Republic of Côte d'Ivoire Urbanization Review

Executive Summary

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  Planning—charting a course for cities by setting the terms of urbanization, especially policies for using urban land, enabling housing markets, and expanding basic infrastructure and public services.
  
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  Connecting—making a city’s markets accessible (labor, goods, and services) to other cities and to other neighborhoods in the city, as well as to export markets.
  
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  Greening—enhancing livability of cities by reducing pollution and emissions and conserving scarce environmental and financial resources.
  
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  Financing—finding sources for large capital outlays needed to provide infrastructure and services as cities grow and urbanization picks up speed.
  

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  Improve land market fluidity. A constrained land market limits private investment. Improving the fluidity of the market will help increase the investments in industrial and residential development. This will require increasing the supply of usable land in three clear steps:
  
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    First, tenure security should be improved through simpler, shorter, and cheaper procedures.
    
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    Second, trunk infrastructure should be expanded in a timely manner, especially for new urban extensions not yet connected to urban services (in particular roads, electricity, and water) and before these are settled.
    
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    Third, land for different investment activities should be identified, planned, and allocated efficiently to enable meeting increasing demand for land.
    
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  Expanding service delivery. Besides creating functioning land markets, policy makers must also ensure that most basic infrastructure services reach all city residents—urban and peri-urban—alike. There are two key priorities:
  
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    First, step up efforts to develop serviced land.
    
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    Second, implement financially sustainable service delivery models and strengthen regulation to increase cost recovery and, accordingly, investment and service coverage.
    
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  Simplify planning regulations. Land use plans can ensure that public and private developments in various zones are developed harmoniously, and that developments provide mixed economic and residential activities as well as green and protected areas. There are three key issues:
  
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    First, improve coordination in allocation of responsibilities governing urban areas.
    
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    Second, align land use policies and planning standards with infrastructure availability and plans.
    
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    Third, simplify and relax regulations on land use and zoning, to increase housing affordability.
    

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  Coordinate Land Use and infrastructure to enhance urban mobility.
  

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  Accelerate reforms for greater professionalization of operators in the transport sector and better access to finance.
  

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  Better organize the freight transport sector and make it more competitive.
  

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  Establish a market information system (MkIS) to better connect transporters with customers.
  

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  Set up investment in strategic corridors and develop supporting plans for strengthening urban agglomerations and city development.
  

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  Diversify the corridors connecting the domestic economy to attractive regional markets.
  

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  Increase coverage of basic services for reduced pollution (Water, sanitation, waste collection, and electricity)
  
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  Coordinate land use planning and infrastructure for reduced emission by:
  
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    Linking people to jobs through mixed land use planning and mass transport systems when density is sufficient
    
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    Linking goods to markets through improved logistics for freight
    

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  Coordinate land use planning and infrastructure for increased resilience by integrating the assessment of flooding and climate change risks into city planning, e.g. storm water drainage and green space
  

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  Address the inconsistencies between devolution and decentralization alignment so that delegated functions follow finance and minimum human resources capacity is in place.
  

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  Strengthen the local finance system and revise the fiscal transfer systems in key areas, simplifying the number of transfers and supporting the expansion and improvement of own-source revenue collection and improvement of public financial management.
  

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  Leverage collaboration between regions, municipalities, and utilities to generate economies of scale in infrastructure services delivery.
  
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  Assess the efficiency of current transfer schemes, consolidate administrative decentralization to enable improved performance at the commune level, and consider introducing new elements to incentivize performance.
  
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  Explore the viability of additional new sources of financing for Global Connectors and creditworthy Regional and Domestic Connectors.