INSTITUTIONAL REFORMS OF THE UDPl

Soon after taking the first steps after the signing of the project agreement WB advisors discovered that the governmental housing institutions (such as the National Hosing Corporation and the Jordanian Housing Bank in charge of maintaining an adequate level of production in conventional housing sites) were unable to function as expected and their general response to the growing housing needs of the low-income groups is destined to fail. The WB then asked for reduction of the central administrative control over the process, almost from the beginning stages. The bank argued that the only way to reduce the existing

procedural problems and to increase the level of housing production was to raise the efficiency of the housing market, alongside the level of public participation in such a market. D.S. Walton explaining WB philosophy in their housing projects, states:

"the project is a vehicle to make market work and to establish community led organisations" (Summer 1990).

This notion appeared in the WB’s literature of the early 7 0 's, and its introduction claimed to be "the out-come of lessons learned" from other housing practices in developing countries. Grimes (1976), for instance, has clearly stated that the failure of housing supply in those countries was largely due to a number of "unnecessary administrative controls" which tend to "reduce the flow of resources into the housing sector" (Grimes, O., 1976). In its attempts to overcome the constraints such as these, sometime later the WB called for adoption of a more flexible approach. An alternative that would provide the community of low-income groups, who had little hope of benefiting from the conventional methods, with appropriate economic and institutional assistance to get a chance to access affordable housing. This revised approach, was influenced by the Turner’s ideas, and included a strong element of moving away from the central bureaucratic organisations. Instead it relied on community participation to increase the housing supply. Attention to local level activities was so strong that in one of its published papers, aiming to promote the site and services approach, the WB proposed to establish a "local based unit" to implement its new projects (World Bank, 1974).

The WB, also in general, advised the governments to create a separate housing institution that enjoyed relative autonomy, and was partly administered by the local community. It specifically asked for certain amount of authority to be given to these locally based institutions to enable them to cooperate with other agencies at national level, especially in

modifying the cumbersome housing regulations. I talked to one of the WB's local consultants for UDPl project (A. Alwan 1988) who moved back to the WB head office at the end of UDPl (1985). She said:

"UDPl was one of the WB's successful projects. We were able to establish a semi- autonomous institution with flexible set of rules and regulations that made the project affordable to low-income groups"

The WB's advisors argued that by knowing how exactly the existing unnecessary regulations block the process of housing production, the government institutions at national level would be compelled to stop insisting on their application. Modification of the housing regulations and building standards to suite the growing needs of the low-income groups then could naturally result from co-operation between the newly established local organisations, and the concerned bureaucratic institutions, the WB hoped.

To put the idea into practice, the WB choose to advise the government officials about the significance of relating the level of expected housing regulations, to financial ability of the beneficiaries concerned. Although decisions making, concerning alterations and modifications of the housing regulations, was largely left to the discretion of government departments, the Bank sometimes used its financial muscle to force the governments to formulate the necessary changes as it envisaged to be apt. WB consultant (D. Watson) said:

"When the UDD was unable to convince the government with its proposals they used to ask for the help of cowboys like us".

The resulting regulations and standards, however, was not necessarily what the low-income groups might have wished for but the WB, through its locally established units, made constant efforts to remedy this problem by insisting on the need to reduce the level of

housing standards proposed by the governments at every possible stage.

In case of Jordan, the local institution to implement the WB's project was called "Urban Development Department" (UDD). It was termed as a "local" unit, not because the local communities had any share in its running, but because it was originally established as a non­ governmental office in Amman locality, and meant to act independently from the existing public institutions. The UDD headed by a Jordanian director (H. Zagha), previously known for his experience of working with international agencies, appointed by mutual agreement between the WB and the government. His staff according to him (Summer, 1986) "I was personally involved in the selection of UDD staff. I needed to ensure that they were young with lots of enthusiasm and motivation and were not involved in government conventional housing institutions for a long time, they were trained to enable them to work in UDD with the main aim of working with the local communities".

As a newly established organisation under the WB's auspicious, it was granted a certain level of autonomy to deal with the on-going project problems. The UDD's relative autonomy was considered necessary for its proper functioning as a mediatory body between the WB beneficiaries and the Jordanian government. Its main task was to manage and monitor the process of resource allocation (i.e. the WB's housing loans) within the project and also help to attract co-operation of the beneficiaries to invest their resources in it. In addition, this institution took some responsibility in promotion of education and employment among the beneficiaries, as secondary means of attracting public participation. It opened a neighbourhood office, supervised by a community notable such as the local teacher; and through this office it embarked upon providing adult education programmes, job training schemes for woman, etc.

turned to become yet another public institution. This was the result of particular social formation of Jordan, as well as the WB’s half-hearted com mitment towards establishment of an adequately autonomous organisation of beneficiaries, as Turner probably had envisaged. In fact the notion of "self-help" in the WB institutional approach has been modified to seek only the communal participation in the construction (self-build) rather than in the management process. Thus in this period, promoting collective community action, according to the WB, was to lead and involve the participants in construction process, but to avoid enhancing their sense of communal awareness and solidarity by leaving the project management to private sector or the state (World Bank, 1974). In Jordan, where a strong traditional link between the private sector and the state officials had existed, great emphasis was placed on the participation of local housing contractors and the private construction sector in the WB projects. Since customarily people hired small contractors to build their houses, the idea was that attracting private sector would encourage them, and the community, to invest more in the project. A WB employer commented in an interview:

"We can mobilise community participation particularly in upgrading projects. With the private sector involvement community participation is rendered more effective". (S. Whitehead 1988)

For instance, completion of an allocated site in the UDPl project could be commissioned to a building contractor who was hired by a beneficiary. Then the job would be done faster, quality would be higher, and most important of all, the participants had invested at their possible maximum level. In this way, the government had more chances of recovering its original investments and the likelihood of implementing similar housing projects without external assistance could be increased (World Bank, 1975).

and private sector to the project. It was only in and around Amman, the UDPl area, that private contractors were interested to take part in the process and the beneficiaries were able to hire them. A government employee in the land repossession department was quite proud of the high level of housing standards achieved by private contractors: He said:

"the owners in these projects (Marka sites and services) belongs to a high position in government departments with substantial financial abilities enabling them to hire good contractors and cover their walls with carved stone. Our main aim to attract higher income groups to the project is to facilitate marketing the rest of the repossessed land" (Summer 1990).

At national level, no increase in low-income groups housing activities were generated and no surge of private sector activities appeared to take place (Renaud, B., May, 1987). The WB itself has admitted that, in general, the so called local institutions, such as the UDD, were unable to bear enough pressure to the government officials to make the necessary regulatory changes on time, or alter the laborious housing standards at national level. One of UDD employee who was the next most knowledgeable and had been with the institution from the start admitted that they have failed to influence the government to make the necessary regulatory changes.

In its assessment report published in 1983, the WB has directly criticised the negative impact of the central institutions in decreasing the local autonomy, and thus the efficiency of the community organisations. The bureaucratic, financial and managerial obstacles created by the national institutions have specifically been named as the venues through which local autonomy has been usually undermined (Cohen, M ., 1983).

5. THE W B’S GUIDING PRINCIPLES AND THEIR METHODS OF