City University Partnerships: Progress in AUICK Associate Cities

In 1998/9 AUICK conducted a study of population environment dynamics in five cities. The result was a book, Five Cities: Modeling Asian Urban Population Environment Dynamics, edited by Gayl D. Ness and Michael Low, published by Oxford University Press of Singapore. The five cities included in the study were Faisalabad, Pakistan; Khon Kaen, Thailand; Cebu City, the Philippines; Pusan, South Korea; and Kobe, Japan.

The study used a dynamic modeling program called STELLA to examine relations between population, social services, air, water, energy, the economy, land use and the transportation system. These were sectors that Asian urban administrators have often told us are important for the quality of life in their cities. In each of the five cities, local teams of social scientists and urban administrators worked together to collect data on the eight sectors using the time frame 1975-2020. Actual data were collected for the years 1975-1995. Using these data and various assumptions, projections were made for the coming 25 years.

The studies provided some useful views of possible futures, but they also identified critical problems in urban management. Very often the data needed were not available, or were highly suspect. (Water quality measures exactly the same for multiple years down to three decimal points.) This led AUICK to propose an institutional arrangement so that urban administrators can more readily obtain the data they need to look into future possibilities of current conditions, without resorting to external support. 

The institutional arrangement was called the City University Partnership or CUP. The idea is to organize a group of local university scientists (both natural and social) to work closely with a select group of urban administrators. Together these teams would identify the data needed, collect the data and together run possible future scenarios from the data. This would help urban administrators see some of the possible implications of current conditions and trends. Members of the CUP academic institutions will also accompany participants to the second AUICK workshop of each year, from 2008. This will increase AAC participation at AUICK workshops, and sustain the CUP system itself.

Today there are experimental projects to develop Management Information Systems (MIS) through these partnerships in three of AUICK’s Associated Cities. In each case, UNFPA country offices are supporting groups of university scientists working to develop the MIS with the urban administrators, to provide information needed to better manage their cities.

The MIS unit established in Danang University has collected population, health, education, labor and economic data from different sources for analysis, from 1997 to 2006. The findings were presented to the People’s Committee of Danang, and used for training in the university. They requested further data from other provinces and countries for analysis, as well as for their students to review.

Khon Kaen University scientists found existing data on the Municipality to be non-digital, incomplete and out-of-date. New data has been collected on population, poverty, education, health, HIV/AIDs and environmental indicators, pertaining to each of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The next step is to use the data to project future trends for each indicator. This will assist the management and policy making of Khon Kaen Municipality.

Surabaya, Indonesia is also organizing similar teams on a larger basis, in a portion of East Java, to do the same. The mayor and government of Surabaya were invited to develop an MIS with the Indonesian Institute for Human Development and DAMANDIRI Foundation. This will be in two parts: at the city level, relying on routinely generated data by the respective agencies; and at the village level, with data generated from the hamlets.

The long term vision is that as these experiments discover how best to urbanize, in order to help administrators. They will be models that can be replicated in other cities in each country.