ABSTRACT
Since the middle of the 1980s there has been a growing awareness of the desirability of better management of urban development in less-developed and relatively poor societies. At all levels-local municipal administration, state and federal government-the message is one of how to achieve better value for capital expenditures in providing urban services, utilities, land and housing; how to cut wastage through removing inefficiencies and “leakages”; how to improve cost recovery; and how to ensure a greater level of financial replicability for such programmes, so that these are ongoing, rather than oneoffs that end when the money runs out. As we shall demonstrate, this changing awareness reflects a broader paradigm shift away from large-scale urban projects, in which government expects to be the principal provider, towards a position in which the rôle of public administration is to facilitate equitable and replicable urban-development processes, in part by offering conditions conducive to the involvement of privately raised capital. Increasingly, a major concern is to ensure self-sustaining environmental management. Often, too, it involves a complete revision of taxation and consumption charges in order to remove subsidies. In principle, we applaud this broad shift in approach, and we note that most working-class householders whom we have interviewed over the years in the course of several research projects are usually willing to take these costs on board. They do not expect something for nothing; their major concern, however, is that such charges be realistic and affordable given local wage levels, and that any measure should be applied equitably across all socio-economic groups.
