Sustainable Cities and Communities
Since the Santa Cruz Summit, governments have
begun to channel more resources to their sub-national jurisdictions.
As a result of this, these regional and local governments can
facilitate business and community initiatives to expand and improve
services in coverage, quality and efficiency. International
technical assistance and lending programs have provided financial
support to these initiatives as well. Due to this support the
following progress has been made in the area of sustainable cities
and communities:
Economic Development
Cities have addressed the challenges of urban
unemployment with the help of the national and regional governments,
the private sector and international cooperation:
- Progress has been made in identifying and implementing new
approaches to urban management. For instance, Honduras and
Nicaragua have continued their initiatives to strengthen
municipal government, and Guatemala launched a program on local
communities' participation in development. A conference on
democratic decentralization was also held in Guatemala City in
September, 1997.
- The mayors of the Americas have periodically met over the past
few years to study issues of urban development in an integrated
manner, with the support of the OAS, World Bank, Inter-American
Development Bank and USAID.
- Local authorities in Latin America and the Caribbean are
seeking to create balanced, sustainable cities that foment the
compatibility between individual interests and collective
services. Cities such as Mendoza, Argentina, Curitiba and Porto
Alegre, Brazil, Manizales, Colombia and Quito, Ecuador have been
pioneers in their multidisciplinary and integrated approach to
city management.
- Local communities and governments in Bolivia, Honduras and
Nicaragua are helping to plan construction and maintenance
projects in urban infrastructure, and cities such as Porto
Alegre, Brazil, have been successful in incorporating different
sectors of society in the preparation of the city's capital
budget. These sorts of integrative practices are taking place in
other cities throughout the region as well.
- With the support of USAID, a three-year initiative was
launched in 1997 to support job creation, labor productivity,
microenterprise and investment in the smaller economies of the
Easter Caribbean.
Housing
Great demand for housing still exists throughout
the region. The following has been done to help alleviate this
serious housing shortage:
- Several countries and cities have expanded the types of
instruments and mechanisms available for urban land acquisition,
zoning, development and regulation. Colombia has enacted a law
authorizing cities to appropriate, as resources of the local
government, part of the increases in land values caused by
administrative decisions. In Mexico, plans have been adopted to
redistribute profits flowing from incorporation of suburban land
or adjoining rural areas into the cities among previous owners,
infrastructure financing, and environmental protection areas.
- Central American countries have undertaken programs to
facilitate access to real estate, capital markets and housing to
low-income groups. Metropolitan areas now recognize the need for
greater coordination between local and national governments in
matters of planning, urban development and environmental
protection.
Pollution Prevention and Environmental Protection
- Peru has already enacted, and Brazil, Colombia and Mexico are in
the process of enacting, laws to offer economic and fiscal
incentives and extended compliance terms for new standards to
those who abide by existing environmental regulations.
- Bilateral and multilateral development agencies have developed
new principles and operative models to control industrial
pollution. These models are a result of interaction between
governments, producers and consumers; between businesses and
communities; and between the public sector and markets.
- The IDB has contributed substantial loans for urban environment
and pollution control projects in Mexico, Uruguay, Bolivia and
Guatemala.
Sustainable Transport
- Cities in Brazil have adopted integrated policies on land use
and urban transportation with the goal to reduce high
expropriation costs associated with land acquisition for building
urban transportation infrastructure.
Obstacles
- The acceleration of urbanization creates new forms of social and
economic marginalization that sustain crime and violence at
epidemic levels.
- Municipal governments suffer from weak structural and
operational frameworks that inhibit the planning and
implementation of social infrastructure projects and credit
programs for income-generating activities.
- Cities are often forced to expand beyond their limits, and
because of this, systems to provide water, sewerage, waste
disposal and other common services tend to be insufficient and
inefficient.
An excessive bureaucracy, along with a lack of community
participation, inhibits the successful implementation of housing
development designs and applications
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