LASDO : Sub-projetcs

Local Area Sustainable Development Observatory

Paris – Madrid – Colombo

LASDO

project major outcomes

Sub-project 1

Multimedia tool for urban communication purposes

Background reminder

As urban challenges have been constantly growing for most of the Sri lankan cities over the last decades, municipal political leaders have been looking for new policy making methods which would be more in accordance with population needs and demands. Along with current international orientations to promote sustainable urban development in developing countries, precepts of ‘good governance’ have gradually expanded throughout political elite. Among these precepts, communication with the public has been considered very important to support transparency on the one hand, and restore public confidence in local Administration on the other.

In order to achieve this goal, there has been a strong demand from the successive Mayor(s) of Colombo Municipality to obtain from international donors programmes, and decentralised co-operation initiatives, some new tools to develop political communication with the population.

In this respect, the LASDO project came up with a jointed initiative from the three partner cities, Paris, Madrid and Colombo to provide the latter with a ‘Multimedia tool for urban communication purposes’ comprising layers of city maps combined with thematic information and organised in a user friendly GIS tool. This tool has been designed and developed by the urban and town planning agency of the City of Paris (APUR) and has found an on going support and use from Paris local authorities.

Sub-Project description

The sub-project 1 of the LASDO project has been designed as an interactive consulting post based in CMC with the aim of presenting to Colombo inhabitants digitised maps on municipal patrimony, land use (actual and foreseen), urban facilities and any other information that CMC decision makers would consider important to diffuse to the public.

On September, 4^th 2003, the final version of sub-project 1 was presented to the public and the press. CMC received the CD of the tool which they will diffuse within the Municipality and to Colombo population through an interactive point located in the City hall, as announced by the Mayor during the final Seminar.

Sub-project 2

GIS for Urban and Sector Planning

Background reminder

The Colombo Municipal Council is currently facing urban development and environmental management stakes. The challenge of providing an affordable and appropriate level of service delivery has become a major issue for the municipal government.

Indeed, Colombo, as a lot of other Southern Asian capitals is characterised by a high population density, a large traffic flows and congestion, a deteriorated environment and general living conditions in under-served settlements.

In this viewpoint, CMC has been gradually confronted to growing customer expectation relative to lowering the costs and increasing the quality of urban service delivery systems.

However, CMC often lacks appropriate, updated, complete and localised data to insure a relevant urban management policy. Therefore, there was an imperative need to build up local capacity for collecting and monitoring useful information on urban trends and to apply this data to appropriate analytical techniques, and help in the decision making process.

The objective of attaining sustainable urban development and a balanced social environment (involving a compatible growth between different constituents, namely population, employment, housing, transport, education, health and other basic public services) has stimulated municipal authorities to examine their management capacity, evaluate and design future urban development policies. Thus, the constitution of a thematic urban observatory as defined in the LASDO sub-project 2, which preliminary focused on health and environment issues, will provide a good monitoring tool for local policy makers.

Sub-Project description

The LASDO sub-project 2 consisted of realising a GIS for Urban and Sector Planning, with particular focus on Health and Environment issues. This GIS will be operated and monitored within CMC established GIS team and it will be further updated upon specific municipal demands from project-related CMC Departments.

This project will help CMC decision makers to better visualise the Health situation of Colombo city including both quantitative (location of health centres) and qualitative information (epidemiological schemes) in order to define appropriate health policies over the coming years. Based on GIS techniques, sub-project 2 will also help municipal decision makers to identify further projects to be conducted in particular areas of the city suffering from specific health problems.

Moreover, the outcomes of sub-project 2 will be communicated to the Census Department (national institution) so that the latter could complete its data analysis and cross the existing demographic information with health patterns of Colombo municipality.

This GIS has been conceived to be updated internally by CMC technician staff. Other indicators and data could thus be further defined, collected and integrated into the data base.

Especially, focus may be brought upon environmental issues such as air pollution since air control points will be extended after project completion.

Regarding solid waste issue, the GIS would substantially contribute to improving solid waste management and municipal sanitary policies since it would allow regular and precise following of the quantity of garbage collected per day.

As far as health policies are concerned, significant improvement are expected with the use of the GIS since the latter would allow rapid and direct recognition of the epidemiological diseases affecting Colombo population and subsequently, the definition of the appropriate treatment to apply. In this respect, treatments may differ based on ethnic origins and religious beliefs of the patients. Also, the GIS would allow better management of health institutions and hospitals since it would be able to anticipate over treatment demand and subsequently limit institution congestion.

The thematic maps realised in the scope of this sub-project, published as a sample in an Atlas, offered a clear vision of the support cartographic data could add to sector policy conception and implementation. The maps presented below are illustrations of sub-project 2 potentials.

Sub-project 3

GIS for Local Operational Planning

Background reminder

The problem of under-served settlements in Colombo has become one major urban challenge for both national and local authorities. According to the data collected in the scope of the Urban Poverty Reduction Project (UPRP) carried by CMC and which conducted to the publication of the Poverty Profile for Colombo (February 2002), there were 1506 under-served settlements throughout the city. These areas are mostly state owned land and cover 1,000 acres.

