Cities Alliance 2004 Annual Report

The Cities Alliance was established to improve the efficiency and scale up the impacts of urban development cooperation and urban investment. From the outset, Alliance members recognised that this meant changing how international development agencies work with cities, including creating a new coherence of effort to reduce urban poverty. By supporting cities in their development of citywide strategies that link their economic growth and poverty reduction objectives, the Alliance is helping to overcome the limitations of sectoral approaches to development.

The Alliance has made considerable progress on several fronts. This is reflected in the endorsement of the Alliance’s Cities Without Slums action plan by the world’s heads of state in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, subsequently incorporated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Equally important has been the response of a growing number of cities and countries that are adopting comprehensive slum upgrading programmes, setting development targets, undertaking reforms to prevent the growth of new slums, and leveraging public and private resources to improve the lives of slum dwellers.