Politics and performance: the implications of emerging governance arrangements for urban management approaches and information systems

Challenges to traditional public sector approaches to urban government have had an impact on various aspects of governance and management, including political arrangements, decision making processes, ways of ensuring accountability, the allocation of roles and responsibilities between public sector agencies and other potential service providers and between different levels of government, and the mobilisation and allocation of financial resources for urban development. These are discussed, drawing in particular on recent research on urban poverty and governance in ten cities in the South. The changing approaches to urban government and management have been accompanied by attempts to define criteria by which urban governance arrangements and performance can be assessed, which are summarised and critically evaluated. Finally, the potential value of a particular set of tools (GIS) for emerging approaches to urban governance is assessed. Their potential for improving the information available to all governance actors is recognised. However, because of their cost and technological and managerial demands, as well as the limited effectiveness of spatial planning and inequalities in access to information, plans for their use must be financially, institutionally and politically realistic.