Christine Auclair
Human settlements may be defined in simple terms as places where human activities take place. In the present context, however, it is the urban areas, the cities, that are the main challenge for sustainable development. The rapid growth of population and its concentration in cities around the globe constitute a crucial element affecting the long-term outlook for humanity. The problematique of sustainable human settlements development encompasses economic, social and environmental dimensions, which leads to an integrated or holistic approach.
As in biology, one can observe the city and its urban region as an evolving organism articulated by interrelated 'life support' systems. Such an organism may be endowed with an overall capacity for creative adaptability, which allows it to evolve continuously into a liveable human habitat. Or it may be moribund, unable to respond to a changing world of dwindling resources, social instability and lost markets. Indicators are the particular tools which monitor systemic conditions and trends and allow us to estimate the stress placed on an organism and its ability to adapt in a changing world.
The Indicators Programme of UNCHS (Habitat) addresses the global urgency to monitor and analyse urban systems by helping countries and cities design, collect and apply policy-oriented indicators. The Indicators Programme started in 1988 as the Housing Indicators Programme, as a joint UNCHS (Habitat)/World Bank programme, in response to the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000. In 1993, the programme moved towards a broader issue: sustainable urban development, in response to the major theme addressed in the Habitat II Conference: 'Sustainable Human Settlements in an Urbanising World'.
THE HOUSING INDICATORS PROGRAMME
The objective of the first Housing Indicators Programme was to design tools for monitoring the implementation of the Global Strategy for Shelter calling for the establishment of an enabling legislative and regulatory environment which can facilitate the accelerated development of the housing sector. A set of indicators that would be policy-sensitive and easy to collect and update on a regular basis were proposed with a view to producing a framework for monitoring the performance of the housing sector from different perspectives. They were intended to provide a management tool for the key stakeholders - housing consumers, housing producers, housing finance institutions, local governments and central governments - to identify policy imperatives to address the pressing problems of housing. In examining the links between policies and housing outcomes, the analysis of indicators established that poor housing outcomes are often as much, or more, the result of inadequate policies than of levels of income expenditure. The results of a global collection of key indicators have been analysed and incorporated in an Enabling Index (see box below). This index is based on the definition of an enabling housing market and is intended to reflect the efficiencies of housing policies in terms of market. It constitutes a good example for further development of indices in the wider context of sustainable urban development.
The stakeholders in a well-functioning housing sector pursue their own goals and objectives, subject to a set of rules which determine the relationships between them and constrain their behaviour. An enabling policy environment for an activity allows, empowers and supports this activity but leaves it to happen by itself, by its own rationale, using its own information and managing its own resources to achieve its own ends. The structure and dynamics of the housing sector are looked at in terms of housing markets, which have been shown to exist in even the poorest squatter settlements and in the most rigidly controlled, centrally planned economies.
The Global Survey of Housing Indicators was conducted in 1990 under the joint programme of the UNCHS (Habitat) and the World Bank. The overall objectives of the survey were to create a comprehensive basic set of indicators for the housing sector, to obtain current estimates for these indicators in a large number of countries and to use these to establish key analytical relationships among these indicators. Housing indicators were collected in the following areas:
The Global Survey was carried out in 53 cities selected on the basis of economic development, city size, geographical distribution, and socio-political systems.
The Enabling Index is a composite measure of six sub-indices - three on the demand side and three on the supply side. The underlying principle is that housing policies which increase demand without, at the same time, making supply more elastic usually result in unnecessary housing price increases without improving sector performance. Both supply-side and demand-side policies must be in balance in a well-functioning housing sector, and the enabling index gives equal weight to both. The three components on the demand side are: (1) the property rights index, (2) the housing finance regime index and (3) the housing subsidies index. The three components on the supply side are: (1) the residential infrastructure index, (2) the regulatory regime index and (3) the industrial organization index. Each one of these components is again composed of several sub-components.
The results show a strong relationship between the Enabling Index and the level of economic development, but there is a wide range of variation in the degree to which policies may be characterized as enabling at every level of development. The tendency for the degree of enabling to rise with development is, in part, a consequence of the extent to which some components of the index are associated with resource levels, the most obvious being the Residential Infrastructure Index, where resource levels determine the scope and adequacy of water, sanitation, roads, etc.
From: Shlomo Angel and Stephen K. Mayo, Enabling Policies and Their Effects on Housing Sector Performance: A Global Comparison, Habitat II, June 1996,93 pages.
