Home > Programs > TUGI

Development of Poor Urban Communities Sector Project

[NOTE: TUGI's website is currently undergoing reconstruction and will be up by November 2003. Their temporary website cannot be accessed either. This is why this is a longer, more detailed description than option 1.]

• Goals
• Aims and Objectives
• Project Strategy
• Current Initiatives
  • The TUGI Report Cards
  • Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Good Governance
• Beneficiaries
• Participation
• Structure and Execution

The Urban Governance Initiative (TUGI) is an endeavour of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to assist mayors, governors, and other urban stakeholders in building the capacity of local governments to perform their tasks effectively. It will advance the five principles for liveable and sustainable cities. They are:

1. Social Justice
2. Ecological Sustainability
3. Political Participation
4. Economic Productivity
5. Cultural Vibrancy

The Urban Governance Initiative (TUGI) is a response to UNDP's continuous commitments to work on urban issues, building upon its earlier investment and insights from the Urban Management Programme for Asia and the Pacific (UMPAP) and Asia Pacific 2000 (AP2000).

Goals

The Urban Governance Initiative (TUGI) is directed at assisting local governments in making sities in the Asia Pacific region more livable through:

• Strengthening capacities
• Promoting good governance principles
• Enhancing the quality of good governance tools available to urban administrators and decision-makers

Aims and Objectives

Specifically, TUGI aims to improve the quality of urban life through developing and promoting:

• Indicators, tools and methodologies of good governance; and identifying and sharing positive references that can be adapted to enhance the capacity of local authorities.
• Information mechanisms, and to gather and share quality information on urban governance for sustainable human development; and, also to assist mayors/governors and city governments to take full advantage of the increasing flow of information and networking mechanisms.

Project Strategy

The Initiative is intended to build upon what has already been done to develop capabilities and effective visionary leadership in the participating cities, and through them in the region. It will:

• Support collaborative, city-level pilot projects for urban capacity-building;
• Support local and regional efforts to build partnerships with a wider range of local government, civil society and private sector organizations; and
• Act as a regional support and coordination facility in the Asia Pacific region for information activities on urbanization, globalization, and urban governance.

Current Initiatives

The TUGI Report Cards

In an effort to increase the potential of citizens to developing and innovating do-able alternatives to current bad governance practices, the Urban Governance Initiative of the United Nations Development Programme has developed and operationalized a set of 16 Good Governance Report Cards that have proved themselves as a constructive, innovative, and creative process for developing plans of action.

Communities are finding that such a tool has benefits in mobilizing community involvement and participation at many levels, while local governments find it useful in obtaining feedback from their constituencies, as well as an effective monitoring and evaluation mechanism. In Nepal, subsequent to being used within a TUGI pilot project based in Kathmandu, the Report Cards are currently in the process of being adopted by the Municipal Association of Nepal as a method to promote good urban governance in that country.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Good Governance

One way of increasing capacities of local government organizations includes being able to adequately respond to the enormous demands placed upon the limited resources of governance institutions. TUGI clearly sees information and communication technologies as one way to achieve this increase in capacities. Accordingly, in collaboration with another UNDP initiative, the Asia Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP), TUGI organized a training for local government bodies and civil society organizations in how to use website development to promote good urban governance. Since then, we have increasingly received requests for other similar trainings to be held, and are working in collaboration with other regional institutions to realize the same.

TUGI collaborated with the Urban Management Centre of the Asian Institute of Technology (UMC-AIT) to develop a handbook and web-template for cities that want to develop websites, which are based upon the nine characteristics of a good urban governance—Participation, Rule of Law, Transparency, Responsiveness, Consensus Orientation, Equity, Effectiveness and Efficiency, Accountability, and Strategic Vision. UMC-AIT will also conduct a City Websites Survey, which assesses existing websites for the extent to which cities in the region and already using ICT to further the cause of good governance. The sites are examined and rated for their effectiveness, as well as an array of other roles performed, with the idea of developing a rewards system for the best City Website. UMC-AIT is developing both an e-mail and web-based discussion list on urban issues, with on-line archives of relevant urban materials.

Beneficiaries

The primary target groups of the Initiative include the following through whom, the Initiative envisages to help improve the well-being of urban populations living in the participating countries. It will place special emphasis on reaching the vulnerable groups, such as:

• The urban poor, children, and women
• Local authorities, specifically mayors, governors, and city administrators;
• Regional association of cities/municipalities, and urban training and research institutes;
• Relevant members of the civil society groups;
• Concerned institutions.

Participation

The Initiative is open to all cities from the developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region, while a select number of them will serve as nodes for demonstration and good governance.

Structure and Execution

The Urban Governance Initiative (TUGI's) executing agency is the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS-Asia Office. UNDP Kuala Lumpur serves as the Designated Field Office (DFO), and as the Principal Project Resident Representative (PPRR) is the UNDP Resident Representative in Malaysia. The Project Secretariat is located there as well.