1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 It is not possible, within the dry confines of a formal report, to begin to do justice to the vigour, imagination and simple humanity that leap from the pages of so many of the submissions we have seen. The members of the Technical Advisory Committee are united in recognising the wealth of commitment and endeavour shown by so many people across the world, who are taking their destinies in their own hands to improve their and their families' lives and the well-being of their communities. By the middle of the twenty-first century, within not much more than a single generation, it is estimated that one person in two throughout the world will be living in a city. For those who are not by then urban dwellers, the combined onslaught of the different forms of environmental degradation is likely by 2050 to have imposed on most forms of human settlement strains and pressures at which we cannot even guess. But people and societies are proving not to be mere passive bystanders as this sombre prospect unfolds. More than anything else, perhaps, the Best Practices Initiative in Improving the Living Environment is a story of hope and achievement.

The TAC reviewed nearly six hundred submissions. It tried to be as fair and objective as possible in reducing these to a list of one hundred Best Practices, with a short-list of about forty going forward for the Jury to decide on ten to twelve award-winning Best Practices. Everyone who submitted a serious application should know that we considered it seriously. Those which were not shortlisted can remind themselves that they were up against the stiffest competition in the world, and therefore to have failed to reach the final list is no failure at all. And most of the submissions will be included on the Good Practice database, so their experience and wisdom will be shared as widely as possible.

1.2 The practices submitted vary considerably. Some are long-established, with an impressive record of documented results. Some are very new, with few results to show so far. This wide variation was not a problem for the TAC, because it was looking less for a list of demonstrable achievements than for pointers to the future -- initiatives, processes and practices which will help to meet the challenges ahead. One of the aims of the Best Practice Initiative is to facilitate the exchange of experience. It does not seek to develop models, but to derive principles for action. And in this context 'failure' can be as instructive as 'success'. It is as important to learn what to avoid as to learn what is transferable.

The TAC members did not approach their work as complete innocents. We had been given a large part of our instructions at an earlier stage in the preparations for Habitat II. That will concern itself with seven major issues:

urban poverty reduction and job creation
urban environment and health
governance
disaster preparedness, mitigation, and redevelopment
access to shelter, land and finance
status of vulnerable groups
gender
At PrepCom III, those present from the TAC, in consultation with delegations and major groups of actors, concluded that four broad categories should be suitable for classifying all the submissions. The four categories are:
shelter/urban infrastructure development, and neighbourhood regeneration, including access to land, finance and small-scale economic and social regeneration initiatives
sustainable human settlements development (including all initiatives dealing with city-wide development processes, productive and consumptive patterns, and policy and strategy development)
experimental and innovative practices, including research initiatives
natural and human disaster management and post-disaster reconstruction, including ad hoc humanitarian investments.
These themes and categories served as, so to speak, the first filters to enable the TAC to see where a submission stood. Once case studies were analysed in these terms, they were considered under a number of other headings. It was possible to fine-tune the appraisal of the submissions by applying the initial nomination criteria established by the Preparatory Committee for Habitat II and additional considerations contained in the Dubai Declaration:

1.3 Criteria:

Tangible impact on improving the living environment
- does the practice have an impact, and one that can be measured quantitatively?
Partnerships
- are at least two partners involved (e.g. central and/or local government, NGOs/CBOs, the private sector, academic/training institutions?)

Sustainability
- does the practice have a sustainable impact on laws, decision-making processes, resource allocation, management systems, or technology?
- is it funded on a sustainable basis?

Additional considerations:
Innovativeness
- is the practice a genuinely new initiative ?
- does it employ innovative processes, procedures, systems or technologies ?
Transferability
- is the practice being replicated elsewhere, or does it have the potential to be replicated ?

Gender
- if the practice has gender-related impacts, or the potential for them, are the issues addressed adequately ?

Subsidiary considerations which could be used to rank practices included:
- capacity for scaling-up
- high demonstration value
- leadership in inspiring action and change
- accountability and transparency in decision-making processes
- empowerment of people, neighbourhoods and communities
- high impact in relation to resource allocation.
These themes, categories, and criteria provided a matrix to reach objective judgements on widely differing practices. Every practice submitted to us, from those we were not able to recommend to those which we have sent forward to the Jury, has been judged by reference to the same matrix.

