The Urban Planning Conundrum in India
Darshini Mahadevia
(Professor, Faculty of Planning &
Director, Centre for Urban Equity, CEPT University)
FP Lecture Series
February 21, 2017 (6.30-‐8.00 pm)
CEPT University
3/15/17
Preface
A personal note • Have you done planning? Do you know planning? • Oh! She criUcises planning! Blasphemy • Heard mulUple Ume -‐ Oh! Planning fails in its implementaUon -‐ These poliUcians interfere too much in plan implementaUon
-‐ We are constrained by the poliUcal interference! • QuesUon: Is it the limitaUon of the concept or limitaUon of implementaUon
• Transport mess (a big middle class concern)
• Mixed traffic and congesUon
• High air polluUon (WHO data puts Indian ciUes in high polluUon category)
• 57,000 people died from road accidents in Indian ciUes
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 1
Bhopal
Ahmedabad
Ahmedabad
The Urban Cocktail – 1 (Planning & Governance Deficits
• Lack of infrastructure (water supply & sanitaUon)
• Water lines, tanker water, afflicUng the poor more
• Time loss, unpaid work of women, work loss for women and educaUon loss for girl children
• Water borne diseases – health implicaUons
• Purchase of water (5.2% hhs use boaled water) for drinking
Gautam Nagar, Bhopal (2015)
Shodhan Talav, Ahmedabad (Dec 2014)
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 2
Baba Nagar, Bhopal (2015)
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 2
On BSUP site On Informal Sealement site
Ahmedabad
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 3
Self-‐provided through Unnayan SamiUs
Coping
• Water conflicts -‐ Of the residents with the state
-‐ Of the residents with non-‐state actors
-‐ Territorial fights among non-‐state actors
Conflicts between residents due to the state’s inadequate provision of drinking water.
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 3
• SanitaEon -‐ Garbage dumps – methane emission, example of Ahmedabad garbage mountain
Proximity to Pirana Dumping Site
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 4
• SanitaEon -‐ Garbage choking streets and chocking drains
-‐ Cows as recyclers – traffic hazard and food chain contaminaUon
Flooding in slum settlement due to choked drains, Pune (2015)
Dumping of Garbage in Shodhan Talav (June 2013)
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 4
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 4
• Managing wastes -‐ IniUaUves such as Bhagidari, MHT’s network called Vikasini, SWACH in Pune etc.
-‐ Limits to upscaling A registered society of rag pickers, Solid Waste (Collection and Handling) Cooperative (SWACH) involved in door-to-door collection since 2008 onwards in Pune.
• Sewerage and Storm water
-‐ Open drains picture
-‐ Water logging
-‐ Climate change impacts (frequent floods)
Chennai during floods in Dec 2015
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 5
Some Glimpses: Intense continuous rainfall for five days in Gujarat – July 2015
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 5
Some Glimpses: Heat wave in 2016
11th March 2016 DNA, 9th May 2016
TOI, 17th May 2016
Area Temp. (in deg. C
Gomtipur 53.0
Narol 52.5
Paldi 45.5
Vatva 52.5
CTM Crossroads
47.0
Shahibaug 51.0
City Hotspots
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 6
Climate Change Concerns – Ahmedabad (e.g.)
Oct. 1991 Oct. 2000
Loss of Green Cover
Pathak and Shukla, 2015
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2001 2011 2021* 2031*
Water Demand (MLD)
Heat Wave Impacts on Mortality
Note: Change in mortality between 99th and 95th percenUles of temperature distribuUon. This is called heat effect
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 7 • Ecological devastaUon -‐ Encroachment/ Plundering of commons • Fishing prohibited in Deepor Beel, GuwahaU
• Deepor Beel is Ramsar site • Waste dumping by the GMC • Housing encroachments by low-‐income households not permiaed
• Conflicts with GMC and state government
Access Roads in Hill Settlements, Guwahati
• Ecological devastaUon -‐ Lake encroachments for real estate
• Hill sealements in GuwahaU
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 7
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 7
Land slide, one death, GuwahaU
• Genesis of all issues • Informal developments
• Informal developments per se are not a problem
• Limit to informality
• Require negoUated soluUons • NegoUaUons are difficult due to ‘tradiUonal bureaucraUzed approach to planning’; in case of Ahmedabad the TPS
• Public purpose lands unavailable • On ground – subversion by the state to accommodate need for public purpose lands
Case of Informal and unplanned growth of Bombay Hotel, Ahmedabad.
