Habitat Debate Vol. 10, No. 4, A future for urban planning

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Habitat Debate December 2004

A message from the Executive Director

There was a time when messengerswere executed for being the bear-ers of bad tidings, and to blame

urban planners for our urban crises is liketurning back the clock and going back inhistory to a time when no-one could haveforeseen the problems that we now face. We live in a world where UN-HABI-TAT research shows that nearly 1 billionpeople, or 32 per cent of the global urbanpopulation languish in slums, mostly indeveloping countries. In a process thatwe call the urbanisation of poverty, thelocus of global poverty is moving intocities. We have to find a concept of urbanplanning, which combined with concertedaction by local authorities, national gov-ernments, civil society actors and the in-ternational community, works to alleviatethe plight of slum dwellers. If we fail, thenumber of slum dwellers is projected todouble over the next 30 years to 2 billion,making the cauldron of misery and thepotential for social unrest twice as greatas it is today. Member States of the UnitedNations are committed to “achieve a sig-nificant improvement in the lives of atleast 100 million slum dwellers by the year2020”. UN-HABITAT is the agency man-dated to help governments, municipali-ties and all urban actors find the way here. It means that urban planners and theirpolitical leaders have not only to addressthe needs of slum dwellers for better shel-ter, but also the broader problems of ur-ban poverty, unemployment, urban gov-ernance, low incomes, and a lack of ac-cess to basic services like water and elec-tricity.

In 19 th century Europe and NorthAmerica, the slum problem in cities wasthe catalyst for modern urban planning.But we need to bear in mind that it tookwell over a century to substantially elimi-nate those slums. Slums are the worst, most degradingmanifestations of urban poverty, depri-vation, and exclusion in modern world.And it is a fact that today we have boththe technical know-how (such as Geo-graphical Information Systems un-dreamed of in the 19th century) the powerand the resources to plan effectively forthe target established in the MillenniumDeclaration. As we enter the 21st century, urban plan-ning faces the challenge of harmonizingthe global norms with locally distinct cul-tural conditions. While the broad frame-work for planning can have universal ap-peal, societies and countries should si-multaneously be able to develop theirown proposals and solutions. Rapidchange, driven mainly by business andtechnology, has to be tempered by cul-ture and local specificities. In recent decades, spatial planning hasbeen grossly maligned. Many of the illsof urbanization have been convenientlydropped upon the doorstep of urban plan-ners. Planning, however, does not existas an independent function or as a sepa-rate agenda. It is one of the responsibili-ties of government to anticipate the fu-ture and to prepare for it. There are many reasons why planningmay not result in a better living environ-ment for all. Planners’ advice may be goodor bad, taken or ignored. Planners maynot have adequate training. Politiciansmay have a distorted sense of the publicinterest. Plans may be unrealistic, giventheir resource requirements. Powerful eco-nomic interests may feel threatened byplanning recommendations. Plans maynot reflect the priorities of communitygroups or business interests. Implemen-tation authority may be fragmentedamong jurisdictions. In trying to correct these deficiencies,planning has opened itself to public par-ticipation, to a more realistic view ofstakeholder interests, to advocacy work,to setting social priorities, to environmen-tal impact analyses, to multi-jurisdictionalmanagement and other areas where con-sensus signals good governance at work. Yet, in today’s world, it would appear

that the planning function still falls short.Slums are multiplying, urban crime is ram-pant, development keeps sprawling, trans-port efficiency is declining, energy costsare rising, health problems increase, andmany citizens are walling themselves offfrom others. What’s happening here? Hasplanning failed and does it need to be re-placed by a more effective approach? As the articles in this issue reveal, plan-ning is accepted everywhere as a neces-sary function – a hallmark of human soci-ety. Municipalities, communities, andstates all engage in planning. Where it isnot working, however, there has beenmuch experimentation and innovation tomake planning fit the prevailing mood andpolitical mode of governance. There havebeen some striking success stories. The question raised in this issue of theHabitat Debate is how to make planningmore relevant. It would seem that com-munication throughout the developmentprocess is part of the key. Open and trans-parent governance and inclusive are an-other big part. Likewise, some humility.Planning thus needs to be interdiscipli-nary, taking in social and cultural situa-tions. There is no substitute to planning.But if it is not anchored to local condi-tions, it can easily be substituted by an-archy. Thus the success of planning in thefuture may depend on the success withwhich we can cross the boundaries be-tween the arts, design, urban and spatialplanning, public policy, market forces, ar-tistic creativity and cultural management. Planning needs to be continuously re-invented.

