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About Us | Background | Strategy

About Us

The Human Settlements Programme works to reduce poverty and improve health and housing conditions in the urban centres of Latin America, Asia and Africa. The Programme seeks to combine this with promoting good governance and more ecologically sustainable patterns of urban development.

The Programme engages in policy research, most of which is undertaken in partnership with NGOs and academic institutions in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The principal project groupings and related policy goals are:

• Urban poverty – reducing the extent and depth of urban poverty, including aspects related to health, human rights, entitlements and participation (IIED contact: David Satterthwaite)
• Urban environmental burdens - improving local environmental health conditions, while avoiding long term threats to regional and global life support systems (IIED contact: Gordon McGranahan)
• Rural-urban linkages and urban change – ensuring that urban and rural development strategies are mutually supportive (IIED contact: Cecilia Tacoli)

The work also includes evaluation, technical and policy assistance, seminars, publications and training.

The Programme publishes the international journal Environment and Urbanization and its staff have also advised many United Nations agencies, international NGOs and bilateral aid programmes on urban policy.

The Programme has longstanding links with an affiliate organization, IIED-América Latina in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as well as a number of longterm partners in other cities in Asia, Africa and Latin America

Background

History of IIED’s urban work | The main urban issues | Urban opportunities
Getting urban issues onto government and donor agendas
IIED’s role in promoting change

History of IIED’s urban work
IIED began work on urban themes in 1974 when its president, Barbara Ward, was invited by the Canadian government to write a global overview of urban issues. The resulting book, published in many countries and languages, was one of three that Ward wrote in the 1970s that reached a large audience with IIED’s concern for both environment and development. In 1976, IIED helped the Canadian government to organize Habitat, the first UN Conference on Human Settlements. To support the interest in urban issues that this conference generated, IIED invited the Argentine urbanist, Jorge E. Hardoy, to establish its Human Settlements Programme in 1977.

The Programme’s initial work, with teams in the Sudan, Nigeria, India and Argentina, included assessments of the effectiveness of governments and international agencies in housing and urban development, studies of the housing markets used by low-income groups, and research on the health and environmental problems faced by low-income groups. Work was also undertaken on the role of small and intermediate sized urban centres in rural and regional development. Jorge Hardoy also founded a new IIED office in Buenos Aires, first as a branch of IIED and later as an independent institution, IIED-América Latina. The Human Settlements Programme became directed jointly out of London and Buenos Aires.

In recent years, the Human Settlements Programme has focused on environmental problems in cities, the integration of sustainable development concerns into urban policy, rural-urban linkages, housing finance systems that serve the priorities of low-income households, the constraints on community based action in low-income settlements and interventions for supporting poverty reduction in urban areas. This work has been undertaken in partnership with institutions in 20 different countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America which include some of the most innovative urban NGOs and research groups in these regions (partners).

Human Settlements also has joint research projects with other IIED areas of work, including Environmental Economics for work on urban water and sanitation services, and Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods for work on rural-urban linkages.

The main urban issues
Most of the world’s urban population is now in Africa, Asia and Latin America. So too is most of the urban poverty, as IIED has helped to demonstrate. Increasingly, governments and international agencies recognize that a large and growing proportion of the world’s poorest groups live in urban areas. IIED has worked also with the World Health Organization to document how more than 600 million urban dwellers in the South live in ‘life-threatening’ and ‘health-threatening’ homes and neighbourhoods because of poor quality, overcrowded housing, dangerous land sites and a lack of basic services.

Urban areas also concentrate a high proportion of resource consumption, waste generation and greenhouse gas emissions in virtually all countries, and future levels for all these will be strongly influenced by the scale and form of urban development. Given the scale of urban poverty and of the environmental implications of urban development, any institute committed to environment and development has to work in urban areas. IIED has long emphasized that urban policy is an essential part of sustainable development policy. Its work has also highlighted the potential advantages that urban centres have for combining healthy and safe living conditions with resource-conserving, waste-minimizing patterns of production and consumption.

Urban opportunities
Whilst most of the urban literature dwells on urban problems, urbanization brings important opportunities. Well-managed cities contribute much to strong and adaptable regional and national economies. Cities reduce the cost of meeting the basic needs of many of the world's low-income citizens as high densities and large population concentrations usually lower costs per household for the provision of infrastructure and services. The concentration of industries should reduce the unit cost of making regular checks on plant and equipment safety as well as on occupational health and safety, pollution control and the handling of hazardous wastes.

Cities can also set new standards in resource conservation and waste minimization. For instance, the concentration of production provides more scope for minimizing wastes or re-using or recycling them. In addition, well-managed cities can greatly reduce the dependence of higher-income groups on private automobile use. Making sure that these opportunities are secured in an increasingly urbanized world is one of the key challenges of the twenty-first century. A further challenge will be to ensure that the urban poor’s rights are recognized and that they can form more effective relationships with local government and other decision makers.

IIED has long emphasized the need for environment and development policy for cities to be integrated into wider regional concerns. Resource flows and waste streams into and out of any city show a scale and complexity of linkages with rural producers and ecosystems which demonstrates that ‘sustainable urban development’ and ‘sustainable rural development’ cannot be separated. The linkages can be positive in both developmental and environmental terms. Demand for rural produce from urban enterprises and households can support prosperous farms and rural settlements, where environmental capital is not being depleted. There are many examples of rural producers investing in maintaining the quality of soils and water resources, and of urban organic solid and liquid wastes being used to enhance soil fertility. But these are the exceptions. IIED’s work on rural-urban linkage with research teams in Mali, Nigeria and Tanzania seeks to provide a better basis for integrating rural and urban issues within urban policy.

