While the importance of urban management in achieving sustainable urban development is increasingly recognised as being significant by urban managers and the general public, there is still great deal of confusion and misunderstanding in China about the substance of urban management, which impedes effective implementation. This paper examines some of the problems encountered in urban management practice in Chinese cities, and highlights the importance of a holistic conceptual understanding, and a strategic model for enhancing urban management capacities in the Chinese context. Focusing on a case study of Guangzhou Development District (GDD), the paper demonstrates that the application of a set of measurable evaluative criteria for assessing urban management performance is useful in improving urban management practice.

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Notwithstanding the increasingly fragmented organizational relationships within Colombo's urban governance system, the cooperative nature of stakeholder relationships lends a high level of coherence to the overall system. Since 1995, Colombo's solid waste management system has been characterized by the increased role of the private sector, community‐based organizations and NGOs. Whilst the increasingly fragmented nature of this system exhibits some deeply ingrained problems, there are also a number of positives associated with the increased role of civil society actors and, in particular, the informal sector. Reforming regulatory frameworks so as to integrate some of the social norms that are integral to the lives of the majority of urban residents will contribute to regulatory frameworks being considerably more enforceable than is currently the case. Such reform requires that institutional and regulatory frameworks need to be flexible enough to adapt to the changing social, political and economic context. In the Colombo case, effective cooperation between public sector and civil society stakeholders illustrates that adaptive institutional arrangements grounded in pragmatism are feasible. The challenge that arises is to translate these institutional arrangements into adaptive regulatory frameworks — something that would require a significant mind shift on the part of planners and urban managers. En dépit de relations structurelles de plus en plus fragmentées, la nature coopérative des liens entre les différents acteurs apporte une forte cohérence à l'ensemble du système de gouvernance urbaine de Colombo. Depuis 1995, la gestion des déchets y est caractérisée par le rôle croissant du secteur privé, de groupements locaux et d'ONG. Si la nature plus fragmentée de ce système révèle des problèmes profondément ancrés, un certain nombre d'aspects positifs s'associe au rôle plus présent des acteurs de la société civile, notamment du secteur informel. Réformer les cadres statutaires afin de pouvoir y intégrer certaines normes sociales dominantes dans la vie des citadins contribuera à ce que ces cadres soient beaucoup plus faciles à mettre en œuvre qu'actuellement. Cette réforme implique que les cadres institutionnels et statutaires soient suffisamment souples pour s'adapter aux contextes social, politique et économique évolutifs. Dans le cas de Colombo, une coopération efficace entre les parties prenantes du secteur public et de la société civile montre que des dispositifs institutionnels adaptatifs fondés sur le pragmatisme sont viables. Le défi à relever tient à la possibilité de traduire ces dispositifs institutionnels en cadres statutaires adaptatifs, ce qui exigerait un net changement de mentalités chez les responsables et aménageurs urbains.

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In order for informal settlement upgrading to build the institutions necessary to ensure continuity of the improvement process, planners must move beyond a narrow concern with legality and illegality. Upgrading should comprise a gradation of strategies that legitimize and integrate aspects of settlements' de facto institutions into the planning process. In so doing, it is possible to contribute to legal regulatory frameworks that are more appropriate to informal settlements. This article considers planning, tenure delivery, and public participation as three aspects of a recent upgrade in South Africa, and the extent to which they bridged the gap between the de jure and de facto.