Indicator 11.3.2 Proportion of cities with a direct participation structure of civil society in urban planning and management that operate regularly and democratically

Indicator 11.3.2: Proportion of cities with a direct participation structure of civil society in urban planning and management that operates regularly and democratically

Target 11.3: By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries

UN-Habitat

Definition:

Civil society organizations (CSOs) make a difference in international development. They provide development services and humanitarian relief, innovate in service delivery, build local capacity and advocate with and for the poor. Acting alone, however, their impact is limited in scope, scale and sustainability. CSOs need to engage in government policy processes more effectively. The development of sustainable human settlements calls for the active engagement of all key stakeholders with particular attention to project/programme beneficiaries and vulnerable groups. Therefore local and national governments should strive to: a) facilitate and protect people’s participation and civic engagement through independent civil society organizations that can be from diverse backgrounds - local, national, and international; b) promote civic and human rights education and training programmes to make urban residents aware of their rights and the changing roles of diverse women, men, and young women and men in urban settings; c) remove the barriers that block participation of socially marginalized groups and promote non-discrimination and the full and equal participation of women, young men and women and marginalized groups. To monitor this indicator fully, it is important to define cities as unique entities and define what constitutes direct participation structures of civil society. Urban planning and management are more clear concepts that UN-Habitat has worked on developing for the last few decades and these are well articulated in the urban agenda documents. Experts who have worked on the methodological developments of this indicator have therefore put forth the below definitions to help guide the work on this indicator.

Concepts:

City or urban area: Since 2016 UN-Habitat and partners organized global consultations and discussions to narrow down the set of meaningful definitions that would be helpful for the global monitoring and reporting process. Following consultations with 86 member states, the United Nations Statistical Commission, in its 51st Session (March 2020) endorsed the Degree of Urbanisation (DEGURBA) as a workable method to delineate cities, urban and rural areas for international statistical comparisons.^[1] This definition combines population size and population density thresholds to classify the entire territory of a country along the urban-rural continuum, and captures the full extent of a city, including the dense neighbourhoods beyond the boundary of the central municipality. DEGURBA is applied in a two-step process: First, 1 km2 grid cells are classified based on population density, contiguity and population size. Subsequently, local units are classified as urban or rural based on the type of grid cells in which majority of their population resides.

Other concepts

Democratic participation: Structures allow and encourage participation of civil society representing a cross-section of society that allows for equal representation of all members of the community with equal rights for participation and voting.

Direct participation: Structures allow and encourage civil society accessing and actively engaging in decision-making, without intermediaries, at every stage of the urban planning and management process.

Regular participation: Structures allow and encourage civil society participation in urban planning and management processes at every stage, and at least every six months.

Marginalized groups: Groups of people that are not traditionally given equal voice in governance processes. These include, but are not limited to, women, young men and women, low-income communities, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, people with disabilities, the elderly, and sexual and gender identity minorities and migrants.

Structures: Any formal structure that allows for participation of civil society. This can include, but is not limited to national or local legislation, policy, town council meetings, websites, elections, suggestion boxes, appeals processes, notice period for planning proposals etc.

Civil Society: The combination of non-governmental organizations, community groups, community-based organizations, regional representative groups, unions, research institutes, think tanks, professional bodies, non-profit sports and cultural groups, and any other groups that represent the interests and wills of the members and wider community.

Urban Management: The officials, including elected officials and public servants, that are responsible for city-management, across all sectors, such as roads, water, sanitation, energy, public space, land title etc.

Urban Budget decision making: The process by which money is allocated to various sectors of urban management, including roads, roads, water, sanitation, energy, public space, land title etc.

Urban Planning, including Design and Agreements: The technical and political process that concerns the development and use of land, how the natural environment is used etc. Design includes over-arching and specific design of public space, as well as zoning and land use definitions. Agreements refer to specific contract/arrangements made with various groups in regard to their land, e.g. Indigenous groups, protected natural environments etc.

Proportion (Percentage)

Option 1: Evaluators will examine structures at the city level, with data aggregated from city levels for national averages through local national statistical systems constituted and chaired by the national Statistical agencies.

Option 2: For countries where civil society engagement is covered within the law as a requirement and legally enforced, evaluators can provide a direct national level assessment of the practice and coverage for the cities as one estimated percentage.

National statistical organisations.

The indicator measures the availability of structures for civil society participation in urban planning and management, which is a reflection of structures for citizen voices/participation. The fact that informed evaluators conduct the evaluation can introduce biases. These biases and discrepancies have been examined in the pilot phases and so far the experiences is that the marginal differences are not as large as we were expecting. Overall, the evaluators’ assessments sometimes do not reflect a full analysis of the effectiveness or accessibility of these structures in its totality, but gives a local idea of how these evaluators view the inclusiveness and openness on these structures to accommodate the participation of citizens and civil society. Changes in data will be examined for intra-city differences and within country differences over time to understand more sources for variations and internal consistencies.

Within the civic society landscape, there are many types of players including civil societies led by individuals, community groups, advocates, corporations and foundations. Similarly, there are many different views about the relevance and importance of civil society participation particularly, perhaps, among different groups as listed above and for these different structures at the urban level maybe available for involvement or not.

