- Good Urban Governance, Actors’ Relations and Paradigms: Lessons from Nairobi, Kenya and Recife, Brazil    757 kb by    Kedogo , Joseph & Sandholz, Simone & Hamhaber, Johannes | jkedogo@yahoo.com    Short Outline This paper discusses good governance contribution to sustainable urbanisation. Integrating Kenya and Brazil studies, it analyses actors' paradigmatic frameworks at different scales and sectors as barriers to inclusion and alternatives for improvement. Abstract Worldwide urbanisation is projected to continue for many years to come, with the cities in the developing countries accounting for 95% of the total future urban population growth. In these cities, this process has not been met with commensurate urban policies nor governance structures, resulting in serious urban problems such as the proliferation of slums which in some cases house more than 90% of the urban population. Due to the challenges facing developing countries, their urban arena has become very complex, broad and fragmented, involving heterogeneous actors at various scales. This is further complicated by disparities in their powers, roles, interests and perspectives. Therefore improving the actors’ relationships is vital for any progress. This calls for an appropriate and well functioning multi-level and multi-actor urban governance system, that integrates well both horizontally and vertically, permitting effective negotiations amongst the actors from the local to global levels. This paper deals with the question of how improved urban governance could contribute to ensuring sustainable and inclusive urbanisation. After defining good urban governance, it analyses some impediments to it and discusses available means of improving the quality of governance as it affects urban planning processes. Based on a multilevel stakeholder analysis of the urban arena on Nairobi, Kenya, and incorporating lessons drawn from a study conducted in Recife, Brazil, it examines the actors firstly at different scales (international, national, city wide and the local grassroots levels), and secondly from different sectors (state, market and civil society and also including informal to illegal actors). In conclusion, the paper focuses on the different legal and institutional frameworks that serve as references for the actors which by their paradigmatic character, lead to a profound lack of common ground, of mutual understanding, and of common vision and thereby worsening the actor relations. Keywords Legal and institutional framework, paradigmatic frameworks, multi-level and multi-actor urban governance, Nairobi, Recife Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2010: Sustainable City - Developing World   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper