Applying NFTs to urban planning offers revolutionary potential but raises serious equity concerns. Although NFTs are linked to digital art speculation, their underlying technology, decentralized ownership, smart contracts, and tamper-proof records could transform participatory planning, land-use management, and community asset stewardship. This article discusses how NFTs could decentralize planning power by enabling tokenized community land trusts, zoning-compliance automation, and neighborhood DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations). However, they also pose dangers, such as digital exclusion, environmental degradation from energy-hungry blockchains, and capture by technocratic elites. Mitigation is needed through hybrid digital-physical participation systems, public sector-led blockchain infrastructure, and equity-sensitive token design if these tools are to benefit the public interest. The article proposes a staged implementation approach, beginning with controlled pilots (e.g., NFT-tracked community benefit agreements) before scaling up to more advanced applications such as dynamic zoning regimes. Lastly, ethical use of NFTs in planning demands visionary public-sector leadership to avert the entrenchment of existing inequalities in the name of innovation. Planners must critically engage with this emerging technology not as eager consumers but as stewards shaping its trajectory toward more equitable, open, and democratic urban futures. The question is not whether NFTs will influence cities, but who will determine that influence and to what ends.
Decentralization is a popular idea that is believed to bring improved public service and sustainable growth that is both inclusive and natural. On the other hand, in the case of developing states, the degree to which it works depends mainly on the local political situation and the existing social order. One of the most notable achievements in the Nigerian judicial system has been a historic Supreme Court judgment in 2024 that gave local governments direct financial allocations. Each of the 774 Local Government Areas in Nigeria must now be directly financed to make local governance more effective by limiting state intervention. Nevertheless, this initiative is carried out in a very politicized setting that is at the verge of breaking apart due to the increase of ethnicity after the 2023 elections, and a citizenship policy that perpetuates a two, class system of indigenes and settlers. This paper illustrates how local financial independence, along with the indigene, settler systems, have an effect on the patterns of resource distribution and the provision of public goods and services. Through a mixture of a research paper on the local financial autonomy of LGAs in the South, West and North, Central zones of Nigeria and a theoretical framework based on Peter Ekeh's works "Two Publics" and a ground reality review, it is established that some of the scenarios created by financial autonomy exacerbated local elite capture and exclusion of so, called "long, term residents" who are defined categorically as "non, indigenes." This is evidenced by the findings on disproportionate capital expenditure distribution within wards, and qualitative viewpoints on local narratives about the justification for exclusion and rightful local belonging. The debate will continue on the proposition that if the idea of citizenship is not changed from one based on birth to one based on residency, it will result in local exclusion and development failure. The solution ends with a conclusion on residency, based citizenship and conditionality in the transfer of funds between different levels of governance
The urban administration in Pakistan has transformed as a result of political and economic shifts. The urban government in Pakistan has been influenced by external financing, which is a reflection of institutional reforms, fiscal decentralization, and the priorities of global development. Over the course of the last three decades, Pakistan's urban management has transitioned from a centralized bureaucratic authority to fragmented local governance systems that are shaped by donor-driven projects and conditional cash inflows. An in-depth analysis of how multilateral development banks and bilateral aid influence urban policy, infrastructure, and service delivery is presented in this specific piece of writing. The evidence demonstrates that the use of external financing has hastened the process of urban modernization while simultaneously exacerbating governance problems such as policy incoherence, accountability deficiencies, and socio-spatial inequities. In this study, political economics research and urban planning perspectives are combined in order to investigate how external funding mechanisms influence the capacities of local governments and the transformation of urban infrastructure in Pakistan's fast-growing cities. The findings highlight the necessity of having governance structures that are adaptable and, in a position, to strike a balance between local interests and global urban finance strategy.
Cities are central to climate adaptation but face growing risks from flooding, heat, and water insecurity that disproportionately affect the urban poor (IPCC, 2022; Dodman et al., 2022). Although urban climate finance has increased, municipalities-especially in the Global South-often lack the fiscal autonomy and institutional capacity to access and deploy these resources effectively (Diezmartínez & Gianotti, 2024). Weak fiscal decentralization, fragmented intergovernmental transfers, and limited borrowing authority constrain local investment in climate-resilient WASH and infrastructure (Sow & Razafimahefa, 2015). In Bangladesh, climate-induced migration intensifies urban service deficits, reinforcing vulnerability among low-income and informal populations (Banks et al., 2011; Tanjeela, 2023).
