[sustran] Re: "Vision", "technical assessment" or ???

ravi gadepalli gsbravi026 at yahoo.co.in
Tue May 10 20:02:08 JST 2011


Dear Dr. Zegras,

Your posts have been real eye-openers in terms of how to go about things while taking up a planning exercise. Just to make sure that I understood your reasoning correctly, I would like to put in front of u a real life problem being debated upon in Delhi. Please see if conforms to the planning process you suggested to be the best.

Chandini Chowk is the heart of Old city in Delhi and is a heritage area. It has been a prime commercial area for hundreds of years. The streets in this area are quite narrow and the traffic has a high proportion of Cycle-Rickshaws. This results in traffic jams in the area throughout the day and so the Municipal corporation is looking for options to solve it. 

The consultant employed came up with a plan to remove all vehicular traffic in the area (including cycle-rickshaws) and provide trams for local mobility. This proposal was put forward for a stakeholder consultation. It was found that the tram is infeasible in the area and regular bus service was found to be more efficient based on the technical analysis. Removing Cars and two wheelers from the roads to the peripheral parking lots being developed is agreed upon. (Only after implementation will we know the seriousness of their acceptance, but still a consensus has been reached. )

The major point of debate has been the issue of Cycle-Rickshaws. Based on the technical analysis carried out, the consultant found the buses to be sufficient for mobility in the area. But the community felt the rickshaws provide better service due to door to door service even into interior areas and also acting as goods carriers for small loads. While this point can be debated and a consensus can be achieved, a new issue has cropped up. The socio-economic problem of the cycle-rickshaw pullers. They are not doing what they do because it is the most efficient mode, but because it is their livelihood. 

In such a scenario, if we go for the suboptimal solution of removing motorized traffic but still going with cycle-rickshaws, because it would still be a development over the existing scenario for some trips, the longer bus trips will not be catered to. Its either buses or rickshaws in the area.

I think the problem in the whole issue is that the consultant looks at it as a transport problem and tries to find a solution but the local community looks at it as a socio-economic problem, of which transport is one of the many issues. But the Municipal corporation looks at it from the city's point of view and since Chandini Chowk is a heritage area they want the traffic congestion relieved through whatever means possible. 

So, if we go back to the problem definition stage, do we look at it from the local community  perspective or from the municipal corporation perspective or from the consultants perspective i.e. the optimum solution based on technical analysis? They cannot co-exist and one of them has to be chosen among the three.

Kind Regards,
Ravi.



--- On Mon, 9/5/11, P. Christopher Zegras <czegras at MIT.EDU> wrote:

From: P. Christopher Zegras <czegras at MIT.EDU>
Subject: [sustran] Re: "Vision", "technical assessment" or ???
To: "Ashok Sreenivas" <ashok.sreenivas at gmail.com>
Cc: "sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org" <sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org>
Date: Monday, 9 May, 2011, 7:53 AM

Dear Ashok,

You make excellent points.  Personally, I would be happy if any community started with the perspective/vision being: "sustainable accessibility." Accessibility here refers to the capability for people to fulfill desired activities to "flourish" (related to Sen's concepts of functionings and capabilities); sustainable attempts to account for all the lives, time, natural resources, etc. necessary to maintain accessibility over time.

Such a perspective, as you suggest, would hopefully start us thinking about the "problem" and potential "solutions" in broader, more innovative ways, and make more likely the explicit and transparent consideration of the range of tradeoffs implied (and the value-system underlying those trade-offs), including over time.

Kind wishes, Chris


From: Ashok Sreenivas [mailto:ashok.sreenivas at gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 08, 2011 12:36 AM
To: P. Christopher Zegras
Cc: sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org
Subject: Re: [sustran] Re: "Vision", "technical assessment" or ???

Dear Chris and Jonathan (if I may take the liberty of using first names as appears to be the norm in our informal "community"!),

Thanks for initiating this very interesting discussion (particularly to "non-specialists" like me) and the excellent summing up of his views by Chris. I agree with most of Chris's statement but would like to elaborate a little on a point that, I think, is extremely important and perhaps has not been underscored enough.

