Assessment of the Implementation of USAID’s Urban Policy

This assessment examines the extent to which USAID has implemented the Urban Policy as intended since its release in 2013. It assesses the progress, challenges, and lessons learned and recommends actions that the Agency can take to improve the effectiveness of the Urban Policy for the next five years.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION ASSESSMENTS AT USAID

USAID’s Office of Policy within the Bureau for Policy, Planning, and Learning (PPL/P) recommends conducting Policy Implementation Assessments (PIAs) approximately five years after the publication of each policy or strategy in order to better understand how USAID policies have been internalized by the Agency to drive positive change. PIAs use rigorous research methods to help us understand how and to what extent the implementation of a policy has affected Agency programming and processes. PIAs have resulted in detailed reports that have been presented to relevant sector leadership and other USAID stakeholders and used for action planning to improve implementation in line with the findings and recommendations.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSESSMENT

In October 2013, USAID released the Sustainable Service Delivery in an Increasingly Urbanized World Policy. The “Urban Policy” was intended to guide USAID governance and service delivery programs working in urban and peri-urban communities. The stated vision is “to promote sustainable service delivery that brings large-scale benefits to urban residents.” This Policy was the first Agency-wide urban guidance since the 1998 Making Cities Work: USAID’s Urban Strategy. The Policy, developed with an extensive consultation process, builds on USAID’s 50-year history2 of urban programs and set out to guide USAID’s development efforts in the context of accelerating urbanization in low-income and lower- middle-income countries. The Urban Policy posits that urban programming improves governance, encourages accountability, and strengthens local capacity to generate revenue and improve and manage urban service delivery systems. The Policy identifies four development principles for urban programming: sustainability, pro-poor service delivery, public-private collaboration, and municipal resilience. Rather than applying a universal definition of “urban,” the Policy defers to national definitions of “urban,” but generally guides programs working in cities and towns on governance and service delivery for urban and peri-urban communities.

PPL commissioned the Learning and Knowledge Management mechanism (LEARN) to conduct this assessment to understand the extent to which USAID has implemented the Urban Policy as intended since its release in 2013. It assesses the progress, challenges, and lessons learned and recommends actions that the Agency can take to improve the effectiveness of the Urban Policy for the next five years.

The assessment examined four main research themes:

  1. Awareness of the Urban Policy and uptake of the Policy’s vision
  2. Integration into program cycle and strategic planning
  3. Urban programming and USAID capacity and resources for policy implementation
  4. Leadership and institutional support structures

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