2 THE TAC JUDGING PROCESS

2.1 The Best Practice Initiative is completely new. It would not have been accomplished at all without massive organisational effort, as it is a very ambitious undertaking. Valuable lessons for the future can be learnt from this first year, and the TAC offers its comments on the judging process in the light of the need which has become apparent to make some minor refinements in the way it works.

2.2 The TAC members and several alternates met in Rotterdam from Monday 26 February to Friday 1 March. Before arriving we had reviewed slightly under two hundred submissions which had been sent to us during January and early February. On arrival we found nearly three hundred more practices which had not been circulated (we refer in more detail to the problem this caused in section 5). It was clear that in the five days available to us we should not be able to do anything apart from reading the new submissions if we were all of us to read every one of them. So, at the chair's suggestion, we split into six geographical sub-groups: Africa; Asia and the Pacific; Europe; Latin America and the Caribbean; North America; and Middle East and Arab states.

2.3 We spent Monday afternoon and most of Tuesday in these sub-groups, both sharing our views on the submissions which had been circulated in advance, and reaching decisions on those we had found in Rotterdam. For all of us, this meant a period of intensive work, with limited time for reflection, or for appraisal of the new submissions. If our work shows a lack of thoroughness or objectivity, it is here. There simply was not the time to do more.

2.4 Although we were aware that this was a less than ideal way of working, we were very encouraged to find that the conclusions we had reached before arriving at the meeting were remarkably consistent. When members of the Asia sub-group, for instance, revealed their thinking on the practices from Latin America, there was a high degree of overlap between their choices and those of members of the Latin American sub-group itself. This pattern was consistent across the entire group.

2.5 To secure the greatest possible degree of consensus, the TAC was then split into two groups, which worked independently of each other. Both groups had at least one representative from each of the regional sub-groups. Their task was to compile -- on the basis of the sub-groups' recommendations -- a list of 100 Best Practices, and a short list of about forty. Again, in most cases, there was evidence of a consistent approach, resulting in rapid consensus on almost all the recommendations.

3 THE SELECTION PROCEDURE FOR THE HUNDRED BEST PRACTICES

3.1 The main list of Good Practices covers a multitude of practices, some of fairly local or limited application, but all of which have something to offer in different contexts. The assessment sheet suggested by the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS) in Rotterdam proposed that a submission would rate as a Good Practice if it conformed with the criteria outlined in para 1.3.

3.2 Inclusion on the Good Practice list is important for a practice because it then qualifies for entry on the Habitat Good Practice database (discussed in more detail in section 6). As the Best Practice Initiative is only the start of a process, the database will be a critical tool in disseminating ideas, and in helping to form networks and to inspire action.

3.3 The annexes to this report list submissions in one of two categories:

The 100 Best Practices List (selected from a larger list of Good Practices).
A Short List of Best Practices selected from the hundred above which are being recommended to the Jury. These are described in greater detail in the annexe, with our reasons for choosing them. For convenience, they are listed here in summary form below.
The TAC members took the liberty of grouping a few practices as in our view, they represented local or national efforts which shared similar objectives and strengthened one another in terms of impact, partnership and/or sustainability.

4 THE SHORT LIST

CATEGORY ONE: Shelter/urban infrastructure and neighbourhood regeneration.

AFRICA

Successful Institutionalisation of Community-based Development in the commune of Adjamé, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire.
Piped Supplies for Small Communities in Malawi Urban Areas: Development & Impact of a Gender Strategy
ASIA-PACIFIC
A Women's Self-help Organisation for Poverty Alleviation in India: The SEWA Bank, India
'Khuda-Ki-Basti' -- Innovation and Success in Sheltering the Poor, Karachi, Pakistan
EUROPE
Implementation of Collective Housing Settlement Projects, Ankara, Turkey
Action for Warm Houses, Glasgow, Scotland
Sustainable Rural Settlements Development -- The Case of Keramitsa, Greece
LATIN AMERICA
Project on Sites & Services for Family Groups with Low Incomes Living in the north of Gran Buenos Aires, Argentina
A Nation-wide Low-cost Housing Programme/The Architect of the Community: A Participative Designing Method, Cuba
MIDDLE EAST
Shelter Upgrading, Agadir, Morocco
NORTH AMERICA
'Don't Move, Improve', Community-owned and -governed Urban Revitalisation Project, South Bronx, New York, USA
CATEGORY TWO: Sustainable Human Settlements Development

