7

LOCAL GOVERNANCE

PRINCIPLE 7: LOCAL GOVERNANCE

TCWNN IS MANAGED WITH PUBLIC PARTICIPATION AND IS DEMOCRATICALLY GOVERNED.

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1. TCWNN is participatory. It promotes effective partnerships and active engagement by all members of society and partners (public, private and civil society). It safeguards local democracy by encouraging participation, transparency and accountability.

2. TCWNN empowers communities to be self-supporting, innovative, developing local capacities and supporting local leadership and collaborative institutions. It recognizes and values data inputs generated by community- based and grassroots mapping initiatives and has an equitable, transparent framework into which they are placed.

3. TCWNN recognizes that its inhabitants are co-owners of the public space, which are designed with their participation and consciously include the needs of women, older persons, as well as children and youth, persons with disabilities and marginalized populations to ensure its accessibility and affordability.

4. TCWNN makes public service an employment of choice and engages appropriate professionals and ethical practices to carry out its policies and plans. The City We Need recognizes the important roles that women fulfill in their respective communities and strengthens female participation in urban and local decision making.

5. TCWNN makes effective urban legislation an indispensable pillar of sustainable urban development.

6. TCWNN maintains transparency in all fiscal matters at different levels of governance through publicly available and community audited financial data.

PRIORITY ACTIONS

1. Enact laws allowing community participation and public disclosure in order to establish appropriate accountability relationship between local government bodies and the citizens. Also establish community participation funds to support community-led initiatives.

2. Implement the principle of subsidiarity, that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralized competent authority, by building up capacity at all levels to strengthen bottom-up decision making participatory processes throughout the entire policy, implementation and review cycle to collectively define, review, implement, and oversee city priorities, strategies and actions.

3. Strengthen the role of community leaders and grassroots territorial organizations in defining urban initiatives and projects given their pivotal role and inside knowledge of multifaceted communities.

4. Increase ‘engaging’ urbanism approaches to ensure the participation of citizens towards the life activation of places, prototyping of solutions and evaluation of experiences before implementing solutions.

5. Adopt new user-friendly technologies to facilitate communication, support planning and increase the transparency of decisions and actions.

6. Continue implementing the decentralization of territorial