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 8
Bombay Hotel – Ahmedabad Informal Commercial Sub-‐division Planning intervenUon – 10% households affected by demoliUons
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 8
• Conflicts around informal land issue • GuwahaU, land rights movement, web of violence and counter-‐violence and episodic self violence
Land Rights Movement in Guwahati
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 8
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 8
• Chain of Violence and Counter Violence • Followed by ImmolaUon of acUvist and arrest of movement leaders • NegoUaUons for land rights ongoing
• Land for vending -‐ Conflicts on streets
Sunday Market (Ravivari), Surat
Jamalpur Flower Market, Ahmedabad
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 9
Street Vendors fighting for Vending Space in Beltola Market, Guwahati
The Urban Cocktail -‐ 9
• Challenges not addressed at all – challenges become conflicts that Up into violence
• Challenges addressed through exisEng planning paradigm of bureaucraEc pracEces – extremely legal lens; leads to violence on the poor by the state and sows seeds of counter violence and crime
• Challenges addressed through single raEonality – Watson says mulUple raUonaliUes exisUng in the ciUes of developing countries
Cocktail becomes lethal
Urban Planning – The Answer?
• Urban Planning addresses land, infrastructure requirements! • The New Urban Agenda (Habitat III) -‐ ”reinvigoraUng long-‐term and integrated urban and
territorial planning and design in order to opUmize the spaUal dimension of the urban form and to deliver the posiUve outcomes of urbanizaUon”
• IPCC Reports – Urban adaptaUon planning: Land use planning &
management, planning regulaUons, zoning & building codes idenUfied as important for climate adaptaUon (WG II report)
-‐ Human sealements, infrastructure and spaUal planning idenUfied to have strong relaUonship with miUgaUon (WGIII report)
Subversions & Conflicts
• Planning not responding to reality leads to subversions • All previous slides show subversions of planned intervenUons
• E.g Bhadra plaza, pedestrians walking in the centre of the road, parking on footpaths, informal housing, etc.
• Informality in housing, economy, transport, basic services, etc.
• Conflicts around land, on roads, in accessing water supply, in even BSUP housing
What is Urban Planning?
Are we constrained by the demagoguery of what planning has
been historically defined?
Does Urban Planning Means MulEple RaEonaliEes?
The Urban Cafe It’s to do with Sustainable cities like water recycling, waste management, water harvesting, etc.
Climate resilience
and mitigation – Technological view, solar panels, wind mills and
other gadgets, green spaces
Engineers think it’s about
networks. NO, Design cities “I am Corbu”
We have to look into Women’s safety ! Seen Woman Plan Toronto??
Cities are Spaces of protests,
insurgencies
It’s about making the City beautiful
Promote megaprojects, metro, monorail, riverfronts, etc/
City as an Enterprise Develop
Malls, wide roads, trees,
etc.
Stupid, It’s about FSI !!! Markets and land It’s about
Addressing informal sector wading through informal housing
• Urban Planning as a ‘Profession’ is constrained by its ‘history’ (in literal sense) – there is no ‘herstory’
• Urban plans have been masculine – an approach of totalitarian socieEes
• Phase 1 of urban planning – urban design of grandiose ‘public spaces’, or large infrastructure (Robert Moses) or ‘urban utopia’ of yearning to go back to rural life (as in Garden City)
• ‘Herstory’ is the criEque, e.g. Jane Jacobs who talked about small intervenEon, non-‐physical aspects of ciEes, what some call the first ‘post-‐modernist vision of ciEes’
Urban Planning Conundrum-‐ 1
Urban Design Urban Utopia, anU-‐urbanism (Howard, Corbusier, Wright, etc.) criUqued by Jacobs and Alexander
Urban Design Approach
Bijlmermeer, Amsterdam
CIAM (InternaUonal Congress for Modern Architecture) -‐inspired housing
Bijlmermeer, Amsterdam
• Social Housing • Pre-‐dominant low income populaUon – gheao • High crime rates • DemoliUon of high rise blocks – back to ground • Within the renewal area the number of original high-‐rises has been reduced from 95 to to 45 per cent.