Getting urban issues onto government and donor agendas
Both urban poverty reduction and urban environmental issues have received a low priority from most development assistance agencies and many national governments. This reflects a long-established belief that development problems might be more easily addressed if people remained in rural areas where they can grow their own food. It misses the key economic role of well-functioning urban systems and reflects an inaccurate assumption that urban populations are privileged with government expenditure on basic services. IIED’s work has emphasized that urban areas (especially major cities) may receive above-average levels of public expenditure on infrastructure and services but that a large proportion of the urban population does not benefit from this. Hospitals, piped water systems and sewers may be concentrated in cities but a high proportion of city dwellers have no access to them. Meanwhile, urban populations living outside the larger cities are often as ill-served with basic services as rural populations.

Most international agencies have limited experience in urban areas and some are still reluctant to work there. In addition, effective urban interventions depend on effective and accountable urban governments — but urban governments remain weak in most countries. IIED’s work has helped to highlight how success is possible. The scope for success is greatly increased in countries with effective decentralization programmes and where local democracy is strong. Another key part of the context for urban development is increased private sector involvement in the provision of basic services and infrastructure (such as roads, public transport, water, sanitation and waste management). This has changed the nature of urban governance, including the roles and responsibilities of government bodies. It also has implications for the nature, cost and availability of essential facilities.

There is also the fact, long-emphasized by IIED’s work, that governments and international agencies do not give appropriate support to the many ways in which cities are built ‘from the bottom up.’ The informal sector remains critical for employment and livelihoods for many of the lowest-income urban residents, and many citizens also develop ‘informal sector’ solutions to their housing needs. Low-income groups and their community organizations have a major role in the construction and management of most urban centres in Africa and most of Asia and Latin America — and will continue to do so. Yet, they rarely receive official acknowledgment for this role, let alone appropriate support.

IIED’s role in promoting change
For more than two decades, Human Settlements at IIED has argued that ‘urban does matter’. Through its research, policy advice and documentation, it has sought to ensure that development professionals and practitioners throughout the world understand urban problems and opportunities, and have an appreciation of effective solutions. Its long-standing experience and its network of partners give it a unique understanding of both the problems that need to be tackled and the solutions that are being tested and tried. Its position between academic researchers and practitioners, between Northern development assistance agencies and Southern practitioners and academics, and between government institutions and civil society provides insights into the potential and capacity of each group and the roles that they might have. Inter-disciplinary approaches enable a broad range of analytical tools to be brought to bear on urban problems, while a strong commitment to the concept of sustainable development ensures that social, economic and environmental issues all receive full attention.

Strategy

The strategy of the Human Settlements Programme draws on the following insights:

• The world is urbanizing;
  
  
• The extent of urban poverty has been underestimated in the past and is growing;
  
  
• Most of the world’s urban population is now in Africa, Asia and Latin America, as is most of the urban poverty;
  
  
• Urban areas concentrate resource consumption, waste generation and greenhouse gas emissions;
  
  
• The future of both world poverty and the global environment will be strongly influenced by the forms urban development takes;
  
  
• Urbanization brings important opportunities, as well as risks, for both environmental improvement and poverty reduction;
  
  
• The interests of the urban poor are often misrepresented in global, national and even local policy debates;
  
  
• Local residents and researchers who work with the urban poor are often more knowledgeable about the challenges cities face than outside ‘experts’.

The approach adopted by the Programme involves:

• Engaging in policy research on critical urban environment and development issues, with an emphasis on issues that are of particular concern to urban poor groups, and that tend to be misrepresented in local, national or international policy arenas;
  
  
• Working in collaboration with partners in Africa, Asia and Latin America, so as to strengthen the voice of local researchers, professionals and institutions in research and policy debates on poverty and environmental degradation – with particular concentration on groups committed to genuine partnership with the urban poor;
  
  
• Using the results to help convince governments and aid agencies to develop appropriate policies and institutions for addressing urban poverty and environmental degradation, and to do so in a democratic fashion, giving full recognition to local knowledge, skills and capacities to organise;
  
  
• Maintaining the quality, credibility and long term influence of the research by presenting and publishing the results in the academic arena, and subjecting them to peer review;
  
  
• Participating in networks to strengthen the effectiveness of organisations working in these areas.
  

The strategic priorities currently being advanced by the Human Settlements Programme include:

• reducing urban poverty and inequality and improving urban livelihoods, especially through interventions that build on the strategies of the poor and respond to the challenges of globalisation;

• addressing the environmental hazards that contribute to a large share of ill-health, injury and premature death among urban populations (especially low-income groups), and adapting to reduce the risks of climate change;

• changing urban production, consumption and waste management patterns that waste scarce natural resources, damage the environment and contribute to climate change – while ensuring that these changes do not harm urban poor groups;
  
• exploiting the potential benefits that urban development can provide to rural areas (and vice versa) on the basis of a more accurate and country-specific understanding of the social, economic, political and demographic influences on urban development and rural-urban relations;

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