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Challenging issues in development policies
The criteria used to evaluate national economies
are not appropriate for assessing
the development potential of local areas.
The country of Luxemburg and the city
of Toulon, two areas with half a million
inhabitants, are not comparable in economic
terms. The former is dominated
by international market competition ; the
second by intranational flows of public
goods and services. The local area is dependent
on transfers and public policies, the
national area on markets and capital : the
development of the Hérault Département
is characteristic of local development
based on mobile income and transfers.

The size of a city is no longer a determining
criterion for generating the
highest economic values. The accelerating
cycle of the production and use of
goods requires a greater capacity for
mental and cultural change on the part
of organisations and individuals. The
aggregation of skills on a territorial base
that has an average population level and
is liveable takes precedence over financial
and technological superclusters
whose supremacy is on the wane.

This programme, set up by the World
Bank, aims to establish a networking
process in medium-sized cities, to link
up local, regional and global levels.

Protecting and restoring the urban heritage
does not only create jobs in the
tourist industry but also produces a
chain of symbolic effects that strengthen
local links. Those parts of the city
that do not benefit from these dynamics
are liable to suffer from them. By
setting up public bodies to arbitrate
and negotiate opportunity costs, the
social impact of heritage-related measures
is broadened.

Sustainable development paradigms
subvert the utilitarian approach of the
liberal economy by making production
and trade subject to the moral
obligation to protect and sustain the
natural and human world. In the
energy-intensive transport sector,
which is the main source of destruction
of the environment, resistance to
sustainable development is tantamount
to strictly economic management of
transport activities. Flow planning in
urban areas is reviving the conflict between
the economy and the environment.

Small and medium-sized enterprises
rarely have the means to control the
urban nuisance they cause. The introduction
of clean technologies into production
processes has triggered the creation
of local inter-company cooperation
bodies. At the instigation of public
authorities, collective treatment plants
have been set up in the sector of surface
treatment industries. Preventive pollution
treatment through good governance
is preferred to ex post enforcement
by specialised civil servants.

The doctrine on the mobilisation of
local resources in Europe that arose out
of the economic crisis of the 1970s, was
mainly concerned with areas of rural
depopulation and industrial reconversion.
Today, urban sectors that are cut
off from the labour and housing market
are at the centre of developmentalist
concerns. The symbolic dimension of
local dynamics produces doubtful economic
effects.

Community development in the United States
In round-table discussions on neighbourhoods
in social difficulty, presentday
experience of community development
in the United States is a reference.
Local investment by public and private
actors and mediation between institutions
and people characterise the Community
Development Corporations.
Despite considerable social progress,
their action is not reversing the segregative
trends of liberal society.

In the fifties, urbanisation was synonymous
with technical and societal progress
and the development of the Third
Worldist movement. Today’s urbanisation,
which is a major phenomenon on
all the continents, is bringing to light
extremely strong social antagonisms,
which local and sustainable development
mechanisms are seeking to mitigate.
But local social participation, even
in the cities of Latin America where it
is most developed, remains a weak point
in the implementation of these mechanisms.

Urban sprawl affects all countries whatever
their level of development. This
phenomenon is accompanied by social
polarisation that can only be attenuated
by heavy cultural investments.
Architecture thus remains the poor
relation of social development programmes
 a prejudicial situation,
since the concern for shapes and forms
is the universal vector of all social identity.

After ten years of development following
the economic liberalisation reform
of the regime, Pudong is now an ultramodern
area of Shanghai, the main
industrial port of China. But its exogenous
growth is not a guarantee of its
future. The threat of disinvestment by
foreign powers and the lack of local skills
tell against this project and against the
entire country.

Despite its liberal economic reference
model, the World Bank is an institution
that opens up to the diversity of
local situations. In China, the doctrine
of competition and transparency comes
up against a complex interplay of allegiances
and resistance from the new
celestial bureaucracy. The ups and
downs of wastewater treatment in
Chong King give reason to expect a specific
negotiated approach to economic
development.

Although action is being taken against
informal, unsanitary housing in Morocco,
it is the main social housing sector in
cities. Its economic dynamism is due to
the shortage of cheap and comfortable
legal housing. The State should take
notice of this by reorienting its policy and
recognising the economic contribution
of do-it-yourself grassroots homebuilders.

Sprawling urban growth in Cotonou
seems to be acting as a brake on local economic
and social development. Yet the
real estate economy, which is largely speculative
and informal, is a source of
income for most city-dwellers. This potential
is insufficiently understood in the
action of developmentalist institutions.

The impoverishment of the African continent
and the crisis of its nation-States are
leading the World Bank towards specific
aid programmes for local authorities.

In the 1980s in Argentina, opposition to
the military dictatorship gave rise to an
unprecedented social participation
movement. The weight of the machinery
of government and a traditional
client-centred approach have nonetheless
regained the upper hand. The
« Social Justice Plan » implemented in
Buenos Aires cannot be dissociated from
a division of the city into local identities.

European experts in urban development
hesitate between a town as a matket of private
services or a city of ebating citizens

The ambiguities of the localist paradigm
Local labour costs determine choices
for the establishment of industrial market
activities. The response to the territorial
mobility of large markets is the
rooting of the informal economy in the
city in poor countries. Local economic
development initiatives run the risk of
being turned away from their social
objectives by international donors.

The main keys for a sustainable development
can be found in cities, keys for
growth and keys for environmental preservation.
International investments, specially
those from the World Bank, must
support institutional changes and equalization
measures in order to reduce poverty.