Corporations invade world's cities

The power of the state government is slowly being replaced by market forces, leading to what experts call the "McDonaldisation" of cities, writes Peter Zirnite of Inter Press Service.

WASHINGTON (IPS): Cities in developing countries are influenced more and more by multinational corporations and international financial institutions because economic globalization has weakened national governments.

The fragmentation of the state, however, has fueled an explosion of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) which have an opportunity to empower urban residents to a degree they never experienced under traditional government structures, say urban researchers.

To date, however, NGOs largely have failed to fill the void, allowing cities to be shaped more by market forces than by the social needs of their residents.

These were some of the conclusions of researchers who met in Washington in November to discuss the findings of the final phase of the Global Urban Research Initiative (GURI). The research followed the June 1996 Habitat II Conference in Istanbul which examined local urban governance in developing countries.

"There is no question that international forces have changed the face of our urban systems throughout the world," said Richard Stren of the Center for Urban and Community Studies at the University of Toronto, which coordinates GURI.

He acknowledged that the influence of international financial institutions and multinational corporations on cities, in some ways, has been positive but it also has created a "McDonaldisation of the world" a reference to the worldwide fast food chain.

This has led to a "fragmentation of local identity" that state government cannot counteract because its powers have been diminished by the decentralization that has accompanied economic globalization, Stren said.

Maria Elena Ducci of the Institute of Urban Studies at the Catholic University of Chile said the diminished role of the state has created an opportunity for local residents to exercise political power to an extent that they never have before.

In places where there has been a strong central state, such as Latin America, she explained, people have tended to wait for the state to act on their behalf, rather than taking an active role, but now people must "break the natural inertia" and NGOs can play a critical role in doing that.

As state powers have withered, GURI researchers noted, NGOs have experienced explosive growth. But many researchers questioned whether these organizations are growing fast enough, and in a manner that will allow them to assure that the social needs of urban dwellers are not trampled by market forces.

"We cannot just be overrun by the profit motive. We must meet the needs of the people," said Emma Porio, who chairs the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines.

The current overwhelming power of market forces "is very dangerous," she warned, illustrating her claim by noting that in some urban areas of the Philippines it has been impossible to meet housing needs because the price of land has increased 1000 per cent during the past decade.

While the decline of state power has been "opening up spaces for people to mobilize," Porio said NGOs are not doing an adequate job in helping urban residents to take advantage of these openings. "Some NGOs are very much aligned with the state," she added.

Davinder Lamda, executive director of the Nairobi based Mazingira Institute, pointed out that close ties to the government is not unique to the Philippines, as this problem has led people elsewhere to suggest that the acronym NGO stands for "Next Government Official".

The term 'NGO' is "rather unfortunate term" because it can be used in a way that overstates the shortcomings of these organizations such as "Nothing Going On" and "Nothing Going Out", Lamda said.

A major failure among NGOs, according to other researchers, is that while they are touted as a means for creating a more inclusive civil society, important segments of urban populations are still being excluded by these organizations.

Of the some 17,000 NGOs currently operating in North Africa, according to Seteney Shami of the Cairo based Population Council, none is involved in organizing youth, the fastest growing urban segment. As a result, she said, "they are being excluded from the practices of democratizing government."

In the same region, Akin Mabogunje, chairman of the Development Policy Center in Ibadan, Nigeria, pointed out that there was no mention of trades unions in the research conducted on the growing role of NGOs in governing, even though workers "carry a lot of troubles on their shoulders".

NGOs, as well as the World Bank and other international financial institutions, were also criticized for overemphasizing the need to develop leaders in local communities.

"It is as if training leaders necessarily will improve the lot of the poor," said David Satterwaite of the London based International Institute for Environment and Development. "In a mature, participatory democracy, you reduce the need for a charismatic leader. Everybody has the right and possibility to be a leader."'

Satterwaite also warned against assuming that training automatically creates good leaders. Experience has shown that "bad leaders" take advantage of democratic openings. He pointed to Karachi in Pakistan, where local residents seeking services must go through "some politician who is taking his cut".

Even if NGOs were able to overcome their current shortcomings, they would still face a formidable obstacle in their efforts to empower the urban poor, according to Rafael Yunen of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at the Pontifical Catholic University in the Dominican Republic.

Many urban poor, he explained, are unable to participate in local governance because they are engaged in many other struggles to meet the demands of daily life. "If you improve popular economics," he said, "you will get more participation on the community level."