61 minute read
Pin Point
Urbanisation was taking place rapidly but our cities were not equipped at the same speed to deal with its after effect which led to a huge gap between the demand for urban infrastructure and its delivery
Narendra Modi
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Prime Minister of India We throw money at an outbreak, and when it’s over, we forget about it and do nothing to prevent the next one. This is dangerously short-sighted, and frankly difficult to understand. History tells us that this will not be the last pandemic, and epidemics are a fact of life
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
Director-General, WHO
Even if weather disasters for one year cannot be directly linked to climate change and a longer period needs to be studied to assess their significance, these extreme values fit with the expected consequences of a decades-long warming trend for the atmosphere and oceans
Ernst Rauch
Chief Climate and Geo-scientist, Munich Re, Germany Our findings suggest that poor air quality could be responsible for a considerable burden of pregnancy loss in South Asia, providing further justification for urgent action to tackle dangerous levels of pollution
Dr Tao Xue
Peking University, China
UN Development @ UNDP
2020 was a difficult year for everyone. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities and threw into sharp relief the challenges we face as a human family. It also showed us that we are stronger together
UN-Habitat @UNHABITAT
BUZZ
Antonio Guterres @antonioguterres
Sustainable urban & regional planning is one of the most important tools we have to ensure livable & sustainable cities & communities. Sustainable cities will play a vital role in reducing the global carbon footprint from transport, energy & construction
We cannot go back to the old normal of inequality and fragility. Instead, we must step towards a safer, more sustainable path. With decisions today setting our course for decades to come, we must make COVID-19 recovery and Climate Action two sides of the same coin
United Nations ESCAP @UNESCAP
AsiaPacific has a way to go in meeting safe, orderly and regular migration. Policies should be gender-responsive, people-centred and promote family life, ensuring access to protection & education for children
Inside 6 30 Pin Point Newscan
Volume 6, Issue 9 January 2021 37 City Image 46 Urban Agenda
ARTICLEs
8 Powering ahead in 2021
The new year has brought with it new hopes and aspirations for everyone. These could be challenging times for governments, businesses, economies, people in general, and cities. But, as the saying goes, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Cities are fine examples of this old maxim as they always sail through hurdles and emerge stronger after a catastrophe
10 Metro rail projects: Benefits & challenges
Metro Rail has proved to be one of the most desirable infrastructures for the cities. The National Metro Rail Policy 2017 specifies that all cities with over 20 lakh population could look for Mass Rapid Transit Systems (MRTS). Among the various modes of MRTS, the metro rail has shown considerable rise in popularity among Indian cities
12 Leading vision of Nirmal, Aviral Ganga in ‘New Normal’ 22 Leading ASEAN cities towards resilient, sustainable pathways
The year 2020 has given human beings the chance to self-reflect on what the universe has revealed. We had never thought of facing such a crisis in the history of our generation. COVID-19 has impacted millions of people worldwide, not only on health but also on economic and social aspects. It has changed the way people live, think and interact amongst themselves. It has caused new adaptive habits, such as working from home, online schools or education system, and so on 16 Rethinking urban public mobility post COVID-19
The COVID-19 necessitated lockdown resulted in a severe curtailment in travel. Most daily office-goers worked from home, there was virtually no entertainment-related travel and many shopping-related trips were replaced by ordering online. As a result, streets that were otherwise choked were suddenly devoid of traffic for several months. As things open up, questions arise on whether the old movement patterns will be restored or are we likely to see a new normal 18 Cities need to accommodate people displaced by climate change
The world is fast waking up to the problem of people displaced by climate change. People opting for aspirational migration are as such, moving into cities from villages. With more and more people being forcefully displaced for various reasons including development projects, conflicts and climate change, the additional population will be huge for the cities to manage 20 Imperatives of constituting 2nd National Commission on Urbanisation
WILL the year 2021 be a secure future for all of us living in the cities? This question haunts many of us who have been working in the cities since long. The year 2020 has been a thorough expose of the way how we are developing and imagining our cities
E-DIALoguEs
26 Approach to building resilient cities
NumERogRAph
28 India begins world’s largest vaccination drive
Government of India has begun the largest vaccination drive in the world in its fight against COVID-19. The jabs of two Indian vaccines — Covishield and Covaxin — are being administered to the public as per priorities defined by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Team Urban Update tries to address the various confusions regarding the coronavirus vaccines
Powering ahead in 2021
The new year has brought with it new hopes and aspirations for everyone. These could be challenging times for governments, businesses, economies, people in general, and cities. But, as the saying goes, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Cities are fine examples of this old maxim as they always sail through hurdles and emerge stronger after a catastrophe
The world is gradually coming out of the clutches of the Covid-19 Pandemic. With the beginning of the vaccination drive for the priority groups, the future is looking optimistic. Now, the economic and social recovery has started taking place. The stock market which, in general, depicts the sentiments of people about the future, is in green. Cities are gradually starting their activities as planned in the pre-Covid era. The world is entering into normalcy again. it is now up to national and local governments to decide the contours of the new normal in our cities. We must not aspire to see greens just in Sensexes and dows of the world and must adapt to green practices in our urban management and governance as well. Keeping the lessons in the rearview mirror, city leaders must forge ahead and plan their policies and programs.
New road to recovery
We have recently witnessed an economic slowdown and its severe impacts on the public at large. According to a news article published in the Bloomberg, deep recessions in the past have been followed by spikes in industrial activity that churned out far more greenhouse gas than was avoided in the downturn. Carbon dioxide emissions dropped 1.4 per cent in 2009, for instance, before rising 5.1
The world is entering into normalcy again. It is now up to national and local governments to decide contours of the new normal in our cities. We must not aspire to see greens just in sensexes and dows of the world and adapt to green practices in our urban management and governance as well. keeping the lessons in the rearview mirror, city leaders must forge ahead and plan their policies and programs
per cent the following year when the economy started to bounce back. This approach cannot be a suitable option today because such an increase in emissions could wreak havoc and cause irreversible climate damage.
Understanding the situation, many governments worldwide are implementing climate-friendly policies such as switching to green energy alternatives, strengthening climate policies, creating awareness on the positives of the green and sustainable development approach.
The fall in sustainable energy prices gives governments hope that they can drive their development agenda riding on green energy. it has also given optimism to countries that investment in green energy will pay off. india is one of the foremost promoters of this idea, and their decision to promoting renewable energy is trickling down at the local level. Many municipal corporations and councils have decided to reduce their dependence on traditional electricity sources and generate green energy to run urban operations. Green energy has double benefits for local bodies. The first one is that contribution to the larger global agenda of protecting our planet will be fulfilled, and the second, they can reduce their energy expenditure. At present, their spending on electricity hovers between 20 and 30 per cent of their total budget. it varies from a large corporation to a small one. This year, cities can lay their future roadmap and decide on the kind of development they want and ensure that their priorities do not disturb the natural ecosystem.
Ranjit S Chavan President, AIILSG
innovation to remain in focus
during the pandemic, several innovations, which were practised at a small scale, became mainstream. The sudden rise in digital payment, online meetings, tele-medicines, etc., are examples of how people are lapping up new technological tools.
