The Inter-American Development Bank, Emerging and Sustainable cities program
This Action Plan is framed within the Emerging and Sustainable Cities Program (ESC) of the Housing and Urban Development Division of the IDB. This program is a non-reimbursable technical assistance program, providing direct support to national and subnational governments in the development and execution of city action plans. ESC employs a multidisciplinary approach to identify, organize and prioritize urban interventions to tackle the main roadblocks that prevent the sustainable growth of emerging cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Action Plan is based upon a set of baseline studies, commissioned by IDB in the period 2016-2018.
This plan is the final step of a first stage that consists of identifying the sustainability challenges of a city. Afterwards these topics are prioritized to identify issues that pose the greatest challenges in a city’s pathway towards sustainability. Finally, an action plan is formulated, containing prioritized interventions and a set of strategies for their execution.
The results of these studies have been discussed with governmental partners, societal partners, stakeholders and involved actors, through two consultation rounds (respectively in January and March 2019). The time in between the two consultation rounds was used to conduct additional explorative fieldwork. The Action Plan therefore includes actor-oriented and design-driven interventions and processes, following Urban Living Labs methodology. Interventions of place-making and tactical urbanism have the trifold goal (i) to better inform the technical studies, (ii) to develop alternative implementation strategies at governmental level, as well as at neighborhood level, and (iii) to support a new and more sustainable way of thinking.
The actions to turn urban processes into sustainable transformations are diverse. Some actions need to be conceived, directed and implemented by the government, for others public-private-partnerships will be more appropriate, while still others will only be successful when supported and implemented at the level of stakeholders and local actors. Therefore, this action plan not only consists of governmental projects, but, next to this, also includes proposals for implementing processes. Some projects need further technical study before they can be successfully implemented. Therefore, this action plan also identifies a set of technical studies in order to conceive well-informed projects and processes.
Finally, the Action Plan recognizes that sustainable development interventions should not be designed from the desk alone but are more likely to succeed when they are designed based on knowledge and understanding of "what is going on among people," based on insights and in response to how people react to spatial interventions.