Cities and Employment

  • NINT 5285 - Cities and Employment (Fall 2008)

Section A/CRN 5918 (syllabus)
Steven Miller
Wednesday 8.00pm - 9.50pm

This course will review the recent history of development thinking on urban development and on employment creation and explore the policy options available to cities, local governments and international development assistance organizations to support urban job creation. The course will draw heavily on case studies from the International Labour Office, the World Bank, the Cities Alliance and other international development agencies to help prepare students to work at both the policy and operational level in this field in public service, non-governmental organizations or the private sector.

The course will explore different forms of employment in the formal and informal sectors, self-employment and livelihoods. In order to ground the subsequent analysis, different national and international mandates on job creation will be discussed, including the "right to work" in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), "full, productive and freely chosen employment" stated in the ILO's Employment Policy Convention, youth employment in the Millennium Declaration and Decent Work in the 2005 World Summit. These employment centered mandates will be discussed in the light of the different international mandates on cities and urban development, including the Habitat Agenda (outcome of the Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, Istanbul, 1996), the Millennium Development Goal of Cities without Slums (2000) and the work of the Cities Alliance, UN-Habitat and other development assistance organizations.

The course will link the conventional wisdom on urban development - based largely on analyzing urbanization in terms of either physical and spatial development or of demographic trends - with recent literature and practical examples of how job creation strategies support sustainable urban growth. Drawing on case studies of City Development Strategies, Slum Upgrading Strategies and Programmes, Local Economic Development Programmes, Municipal Investment Programmes and financing options, the course will prepare students to critically assess the work of international development organizations in the fields of job creation, urban development and municipal capacity building.

The course will be structured according to the following thematic areas:

  • International mandates and trends in urbanization, employment and decent work
  • Regulations, growth and the informal economy
  • Infrastructure, investment policies and financing options
  • Direct job creation programmes, workfare and employment guarantee policies
  • Participation, urban governance and job creation
Specific case studies will also investigate grassroots initiatives in the areas of community contracting, community-based waste recycling and collection, labour-intensive infrastructure development, municipal training and capacity building initiatives and projects to support workers and employers in the informal economy.

Concentrations:Cities and Urbanization, Development