Governments and private players understood the significance of spending on Research and development (R&d). Even economists are advocating for more spending on R&d and are convinced that it would lead to efficient and sustainable economic growth. Same is true for local governments. They may not have resources to spend on large scale R&d projects, but they must have provisions for allocating some funds to adopt innovation to deal with urban issues. The recovery phase has begun, and the government has started giving funds to bring back industrial sectors on track. it will be interesting to see how the nations and cities will utilize the funds that aid climate solutions and revive economic activities.
The international Energy Agency recently called solar power “the cheapest electricity in history”. it projected that india would build 86 per cent less new coal power capacity than it thought just one year ago. Today, business as usual no longer means a fivefold increase of coal use this century, as was once expected. it means pretty rapid decarbonization, at least by the standards of history, in which hardly any has ever taken place before.
There are some initiatives in countries where they are focusing on building resilient and sustainable communities. These initiatives are not limited to creating green infra and using renewable energy sources. Many cities have rewritten their urban plans to suit the requirements of the day. In the first month of 2021, America will also witness the change of power. President-elect Joe Biden’s recent election victory has given optimism to environmentalists that the USA will also join global efforts to mitigate climate change’s negative impacts and contribute to the Paris Climate Accord.
The city of Paris also brings hopes as the city’s mayor has declared that she would transform Paris into a green city by the 2024 Summer olympics. Her idea for a green city is a city where everyone can breathe fresh air, share an open space and enjoy our lives. The city has decided to give more space to pedestrians and bicycles. Her vision statement talks about this in detail. For instance, the Seine’s banks—urban highways in the heart of Paris—have been converted into promenades. on Sundays, entire neighbourhoods turn into pedestrian zones. And 620 miles of bike lanes will be completed by the end of this year. Wherever possible, in streets, squares and playgrounds, the city is removing asphalt to give space back to nature. Soon, the Eiffel Tower will sit in the middle of a large park. With tree-planting programs, real urban forests will act as the lungs for neighbourhoods across the city. This is a good start, and i am sure many cities would follow the French capital is example. i am quite optimistic that the new wave of hope and aspirations that 2021 has brought will encourage us to plan for a brighter, safer and sustainable urban future.
Metro Rail Projects Benefits and Challenges
Metro Rail has proved to be one of the most desirable infrastructures for the cities. The National Metro Rail Policy 2017 specifies that all cities with over 20 lakh population could look for Mass Rapid Transit Systems (MRTS). Among the various modes of MRTS, the metro rail has shown considerable rise in popularity among Indian cities
While the first metro rail in the country was the Kolkata Metro commissioned in October 1984 (Esplanade to Bhowanipur, 3.4 kms), it took 18 years for the country to see the next one, when the Delhi Metro (First Part of Phase-1, Shahdara to Tis Hazari, 8.1 kms) started operating in December 2002. However, the success of the Delhi Metro became a game changer and the subsequent 18 years, from 2002 to 2020, witnessed swift growth in the number of cities that have gotten metro rail projects approved, of which many have started operating as well. As of December 2020, as many as 13 cities have operating Metros covering 678.48 kms and these are in Ahmedabad (6 kms), Bengaluru (42.3 kms), Chennai (45.1 kms), Delhi (347 kms), Gurugram (12.1 kms), Hyderabad (67 kms), Jaipur (11.98 kms), Kochi (25 kms), Kolkata (35.1 kms), Lucknow (22.9 kms), Mumbai (11.4 kms), Nagpur (22.9 kms), and Noida (29.7 kms).
These 13 cities are shortly going to add about 500 kms of new lines that are under construction. Another 8
cities have their first Metro projects under construction, and these include Agra, Bhopal, Indore, Kanpur, Meerut, Navi Mumbai, Patna and Pune, to be completed in 2021/2022. Many more cities are pursuing to get their first metro projects approved in the coming years, including Coimbatore, Dehradun, Gorakhpur, Guwahati, Jammu, Kozhikode, Prayagraj, Srinagar, Thiruvananthapuram, Varanasi, Vijayawada, and Vishakhapatnam.
Benefits of metro rail systems
Mass Rapid Transit systems such as the Metro Rail facilitate quick, safe and easy movement of people and promote economic activities, social equity, and an enhanced quality of life for the people. Owing to the possibility of seamlessly traversing underground, over ground (viaducts) or at-grade (on surface), the metro rail system connects congested areas with the rest of the city, thus allowing dissipation of the congestion as people reduce the usage of personal transport like cars. An example is the reach of the Delhi Metro to the dense area of Chandni Chowk. In the process, the Metro Rail eases the traffic congestion on the roads. Delhi Metro provides over 50 lakh passenger journeys per day, which otherwise would have crowded the city roads tremendously. Concomitantly, the incidents of traffic accidents also get
Sudhir KriShna
Former Secretary (Urban Development) Government of India
reduced substantially.
On the economic side, MRTS facilitate equalisation of property values across their influence zone. Small businesses and start-ups can extend the forward and backward linkages far more efficiently, through the MRTS. At the same time, MRTS enhances the overall economic activity and enables less influential segment of the society to participate in the growing economic activities. For instance, women can reach jobs that are at a greater distance, as metro would provide them safe and quick mode of travel between home and work place.
Safety in commutation that the MRTS provides benefits not only women but also other vulnerable sections such as the elderly and the physically disabled persons. All metro projects are expected to provide suitable access arrangements at the stations and coaches for the persons with disability (PwD) and separate coaches earmarked for female commuters. The student population is yet another major beneficiary of the metro.
MRTS also provides a huge scope for transit-oriented development (TOD). The residential, commercial and leisure spaces are created within walking distance of the metro stations, which reduces the need for using personal transport considerably. In the TOD framework, metro stations could be developed into a hub for shopping complexes, hotels, cafes, multiplexes, etc. This makes the commutation much easier for the citizens and improves the financial viability of the metro project.
Challenges for a metro project
While the Metro Rail Systems have come to define the cities’ growth and development, they also come with certain challenges that the city and their residents need to handle to ensure a more holistic benefit. For instance, the widespread network of concrete viaducts tends to distort the skyline and the city’s urban form. This can be addressed by taking the metro underground, even though the per kilometre cost would significantly increase.
Another challenge is that land acquisition disturbs many people’s livelihoods, especially of low and middle-income groups. This often becomes the source of agitation and unrest from those who lose their land and could slow down the project. Moreover, urban lands are costly. The construction phase disturbs the peace and tranquillity of the residents. Taking the metro underground reduces the need for land acquisition and reduces the people’s inconvenience during construction.
Cost of the metro projects itself offers a big challenge, being of the order of `300 crore per kilometre. Therefore, the metro should be taken up after a careful viability study. A bus-based system (BRTS) should be given serious consideration, where the metro is unviable. Simultaneously, as the metro enhances the property values and boosts up the economic activities, it consequently enhances the revenues of the governments at various levels. Such growth in the revenue receipts should be utilised to fund the metro projects as per the Tax Increment Financing Model. This model enables garnering funds for the infrastructure projects without necessarily raising the tax rates. For instance, the guidance value of the property, if updated regularly, would result in additional revenue. Similarly, the land use in the influence zone of the MRTS/Metro could be changed, wherever possible, to mixed land use, which would give a boost to the local economy, besides giving additional revenue by way of development charges.
