Infocomm India | Resilient Cities
Urban Resilience: Key for sustaining future cities All India Institute of Local Self-Government (AIILSG) organized a webinar at Infocomm India GoVIRTUAL 2021 on September 15 on ‘Key Considerations for Future Urban Development and Planning in India’ Team Urban Update
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he webinar addressed some of the most relevant question of current times - how COVID-19 pushed urban planners to think about redesigning more resilient cities, and how investing in green and energy-efficient infrastructure can help build a sustainable city? The aim of the discussion was to enhance new and improvise the already existing initiatives that have been taken up for making cities resilient. The webinar was moderated by Abhishek Pandey, Editor, Urban Update. He commenced the session by inviting the esteemed panelists for the discussion, which included Golagani Hari Venkata Kumari, Mayor, Greater Vishakhapatnam Municipal Corporation; Saleha Sapra, Co-Founder, City Sabha; Sanyukta Bhatia, Mayor, Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC); and Prof (Dr) Ashwani Luthra, Director, Centre for Sustainable Habitat, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. Bhatia was invited first to share her views on urban resilience-related initiatives that have been undertaken so far to build resilience in Lucknow city in the post pandemic world. She started off by expressing her concern over the situations that this pandemic has landed us in. “It made us a prisoner of many restrictions. However, the habits that we accustomed ourselves to during the lockdowns are a part of our lives now,” said Sanyukta Bhatia. According to her, governments are
42 October 2021 | www.urbanupdate.in
working towards devising plans and strategies in combating such unprecedented situations and curbing its impact. However, these situations have forced us to think new strategic infrastructural planning. In Lucknow, especially, LMC has taken COVID-19 into special consideration while devising and executing any infrastructural plans. Keeping in mind the significance of green infrastructure, LMC has taken up the responsibility of reviving and taking care of 1000 parks and utilized government funds for their development. Moving ahead, she mentioned the surge in deforestation across Lucknow and said that LMC has improvised an artificial forest with a diverse variety of plants and trees to counter it. “Till this year’s World Environment Day, we had sown around 1.5 lakh plants and trees in the artificial forest,” Bhatia said. This forest has opened its doors to a variety of animals and birds, thus adding to the city’s green infrastructure. Golagani Hari Venkata Kumari talked about proper urban planning, which is crucial for the development of cities and the country. “Our cities are diverse in geographic location and nature. Our first thought should be to make them sustainable, while keeping other key factors of planning and urban development in mind. We have seen how COVID-19 impacted countries. Taking a lesson from this, we need to strengthen disaster risk reduction, health infrastructure, and build resilience in face of such unforeseen situations in future.
As COVID-19 has been such an unpredictable disaster for all of us, in order to become sustainable, we need to accept and acknowledge the change and plan accordingly,” Kumari said. Speaking of COVID-19 management, she mentioned that they had the advantage of ward system and village ward secretariat systems in Andhra Pradesh, which the ULB incorporated in creating awareness and conducting surveys and various other voluntary services. “To make cities resilient and more sustainable, we should focus on green growth health management, environment management, low carbon development, and good governance,” said Kumari. Next, Prof Ashwani Luthra presented his remarks on urban development and planning. He mentioned that demographic and accumulated social and environmental changes are important to be taken into consideration and it is also important to take note of social and cultural transformations. It is in this regard regionalization of urbanization has to be followed. “We are forgetting regional planning in master planning. We need to shift from master to strategic planning approach,” he said. “If people would have taken note of these plans, they would have been more successful. We see floods and we term them urban floods because the terror is not taken care of. We must take note of climate sensitive planning,” Prof Luthra added. He appreciated Lucknow’s initiative for developing green infrastructure and said that green agenda should be formulated