AFRICA

The Sustainable Dar es Salaam Project, Tanzania
Health through Sanitation & Water (HESAWA) Programme,Tanzania
Local Level Capacity Strengthening: Improving Municipal Services & the Training of Municipal Officials -- Jinja, Uganda, and Guelph, Canada
ASIA-PACIFIC
Poverty Alleviation through Community Co-operation: Urban Basic Services for the Poor (UBSP), Delhi, India
The Orangi Pilot Project, Pakistan
Community Action Planning (CAP) Methodology of Sri Lanka
Slum Networking: An Engineering Design and Participative Solution for Improving Slums and Cities -- A Holistic Approach for the Improvement of Urban Infrastructure & Environment through Slum Fabrics in Indore, Baroda and Ahmedabad, India
Australian National Kerbside Taskforce, Australia
Naga Kaantabay Sa Kauswagan: An Urban Poor Programme in Naga City, Philippines
EUROPE
Improving Living Environments through Comprehensive Local Policy in Gothenburg, Sweden
City Management in Tilburg, the Netherlands
Urban Management of Structural Transformation, An Integrated Approach: Duisburg, Germany
Local Initiative Programme: Community Planning Process and City/Neighbourhood Partnership in Lublin, Poland
Revitalisation of a Contaminated Industrial Urban Area, Nordhorn, Germany
LATIN AMERICA
Association of Colombian Recicladores, Colombia
Selective Solid Waste Collection & Recycling in Recife, Brazil
Democratic & Popular Participation in the Public Field: The Experience of the Participative Budget in Porto Alegre, Brazil
MIDDLE EAST
Planning & Participatory Strategies for Sustainable Development & Capacity-building Approaches, HUDC upgrading programmes in Amman and Aqaba, Jordan
NORTH AMERICA
City of Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
Creating a Sustainable Community: Hamilton-Wentworth, Ontario, Canada
Metro Toronto's Changing Communities: Innovative Responses, Canada

CATEGORY THREE: Experimental and Innovative Practices

AFRICA

Community Information Resource Centre (CIRC), Alexandra, South Africa
Tanzania-Bondeni Community Land Trust Project
EUROPE
The Big Issue, United Kingdom
Citizens' Climate Initiative Tampere 21, Finland
LATIN AMERICA
Tree Nursery & Orchard/Vegetable Garden School -- Libre de Agroquimicos: 'An Approach to Sustainable Development', Costa Rica
Integration Council in the Favelas' Rehabilitation Process, Fortaleza, Brazil
MIDDLE EAST
The Small & Micro-Enterprises Project, Alexandria Businessmen's Association, Egypt
NORTH AMERICA
The Loading Dock, Baltimore, Maryland

CATEGORY FOUR: Diaster Management and Humanitarian Investments.

AFRICA

Peri-Urban Upgrading Programme in Sambizanga, Angola
ASIA-PACIFIC
Post-calamity Reconstruction of Anhui Province's Rural Areas, China
MIDDLE EAST
Urban Community Development for the Resettlement Area of Ein Helwan, Cairo, Egypt

5 AFTER ISTANBUL: THE SELECTION PROCESS

5.1 Habitat II marks the end of a long road of preparation. Much more importantly, it marks the beginning of a far longer road -- of learning, training, networking and capacity building, all with the aim of improving human settlements and human lives. We spent some time in Rotterdam discussing how we believe the Best Practice Initiative can be further developed.

5.2 We are convinced that this selection of Best Practices for Istanbul should be only the first of an ongoing series. We strongly endorse the strategy adopted by UNCHS and its partners of decentralising the process of identifying, selecting, disseminating and analysing practices. But whether regionally or globally, we are convinced that the Initiative should continue and expand, as we believe it meets a real need.

