ABSTRACT
When there is pressure for immediate action on an issue or for implementation of a policy, discussions in international development circles tend to be polarized on orientation and approach (for example top–down versus bottom–up). All interested practitioners and advocates have been perceived at one time or another as forwarding their own leadership above that of others in addressing the various challenges posed in advancing economic development and social justice. This has certainly been the case in the planning and upgrading of settlements in the rapidly growing cities of the Global South. International organizations and financial institutions, along with national and local governments, are often perceived as too top–down in their approach or overly technocratic. Concurrently, community-based organizations and their supporting non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been seen as too idealistic about their capacity and too narrowly focused to address the scale of planning and upgrading needed in their cities. And though recent years have seen the acknowledgement of the virtues of partnership and of different actors' capacities to serve the cause of ‘development’, there remains a fundamental ideological siding in opinions of who should – or can – best lead.
