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Mega Transport Projects and City and Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for Decentralised Cooperation. Harry T. Dimitriou Bartlett Professor of Planning Studies and Director OMEGA Centre Centre for Mega Projects in Transport and Development University College London

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  1. Mega Transport Projects and City and Regional Development in a Globalizing World:The case for Decentralised Cooperation Harry T. DimitriouBartlett Professor of Planning StudiesandDirector OMEGA CentreCentre for Mega Projects in Transport and DevelopmentUniversity College London Paper Presented to CODATU X11 Conference 5th July 2005 Lyon

  2. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Introduction • In the last fifteen years, the world’s economy has witnessed unprecedented changes, the outcomes of which have been particularly magnified in the developing world, especially in cities, where for the first time in 2006 more people live in than not. • Global forces and visions have created new mobility ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in terms of not only individuals but communities, cities and regions. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  3. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • This paper places mega transport infrastructure projects in the milieu of these developments, highlighting the new transportation landscapes in the making as competitive forces increasingly re-structure regions and cities. • It concludes by asking how thoughts and practices of the concept of ‘decentralised cooperation’ might ‘tip into wider acceptance’ and impact on future planning and policy-making initiatives as a possible counter-magnet to the more negative aspects of current trends. • The discussion outlines the impact of the challenges posed by the 'new regionalism agenda’ on cities and regions, and their transport systems in face of an apparent global collapse of the integrated planning ideal and speculates on the outcome particularly in the developing world where institutional capacities are particularly weak. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  4. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Globalization • The new order • We are informed we live in a time of ‘globalization’, “a time of instant communication, a time when trade barriers are being smashed and Europe is unifying, a time when you cannot help but feel that the march to a ‘borderless world’ is proceeding briskly” (The Economist, 1998:19). • Globalization is then the new economic, political and cultural order we live in. It is not only the backcloth to many new (especially mega)transport projects it is in many cases their raison d’etre. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  5. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • This is a world where we are told nation states are deemed to no longer represent “meaningful economic units” and where consumer tastes and cultures are homogenized and standardized by global products created by global corporations with no allegiance to place or community (Dicken, 1999:1). • The irony is that it is these very stateless interests who are often reliant upon national governments to guarantee the finance or even subsidize (sometimes by default) the construction and operation of many new transport projects, especially mega projects, to make selected places more conducive to capturing globalized benefits and generating globalized traffic. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  6. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • “There is no historical equivalent to the current global reach and volume of cultural traffic through contemporary telecommunication, broadcasting and transport infrastructure” (Held et al, 1999:327). • The notion of globalization as the precursor to a single world society or community is rejected by these authors because “global interconnectedness is not (and cannot) be experienced by all people or communities to the same extent or even in the same way”. Instead, they see the growing interconnectedness potentially providing the source of intense conflicts and shared fears, rather than cooperation. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  7. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Trade as the driving force of globalization • Trade is the raisond’etre of globalization. International trade is the exchange of goods and services between nations, and emerged with the establishment of the nation-state. It requires global means for efficiently and economically moving goods and services around the globe, and within cities and regions. • Many Mega transport projects in Europe, such as the Oresund Link in Scandinavia, were conceived and constructed on the premise that they will connect domestic markets to international markets and open-up national markets to world trade constituting part of a wider trans-European infrastructure plan (TENS-T)(see Figure 1). CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  8. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou Figure 1: Revision of the Trans European Transport Network [TENS-T] CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  9. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Globalization and Mega Transport Projects • Technological change and globalization • The most significant aspects of the process of global shrinkage have been “the introduction of commercial jet aircraft, the development of much larger ocean-going vessels, and introduction of containerization” (Dicken, 1999:152-53). • These developments have fuelled the global construction of mega transport projects in airport and seaport developments, as well as rail, road, bridge and tunnel linkages to service major transport nodes on the world’s global transport system. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  10. