Academics and policy makers have consistently argued for the need to develop strong local institutions to address the everyday struggles of poor citizens. The assumption is that strong local institutions, such as constituency-based grassroots organisations, can intersect with state, civil society and private efforts to make development more sensitive to their needs. As such, collective action and co-production are viewed as essential building blocks of the institutional arrangements needed to sustainably expand access to basic services for the poor.

In urban areas this rationale is clear: public service delivery is usually ineffective in low-income settlements, and consequently, collective action – the self-help mode of addressing basic concerns by low-income people – is common. Co-production, in contrast, is concerned with the provision of public services through regular, long-term relationships between state agencies and citizen groups, with both making substantial resource contributions.

Building on state capacities and local collective action is therefore increasingly seen as a means of improving service delivery in urban areas. Combining collective action/co-production is thus an attractive institutional mechanism for governing both people and ecosystems, and an appropriate technology for knowledge production and developing grassroots-based expertise.