5.3 We referred earlier to the problem we had in trying to digest a large number of new submissions during our week together in Rotterdam. With an eye to the future, we recommend that subsequent TACs should face as few problems as possible. UNCHS and IHS faced many obstacles in bringing the BPI to fruition, and one of them was ensuring that every participant met deadlines. Sending in a submission is fair neither to that submission nor to those which were received in time, and it impairs the ability of the TAC to reach objective judgements. We strongly recommend therefore that in future years deadlines should be respected rigorously.

5.4 Apart from that, we were broadly happy with the way the nomination and submission process worked, and we do not wish to offer detailed suggestions for change. In one general respect, though, we do feel that the very proper concern of those who devised the reporting format, that all submissions should be judged on an equal footing, did make for some difficulties. We noticed that most initiatives were criticised for shortcomings of one sort or another in their submissions, and we believe that a reporting format which proves so hard for initiatives to comply with probably needs to beadjusted, together with the question of further support for those making submissions. There is a risk that, in requiring very different initiatives to fit themselves within the straitjacket of a stringent reporting format, we may be obliging them to submit to a culturally-determined formula which is familiar to a few, but by no means to all. We therefore recommend that further thought be given to adjusting the format.

5.5 The TAC also thinks it worth recommending that UNCHS should review its suggested shortlist before forwarding it to the Jury, in order to ensure that it does not include initiatives which have been previous recipients of UNCHS awards, or UNCHS-related awards. It recommends that this review should become a routine part of the BPI process in future years.

5.6 Finally, we mention two technical but not negligible points. The first concerns language. It would be worth bearing in mind in future that some TAC members may need translation facilities. The other point is the length of some submissions. We think it would be fairer in future to tell those submitting practices that they will be allowed to send a set maximum quantity of supporting material to accompany their formal submissions.

5.7 We are making these suggestions because of our conviction that the Initiative is so good that it is worth fine-tuning it to make it work as smoothly as possible in future years. We are unanimous in acknowledging the tremendous amount of work put in by everyone at UNCHS in Nairobi and at IHS in Rotterdam. It is a tribute to them all -- and notably to Nicholas You and his team in Nairobi, and to Ed Frank and Mayke Hoogbergen at IHS -- that we were able to get through so much work, with so few upsets, and in such good heart. In thanking them, we wish also to express our gratitude to our chairperson, Mr Gerrit Brokx, and to our vice-chair, Dianne Dillon-Ridgley, both of whom succeeded in steering us resolutely but with a light touch through the week.

6 AFTER ISTANBUL: TRANSFERRING THE EXPERIENCE

6.1 Section 5 tried to address 'housekeeping' issues: how to make sure the Best Practice Initiative works as well as it can in future. This section, by contrast, is an attempt to sketch out some ways in which the BPI can be of use to practitioners, which is the acid test it now has to face.

6.2 The BPI is designed to do two things: to raise the standards of all practitioners to the standards of the best, and to encourage many more individuals and communities to become practitioners. So the BPI will stand or fall according to how widely known it becomes.

6.3 The BPI data base will have an obvious application as a unique education and training tool. It will allow dissemination of experience and practice from the bottom up, and in doing so it will facilitate a process of self-reflection on the part of hands-on practitioners. They will be able to conceptualise, internalise and analyse their experience, and then to share it -- and sharing experience is the key to making it more sustainable.

6.4 The data base will contain details of the Good Practices, as well as the Best Practices. It will be available as a storehouse of knowledge, experience and expertise for those undertaking comparable initiatives elsewhere. The use of key words and other search criteria will enable users to identify the practice or practices of particular interest to them, under a number of headings: thematic, geographical, etc.

6.5 The data base will shortly be available in an inter-active format on the Internet, providing rapid access to users throughout the world. It should before long be linked with other data bases sharing common interests. To operate the data base and to develop it further, we recommend the establishment of a virtual instititute responsible for sustaining the global Best Practice Initiative. This institute, we propose, would be developed as a partnership initiative, and would co-ordinate and provide support to the networks building on and contributing to the data base.

6.6 The data base will be an invaluable tool for identifying common problems and shared solutions, and its ability to pinpoint very precisely problems and solutions on a regional basis should prove one of its key features. It will provide a mechanism which allows governments at all levels, donors and policy-makers to engage in new and improved forms of technical co-operation, specifically decentralised forms.

