Background and objectives:

The objective of this project is to develop comprehensive City Development Strategies for three cities of different size and rank -- Dushanbe, Kurgan-Tyube and Hissar – helping them to identify and eliminate the bottlenecks in achieving their potential as (respectively) a capital city, regional centre and small town. The project will focus on four identified elements and prioritize them within the framework of good local government administration and modern urban management principles. Ultimately, the initiative will address the root courses of urban poverty and propose approaches to make cities and towns more attractive for investment, to facilitate job creation and result in improving the living conditions of citizens. It also aims to maximize benefits from lessons learned to produce similar documents in other countries inside and outside Central Asia.

The main problems identified are in local government administration, water and sanitation, local finance, application of modern urban and land management practices. Key priority areas include:

• Basic infrastructure and services (water supply/sanitation/waste management).  
• Urban planning and management including land use planning and management.
• Municipal finance.
• Affordable Housing policy.

Activities:
The main activities will include:

• Participatory workshops and other meetings to confirm and/or adjust the proposal
• Consultants familiar with the issues of local government in general - and in Dushanbe, Kurgan-Tyube and Hissar in particular - will take the lead in arranging and conducting the workshops and developing the CDS proposal with guidance from UN-HABITAT to reflect coordination of the full scale project document with the WB Urban Infrastructure Strategy and inputs from other interested organizations.
• Workshops to include participation and shared experiences from other towns which have benefited from developing CDS in other countries.
• Workshops will recognize the need to raise awareness of the importance of capacity building and institutional reform and will lead to the preparation of a full scale CDS proposal.

Results:
The expected results will include:

• Participatory workshops (one in each of three cities and one concluding to discuss a draft full CA proposal in Dushanbe).  Proceedings of workshops and meetings will be disseminated to cities administrations, Agency for Construction and Architecture in the Government of Tajikistan, World Bank and ADB.
• A full scale proposal will be formulated and submitted to Cities Alliance.
• The proposal will include a detailed background situation analysis for each city in the context of general situation in urban sector in the country and will highlight the main findings and recommendations.