This article appeared in issue 93 of “Annales de la recherche urbaine” (records of urban research). The fight against poverty (or inequality) is a subject that recurrently arises and subsequently disappears on the international community and donors’ agendas.
This is another piece written on Serge Michaïlof’s request for “A quoi sert d’aider le Sud?” He asked me to problematize the urban question as an introduction to the part of the book relating to cities and infrastructures.
This article was written at the request of Serge Michaïlof as a chapter to feature in his book “A quoi sert d’aider le Sud?” (What’s the point of helping the South?), published in 2006 by Economica, Paris. Serge was working for the AFD as operations director at that time and knew that that I had been very much involved in heritage, tourism and their effects on economy.
The prestigious journal Revue d’économie financière was putting together an issue entitled ‘Financing cities’. The editorial board asked me to write a piece on the topic of emerging countries, since the other articles related to issues in developed countries.
I wrote this text with my colleague Emile Lebris from the Institute for Research and Development (IRD). Emile and I had accepted the responsibility of overseeing an issue of the journal Afrique Contemporain (contemporary Africa) devoted to the topic of decentralization on the continent.
This short note was written at the request of Cities Alliance management, who were looking for a way to encourage funders to significantly increase their commitments to local communities.
I wrote this article with my colleague Juliana Pigey from the Urban Institute in Washington. It was presented at the Fifth Urban Research Symposium held in Marseille in 2009. A summary of this work figures in the minutes of the symposium, published by the World Bank in 2011 under the title Cities and Climate Change.