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • What is clear is that appraisers and evaluators of newtransport projects (especially mega projects) need from hereon to investigate better the cultural, social and territorial changes that can accompany the completion of such projects. These include bridges that open-up a previously rural hinterland to a major port area, as in the case of: • the recently completed 3 km Rion-Antiron bridge at the western end of the Gulf of Corinth near Patras in Greece (see Figure 2); • the linking of two cultures as in the case of Oresund bridge and tunnel joining Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmo in Sweden (see Figure 3), or • the 3.3 km suspension bridge proposed for 2011 and intended to join Sicily to the Italian mainland (and thus its industrial heartland). CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  11. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou Figure 2: Rion-Antirrion Bridge near Patras, Greece CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  12. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou Figure 3: Øresund Bridge and Tunnel joining Copenhagen, Denmark with Malmö, Sweden CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  13. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Infrastructure landscapes • Graham and Marvin (2001: 8) invite us to view world cities and major urban regions as “strategic nodes of global circulation and production, and primary centres of trans-national exchange and distribution of products (and commodities) whose territories are superimposed over time by interconnecting infrastructural landscapes. • They see (2001:10-12): • Cities as a socio-technical process, acting as ‘mediators’ through which nature is transformed into city (Kaika and Swyngedouw, 2000:1). CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  14. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Urban infrastructure networks as ‘congealed social interests, sustaining what might be called the ‘socio-technical geometries of power’ (see Massey, 1993). • Infrastructure networks as embedded geopolitics, representing capital that is literally ‘sunk’ and embedded in cities, translating into long-term accumulations of finance, technology, know-how, and organizational and geopolitical power (Harvey, 1985:149). • Infrastructure networks and cultures of urban modernity and mobility thathave tended to reflect the aspirations and visions of planners, reformers, modernizers and social activists in defining the ideal city (see Friedman, 2000). CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  15. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Changing ideological premises • Transport, utility and communications infrastructure networks have been traditionally seen as agents that bind cities, regions and nations together, planned and operated with the underlying premise that they are ‘public local goods’ generally available to all individuals at equal cost within particular local government or administrative areas (Pinch, 1985:10). • Today’s urban developments driven largely by forces of globalization have actively encouraged a departure from this ideology, so that a whole gamut of infrastructure facilities are now increasingly being ‘opened-up’ to private sector participation in the management and provision of services. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  16. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • “This has made the infrastructure sector one of the most lucrative targets of global flows of finance, capital, technology and expertise, as international infrastructure firms roam the world in search of high rates of return from niche infrastructure markets or franchises” (Graham and Marvin, 2001:14). • Actively supporting this shift, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have for some time reportedly incorporated conditions on the loans they offer and structural reforms they promote that oblige national and local governments to privatize previously monopolistic provisions of infrastructure and infrastructure services (see Palast, 2002). • The implications of this largely unchallenged development could prove fateful for certain transport projects, especially mega transport projects, hereto often largely funded and operated by the public sector. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  17. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Technological determinism and globalization • While the technological drive and the impact of pace-shrinking technologies have facilitated technological diffusion throughout the world, they have not signalled the ‘death of distance’ or ‘the end of geography’ as some have forecast. • This is because there continues to be a pronounced geography of knowledge creation and a strong localization of innovative activity (Dicken,1999:145) (the platform for Decentralized Cooperation?). • Dicken warns that while technology may be seen as ‘enabling’ or ‘facilitating’ agents of globalization, “we should beware of too readily adopting ‘technological determinism’ as a basis for infrastructure planning …. (as) it is all too easy to (wrongly) believe that technology ‘causes’ a specific set of known changes, making particular structures and arrangements ‘inevitable’ or that the path of technological change is a linear and sequential one” which it is not (Dicken, 1999:145-46). CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  18. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Notwithstanding this, many new (particularly mega) transport projects continue to be built with an air of technological determinism. While this may be appropriate for certain straight forward projects, the outcome of more complex ones is likely to be far less predictable. • A systematic monitoring of recently completed mega transport projects to be embarked upon by The OMEGA Centre at UCL will no doubt, throw valuable light on this and ultimately reinforce this view. • The problem is, in a highly competitive environment, once a particular technology or ‘advanced’ type of transportation infrastructure is introduced, its adoption by others may then be seen as ‘essential’ to ensure competitive survival. