formerly known as Resource Cities

USAID’s The Urban Programs Team introduced in 1997 a mechanism to deliver technical assistance in urban management to cities worldwide called Resource Cities; in 2002 it was reborn as City Links. City Links LWA is a cost-effective tool that draws on the pro-bono contributions of technical expertise by US local government professionals through partnerships with overseas municipalities. These exchanges provide an opportunity for officials to learn directly from their peers about pragmatic field-tested approaches to urban management challenges.

City Links has one basic premise–that local communities can and must make a difference in meeting the challenges they face, and that meeting these challenges requires effective local self-government. The technical focus of each partnership is driven by the demands and needs of the target overseas city. The range of technical areas is broad, including trash collection and landfill management, local economic development, budgeting and accounting processes, drug-use prevention campaigns, water/wastewater services, river basin restoration, and downtown revitalization. While each City Links partnership has its own objectives, the program overall seeks to:

• Provide technical expertise to enable local government managers in developing and transitional countries to address pressing urban management issues.
• Provide basic and realistic community-based models for problem solving and decision making, which are replicable in the local government and other communities within the host country.
• Establish substantive professional relationships between U.S. municipal governments and their counterparts in developing and transitional countries.

City Links is procured through a LWA cooperative agreement with the International City/County Managers’ Association. It is a cost-effective mechanism available for USAID missions and bureaus. The bulk of the cost of the City Links partnership is funded by the mission/bureau. The Urban Programs Team supplements the core of the budget by funding the Best Practices Symposium at the conclusion of the partnership. The Best Practices Symposium is an opportunity for the City Links partnership to share their results, experiences and lessons learned with neighboring in-country cities. The cost share, provided through the in-kind services of seasoned U.S. local government professionals, is approximately 30 percent of a partnership budget.

To accommodate the diverse needs of cities and USAID missions, City Links is designed to be flexible — in terms of technical focus areas and design of the partnership. Partnerships can take on many forms, such as:

• A city-to-city partnership, where tasks are identified by the partner cities. Alternatively, the USAID mission funding the partnership may select the specific sector to be addressed (e.g., environment, health) by the partnership.
• A group of international cities, assembled around a specific common issue (e.g., waste management or other environmental issues), and paired with a U.S. city or special district that specializes in the sector.
• A staff-to-staff partnership from the cities, or a partnership that includes staff, elected officials, NGO representatives, citizens, and/or private sector representatives to work on the task.
• A coalition of city officials and community representatives who come together to work with similar partnerships in the United States (e.g., local government associations).
• An agency-to-agency exchange. For instance, the local health department in an international city can be paired with a local health department in the United States, and together develop a localized AIDS prevention program.

In creating direct links between communities, City Links makes real for US citizens the needs and complexities of international development assistance. US local government officials who have participated in partnerships have noted that their participation is not without benefits to their own home city. Many comeback from their exchanges with a renewed spirit to use creatively limited resources, and in some cases, partnerships between the two communities have led to direct trade relationships, student exchanges, and donations of city equipment.

The Urban Programs Team of the Poverty Reduction Office in the EGAT Pillar Bureau welcomes USAID missions interested in learning more about the City Links cooperative agreement to contact Jessica Tulodo (jtulodo@usaid.gov).