Conclusion
Metro rail systems are an excellent infrastructure for the growth and development of large cities and their residents. No doubt they come with many challenges, but those are surmountable with careful planning and management. Handled suitably, metro rails can give a great boost to the city’s social and economic profile.
The Ganga river basin is the largest river basin in India which constitutes 26 per cent of the country’s landmass and currently supports about 43 per cent of the population. The Ganga Basin contributes to 28 per cent of India’s water resources. It also hosts to 97 major urban centres and 4,457 villages. River Ganga is essential for millions of people for their livelihood and economy. With the developmental activities, the River faces critical issue related to pollution and this has accelerated in past few decades and has raised concerns for its existence due to increased anthropogenic activities as well as possible climate change affecting water availability in its catchment. Namami Gange is a flagship programme of the Government of India for rejuvenation of Ganga and its tributaries. National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) is the implementing authority of this programme. Backed by the vision and priority of Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an integrated programme was launched at a monumental scale of `20,000 crores with assured funding consisting of multi-sectoral, multi-agency and multilevel interventions. A consortium of seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), entrusted with developing a holistic Ganga River Basin Management Plan (GRBMP), brought forward the first version of the plan during 2014-15 consolidating at one place, a body of knowledge on different aspects of the basin, identifying challenges and interventions required for its rejuvenation. The plan envisioned a rejuvenated Ganga, restored of its wholesomeness defined in terms of “Nirmal Dhara - unpolluted flow”, “Aviral Dhara- continuous flow” and ensuring the ecological and geological integrity.
Namami Gange is working on an approach drawn from the Integrated River Basin Management Plan with multi-sectoral and multi-agency interventions in a holistic manner. These interventions could broadly be classified into four categories/building blocks. ♦ Pollution abatement (Nirmal Ganga), ♦ Improving ecology and flow (Aviral
Ganga), ♦ Strengthen people river connect (Jan Ganga) and ♦ Facilitate diversified research, scientific mapping, studies and evidence-based policy formulation (Gyan Ganga)
Learning from the experience has taught us that business as usual is not going to work and will not help achieve our mission goals. There is a need to move from city-specific planning to basin planning to make our approach a holistic one. A total of 327 projects have been sanctioned in the Ganga basin at a cost of `29,348.49 crores. 138 projects have been completed and the remaining are at various stages of execution. A total of 153 sewerage infrastructure projects has been sanctioned to create 4,837 million litres per day (MLD) treatment capacity in the Ganga basin and 789.90 MLD capacity has already been created and 5065.37 km sewer network has been laid. In 2014, only 28 projects existed for only 462.85 MLD.
Ganga is host to 97 major urban centres. These centres benefit from the river and are also responsible for the deterioration of Ganga’s water quality. It is necessary to focus on urban wastewater management and improve urban governance. Any improvement in the state of the river cannot be achieved without first addressing the issues and drivers in urban areas. Under the mission, the gap analysis of sewerage generation versus the treatment capacity available, along with condition assessment of old infrastructure was done for the 97 important towns along the river Ganga. The creation of sewerage treatment capacity is not enough, but the operation, maintenance and regular monitoring of the created infrastructure are also
Rajiv Ranjan MishRa
Director-General National Mission for Clean Ganga
crucial in ensuring the sustainability of the projects.
Learning from past, Operation & Maintenance (O&M) has been made an integral part of the projects for 15 years. A paradigm shift took place introducing Hybrid Annuity based Public-Private Partnership (PPP) in sewage infrastructure projects. The model is also endorsed by NITI Aayog now as a reformative approach in the wastewater sector. This reformative Hybrid Annuity Model model extended further by adopting the concept of ‘One City-One Operator’ to improve urban governance and accountability in citywide wastewater management. This approach will help in improving the potential for reuse of by-products of STPs. To cater to Industrial pollution, we have taken some important steps like inventorization and annual inspection through an independent institute. Improvement in compliance has been observed from 51.5 per cent (in the year 2016-18) to 87.45 per cent in the year 18-19. Creation of 31.18 MLD (3 Common Effluent Treatment Plants for Tannery clusters) is also under process. We are also giving thrust upon recycle and reuse of treated wastewater in industries. The flow of the river has its impact on the river’s health and the ecosystem that flourishes in that river. Water is abstracted indiscriminately for various uses, without a thought for the carrying capacity of the river. There is a need for the city to make its contribution towards maintaining the environmental flow of the river. To give the river its right back on its water, the ecological flow was notified for river Ganga in October 2018, formally establishing the right of the river over its water for the first time. This is being implemented successfully and leading to similar studies for other rivers. But it is the responsibility of cities also to move towards demandside management and reduce the consumption of freshwater for nonpotable use. Encouraging rainwater harvesting, switching to water-efficient fixtures, and maximising the reuse of wastewater are excellent ways of relieving the burden on the already overworked rivers.
A comprehensive Biodiversity Conservation, the initiative is in place for mapping and protection of biodiversity hotspot of Ganga. NMCG spearheaded a campaign for conservation of Gangetic Dolphin, the National Aquatic Animal. Hon’ble PM announced Project Dolphin, first for any aquatic animal. A comprehensive scientific program for fisheries conservation has been taken up. To improve flows, it is crucial to take the river as a single system. Many cities are intrinsically connected to rivers either through wetlands, water bodies, their drainage patterns or groundwater flow. Rejuvenating water bodies and wetlands can go a long way in reducing the burden on rivers. To conserve the urban wetlands, a model tool kit for integrated management and rejuvenation of urban wetlands, with a case study of Bhagalpur has been developed. Other than the urban wetlands, we are also working on wetlands in the flood plain of river Ganga. A project has been sanctioned for developing an integrated management plan to conserve 226 wetlands situated in 27 Ganga districts in Uttar Pradesh up to ten kilometres on either side of the river.
We know that it has to be people’s mission for it to succeed. If people are not part of it, no mission can achieve its goal. Thus, people river connect is very critical for the rejuvenation of the Ganga River. The community engagement and people’s participation for conserving Ganga in the form of a composite strategy have been adopted for strengthening people river connect through the development of community-based cadres of different nature, innovative mass awareness campaigns and organizing focused events of varied nature with special attention on involvement of youth and students. These attempts for behavioural changes has been transforming the program for the first time as a People’s movement to connect them with Ganga and work to keep it clean and healthy.
Riverfronts have been improved, kept clean with people’s support, and ghats, with improved crematoria constructed. There is a transformation from dirty to beautiful river banks. Several innovative public outreach activities are conducted throughout the year to catalyse and motivate community volunteers and people.
With depleting water resources and increased pressure of urbanization, it is pertinent to protect and revitalize the water bodies. City governments need to take responsibility for the stretch of river flowing through or near their boundaries. This cannot happen without integrating a water-centric approach in city planning. Hon’ble PM during NGC meeting also stressed the need for developing a new paradigm for planning for river cities. NMCG is working with NIUA, MoHUA to develop Urban River Management Plan and also initiating a Ganga River Cities Alliance for exchange of knowledge and experience. Ganga River Cities Alliance will be a platform for River cities to come together, discuss, analyse and strategize towards a sustainable but unified vision, for river centric planning and Ganga Rejuvenation. Water centric urban design/ urban river management plan should be a priority of the national policy of urbanisation and should be integrated with master plans of river cities.