Anna Kajumulo TibaijukaExecutive Director

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Urban spatial planning has beenin the doldrums for many years.It has typically been regarded as

old-fashioned, technocratic, and bureau-cratic, stifling development by wrappingit up with red tape. Cartoonists depictplanners as faceless officials, insensitiveto the public and responsible for manyof the ills faced by modern cities.

From the 1950s to the 1970s ur-ban planning, despite isolated manifes-tations of public unease with the direc-tion it was taking, was a magnet for thebrightest and best of those involved ingovernment. It was the embodiment ofthe dream of the brave new world. Plan-ners were socially and politically progres-sive. Planning was seen as the means bywhich government could deliver equi-table and economically efficient devel-opment in both the developed and thedeveloping world. Indeed, in a numberof countries in the economically devel-oped north, it has fulfilled many of itsexpectations. Land use planning hasbeen an essential component in the avoid-ance of city sprawl, economical land useand efficient infrastructure provision,especially public modes of transport.

But, as the neo-liberal world viewgained dominance during the 1980s,some of the problems of urban spatialplanning became more evident. But toascribe this to the fall-out of the ascen-dancy of a new development model doesnot wash. Planning often failed the tasksit set itself. The nature of the failures ofthe planning has been rehashed manytimes in different forums, but they areworth repeating.

The ProblemsThe dominant planning approach

of the period was master planning. Al-though this was never a monolithic model(structure planning as developed in the1960s was one response to the failingsof the classic format), there were somecharacteristic problems.

Plans were expensive, involvedlarge teams of professionals, and tookyears to produce, in some cases decades.This would not have mattered so muchhad the plans been implemented, but,save for some countries in the North, theywere not. Reality had normally moved onafter the base data had been gathered.

This often left the plans out of date evenbefore they were completed. In the de-veloping world, most of what was imple-mented had not been planned, and infor-mal development overwhelmed the as-sumptions and projections of the plansand their visions of orderly development.The world was proving just too chaoticand dynamic to be encompassed withinthe bounds of comprehensive masterplans.

And even if plans were producedexpeditiously, they took little account ofimplementation realities. Plans were of-ten the product of specialised agenciesand departments composed of physicalplanners. They had little power oversectoral and infrastructure provision en-tities, which were generally reluctant toimplement plans in which they hardly hadany say. The only power left to plannerswas the control of land use, which theyexercised through costly, bureaucratic,quasi-legalistic and often punitive re-gimes. The reliance on this tool has beenone of the main reasons for the alienationof the citizenry from the process con-ceived as having public – as opposed toprivate – interests as its focus.

One of the greatest failures ofplanning in the developing world hasbeen its inability to respond to growingpoverty and exclusion. Planning dealtwith the world through planners’ eyes,and planners rely extensively on data.The formal economy produces data, butby definition, the informal economy andsociety is less likely to. Therefore, theburgeoning informal sector was not fullyincluded in master plans, and its unpre-dictable evolution played a significantrole in rendering plans obsolete. Thus theobsession with formal statistics contrib-uted to the failure of planning to deal sat-isfactorily with one of the major issues ofthe time - that of urban poverty.

The AlternativesSectoral programmes and projects

took the place of planning. They producedidentifiable outputs with tangible social,economic and environmental benefits de-livered in time and within budgets .

