Central European University A Program for University Teachers, Advanced Ph.D. Students, Researchers and Professionals in the Social Sciences and Humanities Summer University

since 19-09-2003 you are visitor no. 

Co-sponsored by the Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative of the Open Society Institute

July 5 -July 16, 2004

[syllabus] [schedule to download and print (.xls)] 

go to [course objectives and content] [modules] [approach, pre-course work and evaluation]  [draft program]

Course directors: Liviu Ianasi, "Ion Mincu" University, Bucharest, Katalin Pallai, Urban Specialist, Budapest

Course Manager: Masa Djordjevic, Central European University

Resource persons: Keneth Davey, University of Birmingham, Diane Stone, Center for Policy Studies, Central European University, Budapest, John Driscoll, Harvard University, Katalin Tánczos, Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Kenneth Davey is a Professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Birmingham, of which he was the first Head, having previously been Director of one of its constituents, the Institute of Local Government Studies. He has worked as a consultant on local government finance and management in 25 countries for the World Bank, British technical assistance and other donors. During the last decade Ken Davey has worked almost continuously on local government reform in Central and Eastern Europe, directing British Know How Fund programs in Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, and advised the Ukraine Government on fiscal decentralization. He is also a member of the Steering Committee of LGI.

John Driscoll AICP, is a Lecturer in Urban Planning, Assistant Director and Senior Research Associate at the Center for Urban Development Studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He has assisted local governments in the planning and implementation of city development strategies, large-scale neighborhood regeneration projects and community based development initiatives. He specializes in capacity building through training and technical assistance and has conducted numerous policy reviews and research studies on urban programs and projects. He serves on the board of a Boston NGO providing affordable housing and has over twenty-five years of cross regional experience in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

Liviu Ianasi was educated at Iasi Technical University, and received his M.A. in architecture and planning from Bucharest Institute of Architecture in 1982. Since 1990 Mr. Ianasi has been an instructor, since 2001 dean at the Ion Mincu Institute of Architecture and the Iasi School of Architecture, where he teaches courses on urban management, urban legislation, public administration, urban operations, and participatory planning. In addition, Mr. Ianasi has served as vice chairman of the Committee on Human Settlements of the UN Economic Commission of Europe and has worked both as country representative and an expert for the commission. He is also a member of the Steering Committee of LGI.

Katalin Pallai after studies of urban planning, political science and public policies has specialized in urban policies and finance. Since 1991, she has been working for the Mayor of Budapest in his expert team. She was a participant in the drafting and implementation of the economic and urban policy reforms in Budapest. During the last two decades, as chief planner of different policy and development concepts, she has led the work large groups of experts from various fields. She is also involved in training activities and consulting in various countries of the post-socialist region on the commission of major international institutions and firms. Ms. Pallai has also published books and articles on urban management, and development planning, on decentralization and local government reforms. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of LGI.

Katalin Tánczos is the head of department of Transport Economics at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. She was graduated in transportation engineering (1967), she has second degrees in mathematics and computer techniques (1972), MBA and Production Management (1990). She has got PhD and DSc. She received the highest national scientific acknowledgement (Szechenyi prize) in 1998 for her scientific work.

She performs public scientific activity in the framework of several national and interntional organisations. She is the member of External Advisory Group of EU DG TREN (Sustainable mobility and Intermodality), the council member of Association of European Transport, the steering committee member of ECMT (Sustainable Urban Travel). She is the member of the Scientific Committees for Transport, Logistics and Environment of the Hungarian Academy of Science. She works regularly as invited consultant for the Ministry of Transport, the Hungarian State Railways (MÁV), the Budapest Transport Company (BKV), and as local advisor for international companies (Deutsche Eisenbahn Consult, Hamburg Consult, SOFRETU, SOFRAIL, Halcrow-Transman, WS Atkins). She has been invited to join to the IDIOMA project (EU 4^th FW), so, Budapest has became a follower city of the project. Recently under her leadership her department is working on the development of the city logistics conception for the Budapest agglomeration in a wide co-operation with all of the stake holders. Her scientific research team is working in several EU projects (UNITE, MC-ICAM, SPECTRUM, IMPRINT-NAS). She has developed with her team a computer based decision making support model which had been used several times for determining the best way of financing of large size infrastructure development projects in national and international context.

Her special field of interest is the economics related problems of transportation and logistics, like internalisation of externalities, pricing, railway charging, project financing, institutional reorganisation, privatisation. She has several publications in these topics in Hungarian and foreign languages. She was/is the supervisor of several Hungarian and foreign PhD students.