Having brought this path-breaking approach and achieving several landmarks in these few years, we would like to carry them forward more effectively and try to make it a basinwide program. Moving beyond silos, integrated and collective efforts, hold the key to preserve the sanctity of the river Ganga.
The year 2020 has given human beings the chance to self-reflect on what the universe has revealed. We had never thought of facing such a crisis in the history of our generation. COVID-19 has impacted millions of people worldwide, not only on health but also on economic and social aspects. It has changed the way people live, think and interact amongst themselves. It has caused new adaptive habits, such as working from home, on-line schools or education system, and so on
The Chinese characters for the word ‘crisis’ mean danger and opportunity. Despite the challenges we faced caused by COVID-19, the pandemic allowed us to reshape the future we want. COVID-19 provided us the moment to push sustainable development across the finish line. The blue sky that we managed to see and clean air that we were able to breathe in our cities during this pandemic due to less private cars, fewer motorcycles on the streets and absence of industrial activities polluting the cities could be the bright phenomena that it is possible and feasible to transform our lives into a sustainable future. This is the time to act!
Local governments, the administrative body closest to the people, are the frontrunner in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. They have a crucial role in interpreting national orders during the crisis to be easily understood by ordinary people. They also play a significant part in delivering effective safety net programmes provided by the central governments. It is believed that local governments could perform a key role as the forefront agency of the post-COVID-19 recovery effort.
Local governments’ ability to provide and deliver local services to the community during the COVID-19
Local governments’ ability to provide and deliver local services to the community during the COVID-19 pandemic is varied. Local governments that have a clear mandate and authority can respond to the crisis effectively
pandemic is varied. Local governments that have a clear mandate and authority can respond to the crisis effectively. The City of Jeonju, capital of North Jeolla Province in South Korea, came up with its initiative of providing a total of 200 landlords of 500 businesses with a lowered rental fee of around 5-20 per cent for at least three months. This initiative was mentioned by the President of South Korea and scaled up throughout the country. Jeonju is also the first local government in South Korea to provide its vulnerable citizens with basic disaster income to help fight the COVID-19 outbreak and 50,000 people in need were granted such cash support. Efforts made by local governments in responding to COVID-19 and recovering from its impacts were enormous. The effort to flatten the curve and reduce the impacts by local governments can be categorised into three aspects: 1) Developing communication tools to ensure the application of health protocol by people at the local level, 2) Improving health facilities and services, and 3) Minimising the impact on the local economy, social, environmental, and education sectors. The initiatives from various cities and local governments in Asia have been included in the ‘Brief Guide for and Lessons Learnt from Local Governments in Asia on COVID-19’ that was released by the United Cities and Local Governments Asia Pacific (UCLG ASPAC) in March 2020.
Dr BernaDia irawati tjanDraDewi
Secretary-General, United Cities and Local Governments Asia Pacific
UCLG ASPAC has captured tremendous initiatives undertaken by local governments in the region and organised a series of webshare sessions to transfer them to other local governments and partners. The initiatives have triggered knowledge transfer and provided strong motivation that “We, local governments, are not alone in this crisis.” The crisis has also created the feeling of solidarity as shown from donations that UCLG ASPAC facilitated. As expressed by Xi’an City in its donation to Iriga, the Philippines, “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” UCLG ASPAC facilitated the donations from Xi’an City, Haikou City, Zhengzhou City, Yiwu City and Guangzhou to UCLG ASPAC members in Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Pakistan. It is time to reshape our urban future
There are incredible lessons learnt that cities and local governments can take, based on experiences we faced in the past year. Potential losers and winners will depend on how quickly we can adapt to the new normal, a condition we will live with, as result of the existence of COVID-19. The future of living in harmony with nature requires a new design of our cities - the pandemic’s epicentre. There have been several initiatives to improve the local economy such as discounting taxations and launching stimulus packages for companies, having and arranging digital platforms for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), improving community resilience on the food supply chain, and developing strategies on economic sectors impacted by COVID-19 such as virtual tourism and domestic tourism promotion. These are possible as local governments managed to adjust quickly to the needs of the citizens. Others include optimal usage of public assets and new collaboration between local governments and private sectors, such as hotels, to treat the COVID-19 positive cases.
Reform on the local governance system is needed to reshape our future. Horizontal and vertical coordination of different tiers of local governments with central governments on data synchronization, for example, can be seen as one of the effective ways of optimising the safety net programmes and other available support to the targeted community.
It is time to reshape our urban future. How our cities should be redesigned should consider the ecosystem, 10- or 15-minute accessibility for the communities and sufficient public spaces, including good quality of roads with public transport as priorities. UCLG ASPAC, in cooperation with Daejeon Metropolitan City and Daejeon Metropolitan Express Transit Corp (DJET), released a publication on ‘Brief Countermeasures Report of Public Transport during COVID-19.’ This publication can be a useful reference for designing public transport with digital transformation technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AIs) and Internet of Things (IoT). The newly redesigned cities allow equality, equity and security for all. Below is my vision - 5 Zeroes: ♦ First zero is zero inequalities. I envision a human-oriented AsiaPacific that considers the rights of all, including women, children and youth. ♦ Second zero is zero poverty. A society where everyone has a home and food on their tables is something that we all want to see. No one should be living in slums and on a hand-to-mouth existence. ♦ Third zero is zero crime, violence, disaster and accident. We want a safe environment, especially for women, children and less privileged people, free from conflict and disaster risk. We want peace and stability. ♦ Fourth zero is zero greenhouse gas emissions and zero pollution.
Every human being, in fact, every living being, has the right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live in a clean environment. ♦ Fifth and last zero is zero intolerance and zero discrimination. Even with different faiths and beliefs, we must show respect to earn respect. This vision is possible and feasible! Let’s go together towards a better future. As the famous proverb says, ‘If we want to go fast, we go alone, but if we want to go far, we go together’.
Rethinking urban public mobility post COVID-19
The COVID-19 necessitated lockdown resulted in a severe curtailment in travel. Most daily office-goers worked from home, there was virtually no entertainment-related travel and many shopping-related trips were replaced by ordering online. As a result, streets that were otherwise choked were suddenly devoid of traffic for several months. As things open up, questions arise on whether the old movement patterns will be restored or are we likely to see a new normal M
ost would like to see a new normal where cities are less polluted and less congested. Is this what we will get or are we heading for something worse than what we had before
the pandemic?
A quick survey undertaken by the World Resources Institute (WRI) India on possible post-COVID mobility preferences showed that many young workers want to get a personal motor vehicle as they are worried about using public transport due to fear of the virus. This concern is manifested in the increased sale of 2-wheelers and small cars. Therefore, apprehensions that past efforts at persuading people to move to public transport from their vehicles will get reversed are not unfounded. There are also concerns on how public transport systems will make up for the lockdown period losses when they lost revenue even as they incurred almost 60 per cent of their normal costs. Mere resumption of services will not help improve the situation very much for three reasons: ♦ Expenses will exceed normal levels due to the added precautions necessary to keep the systems safe for users ♦ The emerging culture of remote working will reduce passengers and revenue ♦ The need to ensure a safe physical distance between passengers will reduce the number of passengers that can be accommodated
At a webinar during the Urban Mobility India conference on November 9, 2020, an esteemed panel, comprising experts from the World Bank, Transport for London, and govt agencies, were firm in their assessment that public transport will only face a
temporary setback and will bounce back very soon. There were views that the demand for transport may not come down very much as only a small segment of the daily commuters can afford the luxury of working from home. Most others will need to travel every day.
