is uniting
the projects of the forum. This plan is the first step toward the emergence of a real city project
that gives a collective sense to the individual actions.
Fig. 3: systemic approach of the urban planning process modified with the IMAP project
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