state of the world's cities 2012/2013 - United Nations Sustainable ...

State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013regulatory frameworks andIn the citiesstrong institutions – formfact of the worldthe ‘hub’ that controls thetoday, the power to be‘wheel of urban prosperity’mobilised against the crisisemanates from a variety ofand give it direction,stakeholders, not just public pace and momentumauthorities, although these (see Chapter 1.1). Sharedretain a decisive role.prosperity requires thepredominance of the publicinterest as embodied inpublic authorities 50 toThe crucialensure that none of the fivepolicy role of publicauthorities is to harness the ‘spokes’ gain prevalence tovarious types of societal the detriment of the others.powers and potentialsAbstract values and normsthrough appropriate urban are institutions becausepower functions.they guide individualand collective action. 51Box 3.2.2 shows how, inChina and in Europe centuries ago, the State imposed theprevalence of the public over other interests and needs,treating them all equitably for the sake of shared prosperity.The powers and functions that are part of the governancestructure of a city may derive from promulgated city charters,local government frameworks, or directly from the nationalConstitution. The rights and responsibilities granted toindividuals and firms in cities are all dictated by prevailinglegal frameworks. Similarly, the interactions among urbanresidents as well as the modalities of production, distributionand consumption of urban space have always been regulatedby explicit and implicit codes of behaviour and practice. Thetransformative potential of any city has, therefore, alwaysbeen a function of the enabling scope of its laws, regulationsand institutions. The degree to which such instruments canbe deployed as they are, or consolidated, or even reformedwill determine a city’s degree of prosperity.In the metaphor of the ‘Prosperity Wheel’, the legal andinstitutional framework as a whole acts as the ‘hub’ whichsteers the developmentof the five dimensions(‘spokes’) of prosperity,Laws and the modulating momentum,fact associatedrelaying its energy to theinstitutional set-upother dimensions, andhave determined themaintaining the overallvery genesis of themodern city, both in its balance of the ‘wheel’.essence as well as its Internal dysfunctions infunctionality.the legal and institutionalframework, or any disconnect between the hub and thespokes, interferes with the operation of the ‘wheel’ andmakes any existing momentum unsustainable (such as basedon only one of the five dimensions).The Legal-Institutional Basis of the20th-Century CityAdvances in industrial development, consolidation of themarket economy and the permeating influence of liberaldemocracy (both in its origin in the West and the postcolonialvariant in the developing world) have created ashared legal and regulatory foundation in much of the urbanworld. The legal, regulatory and institutional fundamentalsof the contemporary city tend to be identical, differing onlyin levels of development, institutional characteristics andperformance ability. Indeed, the legal-institutional basis ofthe 20th-century city is fairly uniform; and this explains thesimilarities not only in functional modalities but also in theall-too visible imbalances characterizing the 20th-centurycity in its generic sense (i.e., spatial segregation, socialexclusion, a predominance of motorised mobility, highKarnataka, Bangalore, India: A road sign hangs over the entranceto ‘Electronics City’, an industrial complex dedicated to the ITand electronics industries. Located ten miles (16km) outsideBangalore, the complex has been hugely successful in attractingforeign investment.© Chris Stowers/Panos Pictures116