Purpose – Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), one of the latest innovations in the financial world, have succeeded in triggering debate among the public, especially in terms of Islamic financial principles. Therefore, this study seeks to explore the gap between public societies’ perspectives on NFT on Twitter and the discourse conveyed by experts in research articles or journalists in popular articles. Methodology: This study combines two analyses, namely sentiment analysis, using the R Studio application to categorize public opinion into positive, neutral, and negative sentiments. Discourse analysis uses the NVivo 12 application to identify critical themes in scientific writing.Findings – The results show various perceptions of positive sentiments often associated with NFT and innovation. By contrast, negative sentiments focus on speculation, lack of clarity, and the potential to conflict with the principles of Islamic finance. These findings convey concerns about the speculative nature of the NFT and its compliance with Sharia law. However, some scholars argue that NFT can be structured according to Islamic ethics if proper guidelines are followed. Implications – This study contributes to bridging the gap between public perception and scholars, so that insights arise regarding NFT as perceived within the framework of Islamic finance. Originality – We believe this study is the first qualitative study to investigate public sentiment about NFT from Twitter/X and discuss it with the principles of Islamic finance.
Somalia's urban growth, particularly in the Benadir region, has intensified over the past decades with driving forces such as population inflow, economic opportunities, and post-conflict rehabilitation.This study analyzes challenges encountered by Somalia's Benadir local government administration, such as urban growth and challenges they experience owing to reasons such as weak infrastructure, lack of finance, and inefficient systems of governance.This rapid urbanisation, however, presents significant challenges to local government management, such as inadequate infrastructure, poor urban planning, limitations on resources, and governance challenges.This study investigates the impact of urban development on local government functioning in the Benadir region, with an emphasis on how municipal governments manage urban services such as housing, waste management, public health, and security under the conditions of limited financial and human resources.The research also emphasizes the demand for better infrastructure, more effective institutional frameworks, and better policies of local governance to manage urban growth effectively.By facilitating sustainable urban development, policy concepts consist of decentralizing resources, developing capability, and establishing strategic partnerships with foreign entities.The research applied qualitative methods to approach, analysing secondary data acquired from kinds of literature of local government officials and leaders and data collected from policy documents and urban development reports.The findings show a gap between rates of urban growth and administrative capacity, leading to such governance challenges as informal settlements, poor public services, and undermined institutional arrangements.Strategic urban planning, enhanced mobilisation of resources, and building capacity are recommended by the report to strengthen local government administration and promote sustainable urban development in the Benadir region.These results contribute to the broader debate on urban governance in post-conflict environments, offering policy implications for Somalia and other developing nations experiencing rapid urbanisation.
The financial independence of state governments hinges on their ability to prioritize Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), which could help them to better achieve the social welfare and infrastructure needs of their citizens. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of internally generated revenue on infrastructural development in Kwara state. By decomposing IGR into tax and non-tax revenue, we hypothesize that there is no significant long-term and short-term relationship between tax/non-tax revenue and Kwara state infrastructural development. Due to its ability to avoid stationary data problems, Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) was employed to analyze the annual data which were extracted from the Kwara state financial statement report from 1999–2023. This study finds that IGR and loan have a significant positive influence on infrastructural development, both in the short and long run. However, tax revenue influence can only be felt in the short-run and the previous year’s loan exhibits a negative effect on infrastructural development in the current year. Practically, these results imply that IGR is an essential source of revenue for the Kwara state government to finance capital projects, especially non-tax revenue, the effects of which tend to also be felt in the long-run. It can also be linked to the fiscal decentralization concept that supports the state government’s fiscal autonomy. The study suggests that the Kwara state government should increase its tax base and rate in a form that would not yield negative consequences on the state economy, and diversify its non-tax revenue sources to cushion unexpected economic shocks.
Abstract In coming decades, Africa's urban populations will expand, and the effects of climate change be more keenly felt. Land policies and institutions will be key for urban dwellers to be able access productive jobs, breathe clean air, and live in decent housing; for entrepreneurs, especially women, to leverage land for productive investment; and for farmers to diversify, insure against shocks, and accumulate capital. Yet, many African land registries perform poorly, command little trust, and have failed to capitalize on opportunities to improve quality, relevance, and outreach via digital interoperability, use of earth observation, and connectivity. Literature highlights scope for regulatory and institutional reforms to (a) expand property taxation and land value capture and to improve urban service delivery, planning, and land use regulations; (b) increase quality and affordability of land services and access to land price and ownership data; (c) guide issuance of rural land use rights to reduce barriers to rural factor markets, including by spatially enabling farmer registries to improve subsidy targeting and effectiveness; and (d) demarcation and transparent decentralized management of public land to attract investment, including in climate finance, without fueling corruption, and to manage disputes before they escalate into ethnic violence.
