BANKING ON PUBLIC SERVICES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: FINANCE AND INNOVATION IN LOCAL WATER GOVERNANCE

Speaker:  Jim Spencer

Since the time of Jane Jacobs, there has been a progressive focus on community-level participation, action, and organizing that has opened up one of the most dynamic areas of the Urban and Regional Planning discipline. Spencer describes four empirical cases of community-level organizing in the water sector in Viet Nam, Cambodia and Indonesia. Seen together, the cases suggest that under some circumstances communities are coherently organized entities with “bankable” structures. If this is the case, then one of the challenges for planners in rapidly developing cities is determining how to engage a complex and locally-driven system of credit, investment, and planning.

Biography:  Jim Spencer is an Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning and of Political Science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Director of the Globalization Research Center. His scholarly research focuses on urban environmental and inequality issues in the US and in Southeast Asia. In particular, his published work addresses water and sanitation governance and finance, environmental security (infectious disease, natural resource tenure and access), as well urban development policy, neighborhood change, ethnicity/race and violence. His applied research and training includes work with the Ford Foundation, the European Commission, The Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the City of Los Angeles, and numerous NGOs on urban policy, planning and development issues. He has also served on Hawaii 2050, the State Legislative Task Force for Sustainable Development, and served as an adviser for the Royal Government of Cambodia and municipal governments in Viet Nam. Dr. Spencer's research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Social Science Research Council, and the Ford Foundation, among others. His undergraduate degree is from Amherst College, his M.E.M. is from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and his PhD in urban planning is from UCLA.