This is a good time to set right the years of neglect in putting public transport finances on a more sustainable foundation. The State Transport Corporations together incurred a loss of nearly `16,500 crore in 2016-17. Metro rail systems in just 8 cities lost over `2,200 crore in 2018-19. Such deficits need to be plugged on a solid foundation of innovative funding.
The traditional approach to bridging revenue – cost gaps has been a subsidy from the public budget. However, the pandemic has been a huge drain on the public budget for the relief and rehabilitation work and the availability of resources to meet public transport operational deficits will be severely constrained. Therefore, it is a good time to rethink how such gaps can be met for the present and in the years to come. It is an opportunity to fix public transport finances once and for all. Solutions to revive public transport
Fortunately, several good options have been successfully tried in other parts of the world. However, they have yet to be tried out in India in a systematic manner. The one with
OP AgArwAl CEO, WRI India
the best potential seems to be the commercial exploitation of land owned by most public transport systems. So far they have been looked upon as essential assets for the operation of public transport. They have not been looked upon as potentially revenuegenerating assets. In a simple, back of the envelope calculation , and using data on property and rental values from Magicbricks.com, the author had estimated that the Delhi metro could raise over `4,90,000 crore from sale of the property and nearly `1,25,000 crores from rental income over 20 years. The rental income alone would more than meet the operating revenue gap for the Delhi metro as well as the entire public transport system in the city. The earnings from the sale of property would more than pay back the loans taken by the Delhi metro and serve as a capital resource for additional investments.
Further, there is tremendous potential earnings by Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) from its depots and terminals located on prime land across the city. DTC owns over 35 depots across the city. These depots are primarily used for parking buses at night and some preventive maintenance work. During the day, these are virtually empty and could be better used as public parking facilities. Also, air rights can be used for the construction of residential and office complexes, which would provide substantial revenue. Systematic work at estimating the potential at each depot and designing micro-level plans will be essential. This should neither be difficult nor expensive, compared to the kind of revenue potential that exists. The challenge is a mental willingness to take it up.
Second, there is a need to think about the quality of public bus services. Currently, most cities have only a single type of bus service that traditionally offer affordable but low-quality services as they have been seen as the last resort of people who can afford nothing else. Therefore, they suffer from an image problem. Many commuters shun them for fear of damaging their reputation vis-a-vis their peers. This is the time to think of introducing premium services that have much better quality and can attract passengers away from the private modes of transport. Just one kind of bus service is not enough. There is a need for superior quality services with higher fares and much better quality. Such premium services will not need public subsidies either.
Third, with months of working from home, several white-collar workers, especially in the IT industry, consultancy firms, think tanks, etc. have gotten used to working remotely and have begun to find it convenient. As a result, many may not revert to going to an office five days a week but may reduce the frequency of their daily commute. The chances are that their travel needs may now be limited to short trips in the vicinity, not exceeding 3 – 4 kms. However, there is no public transport for such trips and people tend to use personal motor vehicles. Such trips should be nudged towards walking or cycling by investing in safe walkways and cycle tracks. The Government of Delhi has already decided to build over 500 kms of complete streets in the capital. This means the streets will be designed for use by all categories of users and not just car users. This is, indeed a very forward-looking initiative and other cities need to learn from this and replicate the effort.
Fourth, the world is looking at electric vehicles very aggressively and most manufacturers are moving ahead with announcing their electric vehicle manufacturing plans. India has also announced its intent to promote electric vehicles but is yet to put out a coherent, comprehensive, and coordinated road map for going electric. This needs to be done quickly as it offers an opportunity for India to acquire a global leadership position.
Thus, the pandemic offers an opportunity to look at greener postCOVID mobility. We need to establish innovative ways of financing public transport on a sustainable basis, create the infrastructure that makes walking and cycling safer, put in place, premium bus services that can wean away users of personal motor vehicles, and a coordinated approach to move towards electric vehicles will contribute to a new normal with blue skies and reduced pollution. This is an opportunity that should not be lost.
The world is fast waking up to the problem of people displaced by climate change. People opting for aspirational migration are as such, moving into cities from villages. With more and more people being forcefully displaced for various reasons including development projects, conflicts and climate change, the additional population will be huge for the cities to manage
Most of the cities are already struggling to provide basic infrastructure and amenities to the incoming migrants who often settle in informal locations and in the most unhygienic conditions. The addition of this new lot would mean a huge expansion of informal cities and thus a great responsibility of the city governments and authorities to plan development not only to meet the basic needs of these migrants but also to see that they get dignified shelter, better livelihoods and ensured rights in urban governance. Further, cities also need to ensure that the informal city dwellers’ unplanned settlement should not exert more pressure on the already shrinking water commons and other natural resources. For that to happen, cities need to stay alert to the increasing problems created by climate change and related disasters.
Climate-induced disasters on the rise
In the last decade, extreme weather and climate-related events, such as floods, storms and heatwaves, have caused 83 per cent of the disasters. During this decade, almost 1.7 billion
people worldwide have been affected by climate and weather-related disasters. Further, during this time, these extreme weather and climaterelated disasters have killed more than 4,10,000 people. Most of these people are from low and lower-middle-income countries. Heatwaves and storms have been the biggest killers. According to the World Disasters Report 2020, the number of climate and weatherrelated disasters has been increasing since the 1960s and have risen almost 35 per cent since the 1990s. The proportion of all disasters attributable to climate and extreme weather events has also increased significantly during this time, from 76 per cent of all disasters during the 2000s, to 83 per cent in the 2010s.
The increased number of disasters has impacted migration patterns. The number of internally displaced people (IDP) caused by climate change has been growing exponentially. As per the latest report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), the number of internally displaced people has increased by almost 7.7 million in just one year. 24.9 million people were internally displaced in 2019 due to natural disasters and extreme weather events. The number of such people in 2018 stood at 17.2 million. Nearly 1,900 disasters triggered these 24.9 million new displacements across 140 countries and territories in 2019, said the IDMC 2020 report. This is the highest figure
Ranjan K Panda
Convenor, Combat Climate Change Network
recorded since 2012 and three times the number of displacements caused by conflict and violence. Bangladesh, China, India and the Philippines, each recorded more than 4 million disasterinduced displacements. In fact, for India, the number stood at more than half a million. In the first half of 2020 alone, nearly 10 million people are reported to have been displaced by natural disasters and causes associated with climate change. This has become a huge humanitarian crisis for the world and cities have to bear the brunt of it.
