Contenu du sommaire : La croissance urbaine.

Administration of large towns in France. The problems facing large municipalities are becoming ever more preoccupying. The traditional approaches applied to the specific circumstances of large towns have proved unsatisfactory, owing to a series of factors : inadequate structures even though a special status is given to large towns ; persistent recourse to private law resources for service management ; insufficient competencies in municipal staff ; insufficient finance. Various reforms, some of which have been implemented, exist in blue-print. The problem is that these reforms apply both to large towns and the rest of ‘communes', since they have the same status. And although these reforms take into account aspects of large towns, they nevertheless tend to concern mainly medium-size and small municipalities.

Financial problems in large towns. All large towns the world over have to meet a major challenge, ie. management. Resources are limited owing to the need for restraint in distracting compulsory means from the economy through taxation in order not to jeopardize job creation. This requires the organisation of management along strict, stringent, and economical lines. The author proposes a model on the basis of the French example with the following main features : 1) outside auditing to protect public finance ; 2) advanced interrelations between State and townships to develop the responsibilities of each ; 3) the development of a municipal management.

Municipal auditing. Local governments have grown in size and multiplicity of functions to a point where, in terms of revenues and expenditure, they have reached levels outpassing in certain cases numerous State budgets. This trend has led in France to setting up an original System of auditing communal finance which, in view of the “population explosion”, focusses more and more on four main objectives, especially vital for large townships : give them uniform and compulsory tools for financial management in order to improve operation and diminish the risks of error ; set up permanent arrangements for a ‘prophylactic' defence of citizens ; check ex post the smooth working of the whole of the auditing machinery ; contribute to an objective information of citizens about the regularity and efficiency of the local officials' management. Such a System looks extremely centralized. The author's analysis, however, brings out its necessary stringency as a first requisite which eventually will have to evolve towards some sort of collectively accepted discipline.

Urban growth of Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires has adopted town development policies the main characteristics of which are : 1) stop population growth, attempting even to reduce number of inhabitants by promoting migration towards the province and the under-populated regions of the East of the country ; 2) restructuring of built-up areas through a severe regulation of building ; 3) catch up with the delays accumulated in terms of infrastructure for municipal public services. Simultaneously, a financial reshuffling is being implemented in order to up-date the System of taxation. This has already led to spectacular results to the effect that the executives are already contemplating the possibility of monitoring the uncontrollable.

Urban growth of São-Paulo. Greater São-Paulo tops the nine Brazilian conurbations in size, population, riches and also problems. As far as the urban growth is concerned, the issue is one of organizing available space rather than refraining from expanding the boundaries of the city. In this sense, it seems necessary to aim at the following targets : fix viable population levels ; set up infrastructures capable of dealing with denser population movements ; monitor the swallowing up of smaller municipalities under correct conditions ; limit or better spread the installation of industries ; control pollution ; watch out for a gradual and adequate use of the land. A first major attempt was made in this direction through passing an integrated municipal development Plan in 1970. A follow-up will take up new problems regarding administrative and political structures : this conurbation requires urgently innovating political and managerial levels to be set up from scratch.

Urban growth of Caracas. Between 1936 and 1971 the population of metropolitan Caracas rose from 273 000 to 2 325 000 inhabitants, reaching in 1980 an estimated 3 330 000. Considering the scarcity of land available (on the 66 300 hectares of metropolitan Caracas, only 37 200 are constructible, of which 24 000 ha are already built-up), the population density is very high. This makes the urbanization process even more difficult. Three major problems have to be overcome, which are peculiar to Caracas : a high percentage of marginality ; maladjustment of services ; obsolescence and gaps in equipment. To overcome these difficulties and monitor the urbanization process, the VI Plan defines for each region a set of targets, such as, for metropolitan Caracas : the setting-up of sub-regions in order to create permanent and correctly paid jobs outside metropolitan Caracas and to confer autonomy to these entities with simultaneous integration into the national economy ; the implementation of a regional transport System combining various facilities.