The Inclusive City: Infrastructure and Public Services for the Urban Poor in Asia

In June 2004, the Comparative Urban Studies Project (CUSP) and the National Institute of Urban Affairs of India held a forum called “Urban Infrastructure and Public Service Delivery for the Urban Poor, Regional Focus: Asia”, in New Delhi, India. The Inclusive City is the product of this forum, and includes the papers presented at the conference and reflects on the discussions among participants. This volume is concerned with the issues of social, economic and political fragmentation of the Asian city and how the city can be made more inclusive.

The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have concluded that to make cities more economically competitive in the global economy, they must have adequate urban infrastructure and services. Yet, getting basic services – housing, transportation, waste disposal, water and sanitation – poses almost unimaginable challenges to the urban poor of Asia. Over the course of twelve chapters, this book provides case studies of how governmental programmes attempt to meet these challenges by directly involving the poor themselves in improving their access to urban services through collaborative efforts. The book’s individual chapters draw upon case studies from the largest cities in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, China (including Hong Kong), Indonesia and the Philippines, and are written by scholar–practitioners from Asia as well as Australia, Canada and the United States.

Key issues highlighted in the New Delhi forum and discussed in this book relate to poverty, including the urban poor in the social, economic and political life of the city. These include:
- the role of subsidies in the provision of urban infrastructure and services;
- the legalization of tenure in slum upgrading and housing consolidation;
- the advantages and disadvantages of decentralization schemes;
- the role of the private sector in infrastructure and service provision; and
- the participation of the urban poor and undeserved groups in public decision-making.

The 12 chapters in this book clearly reflect the evolution of the city from a more or less cohesive and inclusive organic structure to one that is showing signs of fragmentation, isolation and exclusion. They reveal that a principal way of making the exclusivist cities in Asia more inclusive is by providing infrastructure, housing and basic services to all urban residents, not just elite families living in gated communities. In summary, The Inclusive City emphasizes the importance of urban planning, design and management to consciously include all segments of society, not excluding Asia’s urban poor residents. Following the introductory chapter, Chapter 2 provides the context for discussing the roles of infrastructure, housing and public services provision in integrating the urban poor in the functioning of Asian cities. The infrastructure, housing, and services situation in Indian cities are described in Chapter 3, which also cites statistics, analyzes government approaches and reviews different methods to improve the access of the urban poor to housing and public services. In Chapter 4, community-upgrading projects in 11 Asian countries are reviewed. These highlight the need for capacity building and institutional reform, and the chapter provides a framework for identifying practical measures that could be adopted by governments to improve community upgrading. Chapter 5 focuses on transport and analyzes access to appropriate transportation modes in Indian cities, and cites challenges to mobility as well as recommending incremental improvements. Chapter 6 discusses public transport for the urban poor in the Greater Islamabad–Rawalpindi area of Pakistan. The theme is continued in Chapter 7 but focuses on the urban transport systems in the Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Nanjing. Chapter 8 addresses the urban poverty situation in Hong Kong. It also illustrates how an integrated system that utilizes transport modes ranging from walking to