Improving the lives of the poor through investment in cities - an update on the performance of the World Bank's urban portfolio

The central theme addressed by this evaluation, is whether the Bank's investment in cities, improved the lives of the poor. This is a desk study of the policy context, and performance of 99 urban projects completed during 1993-2000, and an update of OED's 1994 review of urban operations. The study assesses the implementation challenges of Cities in Transition - the Bank's new urban<BR>strategy paper (USP). For its analysis, the study built an evaluation database from existing Bank sources, as well as others such as UN Habitat city-level urban indicators. The first decade of Bank lending -1972-82 - pioneered Bank urban operations and set priorities, such as slum upgrading and sites and services focused upon the urban poor. The second decade - 1983-92 - saw a rapid expansion in urban lending, and made Latin America the main regional client of the Bank's urban program. The third decade - exit years 1993-2000 - witnessed sustained portfolio activity. Africa hosted most projects, but Latin America still accounted for most lending. Overall, satisfactory projects fell to 71 per cent of the totalThe nadir came in 1995, the year of the completion of twelve projects prepared around the time of the disruptive Bank reorganization of 1987, but since 1995, there has been a strong rebound. This decade's urban activities, also show responsiveness to OED's 20-Year Study recommendation to strengthen the congruence of project objectives, and design with better results. Almost all projects aimed at improving livability and governance, incorporated specific components designed to help achieve these goals. However, less was done to develop guidelines for monitoring and evaluation (M&E), and to implement project specific M&E systems that OED had recommended. The fourth decade - 2001 and beyond - poses the challenge of implementing the Bank's new Urban Strategy Paper (USP), with its primary focus upon improving livability - decent quality of life for all, including the poor - through the good governance, bankability and competitiveness dimensions of sustainable cities. Self-evaluation by the Quality Assurance Group (QAG), and the latest supervision missions suggests that final outcome ratings of these projects will be good.<BR>