Aji Muhammad Fitra Firnanda, Bambang Satriya, Praptining Sukowati
Generally, the problem of housing and settlements is the incompatibility of the number of available housing when compared to the needs and the number of people who live there. The main issues are population, spatial planning and regional development, planning for housing and settlement development that is still not optimal, land and infrastructure, financing, building materials industry technology and construction services, institutions, community participation, and laws and regulations. The East Kutai Regency Government is committed to meeting the housing needs of MBR. However, due to the high number of backlogs where the dominance of the need for housing comes from low-income people at income levels below, a synchronization effort is needed that harmonizesbetween central regulations and local conditions. Therefore, research questions are formulated as follows: 1) How effective is the implementation of the housing grant policy for the MBR in the concept of reinventing the policy?; 2) What are the implementation factors and policy models that are in accordance with the conditions of East Kutai Province after the policy reinventing process? The purpose of this study is to measure the effectiveness of the implementation of the housing grant policy for the MBR in the concept of reinventing public policy, to analyze the driving and inhibiting factors for the implementation of housing finance, to formulate a housing grant policy model . The main theory in this research is public policy, while the supporting theory is the theory of social change, social behavior, functional structural. The concepts used include Reinventing Public Policy, Ecosoc Rights, Regional Autonomy, Synchronization, Residential Housing, Housing Financing for MBR, and Strategies for Acquisition and Acquisition of Houses for MBR. Mixed research methods (mix methods) combine quantitative and qualitative data. The research instruments were questionnaires and interview drafts using data collection techniques through surveys of 135 respondents and in-depth interviews with four informants. Data analysis performed synthesis of quantitative data and qualitative data. The results of this study are that the implementation of public policy on providing financial assistance through the FLPP program is effectively applied to MBR, taking into account the synchronization of the financing. The concept of reinventing describes the complexity of a public policy shifting into social policy in its implementation so as to form social protection originating from local initiatives. The result lies in the strength of MBR in putting forward local initiatives to establish social protection. The position of the MBR and the government are equal in implementing policies so that the concept of development is decentralized and easy to evaluate through synchronizing various things. The driving factor is related to the synergy, cooperation and transparency of stakeholders in interpreting social welfare.While the inhibiting factors underline the integrity and loyalty of stakeholders and MBR to utilize existing resources and adapt to the policy environment. So based on this influence a policy model emerges using the lens of reinventing policies that are based on guaranteeing social welfare and leading to local initiatives. Building a new concept regarding changing the position of public policy into social policy. This change in perspective highlights elements of social welfare guarantees and local initiatives for the implementation of a more autonomous and implementable policy for the MBR
Redento B. Recio, Erich Wolff, Ashraful Alam, Sanjeev Routray · 8 authors
… the right to be counted is a struggle for legibility, visibility, and enlisting; it is a contingent and contextual struggle to lay claims to space and infrastructure in the city. (Routray, 2022a, p. 267). As signalled in the above quote, The Right to be Counted offers a unique perspective into the tactics deployed by communities to achieve urban citizenship in India. The book is structured around eight chapters and guides the reader through an investigation of how ‘the poor respond to the contradictory intentions and goals of various state agencies by either partaking in or subverting the quotidian practices of the state’ (Routray, 2022a, p. 266). It does so by delving into the experiences of the urban poor, who are portrayed as active agents in the production of new forms of citizenship in response to calculative state governmentality. The book is theoretically solid and empirically grounded and contributes to the literature on the right to the city. Centred on the concept of ‘numerical citizenship’, the book sheds light on how the urban poor struggle to be seen and accounted for in contemporary Delhi. Numerical citizenship is ‘the systematic, protracted, and incremental political process by which the poor become entrenched in the city’ (Routray, 2022a, p. 2). It involves the struggle of the urban poor ‘to be visible, to be identified, and to be recognised, and to be made eligible for food, shelter, and basic amenities and infrastructure in the city’ (Routray, 2022a, p. 2). The urban poor's incremental efforts to become visible to the local state are characterised by complex relationships in which the urban poor sometimes operate within the purview of state calculative governmentality and sometimes challenge and subvert governmental plans. In this sense, the book offers a timely and provocative expansion of the ideas of insurgent citizenship and other forms of representation as proposed by key authors such as James Holston (2009) and Asef Bayat (2000). The book draws on ethnographic insights to develop a series of arguments regarding numerical citizenship. Against a backdrop of the daily practices and institutionalised tactics deployed by city residents, the experiences discussed in the book illustrate how bureaucratic frameworks are applied in practice and how communities respond to them. In doing so, the book reveals how communities find ways to counter technocratic visions of the city and the processes that shape urbanisation (Wolff, 2020). These community narratives serve as immersive explorations of what it means to fight for recognition and access to public services for the residents of India and, to some extent, for millions of people in the Global South. The key arguments in this ethnographically rich volume contribute to the ongoing SEED conversation series focused on scholarship from peripheralised places, unpacking the spatial politics of uneven geographies of North and South as well as bringing marginalised indigenous, racial, sexual, gendered and ‘other’ narratives to the fore. SEED, the Space for Engagement and Epistemic Diversity, is an international platform hosted within the University of Melbourne's Informal Urbanism Research Hub.1 Routray's book is an epitome of scholarly work that enriches our understanding of the multiple forms, relations and spatial politics of grassroots political agency in different parts of the globe. In what follows, we offer our collective reflections on the book and Sanjeev, as the author, responds. Using a dialogical format, our respective voices are denoted in what follows as ‘review collective (RC)’ and ‘Sanjeev Routray (SR)’. Review collective (RC): Your book draws on an ethnographic study of three state-recognised settlements and their different levels of entrenchment in the city's political landscape. There is a rich discussion of the complex negotiations undertaken by the residents to be visible and assert their numerical strength. Your choice of research sites—a jhuggi jhopri (hutments) settlement, a transit camp and a resettlement colony—provides a nuanced understanding of the varying processes that shape the built environment in Delhi. The diverse research sites offer the opportunity to explore some of the similarities and differences among the various tactics that residents adopt to navigate their precarious living conditions and engage with state