Organizers: Ethiopia s Ministry of Urban Development and Construction, Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, & the World

Bank Addis Ababa, June 24th 2011.

Motivation The structural and spatial transformations of an economy are intimately related. Successful industrialization goes hand-in-hand with a successful urbanization process. This was the case for today's developed countries to which industrialization came early and it has also been the case for more recent successful developers, such as South Korea. It is no coincidence that China has been rapidly urbanizing at the same time as it has been rapidly industrializing. It is also no coincidence that, as industrialization continues to elude much of the African continent, urban shares remain low in sub-Saharan Africa. An understanding of the urbanization process is therefore crucial to an understanding of how countries develop and transform economically. Unfortunately, for the countries which matter most, such an understanding is incomplete. Although theoretical and empirical advances over the last two decades have led to a renaissance of the field of urban economics, the resultant knowledge which has been accumulated relates almost exclusively to developed countries. Whilst empirical work on some, but by no means all, of the most important urban issues has taken place for the largest developing countries (namely, Brazil, China and India), hardly any rigorous work has been published on these issues for the rest of the developing world. Especially for sub-Saharan Africa, serious empirical and theoretical work in the arena of urban economics is noticeably absent. Yet, in the decades to come, it is in the African continent where urban shares are lowest, that urbanization can be expected to be most rapid and the challenges most difficult. Contents As a consequence of the knowledge gap which exists on urban issues, developing country policymakers lack adequate answers to the many questions and challenges surrounding the urbanization process which confront them. These questions and challenges include: are the agglomeration economies which are necessary for a beneficial urbanization process present? Or are they swamped by the diseconomies of concentration viz. crime, grime and congestion? What can be done in the way of, for example, urban infrastructure investment to tackle such diseconomies? 1. Why do cities grow? How do processes of agglomeration in developing countries the main drivers of the rural-urban transformation differ from those that have been historically experienced in industrialized countries? What are the dominant constraints (infrastructure? red-tape?) on urban agglomeration in Africa? 2. How do cities grow? What are the specific dynamics of urban land markets in African countries, and in the peri-urban areas as land is converted from rural to urban uses? What are the market failures associated with the functioning of land markets in African cities? 3. How do urban areas interact with rural ones? What do we know about general migration processes in Africa? Are such processes limited by regulations in land, labor and credit markets? A cross-cutting question for all of the research themes is: How does public policy support or hinder spatial and structural transformations? What are the implications of policies which relate to the above three questions for the dynamics of urbanization? And how do urban development policies affect (either positively or negatively) the structural transformations experienced by national economies? This Forum intends to open up a conversation surrounding these issues.

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Organizers: Ethiopia s Ministry of Urban Development and Construction, Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, & the World Bank Addis Ababa, June 24th 2011.
Time 8:00am-8:45am 8:45am-9:20am Program Breakfast & Registration Welcome and Opening Remarks Ato Mekuria Haile , Minister of Urban Development and Construction, Ethiopia Dr. Abraham Tekeste, State Minister of Finance & Economic Development, Ethiopia Greg Toulmin, Acting Country Director, Ethiopia, World Bank Overview of the day s schedule, and Introductions of all participants Greg Clark, Facilitator Introduction to the objectives of the Urbanization Knowledge Platform and Communities of Practice http://prezi.com/7r5fgxye3ll8/urbkp-addis/ Austin Kilroy, Urbanization Knowledge Platform focal point

9:20am-9:30am

9:30am-9:40am

9:40am-12:00pm 9:40am 10.00am

Roundtable 1: Policies for Inclusive Urbanization A kickoff Presentation: Inclusive Urbanization: Examples from Asia Chorching Goh, Lead Economist, the World Bank Format for each Roundtable Session: y A 20-minute kickoff presentation of key issues y Discussion around the Roundtable moderated by Greg Clark y Open Floor Q&A Participants of each Roundtable comprise experts and East African policymakers

10:00am-10:30am 10:30am -12:00pm

Coffee break Discussion Points: The structural and spatial transformations of an economy are intimately related. Successful industrialization goes hand-in-hand with a successful urbanization process. Urbanization is fastest at low income levels. In the decades to come, it is in the African continent, where urban shares are lowest, that urbanization can be expected to be most rapid. y How do governments with limited capacity and resources at that level of development lay the necessary foundation for an inclusive urbanization? y Well- functioning land market institutions are the bedrock for efficient urbanization. What challenges do governments face to ensure land market works well? y How will rural-urban transformations influence growth, welfare levels, and poverty outcomes across metropolis, cities, towns, and rural areas? Are the speed and nature of the transformations limited by regulations in land, labor and credit markets?