Faced to such deteriorated living conditions in certain urban areas, CMC officials selected two pilot zones to be mapped and integrated into a GIS. These zones were considered as particularly representative of under-served area problematic.

Sub-Project description

The third GIS prototype realised in the scope of the LASDO project will support CMC officials to develop a data base to liase with the public. The data base consists of general information on under-served settlements, land use patterns and demography collected at the block level.

Unlike the other two sub-projects, and due to the volume of the task, the data collection for sub-project 3 was to take place in two specific areas of Colombo which are parts of wards 2 and 34 of the current administrative ward division system.

The sub-project 3 was the most socially oriented of the three sub-projects since it focused on information at the household/block level on the one hand, and it aimed at closely associating the concerned communities on the other. For this, sub-project 3 relied on an active local NGO contribution, SEVANATHA, which has been selected to complete community participation and additional socio-economic surveys after a simplified consultation process.

Final outcomes of this project were to provide CMC officials with methodology allowing to collect and process relevant mapping information on the state of certain under-served settlements in Colombo city in order to help them elaborating and implementing proper housing and resettlement policies over the coming years.

This GIS elaboration methodology could be further extended to the whole city.

Following a “state of sub-project 3” meeting held with the NGO SEVANATHA on December 5^th 2002, it was decided to organize this sub-project GIS work at three levels, corresponding to three mapping scales, namely:

- LEVEL 1/City level : this GIS comprises the location of the USS for the whole city, attached to a basic data base.

The idea was to better link the LASDO project with the PRIMUSS (GTZ) and the Poverty Reduction Projects (UK funding via the UN Habitat).

- LEVEL 2/Wards 2 and 34

This GIS is more detailed, integrating results from the survey on USS carried out by SEVANATHA during the reporting period. This GIS comprises 62 USS, divided into 6 different categories, as indicated in the table below :

Types and repartition of USS between wards 2 and 34

(as recorded by SEVANATHA surveyors during the reporting period)

Types of USS	Ward 2	Ward 34
Up-graded slums	4	1
Non up-graded slums	1	0
Up-graded shanties	15	10
Non up-graded shanties	7	17
Low cost dwellings	1	3
Relocated households	0	3
TOTAL	28	34

- LEVEL 3/Selection of 4 USS, corresponding to 2 categories :

. Upgraded shanties

. Non-upgraded shanties

The selection of the settlements was done over the reporting period as a result of a consultation process among project partners. The SC validated this selection in February 2003. The four USS were the following :

1/ 3 WATTA (non- upgraded shanty located in ward 34)

2/ 702 WATTA (non- upgraded shanty located in ward 2)

3/ 737 WATTA (upgraded shanty located in ward 2)

4/ 24 WATTA (upgraded shanty located in ward 34)

The criteria for the selection were based on two major parameters : the USS should comprise low income households on the one hand, and their size should be appropriate (35 to 50 housing units) on the other. Another important criteria was the historical background of the USS : they all date from more than 15 years, which made it easier to develop on-site upgrading (people are soundly settled, communities are more organised, more homogeneous).

The last USS, 24 WATTA, was chosen in common with GTZ since it also belongs to GTZ pilot sites. Project managers found it a good opportunity to develop synergies and common approaches between these two pilot housing upgrading initiatives.

However, because of important time and data availability constraints, only the 24 WATTA could be treated and integrated into a GIS for local operational planning over the second year. This GIS can be considered one of the major outcomes of the sub-project 3. Indeed, this level is the smallest geographical level designed in the scope of the project. Based on the ward level map, the purpose of this GIS was to locate each household and associate corresponding attributes as defined in the ‘Household profile file’.

The aforementioned Poverty Reduction Project has established guidelines for on-site upgrading which has been shared by the LASDO Project.

For this sub-project, two major outputs have been produced in terms of publications, namely :

one comprehensive report on USS divided into two parts (I “Report and Methodology” and II “USS identification sheets”);
one small booklet containing the general problematic, graphic elements (maps, pictures, drawings...), methodology, achievements and recommendations.

These two publications were diffused during the final seminar on September 4^th 2003.

Aside from this working programme completion and GIS realisation, the NGO representatives insisted on the importance of empowering the people from the communities while designing the maps. These maps thus served as development, planning and squat control documents which would substantially ensure sub-project 3 sustainability after project completion. People from local communities have been always kept informed about the project progress (6 meetings with community leaders have been organised during the reporting period). Moreover people from the communities have been trained so that they could be now in a better position to negotiate with CMC. Such communities empowerment could equally be considered a significant positive side-effect of the sub-project.

From SEVANATHA view point, the methodology adopted by the project has actually strengthened community organisations in the USS.

In the continuation of this, it was agreed that some of the NGOs staff could be trained to GIS technologies, together with the CMC team. Arc view software has already been installed in SEVENATHA office.

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