I refer to the importance of having a "correct perspective" for step 1 (problem identification/definition). For example, if the problem is defined (narrowly) as "too many vehicles are backing up at an intersection during peak hours", then it is likely that the solution to emerge (even following the outlined process) would simply be to build an overpass (or "flyover") at the intersection. Unfortunately, this happens rather often, with the infamous sea-link cited by Karthik being a good example (without going into other perverse incentives for why such projects are chosen!). Hence, I would like to stress that the problem definition phase must pay careful attention to the "scope" of the problem (e.g. why vehicles and why not people, why one intersection and why not the whole city etc.) and also ask associated questions such as the side-effect of the proposed solutions on other desirables such as safety, clean air, energy security, social equity etc. in the
 short, medium and long terms. It is possible that most solutions would involve a trade-off between different objective and desirable elements, but at least the trade-offs would be clear and transparent, so that the solution with the most "acceptable" trade-off is chosen.

Regards
Ashok
--
Ashok Sreenivas
Prayas Energy Group<http://www.prayaspune.org/peg> and Parisar<http://www.parisar.org>

On 08/05/2011 02:15, P. Christopher Zegras wrote:

Dear Karthik,



Thanks for the thoughtful post.



My short response is the following: Dr. Richmond and I apparently don't disagree after all.



To quote his response to you: "Perhaps that way, the two approaches you differentiate can in fact be brought together!"



By my understanding, the primary substantive disagreement that Dr. Richmond and I had was that I disagreed with his hypothesis: that communities "speaking for their needs" was better than "technical analysis" to take on "the imagery on which political decision-making thrives".



To which I simply counter-proposed: "I believe that the either/or choice is simply wrong and the two techniques probably would work most effectively TOGETHER."



So, I no longer see a disagreement.



(I still may disagree with some of Dr. Richmond's presumptions of my knowledge of, experience with, and understanding of the role of numbers, quantitative techniques, neutrality, etc. in planning, but I doubt that debate is of much interest here and attribute it to basic misunderstandings on both sides).



For those that remain interested, I offer more detail below.  Karthik, I will also try respond along the way to the points you raise.  Dr. Richmond, before you respond to my synopsis above, I ask kindly for your patience and indulgence in attempting to wade through my full explanation below (unless you choose to ignore me completely, by which I will not be offended).



First, I will attempt to clarify my own assumptions and concepts.



I believe we are fundamentally talking about planning, by which I mean a process for getting something done.  Planning happens at multiple scales; for various time frames; by individuals, organizations, institutions, societies; using a range of techniques.



Semantically, I called Planning a technology.  By this categorization I mean technology as in: the Greek roots of the word (systematic treatment of art, skill); commonly accepted social scientists' conceptualization of the term (i.e., the skills by which we use and produce "things"); and modern Merriam-Webster (i.e., "practical application of knowledge to a particular area").



However, for the sake of clarity, hereafter I will use "technique" in distinguishing among particular planning methods and "technology" to refer to physical devices or systems of physical devices, even though these definitions remain difficult to practically separate in any actual socio-technical system.  There are a large number of planning techniques, the utility of which depends on the question, the time-frame, the scale, the proposed "solution", etc.  I believe any real-world planning application inevitably requires a combination of planning techniques.



Finally, by "community" I refer to a network of interpersonal relationships providing "sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging, and social identity" (Wellman, 2005).



Personally, I believe "ideal" planning would entail the following generic approach (carried out with various possible techniques and aided by various technologies, starting with pencils and paper):

1. problem(s) identification/definition, by which vision, goals and objectives are articulated.

2. goals/objectives translated into some suite of indicators (need NOT be quantitative), by which one can better understand the current state of the system.

3. design of specific analytical methods (need not be quantitative) to assess possible "solutions" to our problems.

