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International Development Assistance Support for Secondary Cities Development 1818.2.3 International Development Assistance (Bilateral) AgenciesThere are many international development-assistance agencies engaged in supportingurban development and institutional capacity-building projects and programmes. Thefollowing briefly discusses the focus of the largest international development-assistanceagencies.UK Department for International Development (DFID)In 2001, the UK DFID released an urban-sector strategy (DFID, 2001) with a focus onthe following:• Participatory government.• Pro-poor regional growth.• Support for national governments to strengthen legislative and regulatoryframeworks within which city-based development takes place.• Strengthen efforts by the international community to support the urbanizationprocess, which involves the participation of poor people.• Improve DFID’s capacity to address the urban challenge through informationsupport, knowledge and research development.In 2009 DFID began a strong focus on city development and in recognizing the needsof secondary cities (Allen, et al., 2012). More recently, the UK government announceda change of focus in its aid programme (DFID, 2012), which sets out its priorities forthe focus on urbanization. The key features of the policy include a focus on:• Developing future-proofed urban strategies: to address, in an integrated way,environmental, social and economic objectives. Building on sound diagnosticwork, more cities should be supported and encouraged to develop integratedstrategies and programmes of investment that are future-proofed.• Unlocking and aligning finance – including climate finance – for future-proofing:by scaling up finance to cities, including small and medium-sized cities,encompassing efforts to overcome the market and governance failures that oftendeter investment in future-proofing through the use of financial and non-financialinstruments such as feed-in tariffs to encourage investment into renewableenergy generation.• Undertaking urban-risk diagnostics, including an assessment of vulnerabilityto risks, capacity to act, as well as an analysis of scale, projected pace of changeand physical geography.• Strengthening the capacity of urban governance, planning and delivery systemsto improve the ability of cities to respond to risks and make systemic institutionalchanges to mobilize and engage with local communities in decision-makingand solutions to urban-development problems.• Improving the data and evidence underpinning city decision-making needed to