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Showing all Blog Posts, Publications in Cities That Work
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Blog post
Climate change: won or lost in cities or by cities?
Extinction Rebellion disrupted London and brought many transport routes to a standstill on Easter Weekend in 2019. A key demand for the direct action group was for the government to declare a climate emergency. This demand has since been met - by the UK parliament, as well as the Argentinian senate, the French parliament and the Canadian House of Commons. In fact,...
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Blog post
Urbanisation and structural transformation in Africa
Urbanisation is central to Africa’s development, yet the basic facts of the process remain a puzzle to social scientists and policymakers alike. Economists typically explain urbanisation through the combination of two forces: agricultural push and industrial pull. Agricultural gains provide the initial impetus to urbanisation because they allow food requirements to be...
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Blog post
Treedistribution: Combatting environmental inequality in cities
Inequality is not a recent phenomenon. One root of inequality can be traced back to pre-historic urban civilisations, where grain stores varied in size and the grain-wealthy clustered together in particular locations. But with the increasing importance of inequality across and within countries over time, governments have often first turned their attention to addressing the...
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Blog post
The costs of urban giants in sub-Saharan Africa
Several African cities have become veritable urban giants. Lagos and Cairo are each home to more than 20 million people, while others like Kinshasa, Luanda, and Dar es Salaam continue to grow at breakneck speed. The way these major cities grow will have tremendous impacts on future development in Africa. Cities can be inherently productive spaces because they bring people...
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Blog post
Inclusive growth for cities: Fuzzy, functional or forsaken?
The challenge: Inequality in cities Inequality is one of the pressing issues of our time. China’s growth has reduced inequality globally, yet within countries, disparities have tended to increase. This increase in inequality has been most present in cities. Urban areas can be the most unequal: the benefits of scale and specialisation often failing to find their way...
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Publication - Project Report
Considerations for land value capture reform in the Greater Amman Municipality
This report discusses several policy options for improving the calculation and collection of specific land value capture instruments. Namely: Land Value Increment Taxes; Betterment Levies; Development Impact Fees and Exactions. The report focuses on the city of Amman, however, several of the policy challenges and solutions that emerge are common to many developing...
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Publication - Case study
The BRT and the danfo: A case study of Lagos’ transport reforms from 1999-2019
Over the last 20 years, Lagos has had to make large-scale investments in transport infrastructure to keep up with its growing population. Most notably, in 2008, Lagos opened the first ever Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system on the African continent. Today, the system boasts two different lines which cover over 35.5 km of track and transport over 350,000 commuters on a daily...
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Publication - Policy paper
Can Africa learn from the Chinese urbanisation story?
This paper provides a framework to understand the similarities and differences between Africa’s current urbanisation pathway and the path China has taken over the last 30 years. A major difference is that Africa’s urbanisation to date has not been associated with anywhere near the same gains in productivity and poverty reduction that have been seen in China. Instead,...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Impôts sur le foncier: pour valoriser des revenus municipaux inexploités
Dans ce bulletin, nous abordons l’importance de l’impôt foncier annuel comme source de financement des municipalités et examinons les avantages et les inconvénients que rencontrent les décideurs dans la mise en œuvre des réformes. Nous recensons également des exemples de pratiques exemplaires de réforme adoptées par des villes de pays en...
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Publication - Growth Brief
Financer les villes à croissance rapide
Beaucoup de villes des pays en développement grandissent à un rythme sans précédent. Pour répondre à cette expansion aussi rapide que non planifiée, les autorités municipales auront intérêt à la fois à accroitre leurs sources de revenus existantes et à étudier de nouvelles options de financement pour s’adapter à une demande accrue en services...