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Organizers: Ethiopia s Ministry of Urban Development and Construction, Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, & the World Bank Addis Ababa, June 24th 2011.

Noon - 1:30pm

Lunch

1:30pm-3:00pm

Roundtable 2: Land Market Institutions A kickoff Presentation: Building institutions and facilitating market mechanisms in land use transactions for urbanization and development Yu-Hung Hong, Visiting Professor, MIT, and Senior Fellow, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Discussion Points: How do cities grow? What are the specific dynamics of urban land markets in African countries, and specifically in the peri-urban areas as land is converted from rural to urban uses? What are the market failures associated with the functioning of land markets in African cities? What drives informality in housing markets, an all too frequent and visual companion of urbanization? And how best to deal with the division within cities that is the result of such informality? y Do the poor benefit or are they harmed by residential informality? How do land market policies and regulations support or hinder supplies of land? How is land valued by governments, and how can appropriate land valuation help raise revenue to finance infrastructure needs? What are key factors (viz property rights, regulatory framework .) for a well-functioning land market? How do infrastructure planning and land use planning influence each other in core and peri urban areas? How to integrate transport and land use planning

3:00pm-3:30pm

Coffee break

3:30 pm-5:30pm

Roundtable 3: Rural Urban Transformation A kickoff Presentation: How do urban-rural interactions facilitate growth and structural transformation? Uwe Deichmann, Senior Environmental Specialist, Europe and Central Asia, and Coordinator of Urban Research Work, the World Bank Discussion Points: Urban shares remain low in Africa. An understanding of the rural-urban transformation process is therefore crucial to an understanding of how countries develop and shift their economic structure. y Are the agglomeration economies which are necessary for a beneficial urbanization process present? Or are they swamped by the diseconomies

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Organizers: Ethiopia s Ministry of Urban Development and Construction, Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, & the World Bank Addis Ababa, June 24th 2011.
of agglomeration crime, grime and congestion? What can be done in the way of, for example, urban infrastructure investment to tackle such diseconomies? How can such infrastructure be financed? And should infrastructure in larger cities be prioritized over infrastructure in smaller towns? Does urban growth reduce rural poverty? And, if so, what does this imply for national poverty reduction strategies? What s the role of the rural non-farm sector in towns and small cities? What influences rural-urban migration decisions? What s the degree and nature of specialization in towns, secondary cities, capital cities at different stages of development?

y y

5:30pm

Summary of the Forum s discussions Greg Clark, Facilitator Dinner

6:00pm

Short Bios of Presenters:

Chorching Goh, a Malaysian national, graduated from Yale University, summa cum laude, with simultaneous BA and MA degrees, and from Harvard University, a PhD in Economics. She joined the World Bank in 1999 as a Young Professional working on health, nutrition, and education. During 2001-06, she worked on poverty, inequality, trade and labor market issues in East Asia. Prior to joining Africa, she worked on territorial development and urbanization issues in Russia, the former Soviet Republics and Poland. She is a co-author of the World Development Report 2009 Reshaping Economic Geography. Yu-Hung Hong, a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and a visiting faculty in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, earned his Ph.D. in Urban Development and Masters in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on property rights and obligations, land management tools, and local public finance. He has been teaching urban public finance since 1996. He was an assistant professor at the University of Akron in Ohio (1999 2003) and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in China (1996 1998). Selected publications: Leasing Public Land: Policy Debates and International Experiences (2003; translated into Chinese in 2007); Analyzing Land Readjustment: Economics, Law, and Collective Action (2007); Land Policies and Their Outcomes (2007); Fiscal Decentralization and Land Policies (2008); Property Rights and Land Policies (2009); Smart Growth Policies: An Evaluation of Programs and Outcomes (2009); Local Revenues and Land Policies (2010); China s Local Public Finance in Transition (2010); and Climate change and Land Policies (2011). Uwe Deichmann, a Senior Environmental Specialist Development Research Group and coordinator of its Spatial Analysis Team, holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California at Santa Barbara. His research interests are in the geographic aspects of development. His recent work has included issues of housing and urban development, the role of infrastructure in promoting regional growth, and the impacts of natural hazards and global change on economic development. Prior to joining the World Bank he worked for the UN Environment Program and the UN Statistics Division. He is is a co-author of the World Development Report 2009 Reshaping Economic Geography.

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