Urban Governance for Poverty Reduction and Social Development: Tools, Techniques and Good Practices

This Fourth Asian Mayors’ Forum and Regional Workshop focused on the exchange of tools and best practices for poverty reduction and social development in urban areas using case studies of participating cities. It was recognized that cities are confronted with new challenges such as rapid urbanization, economic globalization and an information revolution. As a consequence, new urban problems are emerging. The nature of these challenges and problems may vary from city to city, but many basic issues are similar. Local governments, municipalities and civil society are looking for new answers to those challenges and problems. Alone and in partnerships they try new approaches. Some cities havefound innovative solutions for their problems and translated them into good practices and procedures. There is an ever growing pool of knowledge about innovative approaches to urban problems. It is obvious that other cities may be able to learn from the experience gained.

For this reason the Fourth Asian Mayors’ Forum was initiated. In addition to sharing their experiences, they also discussed what support cities need to replicate or adapt the experiences made and how to upscale the positive practices. The knowledge about best practices and sometimes also less successful approachesis underutilized as it is not sufficiently analyzed and shared among interested parties. Regional networks and international organizations have launched programs to promote good practices, however dissemination of those cases is still at an early stage.

Accordingly the objectives of the Forum were to:

• Identify critical factors for the success of good practices (components, conditions, actors and key lessons)
• Identification of opportunities for replication and upscaling of good practices (constraints, support required and roles and responsibilities)
• Discussion of role of partners in implementing, replicating and up-scaling of good practices such as central governments, NGOs, training organizations or international organizations
• Designing of a knowledge management system for the replication and up-scaling of good urban practices across cities, countries and cultures

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