Urban management in Asia : issues and opportunities

The developing countries have recently been experiencing very rapid rates of urbanization and urban growth. As a result there is a call for strengthening the management capabilities of urban organizations involved in the augmentation and maintenance of local services. While the role of training in improving skills and management capabilities hardly needs to be emphasized, trainers in management training institutions have been constrained by the general paucity of relevant case studies on urban finance and management. The present book attempts to meet the needs of these training institutions. It contains a set of case studies, covering diverse elements of urban fmance and management, such as local taxation, fiscal transfers, urban transport, solid waste
disposal, water supply, shelter and redevelopment. These case studies originated at two regional seminars, held at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in August 1987, and Lonawala, India, in December 1987, under the auspices of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), the Economic Development Institute (EDI) of the World Bank, the National Institute of Public Administration
(Malaysia) and the National Institute of Urban Affairs (India). The immense practical value of these case studies impelled the organizers of the seminars to bring them together for wide dissemination. We hope that the case studies will prove to be valuable to training programmes on urban management and finance the world over.