Margret Thalwitz got her graduate degree in economics at the University of Freiburg, Germany and a post graduate diploma in development economics at the German Development Institute in Berlin.  She joined the World Bank's Young Professional program in 1977 and has held positions as an economist in Southern Africa and India and in corporate strategy.  Between 1990-2001 Ms. Thalwitz worked for the urban sector in the Bank and managed the Bank's program on urban and rural development issues in the Europe and Central Asia Region. She currently works in the Brussels office of the World Bank as a Special Representative for the South- East Europe.

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Course Objectives

Urban management is an interdisciplinary activity. It targets the coordination of various sectoral and functional policies to optimize the intervention package and resource utilization of the local government. The proposed course is aimed at:

The idea and core content of the course is based on the joint World bank Institute-OSI/LGI Urban and City Management course that has already been successfully presented several times for practitioners in the region. The Sun course is redesigned to include theoretical underpinnings and analysis of specific policy options.

The course will focus on the urban policy process and strategic management. It will start from the review of the context where local governments operate and the available strategic approaches, after it will single out specific issues related to financial and sector policies, and in the closing block it will reconnect issues through the discussion of some integrated urban strategies. Discussions will be tailored around the crucial issues of local governance in the CEE and FSU region but will include methodology and analysis suitable for all countries shifting form a centralized to a decentralized system.

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Course modules

This block reviews the process of globalization, the changing role of the public sector and the importance of urban and regional strategies. The decentralization framework and local management issues are placed in this wider framework discussing the role of different levels of governments in a decentralized structure of public administration and offering an overview of general regional and local policy concepts. Besides the overview the block also offers an analysis of the post-socialist urban heritage and the current conditions and challenges of urban management in the post-socialist region.

2. Strategic planning of urban management

The second block is on the urban policy process. The presentations include both the elements of the strategic process and alternative forms of its organization. They show models and methods for the organization of the planning and policy processes and for the integration of various strategies and policies. It will also review the relevance of various strategic methodologies for planning in different urban and political conditions and their implications to policy integration, stakeholder input and outcomes.

As an introduction to the next two blocks basic ideas of public choice theory will be presented, like the concept of public goods, local public goods and the arguments on the public and private provision of such goods. This framework will then be applied to discuss both financial and sector strategies.

This block offers a general overview of elements of urban finance in a form accessible for people with no background in public finance. The presentation attempts to build basic understanding of revenue sources, various expenditure types and the basic logic of local financial management. The discussion will focus on the implications of choices between financing methods in terms of equity, efficiency and sustainability.

This block will conclude with the discussion of Capital Investment Planning and Programming. This topic will offer an opportunity to conceptually connect the strategic methodologies from block 2 to the financing and financial planning approaches presented in this block and to build deeper understanding on policy integration, the key topic of the course.

The policy choices related to organization, provision and finance of basic urban services will also be discussed as related to the (earlier presented) basic concepts of public choice. The block will offer a short analysis of the policies of selected sectors that play a crucial role in urban management.

Among the sectors emphasis will be put on infrastructure policies, but some local social services and policies will also be presented. Besides building the necessary understanding of urban problems and cutting edge sector policy concepts, this block also attempts to use the concepts of policy formulation, strategy drafting and financing that were introduced in block 2 and 3. Through the review of the sector policies concrete examples will be offered to illustrate the concepts previously presented.

The last block turns back to the level of comprehensive policies. Through the presentation of the most interdisciplinary policy areas of urban management (like rehabilitation, local economic development planning, etc) the participants will learn how the multi-faceted nature of urban conditions and problems can be addressed with an integrated set of policies and interventions. They will also have the opportunity to use the various conceptual elements that were presented in the previous blocks for the analysis of strategies for complex urban problems.

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Being in conformity with most up to date teaching techniques, the course aims to achieve the right mix of pre-course reading and research, course lectures and interactive learning methods, like integrated exercises, group work and mediated discussions.

Pre-course work

Course participants will be required to select one urban policy case form their own city or earlier practice. The selection of topics will be coordinated by the course directors, so as a wide array of cases could be secured. The course directors will send to each participant some background reading related to his/her topic. In the frame of pre-course work the participants will have to conduct some research of the case, prepare a short policy paper and presentation of the selected case. The best case studies will be presented during the course and discussed in groups or in plenary sessions. After the discussions participants are expected to revise their papers during the course on the basis of the new concepts and knowledge acquired.

The participants will be evaluated based on their final papers, performance during the policy discussions and contribution to class discussions and workshop exercises, like group works and presentations of urban problems and policy alternatives related to the urban management issues discussed. 

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