4. collection of information necessary to enable our analysis (this includes all forms of data, qualitative and quantitative, as appropriate).

5. identification of and ex-ante evaluation of the possible "solutions" (in light of the goals/objectives/indicators).

6. choice of "best" solution(s).

7. implementation.

8. ex-post evaluation (relative to those indicators identified in step 2).

9. revisit 1, and repeat.



When it comes to transportation (and any other form of public planning), I would prefer, ideally, that place-based "communities" actively participate in every step.  That is, community involvement is not a separate technique, but an integral component of everything else.  I do believe that would produce "better" outcomes.



Karthik, I'm not sure if this is "linear" in that it may be more accurately characterized as circular, continuous....



Of course, this is just Western-informed, "rational" planning almost straight from the textbook (literally, see Meyer and Miller, 2001). In many contexts it may be totally irrelevant.  I emphasize: this is my own biased conceptualization of planning, as informed by my own experiences, education, and so forth.



In practice, it tends to be very difficult to adequately do any of the above, for any number of reasons. We never have perfect information, nor perfect knowledge. Any planning approach or technique, as Sudhir clearly pointed out, can quite easily be abused by the various players (potential for abuse correlated with power of the player), and becomes more complicated based on factors such as physical scale, jurisdictional scales, emergence of new conditions, etc. The larger the scope, the more time and money required. Many places don't think they have either, although most places (or those in power in those places) manage to find the time and money to embark on time- and money-intensive endeavors anyway, i.e.: Act now, Plan later.



Too often, places start at 6 (choose the solution), pretend to do 5 (fudge the numbers), then do 7 (build), and go right back to 5.



My experience in the Americas suggests to me that "communities" want and need to be involved in planning. But, they also recognize the shortcomings of their own particular knowledge in the face of the decision-making processes and powers.  Not to mention that they also have jobs to do, kids to raise, etc. etc.  And, "community" itself is a difficult concept to justly operationalize in practice. Unsurprisingly, most communities I've worked with want to enhance their knowledge with other forms of knowledge, just as I try to do.  That's human development.



Below I provide some additional support and detail on various points, but this is probably already too long for most of you.



My own experience, most recently informed by field-based pedagogical work (inspired by and attempting to operationalize Schön's concept of the "reflective practitioner") in Mexico City and Cartagena Colombia suggests that, unsurprisingly, place-based communities are very interested in actively engaging in defining and determining their development potentials.  They also tend to face major constraints: many of the communities facing the most dire conditions have little time or energy to "participate." That's also not a surprise given how hard most have to work to survive.  Yet, they will make the time and use the energy if they see the value. They want not only to utilize their own knowledge to improve their development possibilities, they also appreciate the value of, and want to gain, the knowledge of others - i.e., actively engage in knowledge creation.  A simplified example, students collaborate with market vendors in making a simple spreadsheet
 model of the actual c

osts of bananas so that market vendors can band together and more effectively press the wholesalers for a better price.  The numbers might be "wrong", the outcome possibly less than best, but better than before and hopefully moving the development possibilities in the right direction.  Beautiful symphony of at least two planning techniques, great learning experience for all parties, aided by a heavy dose of Schön-inspired reflection.  Knowledge gained for the next round.



But, we can't always begin with step 1 (above) because reality often works differently.  Consider another example I'm familiar with in the Latin American metropolitan context: the case of a major urban highway proposal to go from the rich suburbs, straight through the middle of the city out to the airport and beach beyond.  The proposal is cooked up by some technocrats, politicians, the construction lobby, financiers, and others, aided by their primary planning techniques: traffic models and spreadsheets.  They probably did go through some versions of steps 1-6 above, but behind some closed doors, with a limited set of objectives, a limited number of "solutions" identified (i.e., one alignment or another), and a host of favorable assumptions.  However, at around Step 5, the most-afflicted neighborhoods learn about it and fight for their rights to participate in the process. They press to go back to 1, using the knowledge and power they have to
 organize as a community: bandin

