UNESCO Social and Human Sciences
 
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The MOST Phase II website is available at: www.unesco.org/shs/most.
 

 

MOST-MAB PROJECT
Cities: management of social and environmental transformations

UNESCO has established an action-oriented project for the six-year period 1996-2001, entitled "Cities: management of social and environmental transformations". The first four years will be spent designing and implementing a small number of pilot activities. During the final biennium (2000-2001), a comparative evaluation of these experiments will be carried out, and proposals will be drawn up to improve policies for cities, mainly in respect of support for local communities in the context of urban management. 

This project, anchored in the MOST (Management of Social Transformations) and MAB (Man and the Biosphere) Programmes of UNESCO, will be implemented in partnership with local authorities, NGO's and grass-roots organisations. Co-operation with the international organisations and scientific communities is actively sought. 

Since the experimental project relies on action in the field, it seeks to associate the social sciences with the natural sciences. The "social science" dimension will be centred on combating forms of social exclusion and, in particular, urban violence, drug abuse, delinquency, exploitation of children, discrimination against women and will seek to foster various forms of solidarity and citizens' participation in the face of these cases of social dysfunction. The "natural science" approach will emphasise the ecological facets, taking the city as an ecosystem. In addition to the social aspects of urban life, it will introduce the physical, chemical and biological aspects, for example problems related to water and to the purification of urban waste, the destruction of green spaces and the lack thereof, the deterioration of the built-up environment, the deterioration of coastal regions linked to urban growth, industrial hazards in the urban context and atmospheric pollution. 

The relevance of the project is attested to by the following observation: the protection and the functioning of the city require the consumption of "things" which, by the development of forms of representation and of social policies, become goods owned in common, a part of the common heritage. This is the case not only with water, air and soil, but also with health, silence, the architectural context and security. It is the way in which production and the functioning of the city consume, transform and bring about the deterioration of these collectively owned goods that will pattern and create the urban environment. 

This way of transforming and consuming implies a legal and financial framework, technical tools and above all actors, among them the inhabitants of the cities. 

The consumption of "collectively owned goods" by the city may warrant a reference to the "modes of exploitation" (consumption, deterioration, transformation) and appropriation of these goods by the different sectors of the production and functioning of the city. Here we are at the very core of the reality of the presence of two that co-exist in the city of the Third World. 

The issue of " collectively owned environmental and social goods " in the urban context relates to the fact that inequality, poverty, economic development and environment are closely intertwined and leads us to the question of sustainable development and social development as well as that of "governance". 

The goal of the project is to "encourage initiatives aimed at improving the quality of life and to promote the exercise of citizenship in an urban environment". 

In the face of overlapping handicaps resulting from both environmental dysfunction and social dysfunction which feed on each other in a given space, the project is based on the assumption that the only policies with some chance of success are those seeking to involve populations, or better still those relying on local initiative by inhabitants. 

The present programme is therefore neither a project of urban management nor a programme of pure research. It is an action-oriented programme, based on certain criteria of choice. It should also form the basis for partnership among grass-roots communities, municipalities, the scientific community and the media with the impetus being provided by UNESCO. They will be conducted as case studies from which lessons will be drawn. They will form the core of an emerging network of social actors. 

In order to determine the sites of these pilot activities, it is proposed to attach greater importance to the following criteria in the choice of projects: 

