Sustainable City Governance. Which Way Now?

Academic Paper from the year 2016 in the subject Geography / Earth Science - Demographics, Urban Management, Planning, , language: English, abstract: This paper examines various global policy initiatives targeted at addressing sustainable city governance. It aims at proposing a better governance model to creating sustainable city milieu for optimum result. The study gathered relevant literature on the subject matter and adopted James Scott's thesis on "Matis" (Local Knowledge) as analytical framework. It contends that Brundtland's Report which outdoored Sustainable Development thesis and others thereafter mostly imposed from international intergovernmental perspective only acknowledge city governance needs facing Least Developing Countries (LDCs) rather than addressing them. Moreover, these global initiatives in practice end up being an oversimplified agenda imposed from above, an agenda that is often insensitive to local needs and realities.