The CDS wheel of Urban Development
3.4.2. A brief history of city-to-city learning
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that, as alluded to earlier, is only more recently gaining traction in the learning literature. For purposes of the research, Campbell’s (2012a) conceptualization does, however, offer useful insights. Defining learning in its most basic form as the acquisition of new knowledge, Campbell (2012a: 9) makes the point that learning in cities happens during the process of city-to-city exchanges – “technical visits of professional practitioners who actively seek new knowledge and good practice”. During this process, Campbell (2012a: 9) argues that proactive cities begin developing a new dynamic of leadership incorporating the elements of “outside knowledge acquisition, development of internal capacities to learn and idea-exchanges on both policy and practice in order to influence strategic city changes in the long-term”.
Lee and van de Meene (2012: 199), in facilitating an investigation into learning in cities, similarly conceptualize learning as “a process comprising information seeking, adoption and policy change”. This aspect of translation into policy changes made on the assumption that adoption will be successful locally, has been receiving dedicated attention by numerous scholars (Peyroux et al., 2012; Temenos & McCann, 2012; Wood, 2014). It is Campbell’s (2012a) notion of the acquisition of outside knowledge - in this case of municipal visioning and strategic planning from a mentor city as well as the development of internal capacities to learn by the mentee city - in order to improve planning practice and contribute towards long-term sustainability is useful in helping frame the research.
The idea of improving practice also resonates with Toens and Landwehr’s (2009: 348) notion of
“improvement-oriented learning” as opposed to the nominal concept of learning which focuses on mere change. In drawing on the work of Nullmeier (2003 cited in Toens & Landwehr, 2009: 349), they argue that improvement-oriented learning is learning which can be designated as an improvement, based on a set of certain pre-determined criteria. The applicability of this notion will be tested in the southern African case study, and will be revisited later. For now, however, it is timely to briefly trace the history of city-to-city learning before the detailed mechanisms of exactly how cities learn is dealt with.
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In tracing the chronological shifts that gave rise to increased city-to-city learning, Campbell (2012a) points out that environmental change in the 1970s was the main impetus for national policy-makers to begin to rethink the role of cities. In the last two decades, however, it was the triple action of decentralization/ democratization, metropolitanization and globalization that collectively produced a complete transformation in political and institutional relationships.
Campbell (2012a) argues that national governments began a process of wholesale changes in governmental arrangements which saw the handing over of powers to local government all within the space of a single decade. It was these changes, it is further argued by Campbell (2012a), that brought incentives for cities to acquire new knowledge, as they were now thrust into an open environment, becoming more and more acutely aware of their knowledge needs in order to position themselves in a competitive global knowledge economy.
Accompanying these institutional changes, however, has been the exponential increase in the actual number of cities, with nearly 300 cities having moved into the intermediate to large-city range in the last 15 years, with another 250 to be added by 2025 (UN, 2010). Campbell (2012a) makes the point that this growth in the number as well as physical form of cities has had many important consequences for the city learning narrative. In a study conducted amongst 120 intermediately sized cities, Angel (2011) showed that a universal decline in city densities have resulted in escalating service costs of increasingly separated settlements. The issue of how to govern such changing cities and what institutional arrangements need to be put into place, Campbell (2012a) observes have been topics of interest that have motivated city-to-city learning exchanges.
Beyond the growing number and qualitative changes in cities that have driven them to learn from others, Campbell (2012a) also reiterates that with the process of decentralization, the democratization of local government during the 1990s meant that collective city leadership (elected officials, civil society, business, etc.) are now required to account to constituencies from below. Concomitantly, these local leaders who are expected to determine the direction of city growth need to be in touch with how other cities are managing their respective processes, hence the need for city-to-city learning.
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Table 3.1: City-to-City learning timeline (Campbell, 2012a: 26 -27)
Period Event
1891 Fabian Municipal Program
1904 First International Garden City Congress
1904 Formation of the British Committee for the Study of Municipal Institutions 1913 First congress of the International Garden Cities and Town Planning
Associations (IGCTPA)
1913 First congress of the IULA/ IUV (Union Internationale des Villes) in Ghent 1919 League of Nations founded
1920 First town twinning: Keighley, West Yorkshire, UK and Poix du Nord, France 1932 Height of IULA membership
1947 UIM created
1951 Council of European Municipalities(CEM) created 1951 Monde Bilingue created
1956 Sister Cities program created
1957 United Towns Organization (UTO) founded under auspices of Monde Bilingue 1967 Sister Cities International founded
1971 UN General Assembly resolution on “city twinnings as a means of international cooperation”
1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm 1976 First Habitat Conference in Vancouver
1980s Regional city networks founded (EUROCITIES, FLACMA)
1989 Formation of the Municipal Development Program in Africa (World Bank and Government of Italy, Porreta Terme, Italy)
1990 CEMR (formerly CEM) folded into IULA; Lomé Convention and
“decentralized cooperation”
1992 Rio Earth Summit and UN-Habitat’s “Localizing Agenda 21” program launched 1994 CITYNET founded
1996 UN Istanbul meeting: WACLAC (World Association of Cities and Local Authorities Coordination) formed (IULA and UTO are both members) 1999 Cities Alliance (a “learning alliance”)
2000 First Africities Conference 2001 UN Istanbul +5 meeting
2002 Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg
2004 IULA merges with FMCU-UTO and Metropolis to form UCLG
2005 Centre for C2C Cooperation founded in Seville by UN-Habitat; C40 founded 2006 Global Urban Forum, Rio de Janeiro
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In reflecting on Campbell’s (2012a) city-to-city timeline above in Table 3.1, what stands out is the role of watershed moments when cities and city associations come together at international conventions, conferences or summits that herald turning points in the landscape of city-to-city learning. For example, the notion of city-to-city learning was clearly reinforced by the idea of
“decentralized cooperation” which was first popularized at the European Union’s Lomé Convention in 1990, and took the form of town twinning to foster better development strategies (Campbell, 2012a: 33). Important to note in this regard is that in South Africa alone, nearly 20%
of all city-to-city partnerships involve decentralized cooperation (De Villiers, 2007).
Again at the 1992 Rio Conference, Campbell (2012a) argues, there was a global recognition of local governments themselves being development players in their own right, resulting in many countries subsequently decentralizing developmental responsibilities to municipalities, facilitating the promotion of city-to-city exchange. Bontenbal (2009) also makes the observation that the rise of city-to-city exchanges since the 1990s has further been catalyzed by a new shift in thinking away from merely managing cities towards actually governing cities, with a specific focus on improving the quality of local government. Campbell (2012a: 33) identifies the 1996 UN-Habitat City Summit in Istanbul, the 2001 Istanbul + 5 events that focused on horizontal cooperation, and the 2002 Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg as important efforts by the UN and its development allies in constituting what he terms an “international institutionalization and endorsement of municipalities’ active participation in local urban development”.
Perhaps the most significant of all of the meetings, however, will remain the Istanbul Summit in 1996, as it was here that the UCLG was conceived. As Campbell (2012a) observes, the creation of the UCLG, as a single voice of cities, authorized to speak in the UN has been a major milestone from the point of city learning. Against this bigger backdrop of the international trajectory of city learning, this research project, although small in scale is timely as it helps throw more light onto the nature of city learning using the UCLG program of city mentorship between Durban and two of its mentee cities, nearly twenty years since the inception of this important international agency.