  • A well delimited territory, as the site of the activity. 
  • A territory where there is an already-formed grass-roots community. 
  • Support to actions already on their way, by a community of inhabitants. 
  • Activities at the meeting point of the environmental, economic, social, psycho-social and health sectors, for example, centred on: 
    • the relationship between water and women: support for the setting up of water posts by women in single-parent families; 
    • the relationship between decaying built-up areas and youth in the streets: support for pavement repair work by pre-delinquent youth - street children; 
    • example: the relationship between wastes and households: support for income-generating micro-projects (recycling of wastes, market gardening) with rotating community credit.
  • Adoption of interactive strategies for: 
    • renewing the urban environment, 
    • developing the local economy, 
    • enhancing the lives of the inhabitants. 
The assumption here is that the prerequisite for the individual's self-esteem is the self-esteem of the group which itself is based on respect for and the renewal of an element of the urban environment, for example, a street, a square, a river, etc. 
  • Partnership between the grass-roots community and local government. 
  • Along with action, the undertaking of a process to train local leaders and municipal officials. 
  • Support for action in the field and for the training process by a local government authority and an NGO from the North in order to promote South-North and North-South links. 
  • Following up the action and process of training local actors through partnership with local research institutions. 
  • Accompanying activities in terms of information notably through the media and radio. 
  • Setting up networks of the different social actors in the two pilot activities in order to promote South-South networks.
  • Follow-up and assessment of each activity by a network of research workers in the natural and social sciences in order to draw lessons from activities in the field: these lessons would pertain to what works and what does not work, how it works, why the activity is functioning or not functioning, what is changing and what is not changing, what are the obstacles and what are the factors that make things easier. These questions will be asked through the immersion of the research workers in the environment of the activity.
Haiti/Port-au-Prince, cité-soleil districts, Sous-Fort, Caridad 

In the Haitian capital, with a population of 1.3 million, there are several thousands of children aged between 7 and 18 who are homeless and even without shelter and there are even fewer families to receive them. They subsist in small street groups in an environment of violence, where they evolve survival mechanisms. 

In the face of this situation, the inhabitants of the cemetery district who belong to an Association for Street Children have created a Peoples' Education Centre in order to strive for the integration of these children through a community-based approach. 

This association proposes to support initiatives by groups of young people in their districts who have undertaken space-appropriating action: work to repair roads and pavements, action for cleanliness and the recycling of wastes. To accompany these examples of local initiative, action would be undertaken to train municipal cadres and social organisers along with information-providing activities in Haiti as well as abroad. The main thrust of this action would be education in citizenship and democracy in the city. The Cimade and the France-Haiti Partage Association could also be involved along with the Maurice Sixto Homes as well as the GRD (Groupe Recherche Développement), an NGO that works in the recycling of urban waste, the Association des volontaires au Progrès and the Groupe de Recherches et d'Echanges Technologiques (GRET). The Quisqueya University of Port-au-Prince could also be associated through the ENVIL network. The cities of Toulouse, Bordeaux, Montreal which have twinning activities with Port-au-Prince could be approached. Finally the Centre de Formation du Personnel communal, the Association pour la formation et le perfectionnement des gestionnaires des collectivités territoriales francophone, the Association Démocratie, the local education authorities and the Fondation Haïtienne pour les collectivités locales could make commitments. 

Senegal/Pikine (Dakar suburb)/Yeumbel district 

Yeumbel is a peripheral district of the municipality of Pikine in the suburbs of Dakar. 

Owing to the natural configuration of Dakar's location (which is peninsular), Pikine to the north-east of downtown Dakar is one of the two municipalities, with Guédiawaye, that have experienced the bulk of population growth in Dakar. 

Yeumbel (in the Pikine district) which is a former "traditional" village has become a working-class district in the outer suburbs. Most of its 7,000-odd resident households have no connections of their own to the potable water system. Certain parts of the district have no access to the household garbage collection system. 

Owing to urban unemployment which has affected the majority of the population, especially young school-leavers, the inhabitants of the district are constantly undertaking action to create living conditions that are more dignified and less precarious. This action is supported by mutual assistance and solidarity groups such as savings and credit banks, women's development groups, cultural and sports associations, etc. 

The association ENDA is planning a participatory project at Yeumbel for research and action on local development ventures conducted essentially by women. The proposed approach is based on participation by the concerned groups and other local partners (such as the municipality, the district, medical services and health services) in the identification, planning, financing, implementation and follow-up and assessment of different activities to be carried out in the district such as: 

  • the improvement of the public health and environment of the district by the building of toilets and filtering wells in dwelling units that have no such facilities, the setting up of water posts, and the collection and recycling of household garbage; 
  • the improvement of the living conditions of the least privileged groups by providing support to income-generating micro-projects (recycling of wastes, market gardening, etc.) and ventures of community interest (rotating credit, vaccination campaigns, etc.). 
Following the same principle as in Haiti, multi-institutional partnerships, involving NGO's from the North, cities and universities, could be established to back up action supported by UNESCO. 

MOST Project Co-ordinator: 

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