TOWARDS MORE EFFECTIVE PLANNING IN DEVELOPING CITIES

In many developing cities, existing forms of urban planning do not appear to be effective - the resources put into "planning" are not well reflected by what happens in practice, and what happens in practice often does not appear to reflect the policy objectives of government. The dominant reason for this appears to be fundamental weaknesses in existing planning systems and the main prospects for improvement appear to demand adjustments to these systems. Fundamental to any improvements are the creation of new institutions and investment in these may well be more cost-effective than much conventional investment in project planning. Given such investment, two factors appear to warrant a radical change to current practice. Firstly, the concept of affordability needs to be much more realistically addressed: the government test discount rate probably does not reflect this and should not be regarded as the basis for project economic acceptability; and secondly, the real uncertainty facing developing cities is so large that the concept of uncertainty should formally be reflected in planning - this should have far-reaching implications for the basis of project justification and therefore for the types of project which should be implemented. A recent innovative approach to urban planning implemented in Manila, capital city of the Philippines, with World Bank funding assistance, has been designed to meet these requirements and to bring realism and relevance to sector programmes. This appears to have much wider implications in other developing cities. Its requirements and characteristics and the potential it now offers are described. (Author/TRRL)

  • Availability:
  • Supplemental Notes:
    • This paper was presented at Seminar G, Developing Countries, held at the PTRC Annual Summer Meeting, University of Warwick, England, 4-7 July, 1983.
  • Corporate Authors:

    PTRC Education and Research Services Limited

    110 Strand
    London WC2,   England 
  • Authors:
    • Allport, Roger J
    • PRYNN, P J
  • Conference:
  • Publication Date: 1983

Media Info

  • Features: Figures; References; Tables;
  • Pagination: p. 321-334

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 00382756
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Source Agency: Transport Research Laboratory
  • ISBN: 0-86050-112-4
  • Report/Paper Numbers: Volume P240
  • Files: ITRD, TRIS
  • Created Date: Apr 30 1984 12:00AM