The implementation failures ofplanning also led, initially at least, to anincreased focus on management at citylevel. The limitations of the managerialapproach, with its focus on technocraticcapability, thereafter gave way to a con-

cern for governance. Management andmanagerialism were outflanked, just asplanning had been, by an inability to re-spond fast enough to changes in the ex-ternal environment. Management might bemore realistic and efficient, but not nec-essarily forward looking. Governance,with its emphasis on participation and in-clusion, responds to the growing demandfrom civil society to address the needs ofthe poor in a manner that reflects theirpriorities, not just those of planners, tech-nocrats and administrators. Various glo-bal programmes such as UN-HABITAT’sUrban Management Programme and theSustainable Cities Programme have pio-neered techniques of participatory urbandecision making with a sectoral focus onthemes such as the environment, povertyand gender.

The revivalSo, just as we may have been con-

sidering its demise, everywhere there isan expectation for a revival in urban plan-ning. This was evident in a vigorous de-bate at the Second World Urban Forum inBarcelona in September 2004. The revivalof planning has been evident for sometime throughout Western Europe, wherenew approaches to strategic and eco-nomic planning have incorporated spa-tial planning components.

The main reason for this is the rec-ognition that planning is a much-neededintegrative mechanism. Choices need tobe made between infrastructure sectors,and where there are discontinuities be-tween financial resources, sectoral strat-egies and projects that need to be recon-ciled, a “clearing house” function is re-quired to allow development objectivesto be achieved. Urban planning can fulfilthis function at city level.

InclusionThe new urban planning system is

part of the governance agenda. Planningpioneered public consultation, admittedlyoften in an anaemic and ineffective form,long before sectoral and economic plan-ning agencies ever contemplated it, so itis not something that is entirely new. Newplanning practices around the worldwholeheartedly embrace participatoryapproaches. They recognise that the ex-pert-driven decision making processes ofthe past were an important factor behindineffective planning.

Planning for a better futureBy Paul Taylor

Global Overview

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The new urban governance agendais also unambiguously pro-poor and in-clusive. It accepts that one of the rea-sons why the poor are poor is becausethey have been excluded. Urban planninghas been seeking ways of bringing ordi-nary citizens, and especially the poor, intodecision-making processes, using partici-patory mechanisms to ensure their needsand priorities are explicitly recognised.Indeed, contemporary urban planning isincreasingly accepting the notion thatplanning is not normatively neutral - thatits achievements must be measuredagainst broad societal goals and valuessuch as included in the inclusive prin-ciples of UN-HABITAT’s Global Cam-paign on Urban Governance. Key think-ers say it is essential that new urban plan-ning engage with the long neglected in-formal sector in the developing world. Butplanning’s engagement with the gover-nance agenda, is not the only strand thatconstitutes the emergent paradigm.

ImplementationThere is also a concern with imple-

mentation - the Achilles’ heel of masterplanning. Strategic planning practice,which is becoming the dominant meth-odology, involves a move away from com-prehensiveness towards focusing on pri-ority urban problems. Subsequent action

plans embody realistic budgets and time-frames. It is through such means that plan-ning can again become relevant and af-fordable to developing countries wheretraditional planning had become too ex-pensive.

The futureBut the architecture of the new

planning is not yet fully formed. The newplanning will not be as immutable in con-ception as the old. Indeed, the old stillhas much life left in it. Master planning ispractised and successful in a number ofhigh economic growth countries, particu-larly in Asia, that have strong traditionsand cultures of central control and direc-tion accompanied by clear, simple visionsand long term planning backed by sub-stantial government investment.

The term strategic planning meansmany things to many people. Some see itas a means for setting a vision for thefuture, others as a means of focussing onlarge-scale priority infrastructure projects.It is also seen as a means of binding tech-nical rationality into political decisionmaking.

City development strategies sup-ported by various UN-HABITATprogrammes vary from place to place.There is no ready-made formula. UN-HABITAT’s Sustainable Cities

Programme, which embodies many of theelements described above, provides guid-ance on how local authority departmentsand civil society can work together. Butthis is based on principles of voluntarycooperation. It may be that such volun-tary collaboration runs against the grainof many institutions. Insofar as planningis marooned in dedicated land use depart-ments, the possibilities of being strategicmay be still-born.