g together different interest groups, taking to the streets and the press in protest.  They also work exhaustively to gain other forms of knowledge they know they will need.  They appeal to academics, foundations, think tanks, sympathetic technocrats, etc.  They recognize that they can influence the process by exerting their power; they also believe they can strengthen their power by learning (or at least better understanding) the techniques of the technocrats.  The community wants help building their capacity, including technical, to articulate their wants, needs, arguments and counterproposals to the technocracy because they feel that is a key weapon in their struggle. They aim to synthesize the power of various planning techniques, because they believe that is how they can effectively influence planning socio-technical systems as complicated as today's metropolitan transportation systems.  They did not succeed in getting back to Step 1, but
 ultimately at least succeeded in

 improving the decisions made in Steps 6 and 7.



The complexity increases with the scale of place, jurisdictions, and so on, as Karthik was suggesting.  At the city/metropolitan scale, we have massive interventions on the table, large monied interests involved, and long planning processes.  "Community involvement" can be very difficult to sustain, keep fairly balanced (geographically, economically, etc.), etc.  Anybody who has participated in such work over time, knows that people inevitably get pulled back to "their livelihoods", meetings and discussions can get dominated by experts, gadflys, and monied interests (who might or might not represent the "community") - in sum, politics and human nature. This is a world-wide challenge, documented in the Western context, for example, by Flyvbjerg for the case of Aalborg Denmark (Rationality and Power) and Gakenheimer for possibly the USA's first documented attempt at "open" transportation planning at the metropolitan scale: the Boston Transportation
 Planning Review (I'd like to

 note Dr. Richmond's grand lineage in this respect, as I believe he worked with both Prof. Altshuler, the intellectual father and leader of the BTPR, and Dr. Gakenheimer).  Dr. Richmond's own recent work sounds like a very important contribution to all of this and I hope one day to be able to learn about the experience in more detail.



Finally, for any of those still reading at this point....I'd like to return to the proposition that initiated this exchange: PRT.  Its appearance in our "community" offers one glimpse at all of this.



By my recollection, some news arises of a PRT proposal for an Indian city.   The news hits our community, which happens to be virtual-network-based, multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary, multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-purpose, etc.



One of our community members, Mr. Britton proposes and implements one "assessment" technique: a virtual poll to try to answer the question how does some self-selected slice of the global community feel about the virtues of PRT?  Recognizing all the imperfections and potential abuses of his "quick-and-dirty" approach, Mr. Britton aims to make it as transparent as possible.



More doubters from the community weigh in, as does at least one PRT proponent, citing some not-well-grounded evidence to support his particular technology.  As far as I'm concerned, the proponent's proposal is made to this (Sustran) community.  As a member of this community, I suggest another assessment technique: a "bi-partisan" panel take a look at the evidence.  I also suggest that this would be most meaningful if done with a particular place in mind, b/c I think grounding visions in reality is necessary if we are to consider them seriously and transparently. Dr. Bruun proposed another, easier, technique: go look at the evidence already compiled in Prof. Vuchic's textbook.



Dr. Richmond then proposed another approach.  As I understand it, he'd like to start with the "community," by which I assume he means a place-based setting where people and businesses live and work.  That's an entirely legitimate approach; he can go to a place where PRT is being proposed and implement his community-based planning technique and I'm fairly certain that PRT would not even make it onto the radar screen, or, if it did, it would get eliminated fairly quickly from consideration.  And, I would be very happy to see the results of such an exercise. I would also be very surprised if it did not ultimately require use of several different planning techniques, including those that require numbers and counting and possibly even slightly more complex calculations.



We can thank PRT for opening up this dialogue.  I have my own serious doubts about the viability of PRT as a useful transportation technology for most places, but I will let the particular place figure it out, hopefully using the right combination of techniques. However, if the PRT proposal comes to our (sustran) community again, I will make the same request: "show me the numbers, based in place!"



Thank you for your indulgence,



Chris
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