Social development design & local development

BHC – Building Healthy Communities Use of Structural Funds in developing "Health Gains”Bacău, September 29 – October 1, 2010

The Quality of Life Research InstituteRomanian AcademyMihnea PreotesiIulian Stănescu

The concept of social development

• the origin: Mise en valeur (Wallerstein, 2004)

• 1960s: the development decade (Huntington, 1968)

• 1970s: sustainable development (Club of Rome Report, 1972)

• 1980s: human development

• 1990s: social developmentWorld Summit for Social Development - Copenhagen 1995The ultimate goal of social development is to improve and enhance

the quality of life of all people • poverty eradication• employment• social integration

The need of social development in Romania

• transition – first 10 years– 18% decline in GDP– 3.3 million jobs lots out of 8.1 million in 1990– 35.9% absolute poverty

• lack of social & development policies

• institutional and social policy development– CASPIS: EU, World Bank, UK Government

Social development design

• development design “by crisis”, under the pressure of negative factors (Zamfir, 2007)

• more than crisis solving, a process of medium or long term planning

• structural components– desirable status, defined as goal by the

community– set of actions framed in time – strategies,

plans, programmes

Phases of social development

Part I – Social problems analysis1. Social problems identification & diagnostics2. Priorities and objectives 3. Solutions and strategic variable

Part II – Project cycle management4. Action plan5. Implementation6. Monitoring7. Evaluation8. Feed-back & correction

Social problem categories

• types of issues/problems– central– manifest – latent– potential

• systemic view: status and causal problems

Social problem dynamics

Theorem: emptiness beckons filling (Zamfir, 2005)

Local and urban development

• 2000s: the new localism– understanding of the limitations of centrally-

driven policy implementation

• Urban development (Vîrdol, 2007)– associated with industrialization– growth process through qualitative changes

• Policies, strategies, programs

– challenges: complex, interactive, time-consuming

Urban development trends in Romania

• Overgrowth in Bucharest

• Relative decline of large cities (including Bacău)

• Medium-sized cities maintained level of inhabitants (100,000)

• Decline of small cities and towns

Financial empowerment for local government in Romania

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

share GDP share total gov