And finally, what about plannersthemselves? Are they up to the job? Canthey move away from an obsession withcontrol and expert knowledge towards aflexible approach that emphasises knowl-edge of the socio-economic environment,and social entrepreneurship that pro-motes interaction with civil society? Un-less there is a transformation of planningpractice and education to reflect thesenew realities, strategic planning may re-main a good idea - just that and no more.

Paul Taylor is Chief, Urban DevelopmentBranch, UN-HABITAT

Global Overview

By David Kithakye

By 1989, the ten-year-old Master Plan of the Cityof Dar es Salaam had become obsolete. Most ofthe assumptions underlying the plan were no

longer valid in the light of the social, economic and policychanges, which had been going on in Tanzania sincethe preparation of the Master Plan.

The City’s social and physical infrastructure haddeteriorated very badly. The Master Plan had not worked.A change was therefore needed to prepare a plan thatwould work and remain sustainably relevant.

The introduction of the Environmental Planningand Management process in the Sustainable Dar esSalaam Project (SDP) marked the beginning of a newplanning approach. The Environmental Planning andManagement process led to building collaborative bridgesbetween different stakeholders in the public, private andpopular sectors, as well as within institutions and com-munities. The collaboration promotes the sharing ofknowledge and capacity building among stakeholders.

More important, stakeholders have the opportunity

to genuinely participate in decision–making, the plan-ning and implementation of self-improvement initiatives.The process resulted in empowerment of the communi-ties, building of social trust among the stakeholdersand a Strategic Urban Development Plan (SUDP) pre-pared through a consultative process.

The SUDP documents the shared vision of theCity of Dar es Salaam, outlines the strategic develop-ment issues, proposals for environmentally sustainabledevelopment including urban renewal projects, and themethodology of its preparation.

In the preparatory process all stakeholders wereengaged and committed to the output. But the fact thatthe SUDP has yet to be adopted as the legal replace-ment of the Master Plan is probably a weakness to berecognised. It has, however, been guiding the develop-ment of the City of Dar es Salaam with a difference andhas been achieving results.

David Kithakye is a Senior Human Settlements Officerwith UN-HABITAT’s Regional Office for Africa and theArab States (ROAAS).

Urban Planning in Dar es Salaam: A paradigm shift

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Urban development is wound upwith issues of poverty. UN-HABITAT figures indicate that

the world’s urban population increasedby 36 per cent in 1990s, and between 2001-31 the urban population of the develop-ing world will double to about 4 billionpeople, an increase of about 70 millionper year.

Ninety-three per cent of the addi-tional urban population 2000-2015 will bein less developed countries; 75 per centof the growth is expected to be in cities of1 million to 5 million; rural populationswill barely increase and are expected todecline after 2020; one person in six livesin a slum. On present trends, the figurewill be one in three by 2033.

How will another 1 billion urbanresidents over the next 15 years affect theenvironment? We can expect more landconversion from agriculture and forests;extended urban ecological footprints and“heat island” effects - e.g. increased run-off; g reenhouse gases and climatechange.

Everywhere it is the poor who livein the most hazardous locations. In therich countries the spread of cities and theassociated energy costs and greenhousegas emissions impact on global climate.Patterns of land use and transport in thesecountries are an important contributor insea level rise and the incidence of the ex-treme weather conditions. The impact ismost severe on small island states andcountries vulnerable to flooding likeBangladesh.

What can be done?The message of the Commonwealth

Association of Planners (CAP) is simplebut needs repeating:• We share one planet

• There can be no sustainable develop-ment without sustainable urbanisation(in the rich countries as well as thepoor countries)

• There can be no sustainableurbanisation without a new form ofplanning

• That form of planning has to be pro-poor

So how do we begin to changeplanning? I suggest an acronym – SIPICE– because planning needs to be Strate-

gic, Integrative, and Participatory in in-tent, and Inclusive, Creative and Equi-table.