6.7 It is likely also to be an ideal way for breaking down isolation and building networks between groups. One lesson that became apparent time and time again in reading the submissions is the realisation that so often dawns on practitioners: combined, they are more than the sum of their parts. The data base can translate that realisation to another plane.

6.8 The data base will clearly have great potential as a means of financing the activities of the global Best Practice Initiative, and we believe this potential should be explored, with the proviso that the information it contains should always be available at concessionary rates to those who need it most or can afford it least: that will mean many of the practitioners themselves.

6.9 Notwithstanding the tremendous potential for exploiting the data base by means of the most modern technology, we are convinced that UNCHS and its partners should also exploit to the full the more traditional methods of sharing experiences and building networks. Not everybody yet has access to the Internet, and for those who do not there are the tried and trusted routes provided by the more familiar aural and visual media, including printed material. We are happy to note that plans are already advanced for the production of a printed catalogue, diskettes, and a video library.

6.10 All of this lies in the future, though not far ahead. Our concern is to underline what we believe to be the great potential offered by the Best Practice data base, however it is exploited. We are convinced that the international community should continue to allocate the proper means to develop the BPI and the data base, and we note with pleasure that this will very often mean re-directing existing resources, not having to find new ones. We believe strongly that the two together hold out the prospect of an effective model for the United Nations in the century ahead -- an organisation which has found a new and powerful method of capacity-building.

6.11 The TAC recommends to the Jury the formal submission of the following recommendations to the Habitat II Conference in Istanbul:

1. The Conference endorses the strategy of establishing a global network of regional and thematic centres to continue the process of identifying, disseminating and learning from best practices, and recommends the establishment of a broad-based consultative mechanism, including all major groups of actors and stakeholders, to guide the further development of the Best Practices Initiative, and to explore ways and means of promoting the transfer of best practices through, inter alia, training, education, public awareness, policy development, and innovative forms of co-operation, including North-North, North-South, South-South, and decentralised forms of co-operation.
2. It further recommends that the Best Practices Initiative pursue partnership arrangements and innovative means of financing its core activities, and that governments continue to provide in-cash and in-kind contributions for the continued development of the Best Practices Initiative, particularly in supporting the work of regional and thematic centres in developing countries.”

THE MEMBERS OF THE TECHNICAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE
CHAIR:
Mr Gerrit Brokx
Mayor of Tilburg, the Netherlands

VICE-CHAIR:
Ms Dianne Dillon-Ridgley
President's Council on Sustainable Development,
Iowa City, Iowa, USA

Ms Teolinda Bolivar
Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela/Fondation pour le Progres de l'Homme,
Paris, France

Mr Bill Clarke
International Association of Public Transport
(UITP), Brussels, Belgium

Ms Janne Corneil
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Unit for Housing & Urbanisation, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, USA

Mr Diop Ousseynou Eddje
Institute Africain de Gestion Urbaine,
Dakar, Senegal

Mr David J Edelman
Institute for Housing & Urban Development Studies,
Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Mr Alex Kirby
British Broadcasting Corporation,
London, UK

Ms Reena Lazar
International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives,
Toronto, Canada

Ms Caren Levy
Development Planning Unit
University College London, UK

Ms Lydia Nicollet
Fondation pour le Progres de l'Homme,
Paris, France

Mr Abdullah Ali al-Nuaim
Arab Urban Development Institute,
Riadh, Saudi Arabia

Ms Ileana Pascal
Federation of Municipalities,
Bucharest, Romania

Mr David Sayburn
International Association of Public Transport,
(UITP), Brussels, Belgium

Mrs Mona Serageldin
Harvard University Graduate School of Design,
Unit for Housing & Urbanisation, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, USA

Mr Yap Kioe Sheng
Asian Institute of Technology,
Bangkok, Thailand

Mr Ye Yaoxian
China Building Technology Development Centre,
Beijing, China

TAC SECRETARIAT

Mr Ed Frank
Institute for Housing & Urban Development Studies,
Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Mr Nicholas You
UN-Habitat,
Nairobi, Kenya

ASSISTANCE TO TAC SECRETARIAT

Ms Mayke Hoogbergen Institute for Housing & Urban Development Studies,
Rotterdam, The Netherlands