• Middle income groups brought back (gentrified) to reduce crime
Bijlmermeer, Amsterdam
“Town and Country Planning might be described as the art and science of ordering the use of land and the character and siUng of buildings and communicaUve routes …. Planning, in the sense with which we are concerned with it, deals primarily with land, and is not economic, social or poli0cal planning, though it may greatly assist in the realisaUon of the aims of these other kinds of planning”
-‐ L. Keeble (1952)
The first definiEon of urban planning
Systems Approach Systems Approach Interconnectedness of a city, urban ecology, hence comprehensiveness, Chadwick, (modernist opUmism), taking from Geddes of SAP (survey-‐analysis-‐plan)
Ebenezer Howard – Garden City Patrick Geddes – Regional Planning
Rationale Planning Process Emphasis on planning (modernist opUmism), decision theory based on assumpUon that it is raUonal, extension of science to policy and planning, Mcloughlin.
RaEonal Planning Approach
DeHine goals/
problems
Evaluate alternatives
Find alternatives
Implement plan/policy
Monitor effects
Advocates: • RaUonal planning good; not because it produces beaer decisions, but its accountability for the proposed course of acUon.
• Involved idenEficaEon of all conceivable courses of acEon and their evaluaEon against all relevant ends -‐ SuggesUng raUonal planning must necessarily proceed comprehensiveness -‐ Led to idenUficaUon of raUonality with comprehensive planning –Emergence of raUonal-‐comprehensive paradigm
Planner as -‐ Regulator
-‐ Advocate and community mobiliser
-‐ Consultant
-‐ Knowledge generator
Visioning & Problem
IdenUficaUon
Planning
ImplementaUon
Feed back
Competences • Value and paradigm
• Imagining future (predicUve)
• Problem idenUficaUon
• Allocator/ distributor of resources
• Decision-‐making
• AnimaUng local processes
• NegoUaUons • RegulaUon to reduce dominance of special interest groups
• EvaluaUon
From discussions at FP, CEPT
CriEcs of RaEonal Planning / RaEonal-‐Comprehensive Planning: • Whose raUonality? -‐ threat, vested interest, pressure, hidden moUve etc.
• Unable to provide responses to increasing demands related to goal jusUficaUon and for more parUcipaUon and accountability in decision-‐making
• Inadequate answer to exisUng basis of planning experUse. • No space for subjecUve knowledge: personal, societal, or human values, individual intuiUon.
• EssenUally proceeded blueprint planning i.e. producUon of glossy plans.
• PoliUcally naïve – technocraUc exercise
CriEque of RaEonal Planning
• Urban planning anchored in ‘social-‐democracy’, a short-‐period in history from post-‐second world war to about 1980
• Urban planning emerged as a consensus/ compromise between the ‘right’ and the ‘lex’ in wake of emergence of ‘socialist’ countries post 2nd WW
• Post-‐1980, ascendance of ‘New Right’ in absence of balancing force from lex
• New Right’s ideas anUtheUcal to idea of planning
Urban Planning Conundrum -‐ 2
The New Right
New Right Borders on ‘no planning’, but in essence selecUve planning, Market-‐based approach, emphasising FSI/ FAR; TDR, etc.