Cities - The new hot spots
A World Bank report of 2018 revealed that “internal climate migrants” or the internally displaced persons could be more than 143 million by 2050, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and South Asia. Most of these will be forced from their homes by extreme weather events. Others will move from rural areas to cities due to slowonset climate-related events, such as desertification. Studies have already indicated that most of these forced migrations will be in the form of ruralurban migration within countries. Most of these migrants from rural areas will converge to Urban Hot Spots - as defined by some researchers - for food, jobs and shelter. Most of these hot spots will occur in rapidly expanding cities in low and middle-income countries. In the informal settlements, these hot spots have also been termed as fragile cities by researchers because of the lack of proper services, infrastructure, and governance. Crime, inequality and even threat related to climate change adds to the fragility of these spots. In about three decades, it is expected that humanity would have turned into an exclusively urban species. By then, almost 80 to 90 per cent of people would be living in urban areas. Currently, cities in the Global South are growing much faster than they did in industrialized countries 100 or more years ago. Farmlands are getting saturated, and cities are being marketed as the new growth engine for nations. That’s the norm. However, the new norm is the exponential rise of IDP. Thus, cities are facing multiple challenges in keeping pace with the influx – the largest and toughest wave of urban growth in history – to provide all that is needed for making them habitable, equitable and sustainable. Planned intervention needed
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly said that the changes brought in by the climate crisis will influence migration patterns. It said, “However, our level of awareness and understanding of how environmental factors affect migration, and how they also interact with other migration drivers such as demographic, political and economic conditions, has also changed. With enhanced knowledge, there is more incentive to act urgently, be prepared and respond.”
It is a positive signal that governments worldwide are growingly recognising that there are people displaced by climate change. Political awareness around environmental migration, as the UN says, has increased over the last decade and there is increased acceptance that this is a global challenge. Nation-states have signed the Paris Climate Change Agreement, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and most importantly, the Global Compact for Migration.
Our cities now need to integrate the challenge of IDP in their plans and programmes. While the country needs to craft a special policy on IDP and climate refugees, cities need to step up their planned interventions in this regard. The Global Compact for Migration suggests that the primary solution should be to allow people to stay in their homelands. It’s only in extreme cases that new settlements be offered. However, looking at the situation, as the number of such migrants keeps growing and as most of them are expected to end up in cities, building IDP sensitive cities has become a new and urgent need. While accommodating the IDP, the cities have to plan their programmes so that the water commons and other common spaces are not stressed further. Provisioning of services equitably and inclusively is important and makes a city ‘smart’. Conserving the commons is smarter and makes the city’s path of growth sustainable.
The COVID pandemic which destroyed our economic structures and turned the situation into a holocaust was an exposure of the hollowness of our building framework of our cities. The unsustainability of the cities came to the fore in a very vivid manner. Such a system is completely fragile, and we need to reimagine how we are building our urban centres. The lockdown announced in a span of four hours, and the reverse migration of the urban workers mostly in the unorganised sector to their villages will go down in the annals of history.
But why is it that the cities that boasted of creating many indices for ranking on livelihood, sanitation, resilience and what not, could not just hold their poor, informal sector workers and other marginalised sections for even a few days? There are no easy answers to this question. However, one thing is quite immanent to it; the processes and ways in which the cities are being developed are delinked from the people’s demands.
There is a transformation in the cities that began long ago. This transformation, where cities are considered ‘engines of growth’, ‘entrepreneurs’, were actually linked to the need and vagaries of global finance capital. This process began in the early 70s in the world and in the 90s in India and Indian cities. Policy paradigm was suggested to ensure that cities become competitive and become investmentfriendly.
Now, what does this mean in simpler terms? It means that the cities will have to ease out their laws to sustain their infrastructure needs; since most of the laws concerning land, which is so pivotal for development, were either with the state or central government, central and state legislations were brought in. But a naive question could be asked why should cities become competitive, and why should not the state and central government invest in the cities?
According to the JnNURM, the reforms that were effected during the UPA 1 regime, which had the support of the Left in the government, $630 billion are required to meet urban India’s infrastructure needs in two decades. Guess what the total money injected during that the ten year period of UPA 1 & 2 is? It is a mere 2.2 per cent of this demand. Mere $14 billion was planned to be injected in the cities through JnNURM process, most of these were project-oriented grants.
The large capital, which was believed to ameliorate our cities’ problems, did not serve the purpose. Instead, a nexus was generated at the centre, state level, forcing the cities to accept the provisions of the reforms and allow a paradigm shift in urban governance.
I remember Venkaiah Naidu, former urban development minister, saying in a conference on cities; “the cities do not have money, they come to the states, the states also do not have money they come to the centre, the centre also does not have the required money, they look at the multilateral agencies.” These agencies then through their interventions not just in projects, but also on policies, roll out the development model, which is then eulogised by states and the cities. The states and cities are forced to implement these reforms because if they do not, then a large number of grants are stopped, which are linked to these reforms.
Impact of new missions
Smart cities, AMRUT, Swachh Bharat Mission and many others were linked to the old model. It was for privatisation of cities without realising that this model was already failing. The new model of governance in the cities through the smart cities concept brought in an adjunct of special purpose vehicle which usurped the elected council’s powers as the significantnumber of developmental projects were designed and decided by SPVs.
Samuel Stien, in one of his pioneering works, The Capital City, writes that in a few American cities, the city development process has become the primary mode of capital accumulation. We are not sure if that is also true for Indian cities. Still, a cursory look suggests how the privatisation of utilities and services affects the people’s livelihoods.
This has led to a situation where the asset holding capacity of the marginalised and poor has dwarfed phenomenally. In the Oxfam report, the top 10 per cent and bottom 10 per cent in rural India has a gap of nearly 500 times, whereas in urban India the
Tikender Singh Panwar Former Deputy Mayor, Shimla
gap is mind-boggling 50,000 times. The poor do not have any asset to hold onto in the cities. How can they sustain, or how can such cities sustain without them?
What needs to be done?
I remember participating in a webinar discussion just recently where Kirtee Bhai, the lone living member of the first Urban Commission formed in 1986 of which Charles Correa was the chairperson was emphatically quoting from the 2nd Habitat. The executive director of the 2nd UN-Habitat time and again mentioned the necessity of a revolution in the urban to ensure that the urban centres sustain. Of course, ‘revolution’ in the UN terminology has its own connotations. But at least a word missing from the vocabulary of many of the liberal urban theorists started to resonate. Then we had the Habitat 3 in Quito in which I was also a delegate and the executive director of Habitat III kept on reminding that the present model of urbanisation is unsustainable and that we have to go back to the basics. John Closs, the ED of Habitat III vociferously raised his voice that “things, as usual, will not work”, he remarked that “the previous decades of laissez-faire, i.e., the freemarket economy has proven disastrous and that we have to go back to the basics of planning.” Now if both these are compiled together what does this lead to? It has very specific connotations, and the crux is that things must change and change in the people’s interest.
Form 2nd National Commission on Urbanisation
The first Urban Commission had interesting guidelines for the then government. The driving force or if one could say the preamble of this commission was driven by a fact that the cities were looked upon as manufacturing centres. A major part of the objectives of this commission was to address this challenge in the cities.
This commission’s principal role was to examine the state of urbanisation-demographic, economic, infrastructural, environmental, physical, energy, land, poverty, aesthetics, and cultural aspects.
