Valuing Planned Growth and Development.docx

Valuing Planned Growth and Development.docx

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  Role, Relevance andImportance of Valuing Planned Growth and Development in Making Human Settlements Inclusive, Safe, Resilient & Sustainable Jit Kumar Gupta jit.kumar1944@gmail.com 1.1 Cities have been valued as the face and future of humanity, communities, showcasing its growth and development. Looking at the role and importance of cities, future of humanity shall be largely determined by the quality of urban spaces and type of cities we make. However, looking at the present context, city growth is largely marked by unplanned and irrational development. Majority of cities are growing in an unplanned and haphazard manner. Cities are reeling under enormous pressure of population, poverty and migration of rural poverty to urban spaces. Cities are facing the challenges of rapid growth of slums, lack of open spaces, rising pollution and ever rising challenges of traffic and transportation. All this can be attributed to advent of unplanned development and cities growth led by undefined planning and development framework. 1.2Studies made and analysis carried out globally have revealed that root-cause of majority of urban ills has genesis in the environment of unplanned development. Unplanned development and poorly planned urbanisation have invariably led to creating huge slums, promoting tangled traffic, uncontrolled urban sprawl, greenhouse gas emissions and sprawling suburbs all over the world. In addition, unplanned development is known to have marginalized the positivities, inherent potential and capacity of cities, to inform, perform and deliver, to make human living more qualitative and making human beings more productive besides making cities great places to live and work. 1.3 Unplanned development is known to create perpetual problems of irrational growth and lop-sided development for the humanity, communities and cities. On other hand cities growing under planned framework, are known to yield numerous dividends when compared with unplanned development, in terms of; availability of basic infrastructures/services; providing better quality of life for inhabitants, and increased economic activities and higher productivity. In addition, planned development is known to make cities more sustainable, livable and climate responsive by mitigating the challenges arising out of global warming, climate change ,rising carbon footprints. Planned development is also known to make cities inclusive, because such a development operates on the principle of no-body should be left behind. United Nation’s Development Program(UNDP) has also concluded that cost of unplanned development is being more than unplanned development. Accordingly, nations must opt
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  for promoting planneddevelopment of all its human settlements because planned cities have been recognized for its distinct advantages of creating win-win situation for both humanity, communities, nations and nature. Planned cities of Chandigarh, Gandhinagar, Bhubaneshwar, Jamshedpur, Navi Mumbai, Panchkula etc. have clearly demonstrated the distinct physical, social, economic, cultural and environmental advantages of planned development besides ushering an era of providing a distinct qualitive life for all its residents. 1.4 For promoting planned development of human settlements, Urban planners have extensively used the instrument of Master Plans, for the distinct reason that Master Plans- has been considered as the document which - looks holistically at rational and integrated physical, environmental, socio-economic planned growth, development and management of human settlements. However, looking at the current scenario, Master Plans prepared for various towns have emerged as the greatest roadblock in promoting planned and equitable development of the cities. Instead of promoting planned development, master plans have emerged as controllers of development and promoters of large scale unplanned development. Impacting adversely existing flora, fauna and consuming large quantity of land resources, these plans have led to uncontrolled urban sprawl besides making cities large consumers of energy, resources and generators of waste. Majority of prevailing urban ills can be attributed to the intent, contents, scope and methodology adopted for preparing and implementing such plans. Being, cost-intensive, time intensive , resource intensive, having roots in land-led planning and defining use of every piece of land parcel, master plans have tried to freeze the city, limit its dynamism, exclude majority of urban residents from planning process, making cities unsafe, promoting large scale land speculation, making cities a commercial commodity, making cities unsustainable and unaffordable for majority of residents. This calls for relooking at the efficacy, efficiency and usefulness of Master Plans as an instrument for promoting planned development. 1.5 For celebrating and empowering cities, making humanity and communities sustainable, Planners need to ensure that master plans put in place for cities, remain adaptive, resilient, dynamic and responsive to ever evolving, devolving and changing needs of local communities/climate/environment and ecology. Because cities/human settlements remain ever dynamic, always evolving, devolving, never static and never finite. Accordingly, Master Plans/ Planning tools put in position also must ensure that these plans ably support, promote and empower cities to remain dynamic and community centric. Accordingly, existing breed of Master Plans must change and made better master plans by changing its intent, contents, scope and methodology, so as to make them rational and respond positively to growth dynamism of cities. Freezing/controlling rational development remains a fallacy. Master Plans must have in- built flexibility to stay relevant to ever -changing, evolving and devolving needs of the
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  communities, city andclimate. Master Plans should make cities - least consumers of land, energy, water and natural resources, besides generators of least waste and aim at making cities more productive, safe, inclusive, sustainable, resilient, happy and healthy places to live and work. 1.6 Cities must be planned to be compact for minimsing the use of land resource. Planned and designed with nature, using natural resources and adopting circular economy, master plans must make human settlements compact and walkable so that cities become clean, green and highly energy efficient, by eliminating the use of fossil fuel-propelled mechanical transportation. Research & development, needs to be made integral part of urban planning & development process to make Master Plans more objective, transparent, relevant, realistic, rational and supportive of communities and cities. Capacity buildings of urban planners in the domain of Regional and Urban Planning, would help in planning of human settlements and making urban planning and preparing Master Plans, more focused, objective, transparent, effective, efficient and productive. Preparing and implementing Better Master Plans will always help in empowering cities to make cities and communities Safe , Resilient, Inclusive and sustainable , as ordained and defined by the SDG 11. Author; Jit Kumar Gupta Former Advisor, Town Planning, PUDA jit.kumar1944@gmail.com