[sustran] Bottom-up urban planning The public must control public spaces

[Vinay Baindur]

Bottom-up urban planningThe public must control public spacesBusiness
Standard / New Delhi July 18, 2010, 0:06 IST


http://www.business-standard.com//india/storypage.php?autono=401701

Some residents of Hyderabad have initiated a campaign to assert their ‘right
to walk’. The campaign is led by a middle-aged lady who finds it offensive
to have to walk past patches where men relieve themselves — and these in
turn will point to the extreme scarcity of public conveniences. The point is
that when public money is spent to improve public thoroughfares, no thought
is given to the right of citizens to walk comfortably and safely along those
roads. All too often, carriageways are widened by eating into pavements,
placing the needs and demands of those using motorised transport over those
of walkers. A similar public protest movement has gained momentum in
Bangalore, in which the affected residents of particular areas and prominent
citizens who empathise with them have banded together to protest against
counter-productive road-widening work. Homes, shops and grand trees are
being razed to make way for slightly wider roads, which will do little to
relieve the traffic congestion for which the city is now known. The
citizens’ contention is that a contractor-civic official-petty politician
nexus is focused on helping itself, unconcerned about what real benefit
road-widening projects and flyovers bring to the public, and the damage they
cause to public spaces. They have been emboldened by a concerted citizens’
campaign which was able to halt the construction of a war memorial in a
prominent park which is currently just a green lung.

The time may have come to formalise the avenues for citizens to express
their views. One of the reforms that the national urban renewal mission says
civic authorities should put in place in order to quality for central
funding is active ward committees, and these should be consulted regularly
when formulating an urban agenda. The NGO Janaagraha has been seeking to
mobilise and train Bangalore citizens to insist on a say in the way their
neighbourhoods are run. It is campaigning for a law that will make it
mandatory for the civic authorities to consult local residents on their work
programme and agenda. In other words, it is not enough for citizens to
simply criticise local government bodies for misdirected urban growth models
and the declining quality of urban life. They have to take the initiative,
mobilise and make themselves heard so that they get a say in the governing
of their cities, and take ownership.

The best examples of urban renewal in the world indicate that top-down
master plans usually do not work. Cities are best able to change themselves
for the better when all their stakeholders gather together, and agree on a
common agenda in which they all see value for themselves. This is as true of
Curitiba, which gave itself a bus rapid transit system that has transformed
it, as it is of Barcelona which has been able to rejuvenate and revive some
of its most distinctive inner-city areas. On the other hand, a city like
Miami has been unwilling to go by the development pattern that ‘enlightened’
activists and city planners feel is good for it. Most civic officials will
not welcome a more direct people’s voice interfering with their plans, so
the ‘public’ will have to wrest control over the public space; it will not
be given to them on a platter