[sustran] Agency seeks to unify development plans, transform Delhi into a city that is friendly to pedestrians

[Vinay Baindur]

*Cutting red tape for urban transformation*
Agency seeks to unify development plans, transform Delhi into a city that is
friendly to pedestrians
Cordelia Jenkins

http://www.livemint.com/2010/11/16192936/Cutting-red-tape-for-urban-tra.html
New Delhi:

Romi Roy wasn’t planning to return to Delhi.
She had a job she loved in Shanghai, China, as a senior urban designer with
the engineering consultancy, Arup. She could walk to work and buy breakfast
from the street hawkers outside her office. At the end of the day, she’d buy
roasted vegetables from other vendors who turned up to tout their wares late
into the night.
“I had a lovely life,” she says.
But, back in Delhi for a holiday in December 2008, the architect and urban
designer heard about the formation of a new government organization and
suddenly her plans changed.
“When I heard about Uttipec, it sounded so fantastic that I almost fell off
my chair,” says Roy, smiling behind small, neat glasses.


Three months later, she left her private sector job in Shanghai and was back
in her home city as a senior consultant at an agency with a complicated
name, the Unified Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure (Planning and
Engineering) Centre, or Uttipec, and a daunting mandate: to transform Delhi
into a pedestrian-friendly metropolis.


It might sound improbable that someone with as much international experience
as Roy should want to plunge into the notoriously convoluted infrastructure
of the Delhi Development Authority, under which Uttipec operates. But Roy
likes a challenge. More importantly, she believes in the plausibility of
changing the system from within.
She says she jumped at the chance of working in Uttipec because, as an
organization with members from all the key transport and planning
departments, she saw the potential to integrate the various plans and
proposals and to work together towards a common goal.
Uttipec’s multifaceted mandate includes smoothening traffic flow,
environmental programmes, housing, greening the city and making the streets
safer. “That’s the beauty of Uttipec—it’s a team effort,” she says.
Bringing all the planning, infrastructure and transport management bodies
under one roof is a particular problem for Delhi, where planning is
controlled by the Central government and transport by the state.
But Roy says Uttipec bypasses the bureaucracy. “It’s a reduction of red
tape,” she says. “You can have very open discussions because it’s a
multi-disciplinary forum.”
Earlier in the day, Roy met with working groups chaired by the commissioner
for transport and the commissioner for planning and exchanged ideas with
five or six government departments. She seems enthused by the results.
“I think people need to join the government,” she says. “There has been such
a stigma attached to it, because of the lack of coordination, which creates
a mess as we have seen during the Commonwealth Games.”
The Commonwealth Games, held in Delhi in October, were marred by delays in
preparation and allegations of corruption.
Roy, herself, does a lot to try and remove the stigma to which she alludes.
As a woman coming from the private sector, and as someone with a lot of
experience working internationally, she embodies a changing atmosphere in
Delhi.
Before Shanghai, Roy worked in San Francisco with Arup and in Berkeley,
California, managing urban design projects in Moscow, Bangalore, Tunis,
Dubai, Pittsburgh and Austin.
She worked on rebuilding and renewal projects in Louisiana after hurricanes
Katrina and Rita, and she has witnessed first-hand the problems associated
with America’s urban sprawl.
Although she’s hesitant about applying American urban planning principles to
Indian cities, she points out that the sprawl-type growth predicted for
Delhi by 2021 is reminiscent of US cities.
Uttipec’s aim is to put in place competent transport systems and manage
their development so that growth doesn’t result in an unplanned muddle.
As well as producing plans for making Delhi’s existing roads
pedestrian-friendly, Uttipec is working on a scheme it calls
“transit-oriented development” to build with an eye to creating communities
that can be accessed by walkers and cyclists, not just car owners.
A plan to promote “eyes on the street” encourages the replacement of
boundary walls and fences with roadside windows, small shops and businesses.
As well as increasing socialising and commerce, the scheme addresses street
safety issues.
A project to clean and renew Delhi’s polluted system of open drains is also
on the slate for next year.
Despite her criticism of the city’s existing infrastructure, Roy is a
fiercely loyal Delhiite. “One of my fondest childhood memories is getting
onto the bus with my parents and going to see a movie,” she says. “In those
days, there was much less traffic and more space.”
As Delhi grows, and its citizens buy more cars, the problem will only get
worse, Roy admits. But she sees hope in the advent of the Delhi Metro and a
renewed sense of optimism in government.
Ultimately, Roy says, people have to get involved to make things happen,
even if they don’t like the system. “I feel like a doctor and this city is
like my sick patient,” she says. “Just because I don’t like looking at my
patient doesn’t mean I don’t have to treat it.”