Its role was to prepare basic guidelines for a specific action plan in priority areas; evolve policy frames and suggest approaches to building interactions among government, academic, research and citizen groups. Not just to limit to suggestions but also suggest an institutional framework for monitoring the effective implementation of the commission’s recommendations.
The commission had made some recommendations which are worth sharing. It had recommended for promoting 329 growth centres and emphasised upon strengthening of the existing larger metropolis.
In the given circumstances, what is required is to have a 2nd National Commission on Urbanisation to understand our cities’ complexities. When the first commission was formed, migration was not a big issue; likewise, the formal employment sector was more than what it is today. The sheer numbers in the cities have grown phenomenally high. In the 80s, nearly 23 per cent of the population stayed in urban centres. Today it is more than 34 per cent (2001-31.8 per cent). Since the 80s nearly 218 million more people were added to the country’s urban centres (India’s urban population: 1981 -159 million, 2011-377 million). By the 2021 census, the numbers would further swell. The piecemeal approach to urban problems that includes employment, city development, governance, utilities, the vitality of the town etc., cannot serve the purpose.
A 2nd National Commission should be entrusted with a task to formulate a holistic picture of the urban spaces and the challenges. Small doses of “ease of doing business”, “smart cities”, AMRUT, etc., cannot bring in either quantitative or qualitative changes. But the point is who is going to do it?
Different sections of the people will have to come and reclaim their spaces in the urban in the given situation. Meanwhile, some states can formulate their state-level commissions to analyse urban challenges and develop action plans accordingly. The year 2021 is a year of optimism as 2020 has not just been excruciatingly painful for many of us who have lost their close ones but also continue to suffer because of the pandemic both pathologically and economically. This optimism for 2021 for a year of fulfilling cherished dreams will not and cannot fall like a fairy tale but will have to be achieved through our collective efforts for a better and secure future. And urban is part of that!
ASEAN region has undergone transformational changes in economic sectors, socio-economic status with surge in industrial outputs and economic growth driven by market forces and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). At the same time, continual upward curve of domestic consumption, waste output, destruction of biodiversity with natural assets, increased number of plastic hotspots,and rapid urbanizationwith uncertain pattern in environmental and climatic characteristics has thrown the countries into future resilience risks. Presently, human societies around the globe including countries in the ASEAN region is suffering from loss of natural capital and erosion in natural assets and problem is further getting worsening by negative impacts on public health with direct impact from toxic air, food, water leading to casualties. Also, increased application of pesticides and fertilizers, antibiotics and zoonotic disease andthrown masses into burden of disease with erosion in GDP. ASEAN is the sixth-largest economy in the worldwith Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of US$2.4 trillion, today with rapid increasing trend in population with expanding circle of urban area. The current urban population in ASEAN accounts for about 47 per cent of the total population and it is expected to reach 63 per cent by 2050.
Regional climate change, disaster risks and natural capital risks
The regional atmosphere of ASEANs influenced by El Niño and La Niña weather phenomenon which impact the seasonal monsoon cycle with country wide changes in the weather pattern. Countries being on the ring of fire and on the convergent boundaries of the earth’s tectonic plate and typhoon belt, the countries are frequently exposed to natural hazards, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic activities and typhoons. Tropic
Regional and transboundary environmental pollution phenomenon of smoke haze and air pollution posing emerging challenges to the countries and demanding regional actions and programme to eliminate the problem
storms, episodes of typhoons and earthquakes annually pose serious risks and damages to economic activities and life of people.
Regional and transboundary environmental pollution phenomenon of smoke haze and air pollution that is heavily is posing emerging challenges to the countries and demanding regional actions and programme to eliminate the problem. Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and other Greater Mekong Sub-Region (GMS) countries are historically facing meteoro-climatic disaster with significant surge in the climate disaster phenomenon. The enormity of climate disasters have reversed the economic growth of tune of over US$ 45 billion in economic loss and damage as a result of the prolonged, nation-wide, flood in 2011. In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) caused US$ 10 billion in loss and damages. Sectoral challenges and major environmental issues in ASEAN countries
Analysis of the state of atmosphere in the ASEAN region reveals that energy sectors demonstrated slow transition in energy-mix of the countries and increasing air pollution levels because of largecarbon dioxide emissions and it is predicted that energy-related CO2 emission levels may rise by 61 % upto 2025 from the 2014l levels. Continued notification by Governments in the region about new additions of metropolitan regions within the converging municipal councils and regions is creating new sources of GHG hotspots in ASEAN cities need to urgently seek low-carbon economies, infrastructure and transport.
As highlighted in an UNEP report titled as UNEP (2018), Air Pollution
Kamlesh PathaK
Senior Expert, Sustainable Development
in Asia and the Pacific: Science-based Solutions, it was found, around 4 billion people with 92% of the asia pacific being on exposure to pollution levels in excess of WHO impact of air pollution on human health constitutes a serious public health crisis across and has been attributed to as one of major cause of premature death and multiple form of illness. Moreover, surge of (PM 10), (PM2.5) and ground-level ozone in Asia and the Pacific to reduce emissions that lead to serious problem of air pollution as a new kind of social disaster and also compromising food security of and secure food future of asian people. Not only this, degradation of forest, unplanned land-use management and to peat fires related to expansion of large scale commercial plantations has made trans-boundary regional haze pollution as long-standing perennial challenge for countries in the region. Up to 90% of trans-boundary smoke haze in ASEAN is linked. Demand for minerals and materials to fuel the economic growth of the region has resulted in the accelerated, mindless extraction of natural resource exploitation with loss of protected area on land, sea with right to breathe clean and life giving air.
Dwindling freshwater resources and with looming water-insecurity, unplanned urban planning, degradation of catchment, episodes of climate shocks and events of extreme flood, draught is putting more and more risks on cities and municipalities. Exploitation of protects area, nature based ecosystems such as coral reefs, mangroves are facing never before survival challenges. With the growing domestic consumption, increase in per capita income, a vicious cycle of unsustainable consumption and production and lack of awareness on responsible material and chemical consumption. Use of banned chemicals and injection of pesticides and antibiotics into agrifood cycle has will delay the regions progress on SDG Goals before 2030. Above all, one of major environmental challenges of region, plastics, including single use plastic, has caused an estimated 1%–5% decline in benefits or services from oceans— equating to $0.5 trillion to $2.5 trillion per year—particularly those relating to fisheries, aquaculture, recreation, natural heritage, and human well-being (Marine Pollution Bulletin. Volume 142. pp. 189–195), which will be seriously impacting the blue growth and blue economy prospect of the region. About 150 million tons of plastic is already in the ocean, and this amount increases every year by about 8 million to 12 million tons. The 8 major rivers in Asia out of 10 responsible for the load of in the and transport 88%–95% of plastics into the sea are in Asia: the Yangtze, Yellow, Hai, Pearl, Amur, Mekong, Indus, and Ganges rivers are from Asia and spread across the costal one of Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Philippines, PRC , Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.