Much of what passes for plan-ning is actually regulation of developmentin a routine, administrative manner. Scarceprofessional resources are frittered awayin futile attempts to micro-manage landuse. Out of date, detailed plans encour-age haphazard development, and meanthat infrastructure is underprovided andfollows development. Such “planning”favours speculators and squeezes thepoor.

In contrast, pro-poor planningshould be strategic and integrative; puteconomic development, markets and

people – not buildings – at the core ofplanning. Big urban growth is going tohappen. It should be where people wantto live and where businesses want to de-velop – unless such places are danger-ous or threaten essential ecological re-sources. Plan the major transport net-works and hubs and allocate more thanenough land for development. Develop-ment will follow infrastructure.

Planning needs to be integrativeof, and to express the development in-tentions of business and infrastructureproviders. Planners need spatial under-standing, and skills of synthesis, com-munication and negotiation. To contrib-ute to poverty alleviation, plans need tobe integrated with services such as edu-cation, housing and community work –

not standing apart. Work across the di-vides: listen, link and add the spatial di-mension to the other discourses. It’s ademanding job.

Pro-poor planning means movingfrom public participation to participatoryplanning. Participation that is not basedon awareness of patterns of inequality islikely to exacerbate inequalities.

Inclusive planning recognisesthat the poor are not a homogenous group.They are differentiated by age, gender,length of residence, ethnicity, and formsof physical or mental handicap. The teamat Heriot-Watt are writing a Good PracticeGuide on Planning for Diversity andEquality for the government in the United

Kingdom.Our Good Practice Guide will show

how to work for equity, for instance,through audit plans that assess impactson different groups and areas, use of moni-toring to demonstrate equity in treatment,and ensuring equity in recruitment andpromotion within planning organisations.

The culture of planning mustchange and is changing. The CAP(www.commonwealth-planners.org) iskeen to take this agenda forward.

Cliff Hague is Professor of Planning atHeriot-Watt University, Edinburgh andPresident of the Commonwealth Associa-tion of Planners.

A Commonwealth perspectiveBy Cliff Hague

The Commonwealth Association of Planners deals with the planningand management of settlements and regions across the Commonwealth.Professional organisations of urban and regional planners across the Com-monwealth are members. CAP is a forum for creative ideas and practicalaction to make healthy, attractive and competitive towns, cities and re-gions. It has a website that includes, news, papers, lists of contacts andevents. It also produces quarterly newsletters that carry news and articlesfrom across the commonwealth.

CAP engages with other professions and non-governmentalorganisations within and beyond the Commonwealth to promote aware-ness and action for sustainable human settlements. It supports the workof UN-HABITAT and of Commonwealth Habitat through involvement in theirevents and activities. It also uses its extensive network of practising plan-ers and planning researchers to work on projects with international devel-opment agencies.

CAP is open to membership and support from many different typesof planning organisations. For more information, visit the website: http://www.commonwealth-planners.org.

The Commonwealth Association of Planners

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The death of urbanplanning

Conventional urban planning ormaster planning almost passedaway in the mid 1980s, particu-

larly in developing countries. Many rea-sons explain this not so sudden “death”:• In terms of process, urban plans were

designed by bureaucrats and experts,generally ignoring political and socialdynamics of the city. City planning wasa top-down technocratic exercise, nottoo different from economic planning.

• In terms of product, urban plans wereessentially spatial zoning and land-usemaps, not associated with investmentplanning and resource mobilisation.

• In terms of implementation, urban plan-ning was generally blind on institu-tional issues such as the relationshipbetween sectoral ministries, and be-tween central and local governments.It did not associate long-term goalswith daily city management constraintsand short-term priorities.

• In terms of strategy, urban planningtried to go around the need for policyand legal reforms, and often unques-tioningly accepted existing situations.Consequently, it failed to address theroot-causes of many urban problems.

As a result of these limitations, mostMaster Plans were simply not imple-mented. Many still lie in the archive unitof Urban Development Ministries andTown Planning Departments.

