This section contains knowledge, information and tools to meet the needs of urban leaders seeking to bring about major reforms in their cities. You may have chosen such a path for a variety of reasons.
Here are some typical situations.
- You or your colleagues made promises of major reform during a recent
election campaign.
- A major failure or breakdown has occurred in several systems used
by the public every day, e.g., in garbage collection, water supply,
and sewage collection all at once. Alternatively, such services may
not exist at all, and you have committed to offer them.
- There has been a complete loss of confidence in a municipal government
arising from corruption among senior officials.
- A major change has been imposed from above, such as the transfer of more powers and responsibilities by central government without associated revenues.
Some examples of major reform programs include:
- Replacing a long-time management group in the municipality with a
new team having a mandate to "shake up the administration".
- Starting to charge users money for several municipal services that
have been "free" in the past, though they actually cost your city money
to provide.
- Turning several services or programs over to the private sector to
operate, or conversely, taking back public ownership or control of key
municipal services or sectors that have not been doing well in private
hands.
- Fundamentally changing the technology, financing and management structure
used to provide several urban services, perhaps in favour of community-based
systems.
- Granting tenure to squatters around the city, and providing them with sustained support for basic services, including security, water, electricity, and waste collection.
You will not find on today’s Internet a convenient guide to organizing and carrying out most major urban reform programs… so we have had to create one for you here. It is in the form of a slide presentation. You can freely flesh it out and adapt it to your own needs and situation. A possible use of this presentation would be at the first meeting of a new Mayor and his/her advisors on a day following an election victory.
™The structure of this presentation was originally developed by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University for planning organizational change projects.
You can find it at: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/ideal/ideal.present/tsld001.htm. The actual contents have been extensively adapted here.
In addition, we have compiled a Priority Setting Checklist to help new mayors and advisors to initiate major reforms.
For more information on major reform issues, please choose among:
