Urban Development Strategies to Combat Poverty in Asia

More than 1.5 billion people live in Asian cities and by 2030 at current urban growth rates, an additional 1.2 billion people will be living in cities in the region. The region is facing growing problems of access to safe drinking water, rapid population growth, reduced access to land for growing food, and climate change related problems of natural disasters and rising sea levels.

LEI with Emeritus Professor Brian Roberts, have combined our land administration and urban development expertise to spearhead urbanisation and tenure security challenges. Prof Roberts is intimately involved in leading new schools of thought on city cluster development in Asian cities. There is increasing need to develop strategies for social housing and access to land for urban populations, to avoid ever increasing poverty and emergence of slums in Asian cities.

The social and economic attractions for populations migrating to cities are not necessarily being met by employment opportunities, nor planned and affordable shelter, causing urban sprawl and a depreciation of quality of life. City cluster development focuses on the economic drivers, competitiveness of cities and their industrial productivity, balanced with environmental and socially sustainable models.

The Asian Development Bank have published this work in a book titled, Competitive Cities in the 21st Century: Cluster Based Local Economic Development, to support practitioners to analyse and create action plans for industry clusters and for using cluster-based city economic development (CCED) approaches.

Urban problems and local ownership of the solutions are key to development. Hence why LEI are involved, through our local affiliate Land Equity Technology Services (LETS) Philippines in implementing an ADB project on Local Government Revenue and Land Administration Reform.

This project assists nine Local Government Units to build their capacity to undertake reforms that will optimise their revenue results and improve overall decision making and investments. The project facilitates technical advice in property valuation, land market information, up to date spatial data on actual land parcels and improvements, local property tax policy, investment and environmental planning and revenue collection. We look forward to providing a detailed project report in the next LEI Newsletter Issue, coming July 2012.