Entrepreneurial approach Focus on economic development (leading to counter-‐hegemonic pracUces)
• ‘New Right’ has limited success • Is challenged by -‐ By ‘bureaucraEzed planning orthodoxy’, mired in web of legislaUon and legislaUve tools, made all the more difficult to be revised as per needs
-‐ By resistance and protests from the streets, leading all the way to subversions and insurgencies
New Right – Limited Influence
Challenges to TradiEonal Planning Approaches
Urban Planning Conundrum -‐ 3
Time Period Planning Theory/ Paradigms Advocates Till early 1960s • Urban Design Mid-1960s onwards till early 1970s
• Rational Planning / Rational-Comprehensive Planning, Procedural Planning Theory
McLoughlin, Chadwick, Faludi
• Incrementalism / Disjointed Incrementalism Charles Lindblom, David Braybrook • Mixed Scanning Amatai Etzioni • Advocacy and pluralism in Planning Paul Davidoff, Richard Cloward, Frances Fox Piven • Alinsky model of community organization Saul Alinsky • Transactive Planning John Friedmann
1980s onwards - Counter-hegemonic Practices
• Radical Planning John Friedmann, Leavitt, Max-Neef, etc. • Communicative Planning theory (CPT) Patsy Healey, Forester, Susan Fainstein, • New Urbanism David Harvey, Kunstler • New Right – Market-based approach
1990s onwards - Counter-hegemonic Practices
• Communicative Planning theory (CPT) Patsy Healey, Forester, Susan Fainstein, • New Right – Market-based approach • Just City Leonie Sandercock, Fainstein • Insurgency Holtston, Sandercock, Friedmann, Miraftab • Informality De Soto, Ananya Roy, Al Sayaad,
Urban Planning Approaches
• EquaUng physical planning with city planning was a myopic view.
• Emphasized that physical planning should value their social, economic, psychological, physiological or aestheUc effects upon different users.
• Advocated planning as a pracUce required acknowledging need for humility and openness in adopUon of social goals in order to effecUvely deal with problems afflicUng urban populaUons.
• Social planners turned from being advocates of presumpUve public interest to advocates of the disempowered sectors in ciUes.
Eight Rungs on Sherry Arnstein’s Ladder of CiEzen ParEcipaEon
8. CiUzen Control
7. Delegated Power
6. Partnership
5. PlacaUon
4. ConsultaUon
3. Informing
2. Therapy
1. ManipulaUon Non-‐ParEcipaEon
Degrees of Tokenism
Degrees of CiEzen Power
Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning by Paul Davidoff (1960s)
TransacEve Planning Approach
Friedmann’s model Transactive Planning (Late 1960s)
• Aaempt to link up knowledge and acUon through chain of interpersonal communicaUon – dialogue -‐ thus bridging the widening communicaUon gap between technical planners and their clients
• Based on the epistemology that future can neither be known nor designed, that the world is a slippery place, that risk is inherent in acUon, and that to be effecUve, planners must get as close as possible to the acUon itself.
• Reappeared twenty years later in a new form as CommunicaEve AcEon, influenced by the German sociologist Jurgen Habermas.
Radical Planning Approach
Radical Planning (Roughly 1970s onwards) • Emerged from experience with and criUque of exisUng unequal relaUons, distribuUon of
power, opportunity and resources (exercised by state or global corporaUons) • Planning no longer centred in state but in a mobilized civil society -‐ in small spaces of
city in form of urban social movements and resistance – based on people’s self-‐organized acUons.
• Radical planners essenUally involved in three tasks: • Shaping transformaUve theory to requirements of an opposiUonal pracUce in specific
local seyngs -‐ through selecUve de-‐linking, collecUve self-‐empowerment, self-‐reliance • CreaUng opportuniUes for criUcal appropriaUon by diverse groups organized for acUon -‐
thinking without fronUers with meaning, purpose, pracUcal vision, strategic acUon • Reworking theory reflecUng first-‐hand experience gathered in course of pracUce itself -‐
through cross-‐linking, networking, building coaliUons, dialogue, mutual learning
CommunicaEve Planning Approach
• Focused on communicaUon, interacUon and dialogue
• Emphasized planner’s role in mediaUng among ‘stakeholders’ within planning situaUon with primary funcUon of listening to people’s stories and assisUng in forging consensus among different viewpoints.
• Rather than providing technocraUc leadership, planner is an experienUal learner, at most providing informaUon to parUcipants but primarily being sensiUve to points of convergence
• Planner as broker, mobilizer, facilitator, mediator, educator.
Plan Action
CommunicaEve Planning/ CollaboraEve Planning – 1980s & 1990s
CriEque of CommunicaEve Planning
CriEcs of CommunicaEve Planning/ CollaboraEve Planning – 1980s & 1990s • Most prominently from poliUcal economists and neo-‐Marxists from Europe -‐
more accustomed to top-‐down planning and powerful central governments contended that • CPT ignored power and made undue assumpUons about communicaUve
planner’s ability to make much difference in the face of the structures of dominaUon in society.