The international debt crisis of theearly 1980s dealt a fatal blow to traditionalurban planning as structural adjustmentprogrammes (SAPs) were imposed in manydeveloping countries. Under SAPs, gov-ernments had to slash social spending,including on basic services in order torepay their debt. Urban planning becameirrelevant as there was nothing to plan.

The revival of cityplanning

Planning came back through theenvironmental window in conjunctionwith the Earth Summit held in Rio deJaneiro in 1992. UN-HABITAT was oneof the agencies that re-appraised urban

planning and subsequently introducedparticipatory planning and managementas an element of good urban governance.At the Istanbul City Summit, while urbanplanning did not figure as a key issue inits own right, it was in fact subsumed un-der the broader urban governance frame-work which emerged as the main outcomeof Habitat II. This new planning was ex-pected to meet the following criteria:• In terms of process, urban plans

should be prepared in a democraticway, involving civil society organiza-tions and all concerned stakeholders.Experts should mainly play a facilitat-ing role.

• In terms of product, strategic plans orCity Development Strategies shouldreplace master plans. The focus shouldbe on a shared vision for the city (link-ing social development, economic pro-ductivity and environmental protec-tion) and on multi-partner action plansto translate this vision into reality byaddressing priority issues.

• In terms of implementation, local au-thorities should be in the driving seatas the level of government closest tothe citizens. Powers and resourcesshould be decentralised and local ca-pacities strengthened. Planning andurban management should be closelyintegrated.

• In terms of strategy, planning shouldbe considered as a tool, its effective-ness dependent directly on the qual-ity of the urban governance system.Good governance and appropriate ur-ban policy should almost automaticallylead to good planning.

Several programmes of UN-HABI-TAT, such as the Urban ManagementProgramme and the Sustainable CitiesProgramme, have demonstrated that thisnew type of city planning is feasible pro-vided it is focused, locally-owned andpolitically supported. However it seemstoo early to claim that urban planning isback on the global development scene.

Can urban planningbecome affordable forall?

The new planning approach pro-moted by international organisations andalready adopted by several developed

countries, is a complex process requiringa lot of discussions, commitment and con-tinuity in leadership, and adequate capaci-ties at different levels. This process ishardly affordable by least developedcountries (LDCs) which lack institutionalcapacities, financial resources and oftenclear policies.

The challenge, therefore, is toidentify and promote a minimalist ap-proach to urban planning, i.e. an approachthat would generally respect the above-mentioned criteria while simultaneouslyfocusing on very few top priorities con-sidered as essential for guiding urbandevelopment. This concept could becalled “affordable participatory plan-ning”. By definition, the minimalist plan-ning approach should not be comprehen-sive but selective:• The process should mobilise civil so-

ciety and political organizations in thedefinition of the vision (“the city wewant”) and priority areas (“hotspots”)through popular consultations;

• In terms of product, it would usuallyprioritise infrastructure developmentwith emphasis (especially in LDCs) onprimary road and water networks andon pricing and municipal finance;

• Implementation should include astrong component on institutionalstrengthening, particularly at the lo-cal level;

• The strategy should preferably be as-sociated with a review/reform of ur-ban governance legislation, rules andpractices.

Of course minimal planning re-quires maximum political commitment toensure impact and sustainability. Withsuch commitment, urban planning cancertainly become affordable and useful.But planners should also accept to play amore modest and more targeted role inthe management of urban affairs.

Daniel Biau, Director of the Regionaland Technical Cooperation Division, isActing Deputy Executive Director of UN-HABITAT.

Making city planning affordable to all countriesBy Daniel Biau

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By Jos Maseland

After 1945 the predominance ofdiscrete national economies andrelatively self-contained cities

steadily diminished. In the advancedeconomies the combined dynamics ofdemographic growth and Modernist plan-ning ideology caused dispersal of popu-lation and economic activity beyond ur-ban boundaries.

