Suchergebnisse

Participatory urban planning approaches (PUPAs) are seen as key methodological tools to develop plans and strategies that can help in alleviating urban poverty and improving urban planning and governance. Given that, there is a need for a deeper understanding of the PUPAs adopted and implemented in the Arab cities to define the challenges that led to the weak impacts of these approaches in the examined cities and to identify their potentials for improvement in the future. Yet, adopting PUPAs in restrictive political and institutional settings like the ones in the Arab region proved to be ineffective, either in improving urban planning and governance or in including urban citizens in planning decision-making processes. This research examines PUPAs in the City Development Strategies of two big cities in the Arab region between 2003 and 2010: Alexandria in Egypt and Aleppo in Syria. The research investigates whether PUPAs are adopted and supported by the institutional and legal framework in the cities under study and whether they are implemented successfully. For this purpose, the research identifies first the challenges and successes in implementing PUPAs in the two cities based on an in-depth analysis of the structures and actors of governance and planning. Second, it explores the effects of the PUPAs on the participatory process and vice versa. The main findings of the research have shown that PUPAs can only be effective when the political, institutional, and social contexts are supporting participation, which is lacking in the two examined cities. Yet, the different PUPAs implemented in these cities indicate that local actors and planners have a great potential for developing innovative communication strategies and participatory mechanisms that could have positive impacts on urban planning, urban governance, and the society.

Amid low oil prices and rising debts, the Arab region faces a challenging economic outlook. At the same time, development priorities related to decent work, poverty and social justice are more pressing than at any other time in the region's recent history. Fiscal policy offers many of the tools to resolve these complex challenges. This report proposes several primary considerations. Fiscal policy reforms are essential and immediate considerations to move forward, including to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Real progress, on the scale that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development demands, depends on economic structural transformation and broader economic governance reforms geared towards financing inclusive and sustainable development.

The Arab uprisings have laid bare the abyss between the rhetoric and reality of the dominant development paradigm in the region. It is widely agreed that socioeconomic discontent was a major cause of the uprisings. An early slogan raised at the start of the uprising in Tunisia was "employment is a right, you gang of thieves". The slogan contrasted the denied universal right to employment with the actual accumulation of illicit privileges by a narrow minority.

The school-to-work transition is a process that young people typically go through as they complete their education and join the workforce to secure a full-time stable job that satisfies their aspirations (ILO, 2006). The ideal transition to decent work, however, was far from being the norm prior to the 2008 global economic crisis, even in developed countries, particularly for disadvantaged youth (Ryan, 2001). The transition can be long, as young people remain unemployed or employed in temporary or unsatisfactory jobs. They may not start the transition because they are still in school, or remain outside the labor force for other reasons (ILO, 2006).