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  19. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Dangers of marginalizing people and places • Graham and Marvin (2001:15) see cities and urban regions of the world as possessing “new, highly polarised urban landscapes where ‘premium’ infrastructure networks selectively connect together the most favoured users and places, both within and between cities”. • These networks and network nodes (often developed as mega transport projects) occupy valued spaces and are increasingly defined by their ‘fast-track’ connections (with) elsewhere, simultaneously by-passing less favoured intervening places, and what Castells calls “redundant users”. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  20. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • While many of these key transport terminals and links are powerfully connected to other ‘valued spaces’ both across the country and in other nations, there is in the making at the same time an increasing sense of local disconnection. This undermines the notion of infrastructure networks as binding and connecting territorially cohesive urban spaces. • It also obliges us to confront how space and scale are being refashioned in front of our eyes by global networks, in new ways that almost overnight change the configuration of infrastructure networks and the landscapes of urban spaces. Mega transport project developments are a critical part of these developments. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  21. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Investment neglect and fears of infrastructure collapse • Much of the current spout of mega transport projects is a response to growing fears of what Graham and Marvin (2001:21) call ‘infrastructural collapse’ arising from past decades of neglected investment. Such concerns, generated by “fears of the dislocation of urban services on a massive scale” have been reinforced by recent electricity blackouts in Canada and USA, major water shortages in California, and monumental failures of the rail network in UK. • Mega transport projects also provide symbols of development and iconic landmarks as in the case of the new airports of Hong Kong, Osaka and Denver; Europe’s fast train projects in France and Germany; London’s Docklands and Thames Gateway infrastructure projects, and innumerable projects in Japan, Taiwan and China. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  22. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • What such developments are really about is the architectural re-shaping of time as well as space (especially urbanized space) and through them, produce ‘generic specifications for assembling offices, airports, highways, and many different kinds of franchises (Easterling, 1999:3). • The fear of infrastructure collapse, which fuels these developments, previously confined to cities of the developing world, are now endemic in parts of the developed world. This is because much of contemporary urban life is so dependent on a huge range of interdependent and extremely fragile, computerised infrastructure networks that are themselves prone to fail (Pawley,1997:162). CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  23. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • In order to deliver this new mobility and infrastructure more effectively “a more robust, cross-cutting, international, critical, dynamic and trans-disciplinary approach to understanding the changing relations between contemporary cities, infrastructure networks and technological mobilities” is needed (Graham and Marvin, 2001:32-33). • Such a shift requires a broader conceptualisation of the relations between infrastructure services that is conceptually closer to analytical and planning approaches advocated by the pioneers of US urban land use and transport planning: Bob Mitchell and Chester Rapkin (1954), and Richard L. Meier (1962) and the concept of decentralised cooperation currently being promoted in a number of international quarters. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  24. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Demise of the formal planning process • In recent years, large-scale infrastructure projects have all too often been negatively associated with ‘failed’ attempts at achieving urban ‘progress’. As Graham and Marvin point out in their seminal book Splintering Urbanism, this is because modern infrastructure grids, especially highway networks, were conveyed as ‘destroyers’ of valuable social and urban environments. • These perceptions, which still prevail today, can be seen to contribute to “the forced retreat of urban planning from the notion of comprehensive urban and infrastructure planning, effectively ditching the idea that the development of cities could be somehow orchestrated and shaped as a whole” (Graham and Marvin, 2001:111-12). CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  25. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Fillion (1996:1640) points out that this outcome has obliged many planners to accept that their cities and regions are merely ‘collages of fragmented spaces’ defined by multiple identities and aspirations (as well as, inevitably, colliding visions) performing tasks to enhance globalization rather than community development. • New planning processes are instead now seen to be driven by the entrepreneurial imperatives of making specific spaces ‘competitive’ (Jessop, 1998:81), employing a planning process that views the city “as a series of unconnected fragments rather than as a practical and theoretical synthesis of planning thought and action” (Beauregard, 1989:382). CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  26. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Leonie Sandercock (1998:2) worries that “the profession of planning is becoming increasingly irrelevant except in its role of facilitating global economic integration”. This is a fear shared by the author who is concerned that current appraisal and evaluation exercises of mega transport projects are too restrictive and, need to go well beyond existing efforts to facilitate global economic integration. • It prompted the author to submit a successful bid to the Volvo Research & Education Foundations to set up an international research programme to investigate what constitutes a ‘successful’ mega transport project by examining among other things the contribution that such make to the vision of sustainable development, focusing upon particular challenges highlighted in Figure 4. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  27. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou Figure 4: Multi-dimensional Facets of Proposed MUTP Analysis: Cross-relationships and sustainable development challenges CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  28. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Nation-state, deterritoralization and identity • Castells sees state control over space and time, increasingly bypassed by global flows of capital, goods, services, technology, communication, and information. • This growing challenge to state sovereignty around the world originates he claims from “the (alleged) inability of the modern-nation state “to navigate the uncharted, stormy waters between the power of global networks and the challenge of singular (local) entities”. • He points out that “while global capitalism thrives, and nationalist ideologies explode all over the world, (and) the nation-state ….in the modern age, seems to be losing power”, it has not lost its influence (Castells, 2004:303-04). CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  29. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • For Arjun Appadurai (1990:301), it is inadequate to simply perceive the world as an amorphous “network society” in which deterritoralization is the ruling process of the day. He argues, we need to view every deterritoralization as simultaneously a reterritorialization that “re-presents the world as a place with new borders and boundaries being constructed as old ones are torn down” (Mitchell, 2000:278). • What then of identity, particularly national identity? What sort of ‘geographies of belonging’ is now being constructed as a result of globalization? • For those most in control of mobility, the answer is a new form of elite cosmopolitanism that operates in pivotal spaces of power (Mitchell, 2000:280) whereby on a macro level, these spaces are occupied by mega transport projects, such as airports, international fast-train stations, seaports, highways etc. and at the micro level as “the airport lounge, the swank restaurant, and floors of the global sock exchanges (all linked by cellular phone)”. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  30. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Local governance and globalization • In face of the challenges to ‘local place and space’ by globalization, Castells(1991:352) argues that it is essential that local governments develop a central role in organizing the social control of places over the functional logic of the space of global flows. • Castells claimsthat local government is the only part of civil society capable of defending the interests of its locality, and “if organized collectively has the potential to respond flexibly to the requirements of the global flows of power, and in so doing, identify the best bargaining position in each case”. Could it be that the concept of decentralized cooperation can offer the basis for this? CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  31. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • For local governments to assume such a fundamental role he goes on to argue, they must extend their organizational capacity and reinforce their power in at least two directions. Firstly, by fostering citizen participation to support a collective strategy toward the reconstruction of the meaning of the locality and, secondly, by connecting with other organized self-identified communities. • He warns that local governments will be unable to control the logic of the space of global flows if they remain confined to their locality (Castells, 1991:352). This advice appears to advocate the collective development of smaller units of political and economic power as more flexible units in coping with the forces of globalization. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  32. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Castells draws upon history to support this view and points to the formation of the world economy in 14th and 16th centuries which led to the emergence of city-states as flexible institutions able to engage in world-wide negotiation with trans-national economic powers. • He sees the current globalization process potentially leading to the renaissance of the local (city) state as an alternative to the alleged “functionally powerless nation-state” (Castells, 1991:352); a development he claims could account for the extraordinary ‘successes’ of places such as Hong Kong and Singapore, and the Chinese special economic zones in southern China. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  33. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • I would like an alternative paradigm to be developed, one that would not encourage the development of new city-states but one that is based much more on our existing heritage of cities and regions, relying on the tenets of decentralized cooperation and subsequent lesson-sharing rather than the ‘let-rip’ economic growth model of the claimed ‘successes’ of places such as south China. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  34. