Assisting Kutaisi City Municipality with Spatial Urban Development Plan

PMCG, as part of a consortium led by Tetra Tech ARD, within the USAID-funded Good Governance Initiative (GGI), is supporting Kutaisi city municipality to guide and manage its sustainable urban development.

The project provides technical assistance to Kutaisi in developing the City Spatial Urban Development Plan to improve governance and service delivery to citizens at the local level.

By the order of the Mayor of Kutaisi, a special working group (WG) has been created to oversee the development of the Spatial Urban Development Plan and all related documents. The WG consists of all major stakeholders, representatives of different segments of society including local administration, field experts, youth, academia and CSOs. PMCG’s team is working closely with the WG in the process of developing the strategic documents.

More specifically, PMCG’s team is performing the following activities:

• • Thoroughly reviewing and analyzing existing strategic documents developed by the City (city development or socio-economic strategy, medium/long term vision for Kutaisi city development as well as the mission of the city; potential priority directions for urban/economic/social development; general vision about the projects to be implemented under each priority direction for city development)

• • Developing a set of recommendations to further improve the above mentioned strategic papers

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

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

• • Supporting the WG to conduct public meetings; examining the collected data and developing the planning order; working and coordinating with the WB project, and recommending the WGs 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.