Transcript Geci_Karuri-Sebina

Conceptualising the “Township Innovation System”
eKasi and township development programmes
Geci Karuri-Sebina, PhD Candidate, [email protected]
Frontiers of research, practice and policy:
International Innovation for Development Symposium
26 February 2010, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa
Outline
1. The Township Category
2. SA responses
– NDPG and TCSHSS
– Some concerns
3. AI & IS: new specs () for old problems?
4. Introducing the investigation
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4
Example
Tshwane’s local settlements – TCSHSS typology
Capital core
2. Metro Activity Nodes
3. Activity spines
4. Development corridors &
special activity areas
5. Centrally located medhigh income
6. Peripherally located,
med-high income
7. Centrally located, low
income
8. Peripherally located, low
income
9. BNG Site and service
10. Informal settlements
11. Outside urban edge
1.
Overall city level
Internal city level
Settlement level
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SETTLEMENT TYPE
Hectares
1. Capital core
72270
1517.47
2. Metro Activity Nodes
61435
2151.68
139677
7040.06
228817
30464.26
17678
11403.57
5. Central
133632
8408.78
6. Peripheral
153660
13395.97
99934
2578.39
311959
10181.62
160808
12939.97
3. Activity spines
4. Development corridors & special
activity areas
Medium income
Corridors
Specialised land uses
7. Central
Low income
8. Peripheral
9. New housing areas
Within urban edge
10. Informal settlements
Outside urban edge
Other
Totals
63770
64%
1336.08
252161
16486.48
593552
115470.77
Nature areas
5210
13019.16
Other
4656
255.51
2299219
246649.77
11. Areas Outside Urban Edge
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Total Pop
Issues
• Poverty traps
• Unemployment higher than SA & city/town averages
(50%, 70%, 80%...)
• Increase in urban household incomes lower than
average
• Significant local buying power leakage from local
economy
• Poorly performing residential property markets
• Undiversified & marginal economy
• Structural disadvantage
• Development investment basic (if any) and minimal
• Social unrest
7
There has been some policy reference…
• Urban Development Framework (1997)
• National Spatial Development Perspective (2003, 2006)
• National Framework for Local Economic Development in South
Africa (2006)
• Second Economy strategy framework (2009)
8
There have been several area-based initiatives
over the years…
• Special Integrated Presidential Projects (1994-2004)
• Urban Renewal Programme (2001-2011)
• Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programmes
(2001-2011)
• Urban Development Zones (2004-2014)
• Neighbourhood Development Partnership Programme
(2006-2017)
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But the challenges have persisted…
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Neighbourhood Development Partnership Grant
Conceptual Framework
11. Contribute
•Fund
•Manage
•Support
8. Stimulate
2. Attract
Leveraged
Investments
(Private & Public)
6. Attract
4. Deliver
NDPG
Economic
Activity
Physical
Improvements
(muni)
Township-focused
Area-based Dev
3. Stimulate
& Long-range strat 5. Coordinate / Deliver
10. Improve
7. Enable
NDP
QOL
9. Improve
Viable &
sustainable
neighbourhoods
1. Fund
R10 billion, 10 years, 57 municipalities, 90 programmes, 260 townships
NDPG Strategic Objectives:
• To attract private sector investment
• To consolidate and co-ordinate quality public sector
spending
• To provide institutional & development capacity
• To direct capital investment into projects
Equity
Innovation
Economic
• To promote knowledge, best practice, innovation &
advocacy
Social
Partnership
Financial
Community
Support & Develop Local Economies
Regional or rural catchment area
Neighbourhood
catchment area
Node
Township or metropolitan
catchment area
Funding components
NDPG projects are fairly generic…
• Public parks & recreational spaces
• Public transport facilities – bus, taxi stops, ranks &
pedestrian links
• Trading facilities & infrastructure for lease/development
as commercial premises (retail & services)
• Township restructuring & development projects towards
nodal concentration of investment & community activities
• Refurbishment, upgrading, extension & conversion of
any public facility that will lead to private sector
investment
• Etc…
• (+Lucrative consultancies! 10% of R10bn)
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8 years and R2m later…
No indications about grassroots potential, no steering committee,
community studies not completed, no “for people” programmes referred,
no critical institutional analysis despite the experience of the initiative itself…
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•
“economic development normatively seeks to improve the quality of living of
a country’s population. Its scope therefore includes the process and policies
by which a country improves the economic, political, and social well-being of
its people. In the main however, economic development refers to social and
technological progress. It implies a change in the way goods and services
are produced, not merely an increase in production achieved using
the same old, inappropriate methods of production on a wider scale”
Maharajh, Sall, Karuri-Sebina (2010)
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•
“In essentialist terms, we could say that the social economy at the
neighbourhood level contains those agents and their neighbourhood
networks that are involved in local production, allocation and domestic
activity in which ethical principles of (re)distribution, reciprocity and
sustainability determine their social organisation.
•
In holistic terms, the social economy receives a more realist institutional
content, including the historical trajectories of economic functions, modes of
social organisation, local institutions with multiscalar linkages and rules of
collective action, which are partly the outcome of social and political
struggle…
•
The institutions that have grown up with these activities and their modes of
social organisation are part-and-parcel of the holistic definition of the
neighbourhood social economy, developed as a typology of variants around
a context-proof analytical pattern. Ethical principles are no longer the deus
ex machina for urban renaissance, but are part of the local development
history.”
Moulaert, Frank & Nussbaumer, Jacques (2005)
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What about…
• “Cutting the red tape” – Batho Pele principles
• Obstacles to growing local entrepreneurs / small business
• Unique local assets / capacities:
– Unique Language: nurture in indigenous context (e.g. in GP many
township residents speak 4-10 languages; any potential here or draw
the capacity into university linguistic labs and consulting firms’
repertoires?
– Hairdressing: support industry where it is rife, or formalise into malls
where we pay more for less quality
– Repairs and recycling: only reliant on an inconvenient and sometimes
mal-incentivised formal industry closes shop rather than
– Endogenous merits: social capital, cultural variety, different modes of
production and consumption, efficiencies of informality
• Figuring out how to increase impact – or at least getting more
money in the hands of the poor than in the hands of those who we
hope will include the poor?
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More fundamentally…
• Do these interventions have a chance of transforming townships into a
“developed” state within the foreseeable future? Within the next 50 years?
• How can the programmes realist-ically (beyond being merely idealistic or
empiricist) engage with the complexity of contexts + asymmetries + actors
+ linkages +++ ?
• What relevant knowledge can be brought to bear in concrete ways?
Human-scale Development /
Wellbeing
vi
E
nc
e
d
e
T
i s,
he
Ne
ed
s
y
or
/O
pp
Im
p
s
aly
ac
or
tu
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t
“TIS”
“TIS”
An
Components,
Components, Interrelations,
Interrelations, Boundaries,
Boundaries, …
…
Body of
Knowledge
Paradigm
Learning
itie
s
Programme /
Intervention
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M4P?
• Making markets work for the poor
• Making markets out of the poor
• “Transforming markets into
something that has any hope in
hell of ever seriously improving
the condition of the poor” (TM4P)
• Team “for the poor”? (TM4P)
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(by the way…)
• Not a question of private- versus public –led
socioeconomic development
• Both public and private have a role to play
• Both can be inefficient and ineffective
– Corruption is a partnership activity!
• Both need to be seriously exploring ways to be
more efficient and effective
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How we frame questions…
What are the major constraints for innovation processes at community level?
How can agents help communities to overcome these constraints?
1st GRA-WORLD BANK WORKSHOP ON INNOVATION SYSTEMS AT THE COMMUNITY LEVEL
“Touching the Hearts of the People”
Kuala Lumpur, 6-8 February 2006
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Appreciative alternative?
Problem Solving
Appreciative Enquiry
“Felt Needs” Identification of problems
Appreciating and Valuing the best of “What Is”

