Assisting Batumi City Municipality to Elaborate City Development Strategy & Spatial Urban Development Plan

PMCG, as part of the consortium led by Tetra Tech ARD, within the USAID-funded program “Good Governance Initiative (GGI)”, is providing support to Batumi City municipality to guide and manage its sustainable urban development.

The objective of this project is to provide technical assistance to Batumi in developing the City Development Strategy and Spatial Urban Development Plan to improve governance and service delivery to its citizens at the local level.

By the order of the Mayor of the Self-Governing City of Batumi, a special Working Group (WG) was created to oversee the development of the City Development Strategy, Spatial Urban Development Plan, and all related documents. The WG is composed of all major stakeholders, representatives of different segments of society including representatives of the local administration, field experts, youth, academia and CSOs. PMCG’s team will work closely with, and support, the WG in the process of developing the strategic documents.

More specifically, PMCG’s team will perform the following activities:

Activity 1. Analyses of the current state of affairs:

• • Thoroughly review and analyze already existing strategic documents developed by the City (city development or socio-economic strategy, medium/long term vision for Batumi City development as well as the mission of the city; potential priority directions for urban/economic/social development; general vision of the projects to be implemented under each priority direction for city development) and develop a set of recommendations to further improve the above-mentioned strategic papers

Activity 2. Develop City Development Strategy:

• • Develop a work plan for elaboration of the City Development Strategy and its Action Plan

• • Improve and finalize the medium and long-term visions for Batumi City’s development, the mission of the city, and priority directions for economic/social development

• • Provide advice to the WG to solicit necessary financial resources for project implementation

• • Provide support to the WG to elaborate a draft City Development Strategy and framework for elaboration of the Action Plans based on the draft City Development Strategy

• • Provide support to the WG to hold public discussions on the draft City Development Strategy for Batumi City or its individual components

• • Provide support to the WG to finalize the City Development Strategy and Action Plan for Batumi City

Activity 3. Develop Urban Development Plan:

• • Through close engagement with the WG, develop an Action Plan for elaboration of the Spatial Urban Development Strategy and Planning Order for developing the Land Use Plan of the City of Batumi

• • Collect information and all data through interviewing representatives of state agencies, central and local governments, relevant field experts and business-sector professionals to develop the Spatial Urban Development Plan

• • Provide support to the WG to conduct public meetings

• • Provide support to the WG to examine the collected data and develop the Planning Order

• • Provide support to the WG and municipality to work and coordinate with the WB project

• • Participate and provide recommendations to the WG in the bidding process

Background information:

USAID has awarded Tetra Tech ARD with a 5-year contract under the Office of Democracy and Governance, whose purpose is to support the Government of Georgia in strengthening overall transparency, accountability and effectiveness of selected governance and service delivery systems. GGI’s work targets the legislative and executive branches at both the central and local government levels. To ensure greater government accountability, GGI works with government and civil society representatives to enhance public participation and disseminate public information about key reforms. This activity addresses the Governing Justly and Democratically Objective of U.S. Government Foreign Assistance, and especially the promotion of well-governed states and civil society areas.

The objectives of GGI are to improve administrative and financial management of public institutions at all levels, to increase civic engagement and improved access to independent, reliable and balanced information relevant to Georgia’s good governance, to strengthen policy development and lawmaking processes and to strengthen institutional oversight of government.