authorities. Your long engagement with the residents in your research sites and other urban poor networks in India comes alive through your writing about how caste, class and gender intersect in the urban poor's struggle for citizenship. You identify Muslim women and the oppressed castes as the most vulnerable groups, both facing severe daily struggles and often having restricted means to achieve socio-political mobility. Your descriptive account also shows that, as well as being spaces of discrimination, urban informal settlements can also be emancipatory spaces. Over time, the caste-specific clustering of houses merges with the surrounding settlements, leading to a more heterogeneous community. Additionally, residents adopt a myriad of ways to break caste oppression, such as changing surnames, engaging in identity-based politics and renaming their settlements. It is important to understand better what occurs when residents set aside their caste, class, gender differences and prejudices and come together to demonstrate their numerical solidarity. When do these differences flare up and fragment the community? Sanjeev Routray (SR): The primary objective of my book was to examine how the poor incrementally secure housing and a range of citizenship entitlements in the city. I show how they assert their numerical strength and deploy various tactics and counter-tactics to be visible, identified and counted in their political struggles. So, my first goal was to zero in on social spaces that provided an analytical anchor to examine the processes and temporal dynamics of settlement, displacement and resettlement at different historical conjunctures. As I have argued in the book, the social spaces do not represent stable categories or mental abstractions, as Lefebvre has reminded us in his work (Lefebvre, 1991). Rather, as I show, these spatial settings are suffused with social relations, which both enable and constrain the entrenchment of the poor in extraordinary ways in Delhi. As the state routinely under-enumerates and arbitrarily deems a considerable segment of the poor ineligible for housing and welfare, the primary challenge is to assert numerical strength and presence from a particular cutoff date. To claim welfare entitlements, the residents challenge state enumeration procedures and carry out a multitude of documentary and inscriptive struggles in the city. In all these neighbourhoods, the poor build varied social, economic and political relationships, forge kinship ties, and initiate alliances with politicians, state officials, activists and interlocutors across the social and political spectrum. Their fundamental aim is to systematically build collective solidarity, even if it is fraught, tenuous and often contingent. Despite the above overlaps, there are differences that underpin the tactics of the poor across these spaces. As the primary struggle of jhuggi jhopri residents is to build jhuggis, gain recognition from the local state, claim welfare services, prevent demolition and demand resettlement upon demolition, the poor routinely auto-archive their individual biographies and the life histories of the communities, especially if they intersect with key social and political events in the city, so as to establish authentic presence in the city. Moreover, in the jhuggi jhopri neighbourhood, the residents invoke the memory of their neighbours and kin if state officials reject their proof documents and deem them ineligible for resettlement. While the residents of the transit camp also fight against demolitions and claim basic services, they reclassify and recategorise themselves as ‘regular’ or ‘legal’ by challenging state enunciations and categories, including ‘transitory’, ‘temporary’ and ‘illegal’ through their unique legal tactics to contest their lack of numerical entrenchment in the city. In refining my arguments about collective solidarity, I have emphasised how the poor deploy their demographic calculus as a significant tactic in their claims to housing and citizenship entitlements in general terms. I have emphasised how the tactic of demographic calculus is preeminent in the resettlement neighbourhood as the residents leverage their numerical strength to contest host populations, nominate successful electoral candidates and assert numerical presence in demonstrations. As I have emphasised in the book, the poor do not represent a homogenous category. The collective solidarity marked by bhaichara (brotherhood) and ristedari (relationships) is often disrupted over material and identity-based struggles. For instance, the dalits (oppressed communities at the bottom of the caste hierarchy) of the jhuggi jhopri neighbourhood (oppressed communities at the bottom of the caste hierarchy) often remain alienated from the upper and intermediate-caste leaders and the language of the court due to their low literacy levels. When the court made a distinction between eligible petitioners and ineligible non-petitioners and approved resettlement flats only for the petitioners, a few dalit members expressed their disappointment. They even casually demanded a return of their monetary contributions as a threat. Often the dalit residents (who carried out ‘scavenging’ and recycling work and earned the least) lacked the time and social connections to navigate the labyrinthine bureaucratic structures to demand their entitlements. Similarly, the purchasers of flats/plots in the transit camp and resettlement neighbourhoods often appropriate scarce resources due to their relative economic power and social/political connections if you compare them with the original allottees. Nevertheless, the purchasers also have a precarious existence because the state may reject their sale-purchase affidavits as legitimate documents in offering housing in the city. Thus, at key historical conjunctures, the purchasers share the vulnerabilities of residents who lack legible error-free documents. To give you another example, the intermediaries who mediate between residents, state and different actors are divided along the lines of caste, gender, class, regional origin, and so on. While they engage in significant activities that support the residents, they often foster dependencies and arbitrary exclusions in their so called ‘public dealings’. Moreover, a stark division between male and female chiefs disrupts collective solidarity in the neighbourhood. Male chiefs consistently disparage the work of female chiefs by classifying various activities in gendered terms. They label their own work as contributing to ‘development’ in the neighbourhood, whereas they regard the work of female chiefs as merely contributing to domestic dispute resolutions. At times, the residents also resort to character assassination and rumour-spreading about female intermediaries despite receiving support from them. Most importantly, the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019 has exacerbated the divisions between Hindu and Muslim residents. 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Norazmawati Md. Sani Abd. Rahim, Muhammad Shafiq Kamaruddin
Affordable housing has become the main issue of concern among Malaysians, especially those from low-income background in Klang Valley. Limited housing supply in key areas within Klang Valley due to no interest from private developers has forced low-income people to live far from their workplaces. It is considered unprofitable by many private developers because of heavily regulated policies sanctioned by the government, decentralization of affordable housing agencies, and requiring specific design, which can drive the cost of development. Furthermore, access to home financing for low-income people is limited due to their current economic situation and financial constraints. The research focuses on the factors to facilitate private developers in financing and the possibility for the private developers to venture into a home financing structure and analyze other possibilities and solutions that can be implemented with the collaboration between the developers and government.