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Enter Decentralized Cooperation • Defining the concept • The definition of ‘decentralized co-operation’ (DC) is generally accepted to be based on five tenets (EC, 1999): • The active participation of the various groups of stakeholders; • The search for consultation and complimentarily between stakeholders; • Decentralized management; • The introduction of a process-based approach; and • Assigning priority to capacity-building and institutional development. • In practice, DC tends to be planned around three priority sets of action: • The movement toward a decentralized approach; • The encouragement of local development initiatives; • Engagement in social and political dialogue. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  35. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • DC involves in decision-making about major infrastructure not only public local and regional institutions but also non-government organisations (NGOs), cooperatives, trade unions as well as other associations of civil society. • The Charter of Decentralized Cooperation for Sustainable Development drawn up by French local authorities in 2004 for the implementation of the principles of the Agenda 21 in cross-border, European and international cooperation initiatives in local authorities sees the concept as a means to encouraging and assisting local authorities to promote and attain the vision of sustainable development in urban and regional development through international cooperation. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  36. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • The Charter, recognizes: • That globalization has led increasingly to the interdependence of people and communities of the planet; • the importance of legitimate systems of local governance in a context of the increasing integration of Europe, and • widely differing effects of decentralised policies. • The Charter sees the foundations of partnerships among local authorities being based on: • equality – i.e., bringing together partners who are equal in terms of rights, duties and responsibilities, despite existing differences and disparities; • solidarity – i.e., taking into account interdependence of regions and generations, DC should enable the needs of partner regions to be jointly identified and development strategies and projects for the enhancement of livening conditions to be jointly elaborated and debated with shared resources. CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  37. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • reciprocity - i.e., an approach of sharing that goes far beyond traditional humanitarian cooperation or funding that involves the acknowledgement of the worth of stakeholders, of their skills and knowledge that underlie this principle; • subsidiarity - which implies local authorities play a key role in the implementation of sustainable development in a manner that the State will strive within the limits of regulations the engagement not only of autonomous and democratic local powers but also systems of local governance. • The Charter assumes a DC approach is best achieved through the promotion of: • partnership – whereby any cooperation should mobilise all the relevant parties of local authorities, and involve them from the outset; • participation – where the particularity of “region-to-region” forms of cooperation should involve all stakeholders over time; CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  38. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • training – on account that the training of all the stakeholders in the regions involved is seen as so vital to ensuring a mutual understanding of what is at stake, thereby, enabling them to take an active and informed part in elaborating and implementing projects; • transversality – where the identification of all environmental, economic, social and cultural factors affecting the regions are recognised at the outset as a basis for seeking to achieve consistency between initiatives of all of the other stakeholders ; • articulation between spatial and temporal levels – so that the potential impacts of any cooperation initiative on other regional levels can be detected, including any constraints resulting from these (in the short, medium and long term). CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  39. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • Finally, monitoring is seen a major dimension of DC. This looks to aspects of transparency of decision-making, access to information, evaluation of actions and capitalisation of lessons learnt in project design, planning, appraisal and evaluation paying particular heed to: • transparency – here it is considered important that the roles and responsibilities of each partner should be clearly defined and that information should be equally as accessible; • information – here it is believed that the inhabitants of the partnership local authorities must be kept informed of the actions undertaken and be involved in their realisation which involves introducing a system of information and communication which is neutral and universally understandable; CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

  40. Mega Transport Projects & City & Regional Development in a Globalizing World: The case for decentralised cooperation by Harry T. Dimitriou • evaluation - the premise here is that it is vital to conduct on-going and joint evaluation of the partnership and of the relevance of projects carried out on the context of the decentralised cooperation initiative; and • capitalisation – the assumption here is that project partners should strive to ensure that the lessons learned from their cooperation initiative are capitalised, explored and made available to the stakeholders of the decentralised cooperation initiative as a whole. • The challenge ahead then is how best to incorporate DC initiatives into major transport infrastructure planning as a basis for lesson-sharing and counteracting negative local aspects of mega transportation projects, especially in the developing world, where institutional capacities and structures are weak, where there opportunity costs are often huge and where such projects can often act as agents of undiscerning globalization forces? CODATU XII Conference, 5th-7th June, Lyon

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