City masterplans for Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia now include the ger districts—unplanned areas unconnected to basic urban services, including water supply and sanitation. A development strategy for ger areas is a key component of city masterplans to be funded by a 10-year, $320 million investment program.
Extreme climate events like increased temperatures and dry spells have resulted to rural outmigration toward Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar. This migration drives the expansion of the ger districts—substandard peri-urban areas—and currently home to 60% of Ulaanbaatar’s population, that is 840,000 people. The quality of living is low with lack of access to water services, no comprehensive sewerage (most residents use open pit latrines), no public spaces, no facilities for sports, education, and culture, no central heating system, and lack of drainage, making the poor road systems prone to floods. The haphazard development in the ger areas threaten environmental and public health (especially because of air and soil pollution), elevate the incidence of contagious diseases, reduce livelihood opportunities, and heighten inequalities within communities and the overall population.
Interventions
Urban Ulaanbaatar can be divided into two distinct parts: the core area where apartments have full utility services, including water and sanitation systems; and the ger areas, the unplanned areas of expansion that do not have proper access roads and have poor basic services systems. Providing better service facilities in the ger areas and improving the old infrastructure are Ulaanbaatar’s urgent goals.
With a policy and advisory technical assistance financed by Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction, ADB approved the Ulaanbaatar Water and Sanitation Services and Planning Improvement project. The TA project aimed for improvement of water and sanitation services and planning in Ulaanbaatar, which is linked to Mongolia’s Urban Sector Roadmap. Specifically, it helped (i) improve urban planning and management; (ii) enhance infrastructure service prioritization, planning, and maintenance; and (iii) develop innovative approaches to attract private sector in providing urban services.
Results
The study demonstrated that to embrace the challenges faced by Ulaanbaatar ger areas, water services issues cannot be separated from the overall infrastructure and service gap. Piecemeal interventions, focusing on one single sector cannot sustainably improve living conditions in ger areas. A more integrated approach is needed to initiate a liveable redevelopment process and foster private sector investment.
The TA established a shared urban development vision that demonstrated the possibility to breakdown ger areas redevelopment issues into manageable pieces based on upgrading existing economic and service hubs, named subcenters. It introduced a geographically targeted and integrated approach, based on improved urban planning, improved service delivery, and infrastructure and socio-economic facilities investments, to initiate structural changes in the land use pattern, and provide better ground for municipal services delivery and urban development. Further, the TA advocated considering ger areas redevelopment in the overall city planning by establishing a network of well-developed subcenters and urban corridors.
As a result, ger areas—for the first time—were included in the city master plan. The Ger Area Redevelopment Strategy supported by the TA is now one of the main components of “Adjustments to the Ulaanbaatar City Urban Development Master Plan 2020 and Development Directions 2030”, approved by the Parliament in February 2013.
The subcenter development strategy was included as a key component of the Ulaanbaatar master plan and was then translated into the 10-year, $320 million Ulaanbaatar Urban Service and Ger areas Development Investment Program. The program includes a $60 million cofinacing from the European Investment Bank and $3.7 million grant cofinancing from the Urban Financing Partnership Facility. The investment program was followed by the Ulaanbaatar Green Affordable Housing and Resilient Urban Renewal Sector Project that leveraged nearly seven times ADB’s blended loan, totalling $80 million, in both public and private financing from the Green Climate Fund ($50 million grant and $95 million loan), High Level Technology Fund ($3 million grant), and commercial banks, developers and beneficiaries ($307.1 million). These partnerships aim to deliver 10,000 affordable housing and redevelop 100ha of ger areas. As such the TA paved the way for ADB to open a long- term, large-scale, and innovative portfolio for Ulaanbaatar’s urban sector including the two large-scale projects mentioned above, and five multi-cofinanced TA (see below) to permanently change Ulaanbaatar into a more inclusive and liveable city.