Rasha Ali El Ashmawy, Amany Ragheb, Ghada Ragheb, Dalia Abdelrazik
Many developing countries as well as some developed countries suffer from the problem of slums. They constitute a real defect in the economic and social development plan of the concerned countries. The methods used to finance development projects in countries vary according to the different social, economic, and legislative influences. The process of providing the expenses required for these projects is one of the most important problems that governments face. The study aims to establish some rules and principles in a proposed theoretical framework and to document some of the experiences of supporting cities globally as well as in the African and Arab countries, by using a general analysis model that includes Egyptian experiences to understand the most important problems related to sustainable development and how to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in the development of urban planning and management. An analytical study is conducted to the experience of participatory development of Manshiyet Nasser is presented and the proposed development programs to determine their advantages and disadvantages. The study concluded to identifying several recommendations for dealing with slums and setting an integrated urban development model for low-income areas that can be replicated in other similar sites. The study also concluded that in development projects, focus is placed on popular participation and decentralization in decision-making, seeking to solve existing problems in society and taking the initiative to experiment new methods from which the government refrains for fear of failure.
Adalgisa Costa Melo, Francisco Meton Marques de Lima
Resumo A presente investigação busca descrever as principais políticas públicas habitacionais brasileiras pós Constituição Federal de 1988, com ênfase para o Estado do Piauí. Para isto, alicerçada no método hipotético-dedutivo, optou-se pela pesquisa descritiva, desenvolvida com base na análise temática de conteúdos. Desta forma, abordou inicialmente, a descentralização da política habitacional e o papel dos entes federativos, num ambiente marcado pela redemocratização do país. Em seguida, voltou-se para a Política Nacional de Habitação desenvolvida a partir de então, aprofundando-se na sua evolução desde a criação do Sistema Nacional de Habitação de Interesse Social até a criação do Programa Minha Casa Minha Vida. Dedicou-se, ainda, aos fundos que abastecem a Habitação de Interesse Social e aos fundos de financiamento da habitação social no Programa Minha Casa Minha Vida, finalizando com uma reflexão sobre a atual política de acesso à moradia, que vem sendo planejada e construída de maneira mercantilizada.Palavras-chave: Moradia. Políticas Públicas Habitacionais. Sistema Nacional de Habitação de Interesse Social. Programa Minha Casa Minha Vida. Mercantilização da Moradia. Abstract The present investigation seeks to describe the main Brazilian public housing policies after the 1988 Federal Constitution, with an emphasis on the State of Piauí. For this, based on the hypothetical- deductive method, we opted for descriptive research, developed based on thematic content analysis. In this way, it initially addressed the decentralization of housing policy and the role of federative entities, in an environment marked by the redemocratization of the country. Then, it turned to the National Housing Policy developed since then, deepening its evolution from the creation of the National Housing System of Social Interest to the creation of the Minha Casa Minha Vida Program. He also dedicated himself to the funds that supply Social Interest Housing and the social housing financing funds in the Minha Casa Minha Vida Program, ending with a reflection on the current policy of access to housing, which has been planned and built in accordance with commercialized way.Keywords: Home. Public Housing Policies. National Social Interest Housing System. Minha Casa Minha Vida Program. Housing Mercantilization.