Analysis of Causes

Action Planning (Treatment)

Basic Assumption:
An organisation is a problem to be solved

Envisioning “What Might Be”

Dialoguing “What Should Be”

Basic Assumption:
An organisation is a mystery to be embraced
“In its broadest focus, [Appreciative Inquiry] involves systematic discovery of what
gives “life” to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most
constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves, in a
central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s
capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential”
Cooperrider and Whitney
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IS – a systemic view
•
“the system of innovation is constituted by elements and relationships which
interact in the production, diffusion and use of new, and economically
useful, knowledge”
Lundvall, 1992
OECD
Is a Township Innovation System “TIS”
category useful for…
1. Describing the township socio-economy in new, holistic
terms – recognising a unique typology and valorising its
endogenous potential?
2. Evolving concrete measurement approaches for
classifying and assessing the state and performance of
township economies in context?
3. Creating new understandings / knowledge of
township socio-economy which could contribute to
the improvement of the design, implementation, or
assessment of policies and programmes aimed at
township development (e.g. the NDPG)?
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1. Describing TIS
• Eerste Fabrieke Node, Mamelodi
• Interpreting the endogenous innovation system
using AI techniques
• Mixed-method:
–
–
–
–
–
Participant observation
Interviews
Small surveys (cluster innovation)
Meta-evaluation
Secondary data
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2. Measuring TIS
• Established systems for innovation system
measurement and their systemic indicators :
– Focus on formal (registered) enterprises
– Tend to seek out artifacts that are codified in order to
assess innovativity in a formal context
– Are essentialist, being context-neutral and embedded
within a particular orthodoxy about socio-economic
development
• Identify / explore relevant measurement
parameters
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3. Compare to improve understanding - from
NDPG
TIS
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3. Compare to improve understanding - to
TIS
NDPG
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Summary: TIS Study
Stage
1. DESCRIBE
2. MEASURE
3. EVALUATE
4. LEARN
Description
Explore the application of IS theory to township in a descriptive,
appreciative exercise. Can a TIS be characterised meaningfully?
Output:
a) “What is” – Top-down view
b) “What might be” – Bottom-up view
Determine a means for assessing the performance of the TIS.
What are relevant indicators and methods for measurement?
Output:
a) Practical measures of both views
Test how the TIS framework (as a “bottom-up” view) compares
with the prevailing (“top-down”) view. Are the two perspectives
compatible from a developmental perspective?
Output:
a) Analytical framework
Derive any lessons or knowledgeable actions about township
development from the findings.
Output:
a) “What can be” – pragmatic recommendations
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•
Traditional views of urban development often assume, consciously or
unconsciously, that actual processes of urban change are either natural
evolutionary or inevitable outcomes of theoretically imagined processes.
This of course often leads to an unreal portrayal of processes of urban
development.
•
The neo-liberal urban development discourse is a case in point: it abstracts
away from the actual development trajectories of each specific urban case
and tends to overlook the fact that development is deeply historical, placespecific and embedded within specific and concrete institutional settings. It
also confuses ‘discourse’ with theory and theory with reality, taking its
‘explanatory’ factors of economic growth and progress as actual
descriptors of the way urban economies and societies develop.
Moulaert, 2007
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Contact Details
Geci Karuri-Sebina
Tel: 072 148 1132
[email protected]
[email protected]