What is needed in the region
When a major region of the world confronting with such an enormity and diversity of challenges of sustainability, achieving the goals of Paris climate agreement and SDG 2030 will remain a far reality! In this discouraging narrative, the role of Local Authorities (LAs), Network of Cities and Local Governments and International and development cooperation from the political and economic union, European Union (EU) could reverse the damage and accelerate commitment towards global goals the region to UN. (LAs) are and will be at the forefront when responding to the challenges on the ground and providing environmental and economic opportunities to citizens of the region. What was more desirable to explore new and enhanced cooperation mechanism among developing countries and economies in transitions, and also among European Union and Global South countries? The role of South-South and triangular cooperation will be vital and crucial in designing, implementing and financial leveraging based on policies, measures and common challenges. Grants, Investment, Policies around common global strategies, pushed by European Union and partners, with also ownership and responsibility towards will further strengthen the action and commitment of south countries in ASEAN.
Delhi is on the verge of receiving its next master plan, a blueprint that has a bearing on how it evolves over the next twenty years and addresses the myriad challenges it faces. When the draft master plan is released for suggestions, the residents will only have a few days to read, comprehend and respond to the complex and imposing document. Several contradictions exist to the well-imagined preparation of the planning process
Arecent study by Main Bhi Dilli campaign and IndoGlobal Social Service Society (IGSSS)titled ‘Assessment of People’s Awareness on Delhi’s Master Plan 2021-41’ revealed that 80 per cent of the residents have not heard about Delhi master plan, and 0 per cent know how to use or access land use map. They have no awareness of how to give suggestions or raise objections on the master plan, nor the knowledge of which agency prepares the plan. None of the respondents have read the last master plan report, and the majority think it is Delhi Government and not Delhi Development Authority (DDA) which makes the master plan.
The case is not particular to Delhi; this is typical to any city in India. Public engagement in the planning process is viewed as a hurdle with minimal tokenistic consultations. The mandatory suggestion and objection phase does not create adequate spaces for people to critique, offer feedback, or share their collective needs and aspirations. Consequently, it becomes rather late to include and alter anything in the penultimate stage. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that over the last hundred years of urban planning(or the lack of it), only expert-led city planning has worsened social inequalities and made cities increasingly unliveable and exclusionary, turning their backs on its people and the workers that make the cities.
Public engagement in the planning process is viewed as a hurdle with minimal tokenistic consultations. The mandatory suggestion and objection phase does not create adequate spaces for people to critique, offer feedback, or share their collective needs and aspirations. Consequently, it becomes rather late to include and alter anything in the penultimate stage
Perceptions & failures of the conventional Master Plans
There are several challenges that the conventional top-down master planning framework poses. First, it has the inherent weakness of being a ‘master’ plan. The misnomer signifies that planning remains far from ‘Janta Janardhan’. Expert-driven mechanisms that leave out the nuances and lived realities of the people and prefer straight lines and maps that look more planned. Second, the master planning process is viewed often from the lens of implementation’, with the naive assumption that all plans designed by experts are for wider social benefit. The multiple planning agencies, the diverse land use - ownership patterns and above all the lack of data makes implementation a near impossibility. Third, planning is assumed to be a nonpartisan and objective process, where objective and rational decisions are taken. However, this also is a deeply contested socio-political process that makes it imperative to engage with. Fourth, what distinguishes Indian cities and cities in the Global South is the ever-pervading informality. Let it be living or working conditions, the informal constitutes the dominant majority, and state-led planning has only tried to remove the informal practices-often labelled as zoning violations or encroachments. This leads to further marginalization of the urban poor and worker groups. Fifth, the development plans remain undermined
aravind unni
Urban Poverty Thematic Lead, IGSSS
Shalaka Chauhan
Coordinator, Main Bhi Dilli
and irrelevant. Rather than cynically viewing urban planning as an apparatus in the arms of the State and viewing Indian cities as unplannable, we wish to place the focus on the importance of planning by people.
Urban planning and people’s ‘inputs’
The DDA act of 1957, cites Development as – “with its grammatical variations, means the carrying out of building, engineering, mining or other operations in, on, over or under land or the making of any material change in any building or land and includes redevelopment;” – devoid of meaning of social purpose that betters residents lives and living conditions. The DDA Act 1957 does further mandate the invitation for people’s suggestions and objections, but only when the draft is ready, with little scope of participation post that late stage. The Urban and Regional Development Plans Formulation and Implementation (URDPFI) guidelines, though marginally inclusive says at every level of this process, public participation, and representation in the form of Focus Group discussions and consultation is necessary but does not set a mandate for peoples’ contribution. Well-meaning officials and consultants like National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) with support of DDA appointed as in the case of Delhi, though having taken a few steps to involve public participation in the process; these are only a few rare exceptions. They have released an online google form asking for people’s five ideas of how they ‘’envision’’ their city for the next twenty years, but, these steps, though well-intentioned seem inconsequential in the challenge of urban planning as we see in Delhi. As concurred by the assessment report, none of the Delhiites surveyed knew of the master plan process, none had visited the DDA website – leave alone filling up the google form in English, a language that only a minute section of the city and its elites speak.
Way forward
Public engagement in the process of making the plan is critical in ensuring that plans are taken seriously and implemented with people’s participation. The global south examples, though from diverse sociocultural milieu offer many interesting lessons for us to learn and borrow from. The creation of urban policies in Brazil and other Latin American countries in the last thirty years is one of the best examples of the efforts of citizens to make city planning democratic and transparent addressing the social inequalities. The City Statute of Brazil brings to fore the importance of ‘social function’ of planning and need for ‘a path to plan, produce, operate and govern cities subject to social control and participation’. In another context, in our south-east Asian neighbour Singapore, public engagement is becoming a norm in the planning and redevelopment process. In 2001 for the Concept Plan — the first time the public had been involved at the concept planning stage.
To make people co-creators in this process, in the immediate for Delhi, DDA needs to lead the way to conduct awareness workshops on MPD41 at zonal and councillor ward level as a governance unit and help prepare people for the ‘feedback and suggestion’ phase. These units must also then be transferred forward as Local Area Plans that are not twentyyear plans but smaller locality plans that are implemented by active community and people’s collectives for smaller durations of five years. Whilst ensuring democratic participation in the implementation, social inclusion considerations for marginal populations must not be left for later - all the groups such as informal sector workers, homeless, people with disabilities, women, trans people, children, youth, and elderly must be identified first and their spatial needs recognised. Master plan documents need to be more accessible, and available. These should be exhibited in locally available walk-in zonal centres where citizens and youth engage with the process of city-making. The documents and maps produced must be available in local languages. The process need not be overly dependent on Information, and Communication Technology or else public participation will be limited to Twitter shares, and Facebook likes. At the policy level, nationally, we need a shift in policy perspective about the relationship between citizens and city planning policy, from one where citizens are the recipients (objects) of public policy to one where citizens are the focal point (subject) of the policy, with spaces of institutionalized engagement both in the preparation and in the implementation of plans at the city level. As the largest democracy, Indian cities need to set an example and convey that however messy and complicated, that Democratic Planning: By the People, for the People, of the People - is the mantra for us to follow.
Aravind Unni, is working as Urban Poverty Thematic Lead with Indo-Global Social Service Society and handling developmental interventions with the most marginalized sections of the urban poor in more than 20 cities spread across 12 states for IGSSS.
Shalaka is working as a coordinator of Main Bhi Dilli campaign, a people’s campaign that calls for inclusion in Delhi’s Masterplan and has been associated with Delhi Roundtable on Solid waste management.