This publication provides a detailed overview of India’s public–private partnership (PPP) environment, with a focus on the national, local government, and sector PPP landscapes. India has a reasonably mature PPP market with approximately $265 billion invested across 1,150 projects since 1990. Based on a decentralized enabling framework, the PPP ecosystem in the country has been supported by key preparation, financing, and delivery institutions, policies, guidelines, and standardized bidding documents. To attract increased private investments across infrastructure sectors, the government has recently introduced innovative PPP models such as the hybrid annuity model and toll–operate–transfer, which will play a critical role in implementing the India’s $81 billion National Asset Monetization Pipeline, and help finance the $15 trillion National Infrastructure Pipeline, 2020–2025.
The term "urban governance" refers to the effective planning, financing, and reforms in the delivery of urban services to people. Deficits in India's urban basic infrastructure pose a threat to inclusive governance. As a result, schemes such as AMRUT have been developed to fill infrastructure gaps and improve service delivery through effective planning, financing, decentralized-digital reforms, and people's participation. This paper will critically investigate the underlying process that projects like AMRUT use to develop urban planning, financing, reforms, and services more accountable, effective, transparent, and inclusive.
Raja Aishah binti Raja Adnan, Mahazan Abdul Mutalib, Muhammad Ridhwan Ab Aziz
Purpose This research paper aims to determine the factors needed to propose a platform where waqf (Islamic endowment) organizations can collaborate with government public hospitals to develop corporate waqf hospitals. Consequently, the elements of governance and sustainability are included in the management of corporate waqf hospitals thereby leading to the corporatization of public hospitals. Design/methodology/approach This study adopts the qualitative research methodology and undertakes content analysis of data collected from journal articles, magazines and official websites. Data analysis involves open coding with NVivo 12. Findings General findings from the literature review have shown that architectural and engineering fundamentals were essential factors in the success of past waqf hospitals of the era between 8th and 14th centuries. In that era, the decentralized waqf-based hospitals employed the mutawalli (the trustee/manager of the waqf assets) to govern the administration of the hospitals. Present corporate waqf hospitals can exploit the elements identified from past waqf-based hospitals and additionally adopt the private-public partnership model in the form of a muḍārabah (profit-sharing contract) agreement to design a sustainable waqf governance model for Malaysian public healthcare services. Research limitations/implications The proposed platform is designed for a corporate waqf model developed in collaboration between Malaysian waqf institutions and public healthcare services. It abides by both the Malaysian fatwa (Islamic rulings) on waqf and the laws of the Malaysian Government. Practical implications There is potential for developing the Malaysian corporate waqf-governance healthcare model which will enable the hospital to provide better quality healthcare to more patients through upgrading the quality of equipment used in hospitals and/or better facilities at equal or lower costs. Consequently, this will not only improve waqf management and distribution but also result in reduction of government expenditure. Social implications This research promotes the concept of a corporate waqf hospital which will provide innumerable beneficial healthcare services in terms of improved healthcare quality at affordable costs to the general public and at no cost to the poor and the underprivileged. Originality/value Although waqf has played an important role as a vehicle for Islamic financing in the society for centuries, a model of collaboration or partnership of waqf with public healthcare services has yet to be explored and developed. With proper corporate governance and well-managed sustainability in a corporate waqf model, this newly developed partnership between waqf institutions and public healthcare providers can be a first step in many more interesting collaborative arrangements that can be established between waqf institutions and public services in the future.
Background: Nigeria piloted decentralized facility financing (DFF) and performance-based financing (PBF) programs under the Nigeria State Health Investment Project (NSHIP), funded by the World Bank. It aimed to increase the utilization and quality of maternal and child health (MCH) services. Although many low- and middle-income countries have launched or piloted DFF and/or PBF like programs and conducted impact evaluation, very few studies related DFF or PBF’s impact to its cost. This study evaluates the incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) of facilities with DFF or PBF compared to comparably funded health facilities without it. Methods: This study used a quasi-experimental research design. Local government areas (LGAs) in the three states under NSHIP were randomly assigned to the PBF group, where health facilities received payments based on their performance, and to the DFF group, where payments were not tied to performance. An additional three states served as the control group without additional funding. Reflecting the health system perspective, incremental financial costs were assessed for program implementation and verification, consumables, and donor supervision. Net effectiveness on coverage and quality were assessed through difference-in-differences calculations between baseline and endline facility and household surveys. The Lives Saved Tool and literature were used to convert statistically significant coverage changes to lives saved and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) gained. Results: Compared to the control group the incremental costs of DFF and PBF were $45.2 million and $87.3 million in 2015 US dollars, respectively. In comparison to the control group, DFF had a major impact on Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) and diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus (DPT)], increasing their coverage by 13.4% (P<0.001) and 9.7% (P<0.05), respectively while PBF increased the rate of skilled birth attendance (SBA) by 9.1% (P<0.05), and use of modern contraceptives by 5.7% (P<0.05). Overall, the quality of care was also improved under the DFF and PBF when compared to the control group. Compared to the control group, DFF and PBF were estimated to save 756 and 1,679 lives per year respectively, with 17,878 and 39,605 QALYs gained. The corresponding ICERs of the DFF and PBF program were $904 and $787 per QALY gained based on the coverage impacts alone. Combined with the improvement of quality of care, the ICERs of the DFF and PBF program were reduced to $224 and $296 per QALY gained when compared to the control group, respectively. Conclusions: Compared to the control group, Nigeria’s DFF [ICER of $224 per QALY gained or 8.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita] and PBF (ICER of $296 per QALY gained or 11.1% of GDP per capita) program proved cost-effective by the standard of 1.5 times GDP per capita in Nigeria. Whereas PBF is nearly twice as expensive as DFF, it saves many more years of life as compared to DFF during the same period—PBF is more effective than DFF and DFF more efficient than PBF. These results hold both with and without incorporating quality improvements and suggest that DFF and PBF are among the cost-effective interventions for strengthening MCH services in Nigeria.
