ABSTRACT
Increasingly, governments of developing countries are adopting, in rhetoric and policy, the concept of community participation. In many cases, particularly where governments are pursuing decentralisation policies, the responsibility for addressing urban poverty lies with local government and accordingly it is the municipal levels of administration that are handed the responsibility for implementing policies advocating the participation of poor communities. However, most municipalities lack human and financial resources and many function through hierarchical structures and prescriptive approaches. Most are unlikely to have the capacity to change their approach with the same speed that policy makers can draft legislation, reformulate programmes and reconsider approaches.
