ADVOCACY Urban Planning

Creating the momentum for Governance Reforms

URBAN PLANNING

In the last decade, we have seen globalization erode national boundaries at breath-taking speeds. Revolutions in technology and communications have connected us, as well as allowed us to access innovations and experiences in an unprecedented manner.

As the waves of globalisation have become larger and stronger, our cities have become the gateways to economic growth and opportunities. While there may be some who question the implications of this, we cannot ignore the reality that urban centres are at their essence engines of economic growth. However, while there are extraordinary opportunities, there are also many challenges. And today, Urban India seems to be waddling under the weight of its problems.

1. Globalisation and marketplace economics are creating their own challenges in newly urbanising countries. In order to side step the danger of the “macdonaldisation” of our cities, our cities need to quickly find their own soul and unique identity.
2. The relentless pace of urbanization doesn’t allow a sequential approach to addressing these urban challenges. If the pace of our solutions is improving from 5 miles an hour to 10 miles an hour, the problems are growing at 100 miles an hour.
3. Every country has seen migration of the poor from farm to city, and India is no exception. However, we have today more than 100 million urban poor, whose basic needs are not being met – land, water, healthcare and education.

Our cities are assuming two identities: the legal and the illegal - the planned and the unplanned, and the second two seem to have the statistics on their side. We are witnessing growing cities with patchy infrastructure and environmental insensitivity; traffic that is unbearable, housing that is unaffordable; widespread water shortages and pollution; high costs and poor standards of living. What we have are cities without much science or sensibility, character or scale. Worst of all, we are witnessing cities with dis-enfranchised citizens.

At the centre of most of these challenges is LAND. How urban areas deal with the critical issue of LAND, or more generally SPACE, is central to a host of other issues in urban areas. Even among those of us present here today, if we examine our own areas of work, we will find that SPACE relates to almost every aspect of what we do. – whether it is designing public transport corridors, the location of solid waste landfill sites, depleting water tables due to the improper rainwater channeling, shrinking ecological diversity in the cities because of the construction on tanks and lake beds, the real estate development impact of road networks, the increase in slum clusters due to lack of low-income housing stock, stalled infrastructure projects because of land issues, and so on. In each of these, we can see only the connection to space, but sadly, not in a positive light – today, in Urban India, we see the damaging consequences of poor spatial planning on so many different fronts.

What we need is a new paradigm for planning our cities. Not one that takes a myopic view of planning as zoning and land use, but one that is informed by the issues of public governance. One that gives us public realms that are inviting. That fosters building communities. That allows street vendors to earn their living, provide a valuable service and yet is not illegal or inconvenient. That allocates space for new industries and businesses to thrive but builds in flexibility for changing economies. That provides and works towards a vision for the city, that all of us can own.

For this to happen each one working on different urban issues needs to first recognize the impact of space on our areas of work and concern. Only when we do this we can begin to examine our common concerns across the issues that we work in, and articulate solutions.

And in order to do this, we needed to first do one thing: and that is, create the SPACE for us to find this common ground! Making this a reality requires different stakeholders to find common ground: government, administrators, citizens, planners and architects, ecologists, sociologists, lawyers, NGOs, media etc.

While this sounds like a familiar tune, what has been missing so far is working with normative scaffolding, well-defined structures that brings clarity of purpose. In a nutshell, the need for debate, dialog, coordinated action and follow-up is critical and urgent.

Janaagraha has worked on the issues surrounding urban planning. Our efforts have ranged from a participatory planning campaign in Bangalore that involved over 2000 citizens from 10% of the city and over a 1000 volunteers, to a neighbourhood planning referendum on Coxtown Market, to a multi-stakeholder consultation on Bangalore’s Masterplan2005-15, to a national conference on Urban Space held in Goa in February 2006.