Acknowledgements

Compiling this Source Book on Good Urban Governance was a complex task. It required extensive literature review and analysis, careful selection of indicators and user-friendly formatting.

It was a marriage between collating a selective knowledge-base on how to assess urban governance and compiling a practical and useful set of monitoring tools as indicators of good governance.

The purpose of preparing this resource book is to equip the urban planner, administrators, citizens and, in short, all those who are concerned with city management, with some practical ideas, methods and indicators that they may wish to use in assessing the quality of governance of their local government institutions, and how efficient, participatory, responsive, transparent they are.

The task, though complex, was made easy by the conceptual guidance received from Dr. Anwar Fazal, Regional Coordinator, The Urban Governance Initiative (TUGI), UNDP, Kuala Lumpur.

I wish to record my appreciation of the support received from the following in many different ways, particularly by commenting on the first draft of this document.

Mr. Phillip J. Young, UNDP Resident Representative, Malaysia.

Mr. Neil Buhne, Deputy Resident Representative, UNDP, Malaysia, (until June 30^th 1999).

Ms. Gulden Cosslett of UNOPS, Kuala Lumpur.

Ms. Sri Husnaini Sofjan of UNDP/TUGI, Malaysia.

Dr. Clarence Shubert, Former Senior Regional Adviser, UNICEF & UNCHS

Finally, I wish to express my sincere thanks to Ms. Juliana Mokhtar for her excellent computer work and Ms. Savita Kaur Vegil for secretarial support.