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Showing all Blog Posts, Publications in Cities That Work
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Blog post
Keep it clean: Can blockchain change the nature of land registry in developing countries?
The global economy is constantly exposed to disruptive technologies. Take the example of telecommunications: it was not long ago that everything revolved around landlines. Households would go to huge lengths to ensure they were well-serviced with fixed-line infrastructure, while those left out endured long travel times for everyday activities like managing a business or...
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Blog post
Should I stay or should I go? Managing populations with urban to rural migration incentives
Sydney you’ve got to let me know, should they stay or should they go. In 2011, Sydney, the largest city in Australia, asked its residents, should they stay or should they go? Despite regularly rated as one of the world’s top ten liveable cities, the government was offering residents AUD$7,000 (£4,500 or ~one month’s average wage) to move to the country’s rural...
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Blog post
Getting the right institutions in place to run Africa’s cities efficiently
Over the next 16 years, all of the world’s 10 fastest growing cities are going to be in Africa. If this growth is a process of people voting with their feet, as last year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics Paul Romer once put it, these cities are winning. Yet urbanisation in many developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, is not delivering the...
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Blog post
Urban density and the promises of proximity
As an economist, an end of year tradition is to muse over The Royal Society of Statistics, ‘Statistic of the Year’. In 2018, the singled out stat was: 90.5% - the proportion of plastic waste that has never been recycled. An important statistic, but an area in which the International Growth Centre’s (IGC) ‘Cities that Work’ initiative has limited...
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Publication - Policy paper
Urban governance institutions: Policy options for fast growing cities
Developing countries today are home to all of the world’s thirty fastest-growing major cities — with sub-Saharan Africa home to twenty-one of these thirty. This rapid growth has made these cities the epicentre for the battle for national prosperity, a struggle whose outcome depends on the policy choices made by city leaders. Policy options which target the...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Enhancing property tax compliance in Mandalay
This brief discusses several policy options that could improve tax compliance and tax administration in Mandalay – helping the city to escape its low-tax and underfunded services trap. Increasing the perceived benefits of paying tax – by communicating the link between tax and infrastructure – would likely encourage compliance, so long as the government can...
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Publication - Case study
A quick, cost-effective approach to land tenure regularisation: the case of Rwanda
Secure, legally enforceable and marketable land rights are critical for cities in developing countries to be able to ensure that urban land is allocated to its most productive use. However, often these cities grapple with multiple overlapping as well as informal tenure systems that ultimately hinder sufficient public and private investment from taking place. The challenge,...
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Publication - Policy paper, Synthesis paper
Policy options for informal settlements
Across the developing world, the pace of urbanisation has outstripped the ability of governments to faciliate decent, affordable housing, resulting in unplanned and often illegal settlements. This paper brings together economic research and cross-country experience to inform trade-offs policymakers face, both in addressing existing informal settlements, and in preventing...
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Publication - Policy paper
Strategies for effective procurement and public-private partnerships in the transport sector
Around the world, investments in transport infrastructure have risen to the top of the urban policy agenda. Effective urban mobility provides the foundation for economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, and social inclusion. It is now widely understood that after decades of underinvestment, there is a vast need for cities globally to upgrade and expand...
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Publication - Policy paper
Data-oriented urban transport reform in middle-income and developing cities
The paper highlights the key success factors determining the efficiency of data management interventions, and the benefits that the successful implementation of such policies could deliver for local communities and their surrounding economies. Key success factors include (1) a healthy balance of investments in data technology and human knowledge; (2)...