In recent years, states across the African continent have increased their investments in the water, sanitation and energy sectors. However, the extent of the infrastructure remains well below the global average, and population growth in Africa will intensify demand for basic services. The question of financing these services – capital-intensive at first and only generating a return in the long term – is strategically important. With the emergence of decentralized systems, primarily in the energy sector, private actors such as businesses, foundations, impact investment funds, etc., have increasingly financed infrastructures that are alternatives and/or complementary to centralized services. Although a driver for progress and innovation, private financing can never fully meet the vast need for financing. It cannot replace public financing, particularly in low-profitability regions where households lack the means to pay for services and equipment. New mindsets and new forms of (de)regulation are needed to bring together all actors, public and private, international and domestic, to find ways to finance these services.
Local governments have been created as agents of local development in which the people in the local areas are given greater opportunities to influence policies and programs that directly affect their well-being and thereby reducing their poverty levels. But the implementation of the policies and programmes is bedeviled with many problems. Key among them is the issue of financing the local development projects in order to reduce rural poverty. The government of Ghana attempted to reduce this problem when it introduced a development fund in1994 known as the – District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) to encourage local governance and deepen Government’s commitment to decentralization in general and fiscal devolution in particular. The study therefore, seeks to assess the impact of District Assembly Common Fund on Local Government Development in the Adaklu District Assembly in the Volta Region of Ghana. The study mainly adopted qualitative methods of research to obtain information on the experiences of the poor people in the Adaklu communities selected as study areas. Interview guides were used to obtain information from the people in the communities, staff of the Assembly and some heads of the decentralized departments. A major finding of the study is that the assembly did not involve the rural people in the poverty reduction programmes in the district.
The current global development agendas provide relatively little guidance on how the incredible challenge of sustainable urban development in Africa can and should be financed. This paper makes the case for understanding this development challenge at the nexus of urban governance and city infrastructure. Tracing African urban development trends over the post-colonial period, the paper makes three arguments. First, African cities experience fractured fiscal authority. Decentralization reforms have resulted in contested and complex city governance arrangements. Second, large scale infrastructure investments have been the focus of donors and investors. This has resulted in fragmented networks and systems. Finally, these two processes together have created fertile ground for the emergence of hybrid systems of service delivery in cities. This has implications for both how urban services are governed and their material arrangements. This reality, and the underlying processes which contributed to its production, are under-accounted for within global development discourses. In conclusion, it is crucial that new models of infrastructure finance are developed to respond to the fractured fiscal authority, fragmented infrastructure networks, and hybrid service delivery patterns which characterise African cities.
Purpose Over the past 20 years, China's infrastructure has developed at an extraordinary speed. The current literature mainly focuses on the effects of political incentives on the infrastructure. However, this paper indicates that the structural change of China's land regime is an important clue and that the supernormal development of China's infrastructure is an explicable result for that. Design/methodology/approach This paper theoretically proves that in a politically centralized and economically decentralized economic entity with a public land-ownership regime, the self-financing mechanism formed by local officials through regulation of the land-grant price is the primary factor that influences the optimal supply volume of infrastructure in a region, in addition to political and economic incentives, and whether the self-financing mechanism can be formed or not depends on the structure of a country's land regime, which can help to explain the difference between the development of infrastructure in China and that in other developing countries from a theoretical angle. Findings The paper suggests that the mode is facing an important transformation toward land reform and new-type urbanization construction, and the replication and promotion of China's experience in infrastructure construction are of further significance under the Belt and Road Initiative as it provides a method for helping developing countries to eliminate infrastructure bottlenecks. Originality/value Through the test of multinational panel data, the paper indicates that the structural change of China's land regime around 1990 had an overall effect on the supernormal development of infrastructure in China. The paper indicates that the “land-based development mode” of China's infrastructure indeed contributed to the supernormal development of infrastructure in China, but there are still some shortcomings in this mode.
