The ICMA CityLinks™ program was inaugurated in collaboration with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 1997. Known at the time as Resource Cities, the program was established to respond to the impact of economic globalization, accelerated urbanization, and rapid decentralization worldwide—events that prompted USAID to view much of its assistance from an urban perspective.  

USAID's Making Cities Work strategy recognizes that in an increasingly urbanized world, well-managed cities are the key to efficient service delivery, economic growth, sound management of resources, community health, and political stability. And democratic governance is the system by which local citizens hold their elected officials accountable for these outcomes. 

The implicit premises underlying these efforts are that access to political decision-making is fundamental to democracy and that local governments, as permanent institutions with elected representatives, are closer to the people than central governments and can be more responsive to local needs. The Making Cities Work strategy assists in the transfer of decision-making and spending power from central to local governments. It is based on the principle that strengthening the technical, financial, and management capacity of local government to respond to constituents’ needs and to sustain municipal reforms is critical to the success of decentralization. 

To support USAID’s Making Cities Work initiative, the Office of Urban Programs introduced Resource Cities partnerships in May 1997 as a means to deliver technical assistance in urban management to cities worldwide. USAID partnered with ICMA to deliver management and strategic guidance for the program.

Based on the success of Resource Cities, USAID funded a five-year CityLinks program (2003-2008), which encompassed eleven projects in ten countries and resulted in ongoing city-to-city partnerships that endured beyond the end of the funding.

Local officials in all countries share common problems—albeit with varying degrees of severity. ICMA CityLinks allows city officials in developing countries to draw on the resources of their U.S. counterparts to find sustainable solutions tailored to the real needs of their cities. In other words, CityLinks improves the capacity of cities to provide quality services to their residents, create a better living space for the community—and sustain those improvements long after the program has ended.

Results from more than a decade of experience and dozens of partnerships demonstrate that this is an effective way to provide common-sense, pragmatic technical support to the growing global urban community. Because the needs of developing countries vary widely, ICMA CityLinks is flexibly designed so that it can be structured to meet a variety of needs.

The ICMA CityLinks approach is based on the premise that local communities can and must make a difference in meeting the challenges they face, and that meeting these challenges requires effective local self-government. Thus, CityLinks seeks to:

• Empower local governments, NGOs, the private sector, and citizens to effect solutions
• Match the skills, knowledge, and resources of the local community with supplemental skills, knowledge, and resources that U.S. partners can share
• Use innovative and flexible partnership models involving various government and nongovernmental counterparts in the United States, host countries, and third countries
• Establish substantive professional relationships between U.S. municipal governments and their counterparts in developing and transitioning countries
• Facilitate greater understanding of the mutual benefits that can be derived when community leaders in the United States, and their international partners, achieve sustainable solutions that enhance the capacities of democratic local government. 

DownloadS

CityLinks 2003-2008 Report

CityLinks 2007 Annual Report