80939 CITIES ALLIANCE CITIES ALLIANCE IN ACTION IN ACTION “State of the Cities� Reports Help Transform South Africa’s Urban Management Process South Africa’s nine largest cities contribute more than 60 percent of the gross domestic product to the continent’s Project: Support for the Preparation of 2004 & 2006 State of South African Cities Reports largest economy. But despite their importance, there was a glaring and longstanding absence of current data and Duration: 2005 - 2006 analyses of the country’s urban sector. Officials were left to make policy decisions without a solid understanding of Financing: USD 500,000 the links between policies and outcomes, or what makes Key Results: some cities thrive and others stagnate.  Promoting the role of cities So in 2004, the Cities Alliance-supported South African Cities Network (SACN)—a membership-based  Providing data and analyses to improve urban policy decision-making organisation comprised of the mayors and city managers of these nine cities—commissioned the first of three “state of the city reports� (SoCRs), initially covering the nine metropolitan cities. expect if those trends continued. It also set out to highlight the importance of big cities to the national Such reports provide an overall picture of a city and how government, government-owned enterprises, and it works. Producing and analyzing the information provincial governments; raise the profile of cities in encourages cities to compare approaches and identify national debates and policy-making; prompt urban best practices. The reports can also improve centres to think about key issues and operations; compile accountability and city performance and bring about and disseminate reliable and consistent statistics on these systemic change. issues; and contribute to the general body of knowledge in this sphere. “The analysis … tells us far more than any other available source about the The first Report accomplished this by consolidating urban situation. [It] creates a platform for available data from many sources into a “statistical corporate actors and community almanac� and analysing the data to glean insights about organisations to engage in policy debate key trends, how they were likely to evolve over time, and on where the cities are going, and raises what strategic challenges and opportunities they would tough questions for government and big usher. municipalities.� Results The benefits began to be felt even before the report was complete: City officials learned a lot by participating in the The first State of South African Cities Report examined the process, which also raised the national profile of urban forces that had transformed South Africa’s largest cities in issues. Then, by assessing both the trends and the current the decade since the transition to democracy, and what to responses to them, the completed Report pointed the www.citiesalliance.org way to further research, planning, and action that would process itself, which creates a partnership platform, is the be most likely to improve urban life in South Africa. primary outcome, on par with the report itself. And it is best to begin with a clear purpose and target audience, as It also sparked debate on the need for a policy and well as a prioritization of goals, which will drive the processes to improve local resource allocations and report’s timing, process and content. management. And it shaped relations in the country’s most urbanized province, Gauteng, by revealing that its Involving academics and other experts helps ensure three largest urban centres would form the world’s quality, but it’s important for the content to be informed twelfth-largest city region by 2015. by city officials and managers, and to incorporate the views of a range of other key urban stakeholders, A second State of South African Cities Report was including political leaders at all levels, and representatives produced in 2006, again with Cities Alliance support, to from the private sector and civil society. It’s also crucial to update and reexamine the urban situation. It exceeded manage the process in a way that ensures that both the expectations, having been seen by thousands of people city- and national-level governments feel ownership. and receiving generous media coverage. It identified 10 key challenges for South African cities in the next decade: It is useful to base the analysis on statistics that underpin indicators, such as those used for UN-Habitat, and to  Thinking in new ways about urban space economy widely disseminate the report at a time when it can have  Managing population dynamics a real impact on policy and practice—for instance, leading  Economic growth and equitable distribution of up to an election, so it can help set the development wealth  Enhancing urban transport agenda both for incumbent and incoming leaders.  Overcoming the �apartheid city�  Delivering basic services and promoting productivity and inclusivity  Building an urban citizen  Taking sustainability seriously  Streamlining urban governance  Mainstreaming innovation A third Report was produced in 2011, after Cities Alliance support ended. And a number of organisations—either working with SACN or independently—have also followed up with more detailed reports on some of the topics covered in the SoCRs, such as finance and energy. Together, the three Reports have had a strong influence on urban policy and governance, and their impacts continue to be felt both inside and outside the country. To help other countries achieve similar results, SACN prepared a free SoCR toolkit and has been helping a number of other nations in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East to prepare similar reports. Lessons Learned State of the Cities reports provide a useful picture of a city and how it works. The SoCR toolkit contains a wealth of lessons learned from South Africa’s experience. The first is that the www.citiesalliance.org