The Role of International Municipal Cooperation in Housing the Developing World’s Urban Poor: The Toronto-São Paulo Example

Increasingly, local governments in developing countries are entering into partnership arrangements with their counterparts in the developed world as part of an attempt to come to grips with problems associated with rapid urban expansion. As part of a preliminary investigation of the development-related impact of this little studied form of international municipal cooperation (IMC), this paper assesses the effectiveness of one particularly ambitious information and technology sharing arrangement struck by the cities of São Paulo, Brazil and Toronto, Canada. Specifically, the study focuses on an initiative — referred to as the Integrated Operations (OI-Operações Interligadas) — developed by the two cities to assist São Paulo in its efforts to facilitate public housing. Based upon the evidence — collected over a four-year period (1993–1997) in both settings — the paper suggests that IMC ventures of the type described can help deal with problems such as housing, and thus may well provide a new and cost effective mechanism for improving conditions generally in the world’s less affluent urban agglomerations.