Finally, civic society engagement in urban planning and management involves overlapping pathways, and goals as well as a mix of planned and unpredicted elements. Advancing toward a measurement frame is intended to help sort out theories and pathways – not to set hard boundary lines, but rather to help both urban managers and communities better understand what they are trying to achieve, and how they are getting there.

We also recognize that there are some countries where the legal instruments that govern cities and municipalities require that civil society are involved in the day-to-day urban planning and management of cities/municipalities. Hence, such countries can report directly the national level engagement of civil society as 100%, if in practice all municipalities apply the legal requirements for civil society engagement in urban planning and management.

To measure existence of direct participation structures of civil society in urban planning and management at the city level, we recommend two options:-

1-For countries where there is no legal requirement for civil society engagement and the practice is also not known at the city or municipality levels OR For countries where there is a legal requirement for civil society engagement in urban planning and management but however the practice is not known across the system of cities.

2- For countries where there is a legal requirement for civil society engagement in urban planning and management and the practice is also known across the system of cities and municipalities.

Option 1: a scorecard approach will be used to evaluate the available structures for civil society participation in urban planning and management, as evaluated by five (5) local experts from government, academia, civil society and international organizations. The identifications and selection of these 5 local evaluators/experts will be guided by local urban observatories teams that are available in many cities. In the pilot exercises, these urban observatories as local custodians of urban data at the city level are able to coordinate the assessments and check for consistencies and relevant local references that guide the decisions and scores of the evaluators.

A questionnaire with a 4-point Likert scale (strongly disagree, disagree, agree, and strongly agree) will be used to measure and test the existence of structures for civil society participation in urban governance and management. As experts, we agreed that these structures are examined through four core elements and these were assessed in the completed pilot exercises as follows:

1. Are there structures for civil society participation in urban planning, including design and agreements, that are direct, regular and democratic?
2. Are there structures for civil society participation in local urban budget decision-making, that are direct, regular and democratic?
3. Are there structures for civil society evaluation and feedback on the performance of urban management, that are direct, regular and democratic?
4. Do these structures promote the participation of women, young men and women, and/or other marginalized groups?

The evaluators score each of the questions on the Likert Scale, as below:

1 - Strongly disagree, 2 - Disagree, 3 - Agree, 4 - Strongly agree

The Likert Scale use the following guidance for grading:

Strongly Disagree: There are no structures in place or available structures do not allow civil society participation that is direct, regular or democratic.

Disagree: Structures exist that allow civil society participation, but they are only partially direct, regular and democratic; or they are only one of direct, regular or democratic.

Agree: Structures exist that allow and encourage civil society participation that is direct and/or regular and/or democratic, but not all three.

Strongly Agree: Structures exist that allow and encourage civil society participation that is fully direct, regular and democratic.

Once each of the five (5) categories is evaluated as shown in the table above by a single evaluator, the total average score of the single evaluator is computed. The various scores of the evaluators are then averaged to compute the final score for every city.

To determine the proportion of cities with a direct participation structure of civil society in urban planning and management that operates regularly and democratically, a midpoint on the Likert scale of 2.5 will be used. The value of the indicator is the proportion of cities with overall score that is greater than the mid-point.

As a result, if we have N cities selected for the evaluation in a given country, and n is the number of cities with scores that are higher than the mid-point, the value of the indicator will be calculated as:

$\mathbf{V}\mathbf{a}\mathbf{l}\mathbf{u}\mathbf{e}\mathrm{\ }\mathbf{o}\mathbf{f}\mathrm{\ }\mathbf{I}\mathbf{n}\mathbf{d}\mathbf{i}\mathbf{c}\mathbf{a}\mathbf{t}\mathbf{o}\mathbf{r}=\frac{\mathbf{n}}{\mathbf{N}}$ (to be expressed in percentage)

To note, the number of cities in which the evaluation will be conducted may be determined using the National Sample of Cities approach. The approach will help draw a sample of cities using sound statistical and scientific methodologies based on several relevant city-specific criteria/characteristics that capture the specific contexts of countries, ensuring that the sample is representative of a given country’s territory, geography, size, history, etc.

Option 2: a scorecard approach will not be used to evaluate the available structures for civil society participation in urban planning and management, instead a national level assessment will be provided based on a confirmation of the existence of the legal requirement for civil society participation in urban planning and management, followed by a confirmation that this is indeed practice as per the legal requirement. Hence, if N is the number of cities in the country that are covered by the legal instruments of civil society participation in urban planning and management, and n is the number of cities/municipalities where in practice civil society participation is happening in the urban planning and management, then

$\mathbf{V}\mathbf{a}\mathbf{l}\mathbf{u}\mathbf{e}\mathrm{\ }\mathbf{o}\mathbf{f}\mathrm{\ }\mathbf{I}\mathbf{n}\mathbf{d}\mathbf{i}\mathbf{c}\mathbf{a}\mathbf{t}\mathbf{o}\mathbf{r}=\frac{\mathbf{n}}{\mathbf{N}}$ (to be expressed in percentage)

2022-05-18

UN-Habitat

Not applicable

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