This is a commentary on the future of the town planning sector in the next three decades.
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Welcome to 2045. CIDCO has successfully completed 75 years since its inception and Navi Mumbai project. After two years, Indias independence will be completing 100 years, time for celebration. Looking back over the last five centuries as the Director of Urban Planning of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), this is the right time to take into account the developments review the most significant changes.
As Director I am accountable to the Minister of Urban Development. You can say that my post is equivalent to that of the former Principal Secretary to the Government. But my rights to practice are of course very limited and confined to particular geographic location, the entire jurisdiction of the former Principal Secretary was in Maharashtra. To be more precise my rights are limited to Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) only. To be noted, the most crucial and intimate change in the city administration since independence was the transfer of power at local levels for better governance and administration at local level. This transfer of power from top to bottom approach took place at the third tier, which included smaller territories & subrbans, few districts, maybe two or parts of districts. In case of the sate or Maharashtra, the authority or power of attorney of 36 districts was transferred to various locally formed bodies in a distributed fashion, instead of being under the control of a single body of the state.
Democracy is not mere change in the government every five years. It took a while for us to understand and percolate into masses at local level. The true definition of democracy could loosely be played out as, extending the decision-making power to as many people or masses possible. As they say, it's better to spread the frozen butter on the bread than to keep it in one place.
The conventional structure was as such, single political party in power at the centre (first tier) and in most of the states (second tier), thus it was decided empower the local formation, by transfer of the power to locally formed bodies. Thinking from the context of feasibility and ease of management the large states got divided into smaller and manageable territories, for the ease of administrative convenience, distribution of work and to make them more accountable to local voters in principle.
Of course (I was not a pessimist but just a realist) one of the reasons for this split was mainly for the political gain and for the appointment of new regional chief ministers and cabinet ministers. The Chief Minister of the State looks after the administrative coordination and management of all the affairs of the State, making them accountable for the role.
Variations and upgrades have been added in town planning! This was not the case about half a century before the division of power. The director of town planning, headquartered in Pune, and the local municipalities, the planning department, were expected to work together in coordination seamlessly to device the city's development plan for the next 20 years. The process initiated with current land maps. The approximate population of the city was determined over the next twenty years. This figure was kept to a manageable minimum. Because large number, will not be able to provide the basic civic amenities one may need in the near future, i.e. schools & colleges, recreational parks & gardens, adequate roads & transportation routes, markets and commercial interconnectivity.
Undeniably, the most important thing is to have uniform consistency in your entire planning. Being realist to the situation, it is secondary concern if your plan reflects the real situation, it may not, the beautiful future you see is not going to happen overnight or may not reflect as expected after 20 years or more. Determining the geographical location of urban amenities, then planning for the use of each land plot. So that you have the intended proposed appropriate land use. Just an hypothesis, to paint the residential part yellow, the commercial part with blue, and the industrial part purple or any other combination suitable. All of these uses will be completely varied from each other, as required by town planning standards.
These standards are inconsistent or not in inclination with the composite utility of land use in Indian cities. This is because the house of a local shopkeeper (Babulal) living in a residential area is upstairs ) his shop, and maybe his neighbour (Kanhaiyalal) runs a sewing machine business. So it would be useless to ask, how will your proposed land use be implemented?
Malini Krishnakutty termed this type of town planning is called 'technical planning'. And the one who makes the other important decision is called 'universal planning'. It is like a dictatorship that you expect from a deranged king. Planning like this is when you decide to build 55 flyovers in Mumbai, or to build a west coast road. Decrease the FSI too much, or reduce the space between tall buildings so that the occupants on the lower floors have to turn on the lights even during the day, and the natural air does not through their residence. As a result, one tenth of the household suffers from tuberculosis, and other lungs related diseases. Because of someones political aspiration, decisions made in this fashion are the major reasons town planning has failed miserably in most urban areas.
In fact, you will find coherence and clarity of underlying gains in these decisions, designed for particular set of peoples. Every decision is orchestrated by influencers and will benefit the group of developers. The interest of the people is completely irrelevant and biases in this. It is important for the king's vision of overall development and courtly culture to thrive - in this case Chief Minister (CM) of the state is actually the King.
Now that being said, after the transfer of power, however, the scenario changed. Now you know that land use is one of the many components of town planning and acts like key to the jigsaw puzzle. We now set our goals right before we actually begin actual work. These goals are people centric with zero tolerance policy to any kind of discrimination. Goals are set-out on the basis of easy accessibility to everyone, affordable and clean, comfortable and adequate. Transportation is considered to be the backbone of urban civilisation, Subsidies are provided to transportation system using clean energy, reduce pollution for the land use and avoid the traffic congestion. There will be two methods of subsidy on land use, in which the lease fortunate poor class will be able to use the land in the same area at a affordable price and the rich will be able to use it at a higher price. This way poor people are more likely to have a place of work close to their home. It is worth noting here that our objectives are to reject the division on the basis of income like Chandigarh and not to want extravagance like Amravati.
Once the goals have been set, the next follows the policies for their governance. This is compartmentalise into two types.
- Firstly a regulatory system, such as the minimum amount of space required in two buildings to provide natural light and open air.
- The second type is incentives, which will provide financial benefits to private entities to preserve heritage sites.
- And finally you have some aspiring projects. Such as a new transport route and interconnectivity, or a monument of any kind or a proposed sewage system or solid waste management plant and any other appropriation promising scheme such as solution on deluge and water clogging in Mumbai in heavy monsoon rains.
- The primary objective of my ministry is to review all policies, suggest improvements and amendment, or assist in new development of inclusive policies from time to time. It also accommodates analyse and evaluation of all the projects, their feasibility, weighing their merits and demerits, and making appropriate decision in prioritising what changes are required to meet your proposed objective or vision or goals set in the place.
Projects and policies are the most crucial part of town planning. Land use layouts and mapping are secondary and happens at final deployment stage. Projects and policies initiative and their evaluation must be consistent and perfectly aligned with the objectives or goals. Of course, to see if this is happening and taking share as planned, it is important to evaluate the results regularly using reports form ground reality then some colourful charts and grapes representing figures and sums.
The thing that worries me the most is the annual public meeting, just like the annual general meeting in a private company. Where the Minister and I have to explain the performance of the past year and future proposals. Our work has been appreciated by the people, mainly due to the collaborative and inclusive structure of our administration, which has resulted in an increase in the quality of civic life.
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