The Independent Evaluation of the Cities Alliance

The Cities Alliance is a global coalition of cities and their development partners committed to scaling up successful approaches to poverty reduction. The Alliance brings cities together in a direct dialogue with bilateral and multilateral agencies and financial institutions and those members promote the developmental role of local governments and help cities of all sizes obtain more coherent international support. By promoting the positive impacts of urbanization, the Alliance helps local authorities plan and prepare for future growth and cities develop sustainable financing strategies, and attract long-term capital investments for infrastructure and other services. In February 2006 Universalia was awarded the assignment to conduct the five- year evaluation of the World Bank’s Cities Alliance initiative. The task involved a multidisciplinary and multi-lingual Universalia team conducting both field missions to three nations (Brazil, India and Egypt) as well as extensive desktop research and surveying of many types of stakeholders. The prime objective of the assignment is to assess the impact of the Cities Alliance initiative as a catalytic force to spur global investing in urban restructuring and especially in combating urban poverty and promoting slum eradication.