Purpose The land sector in Ghana, particularly skin lands acquisition and title registration are fraught with several issues including unreliable record-keeping systems and land encroachments. The paper explores the potential of blockchain application in skin lands acquisition and title registration in Ghana with the aim of developing a blockchain-enabled framework for land acquisition. The purpose of this paper is to use the framework as a tool towards solving some of the loopholes in the process that leads to numerous issues bedeviling the current system. Design/methodology/approach The paper adopts a systematic literature review approach fused with informal discussions with key informants and leverages on the researchers’ own experiences to conceptualize blockchain application in skin lands acquisition in Ghana. Findings Problems bedeviling skin lands acquisition and title registration emanated from the issuance of allocation notes, payment of kola money and use of a physical ledger to document land transactions. As a result, the developed framework was designed to respond to these issues and deal with the problems. As the proposed blockchain framework would be a public register, it was argued that information on all transactions on a specific parcel of land could be available to the public in real-time. This enhances transparency and possibly resolves the issue of encroachments and indeterminate land boundaries because stakeholders can determine rightful owners of land parcels before initiating transactions. Practical implications Practically, blockchain technology has the potential to deal with the numerous issues affecting the smooth operation of skin lands acquisition and title registration in Ghana. Once the enumerated issues are resolved, there will be certainty of title to and ownership of land and property to drive investments because lenders could more easily ascertain owners of land parcels that could be used as collateral for securing loans. Similarly, property developers and land purchasers could easily identify rightful owners for land transactions. The government would be able to identify owners for land and property taxation. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature on blockchain and application to land acquisition and title registration with a focus on a specific customary land ownership system.
Urban public finance is a hidden force shaping cities and their development. This thesis draws attention to the powerful insights which can be gained from studying cities through a fiscal lens. It argues for an interdisciplinary and relational approach which infuses the fiscal study of cities with political and social interpretations of urban dynamics. Accounting for the city through two very different registers, this thesis draws from urban public finance and from critical scholarship on urban infrastructure. The conventional urban public finance literature is largely technical, produced by urban policy and fiscal experts. In contrast, social and political theorization on urban infrastructure provides a critical reading of the technicist approach and contributes to the refinement of key theoretical concepts within urban studies. There are many incommensurabilities between these two scholarly registers. They have different framings of politics, technical knowledge, and the priorities for change. However, there are several shared interests. They are both concerned with urban institutions, urban places, and the necessity for change. These shared interests provide the foundation for a revised approach to the fiscal study of cities. This synthetic approach is spelled out in a series of conceptual and methodological propositions. The first proposition is the device of the C/city, which distinguishes between an urban settlement (the small ccity) and its governing authorities (the big-C City). The C/city device foregrounds the importance of the city, the City, and the fiscal relationships which operate at the intersections between them. The second proposition frames urban public finance not just as a means of financing urban infrastructure but as an infrastructure itself. Drawing from the infrastructure scholarship, the concept of 'configurations’ is deployed creatively to trace fiscal histories, instruments, and relationships. The third proposition is the importance of grounding inquiry in particular places. To address this, the case study method is used. The case method allows for the use of a variety of types of data and analytical tools, grounded in contextualized experiences. The fourth proposition presents Kisumu, a secondary city in Kenya, as an exemplary case for exploring fiscal C/city configurations. Kisumu provides a useful case for wider generalization precisely because it is an ordinary (African) city. Not only is Kisumu on the margins of Western theorization, its unsensational nature also excludes it from dominant discourses on African cities. However, historically, administratively, and politically, Kisumu has many parallels with smaller urban centers in British East Africa and beyond. It provides a fascinating and widely relevant case of the differentiated nature of fiscal decentralization processes and dynamics. There is much which can be learned from Kisumu and its fiscal story. The bulk of this thesis is dedicated to unpacking the Kisumu case. First, there is a focus on the City. This includes tracing the historical development of Kisumu’s urban institutions and unpacking the ways in which the contemporary City shapes and is shaped by public finance. This is followed by a deeper exploration of particular city infrastructures and their fiscal configurations. The fiscal configurations related to property rates, the corporatized water utility company, and transport finance are traced and exposed. The Kisumu case provides a series of valuable insights. First, it demonstrates the potential and limitations of conventional fiscal analysis. The limitations posed by accounting are particularly important in the context of Kisumu, where the C/city has many misalignments. Second, it makes the case for reading public finance as an urban infrastructure. The process of tracing fiscal configurations illuminates the social, political, material and technical dimensions of public finance. Third, it draws attention to the de facto challenges and complexities related to decentralization (and in fact, the unique recentralization which Kenya has undergone). This includes how the sub-national urban state is constructed and deconstructed, over time and in complex ways. Fourth, it foregrounds the fiscal functionaries whose practices shape the everyday operations of the public finance system. These actors shape fiscal configurations. However, they are often hidden in conventional fiscal analyses. Fifth, it reads the practices of fiscal functionaries as a micro-politics of the state. The heterogeneity of the state and multidimensional nature of power are foregrounded. Finally, the case highlights the challenge of urban infrastructure finance in the context of a post-networked city. It shows the necessity of moving beyond common academic and policy tropes related to infrastructure and services. Collectively, these insights provide a compelling case for urban studies to more deeply engage with the fiscal C/city, in Africa and beyond.