THE INDICATORS PROGRAMME
The success of the Housing Indicators Programme has provided the impetus to develop a set of urban indicators designed to capture the essential elements of urban sector performance and to monitor the performance of the urban sector in relation to desired policy goals. The critical role for urban indicators is not only to assess human settlement conditions and sustainability, but also to assist in policy formulation and in monitoring overall human settlements performance. A serious problem in formulating and implementing urban policy in both developed and developing countries has been the lack of appropriate data at the city level. Accurate and timely data on key policy variables at the city level are required, as well as performance indicators which measure conditions and changes in urban areas. It is this gap at the interface between policy and data that the Indicators Programme addresses.
The basic methodology for the development of indicators is a general process whereby indicators can be established for virtually any broad policy area at any geographical scale. It can be summarized by asking the question, 'What would a well-functioning sector look like, from the point of view of each of the key stake- holders or players in the arena?' The answers to this question form a set of qualitative norms for a well-functioning policy sector. From these norms, a limited set of policy goals or objectives may be derived which will enable these norms to be met.
In turn, a set of indicators may be established which will permit evaluation of the objectives or of policies designed to meet these objectives. Simple criteria have been established in a first phase of development and collection.
At a global scale, the following modules were adopted, covering major aspects of human settlements activity. Each contains a core set of key indicators along with extensive and intensive indicators, which are intended to permit a more comprehensive evaluation of particular sectors:
1. The Background Data Module, which provides key demographic and economic data necessary for the calculation of other indicators;
2. The Socio-economic Development Module, which deals with poverty, city productivity, employment, health, education, social investment and social cohesion;
3. The Infrastructure Module, which deals with networked services including water, sanitation, electricity and telephones;
4. The Transport Module, which deals with transport and roads;
5. The Environmental Management Module, which deals with air and water quality, solid waste, resources, and disasters;
6. The Local Government Module, which deals with governance, finance and local participation;
7. The Housing Affordability and Adequacy Module, which deals with the affordability and condition of the housing stock;
8. The Housing Provision Module, which deals with the provision of housing, including land development, finance, construction, subsidies, public housing, and regulations.
The main aim of the Indicators Programme is to build in-country and local capacity to collect and use indicators as an integral part of the national and local policy development framework. Indicators are part of an enabling process, measuring sector-wide progress of all actors towards achieving environmental, economic and social goals. A set of indicators of local government activity emphasizes sustainability and efficiency goals rather than simple production goals that have been a feature of government performance indicators in the past. The aim is to develop commitment and expertise and to establish a routine for collecting data in all countries. The indicators have also formed an integral part of the preparatory process for the Second United Nations Conference on human settlements. A list of 46 key indicators was endorsed as the minimal set of indicators to be collected in preparation for the Conference. The results were presented by countries, in Istanbul, in their national reports, and also compiled in a Global Database. By the end of September 1996, indicators had been received from 221 cities in 104 countries.
The Habitat Agenda, the main political document coming out of the Habitat II Conference, includes a series of commitments and recommendations relating to the development and use of indicators. It states that all partners of the Habitat Agenda, including local authorities, the private sector and communities, should regularly monitor and evaluate their own performances in the implementation of the Habitat Agenda through comparable human settlements and shelter indicators. Future activities will include capacity building and quality control, information generation and analysis, dissemination of information, as well as further research and development of indicators on specific areas. The first step will be to consolidate the Indicators Database for further analysis of the results and explore the interrelationships between variables. The next step will be to draw up analytical models to test the effects of sustainable human settlements policies, to develop further research on crucial areas and to design appropriate and simple indices.
One of the main research areas will be to explore the objectives of sustainable urban growth and poverty reduction. Within the context of a global network of cities, there is little information about the successful economic performance of cities, even within the developed world. Information about disadvantaged groups and areas within the cities is also rarely available. Substantive sectoral studies or special surveys may be undertaken to really gauge the dimensions of urban poverty. Other research areas needed include: impact of gender status, children and disadvantaged groups, impact of disaster and reconstruction, and consumption patterns in human settlements. On the model of the enabling index, a sustainable human settlements index could be designed, based on sub-indices covering the existing modules.
These explorations within the problematique of sustainable human settlements should bring us to new knowledge about the inter-linkages between economic, social and environmental systems. However, considering the challenging problems posed in urban areas, the main immediate task will be to implement sustainable processes for collection and utilization of effective indicators at the city level in order to find lasting solutions and monitor the implementation of sustainable policies.