Gleaning Some Lessons and Reflections

Abstract

This chapter gleans some lessons and reflects on assessing the outcomes of the World Bank’s physical upgrading loan allocated in each target city. These lessons, in their own right, have important policy implications given that the World Bank’s assessment acknowledging that 90% of the loan was earmarked for urban upgrading and only 3% for housing reform financing which would create more housing options. The positive aspects of these lessons send strong signals for capitalizing on the existing potential urban management opportunities from across the five target cities. Kermanshah , for example, demonstrates potentials for institution building and bottom-up enablement in its garbage recycling efforts, while Sanandaj exemplified a strong case of community enablement observed in road repair, and street and infrastructure upgrading. Zahedan represents a unique case of social/individual enablement where women were elected as honorary mayors. Bandar Abbas also showcases physical enablement through physical upgrading. The maintenance of creeks and riparian corridors turns out to be a major success in Bandar Abbas. Tabriz characterizes a case of enablement through infrastructure upgrading and honing interpersonal skills with an emphasis on producing local handicrafts. The chapter concludes with outlining on threats, prospect, and myths surrounding enablement.

Appendices

Appendix A: Ranking Enablement in the Five Pilot Cities

Enablement Scores for Each Target City

City	Adaptation	Formalization	Integration
Sanandaj	2	3	1
Kermanshah	3	1	1
Bandar Abbas	1	1	2
Zahedan	2	2	1
Tabriz	2	2	2

1. Keys 1. Low, 2. Moderate, 3. High

As the above table shows, all five cities get higher scores for adaptation and formalization stages of their transformation compared with integration, which is not unexpected or surprising by any means. Informal settlements have more control over adaptation and formalization than physical and social integration. Tabriz and Bandar Abbas have overall, better integrated into the urban fabric compared to Sanandaj, Kermanshah and Zahedan. As for adaptation, Kermanshah gets a high score for its garbage recycling effort since its informal settlement residents successfully generated revenues from it. Zahedan, Sanandaj, and Tabriz score moderately due to women’s local leadership skills in Zahedan and bottom-up efforts for road repair in Sanandaj, and close proximity of the informal settlements to the city in Tabriz’s case. Dowlatabad, Kermanshah and Shirabad, Zahedan exhibited successful formalization models in their own rights although Dowlatabad has been more exemplary by initially subdividing large unaffordable plots into smaller, more affordable housing units, and down the road, consolidating them into larger plots as necessary. Shirabad, Zahedan too, successfully experienced formalization through physical and infrastructure upgrading (and local street clean-ups led largely by women), but not integration. In terms of Integration though, Bandar Abbas and Tabriz score better even though there is still a long way to go to fully integrate.

	Dependent variable	Independent variable
City	Enablement score	Projects under implementation or completed %a
Sanandaj	6	100
Kermanshah	5	100
Bandar Abbas	4	90
Zahedan	5	94
Tabriz	6	100

1. Enablement scores
2. Source Author
3. Proj. Implementation or % completed
4. Source Document of The World Bank: Implementation completion and result report IBRD-47390 (October 2010: p. 26) Report No. ICR00001412
5. ^aNumber of projects under implementation or completed in World Bank’s original table were converted into percentages

ANOVA 1

The ANOVA (analysis of variance) reveals the predictive power of the percentage of projects completed or under implementation as a fairly accurate indicator of the enablement index assigned to each target city. The 94% degree of significance proves promising for the independent variable as a good predictor of the enablement variability in the five target cities. The percentage of the projects completed or under implementation in each city presents an offshoot of the physical upgrading efforts, making it possible to predict enablement with the p-value of 0.063 (or the degree of significance of 94%). This finding is intuitive in a sense that trust building and capacity building, in general, call for having fewer projects in the pipeline and, instead, having more projects completed.

Running ANOVA again, with another independent variable (total upgrading projects costs in $ millions) proves an equally relevant predictor for enablement in the five target cities. Thus, the total projects cost serves an appropriate proxy variable for enablement with a p-value of 0.082 or the degree of significance of around 92%. These two separate regression analyses shed light on an important point. A cursory glance at the regression results might imply that neither of the two independent variables, namely, projects costs in $ millions or % projects completed or under implementation owns predictive power to fully explain enablement. Conversely however, the limited predictive significance of each independent variable clearly indicates that physical upgrading contributes to enablement partially not fully. In other words, enablement transcends physical upgrading and involves social, political, and cultural efforts as well. As the first stage of the enablement process, adaptation, for example, consists of not just physical, but also social and cultural adjustments. People adapt and adjust to evolving conditions through various coping mechanisms both physically, as well as socially or culturally. Formalization, on the other hand, mainly involves top-down political and physical processes, whereby sufficient physical upgrading may or may not lead to issuing title deeds for the residents. Finally, integration might only happen on conditions that informal settlements assimilate not just physically, but also socially and culturally. Long-lasting social and cultural stigmas surrounding these settlements however, rarely allow for this phase to come to easily materialize. That is why physical upgrading can only partially account for or justify enablement. And thus, as seen in both ANOVA analyses, the predictive powers of the % project completion and/or the budgets allocated to the physical upgrading throughout the five cities only accounted for 60–70% of the enablement scores (the R square and the adjusted R square in both cases), while its unaccounted 30–40% have to do with social, political, or cultural attributes residing outside the World Bank’s loan for upgrading purposes. These non-physical aspects of enablement vary from city to city and community to community.

	Dependent variable	Independent variable
City	Enablement score	Total cost $ million
Sanandaj	6	13.32
Kermanshah	5	13.85
Bandar Abbas	4	17.52
Zahedan	5	13.99
Tabriz	6	7.81

1. Enablement Scores
2. Source Author
3. Proj. Implementation
4. Source Document of the World Bank: Implementation completion and result report IBRD-47390 (October 2010: p. 26) Report No. ICR00001412
5. Projects completed in $ million

ANOVA 2