The Challenge of Urban Government

Abstract

This paper presents the experience of the Republic of Korea in setting up a National Pension Scheme (NPS) and assesses its likely effectiveness in coping with future challenges. The Korean NPS has features of both a pay-as-you-go system, as it does not have adequate reserves to guarantee the promised annuities, and a fully-funded system since payments are regularly made into a pension fund which could then be invested. It also has aspects of both public and private pension systems; public in terms of the management and regulation of its coverage and benefits, and private in terms of its financing where the involvement of the central government is limited to subsiding the operational expenses of the management agency, called the National Pension Corporation. The Korean NPS is likely to face future challenges due to rapid demographic changes such as the increase in the elderly population and the reduction of family size due to low fertility rates. These changes are likely to seriously test the viability of the NPS, the coverage of which seems to have expanded too fast too soon. The paper provides two main lessons for other developing countries: (a) a pension system should be based on accurate financial and demographic projections which affect its long-term sustainability; and (b) it is better to take a gradual approach by starting with a limited coverage, low-benefit package and upgrading it over time in keeping with the performance of the economy.

Energy and material flows of megacities

“…The sheer size and complexity of megacities gives rise to enormous social and environmental challenges. Megacities often are perceived to be areas of high global risk (i.e., threatened by economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal, and technological risks with potential impacts across entire countries) with extreme levels of poverty, vulnerability, and social-spatial fragmentation (21)(22)(23)(24). To provide adequate water and wastewater services, many megacities require massive technical investment and appropriate institutional development (25,26).…”

Alternative Explanations of Hierarchical Differentiation in Urban Systems

“…Many studies on urban hierarchies (and even a recent data base that was compiled by Eurostat for "comparative" purposes, Urban audit I, 1999) are based on the acceptation of a "city" as a single administrative unit, in which the core of an urban agglomeration is located. However, despite more or less recent (Dahl, 1961, Freire and Stren, 2001, quoted by Gaudin, 2004 call for an "urban governance" on the basis of relevant territorial delimitations, for which there are many possibilities, the definition of urban entities according to political boundaries is rarely designed to enable coherent management of all the coordination problems that arise from the spatial juxtaposition of administrative areas (such as communes, counties, or districts) that have been progressively urbanised into a continuity. Moreover, whereas administrative units are very variable in surface area in different countries or even within one country, therefore putting an arbitrary limitation on the possible extension of an urban unit, there is on the contrary marked consistency in the spatial organisation of the urban agglomerations, at least in regions like Europe.…”

Participatory Governance in Urban Management and the Shifting Geometry of Power in Mumbai

“…With regard to urban management, the neoliberal reform agenda is based on public sector restructuring in accordance with the standards of the new public management (McCourt and Minogue, 2001), private sector participation (Batley, 2004), and a process of decentralization and participation (Blair, 2000). In the South, this process is promoted by international organizations (Freire and Stren, 2001) and leads to a de‐politicization of debates on public policies (Cornwall, 2007). This results in a weakening of the role of the public sector and the rise of new forms of service provision based on multi‐stakeholder arrangements.…”