May 26, 2011—While cities worldwide continue to grow fast, cities in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, FYR Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia have already reached high urbanization rates.

However, cities in these countries do not yet fully prosper and do not deliver a better quality of life for their citizens. This happens because they are still struggling to overcome the challenges from the last two decades of transition when they jumped directly from a centrally planned to a market-based economy. Local governments, who in recent years have acquired new and greater responsibilities as a result of the transition, face a lot of challenges.

“There were a lot of changes for the urban practitioners to handle,” noted Kadri Gega, Albania Association of Municipalities Local Expert. “We moved from strictly controlled migration to free movement of population, from 100% state urban land to 80% private urban land, from only state housing provision to individual housing.”

Everything from the "old" institutions to the laws changed, which has posed tremendous challenges to policymakers and practitioners, especially in secondary cities that were unprepared to adequately manage their cities in these new circumstances.

European Union Accession

In addition to the challenges related to the transition, South East Europe countries are also trying to meet performance standards that will align them with European Union pre-accession requirements.

With the exception of Croatia, which is expected to conclude accession negotiations with the European Union in the near future, only FYR Macedonia and Montenegro have achieved official candidate status, while the other four countries are still at an earlier pre-accession stage.
 

We moved from strictly controlled migration to free movement of population, from 100% state urban land to 80% private urban land, from only state housing provision to individual housing. Kadri Gega, Albania Association of Municipalities Local Expert

There is growing need and requests from municipalities for training and capacity development related to the European Union accession process, particularly in municipal service delivery, such as water, sanitation, and solid waste management, where municipalities are under particular pressure to catch up with high environmental protection standards.

Meeting accession requirements will also allow them to tap into much needed grant funding, which is now hard to access because municipalities lack training on how to prepare European Union financing proposals.

Growing Need for Learning and Capacity Building

Municipalities and public utility companies in South-East European cities are keen to integrate new solutions and learn from relevant experiences elsewhere. They approached the World Bank and Austrian government to support their training and capacity building.

For example, public utility companies in the region responsible for water supply and sanitation, public transport, and solid waste management have chronic problems of overstaffing, poor financial performance, low collection rates, and poor service quality. The more successful ones have been able to attract sources of funding and reform their management practices.  This is why many of the target countries want to reach out and learn about good models. They cited the experience of Vienna Water Works as a particularly good example to replicate.

“Our capacity development needs include education of elected representatives in local government, as well as municipal staff in general in different areas,” said Vesna Travljanin, Director, Association of Municipalities and Cities of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  “We need to learn best practices in different countries, what projects were successful because of their long-term impact and which ones were unsuccessful, without concrete results.”

Other dimensions where municipalities lack the capacity, experience, and resources include cultural heritage and urban revitalization more broadly, as well as challenges related to decentralization and rural to urban migration.

A Vision for Innovative and Sustainable Cities

To respond to these requests, the World Bank partnered with the Austrian government to launch a capacity development program Strengthening Local Governments in South-East Europe Countries. The Program started with a Global Cities Symposium: “Innovative and Sustainable Cities Global Dialogue” on May 25-27, 2011 in Vienna.

“The Symposium features practitioners presenting their experience in addressing leadership challenges, i.e., how they undertook reforms and achieved developments through economic, financial, social, and environmental measures, and how innovations were forged, and implemented, in cities,” said Sabine Palmreuther, the World Bank Institute Urban Program. 

The event captured the essential lessons—insights, strategic moves, management styles, partnerships—that are vital to city success.  It highlighted global experience on urban policy and regulation, integrated planning, municipal finance, and urban governance.

"The Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Sustainable Cities Initiative is about the shift in paradigm from short-term, ad hoc city planning decisions, often influenced by political interests, to long term comprehensive planning that promotes city development in sustainable ways,” said Wael Zakout, Sector Manager in the World Bank ECA region for Urban, Water and Disaster Management, in his presentation at the workshop. “It aims to promote economic opportunities through business retention, attracting new private investment, protecting the environment, promoting social inclusion and amplifying the cultural dimensions and unique identity of the city."

Going Forward

World Bank Institute partners for this Program with the Government of Austria and the World Bank’s Europe and Central Asia Sustainable Development Department.

The Program will offer a series of City-to-City learning workshops, for example “Reforming Solid Waste Management,” “Overcoming sector challenges towards EU harmonization,” and a leadership program to guide mayors, utility directors and their leadership teams on the “how” of reform. Participants will be able to learn through on-line courses, series of video conferences, and hands-on workshops.