• DeliberaUon and inclusion would be inefficient compared to a more standard top-‐down approach.
• ReflecUng ContradicUons to be embraced as an opportunity for a more robust planning theory: • Community knowledge versus science • CommunicaUon power versus state power • CollaboraUon versus conflict: • Process versus outcome:
Simultaneously, New Urbanism emerged • A design-‐oriented approach to planned
urban development. • Bore resemblance to early planning
theorists’ orientaUon (Ebenezer Howard, Frederic Law Olmstead, Patrick Geddes etc.), in terms of using spaUal relaUons to create a close-‐knit social community that allows interacUon of diverse elements.
• Designs of new urbanists included a variety of building types, mixed uses, intermingling of housing for different income groups and a strong emphasis on the ‘public realm’.
• The basic unit of planning the neighborhood -‐ limited in physical size, well-‐defined edge and a focused center.
New Urbanism – A Design Oriented Approach
Applauded for : • Emphasis on public space • ConsideraUon of the relaUonship between work and living • Stance toward environmental quality
CriEques: • Approach to social injusUce -‐ assuming that changing people’s physical
environment will not take care of social inequaliUes • Issues about dichotomy of community power -‐ raises self-‐esteem of members
versus produces parochialism and failure to recognize broader class interests • Heavy reliance on private developers led to greater physical diversity but not
much difference in their social composiUon. • EliUsm within the movement • Lack of openness about its ideas and principles to the public • BeauUful and saniUzed visions made by architects and planners were too
idealized, ambiUous or disconnected from place or reality • Inability of living up to their transportaUon promises and expectaUons etc.
On New Urbanism
Counter Hegemonic Planning PracEces • Bottom up approach (Harvey,
Miraftab, Leonie Sandercock)
Backlash – Failure of modernism – Urban protests – Challenge to uUlitarian prescripUons and lack of distribuUve jusUce
"Why do we need a top-‐down vision of bureaucrats and planners to solve our city's problems?”
CiUzen AcUon Forum quesUoning BDA Master Plan of 2031
BDA's Revised Master Plan for Bengaluru: CiUzens bat for limiUng the growth
Challenge to Master Plan in Bangalore
Drax map of the city was on display at the public consultaUon of BDA's Revised Master Plan for Bengaluru
Planning Conundrum -‐ 4
FragmentaEon
Opening the borders for mulU-‐disciplinarity – housing, infrastructure, environment, transport, municipal budgeUng/ finance, etc.
Planning Housing
Infrastructure
Environment
Transport
Finance
Planning in Capitalist Global South • TransplantaUon from the Global North, firstly through colonialism, and then heavy reliance on Northern universiUes for knowledge
• Post-‐colonialism transplantaUon through new Masters of independent naUons, new colonial insUtuUons such as global financial / development insUtuUons, inerUa
• TransplantaUon on emerging democracies that aspired to be social-‐democracies but could not be
• Urban planning and development controlled & then captured in firstly less than more ways by upper classes and castes
• The rest occupied ciUes – Occupancy Urbanism & AccommodaUve State (more or less way)
Urban Planning Conundrum -‐ 5
Unbundling ‘Urban Planning’
• Relook at what is called/ defined as ‘Urban Planning’ • Urban Planning is democraUc space making
• Relook at the planner as (sole) agency providing alternaUves • Plural perspecUves; plural plans – No unilateralism
• IntegraUng theory and praxis • Climbing down from the ‘ivory tower’ to ‘real world’
• Invented spaces of parUcipaUon; legiUmizing of invented spaces of parUcipaUon
• Non-‐negoUables – ecology, climate proofing, housing for all, transit for all
• Lastly – re-‐establishing social value of land
Urban Planning EducaEon
• Diversity of educaUonal programmes on / related to urban planning
• Urban Planning is trans-‐disciplinary • EducaUon programmes offering focus specializaUon
-‐ social space planner
-‐ community planner
-‐ manager planner
-‐ negoUator, etc.
Thank you
Acknowledgement
• BinUCom, European Union (Research grant)
• Neha BhaUa (Research) • N. Abhilaasha (Graphics)
3/15/17