In the early 1960s, urban sprawlhad become the dominant trend in mostof the advanced economies and new ur-ban spatial configurations started toemerge. Cities in geographic proximityconnected through their sprawl into con-tinuous urban clusters. The first such ag-glomeration was the Washington-Phila-delphia-New York-Boston megalopolis.Large regional urban clusters and mega-urban regions soon materialized in everycontinent: Germany’s Rhine-Ruhrconurbation, the Randstad in the Nether-lands, Brazil’s São Paulo-Rio de Janeirourban corridor, the Hong Kong-Guangzhou area in China, the Lagos-Ibadan corridor in Nigeriaand the Gauteng/Johannesburg province ofSouth Africa, to name a few.

By 2000, a globalpattern of urban agglomera-tions had evolved with some400 city regions of one+ mil-lion inhabitants worldwideand 20 mega-urban regionsexceeding 10 million people.According to UN-HABITAT’s Global Reporton Human Settlements 2003,by 2015, about 1.47 billionpeople (20.6 percent of theglobal population) will beliving in city regions exceed-ing one million inhabitants and 340 mil-lion people (4.7 percent of the global popu-lation) in mega clusters of 10+ million.

With nearly all global demographicgrowth now concentrated in developingcountries, the extended metropolis is be-coming a major feature of the developingSouth. Useful as they may be as demo-graphic absorbers, metropolitan regions,by their sheer size, create complex andmultifaceted problems on scales never ex-perienced before.

The greatest challenges of themega-urban regions are the result of a lack

of political and administrative definition.It makes for a planning nightmare. Butevidence indicates that megaurban re-gions can be sustained without politicalor economic collapse if the focus is onimproved management rather than ontechnological fixes.

Nearly all ‘megacities’ contain amultitude of local governments, munici-palities and special purpose bodies. Met-ropolitan Chicago, for instance, has morethan 1,100 local government bodies thatmore or less operate independently, cre-ating both governance voids and juris-diction overlaps. Similarly, in 1959, Rob-ert Wood already referred to New York’s1,400 governments. The very term‘megacity’ as such is misleading in itselfand is pointing at the core issue. It classi-fies urban regions by population size with-out acknowledging the separate politicalor administrative units they contain. The‘megacity’ is rarely the single administra-tive body the term appears to imply.There are only two single municipalitieswith 10+ million inhabitants: Mumbai (11.4m) and São Paulo (10.4 m).

It is clear that urban managementand planning practices that worked fortraditional mono-centric cities are hope-lessly inadequate for managing multi-mu-nicipal, poly-centric city regions. It leadsto highly fragmented urban governancethat now characterizes most metropolitanareas. Critical urban governance voids,function duplications and coordinationissues have in many countries been com-pounded by steadily diminishing centralgovernment influence over urban policy- in the North due to decentralization poli-cies, and in the South because of lack of

funds and capacities in the face of rapidurbanization.

Fragmented governance of poly-centric metropolitan areas has become theworld’s most serious urban policy chal-lenge.

Public policy, cooperation andplanning set the upper limits of gains tobe reaped from urban agglomeration. Withurban management increasingly becom-ing a matter of policy and coordination atthe urban-region level, experiments withsupra-municipal governance and regionalcouncils are underway worldwide. Todate, there are few success stories.

But metro-wide and urban regiongovernance cannot be isolated frombroader politics and economics. Regionalgovernance, inclusive of new layers of au-thority between the local and nationallevel are difficult to realize due to the re-sistance of vested interests and inevitablerestrictions to policy-making at lower lev-els. Furthermore, positions on governancevary with ideology.

In Europe and Canada, metropoli-tan governance focuses on communities,

equality, solidarity, and urbanmanagement efficiency. TheUnited States tends more to-wards individualism, market-ledcompetition and free choice.Further ideological complica-tions arise in situations wherecentral and metropolitan gov-ernments adhere to opposingpolitical philosophies.

But regardless of ideol-ogy, metropolization trends in-dicate that local actors need toredefine their thinking aboutterritorial planning, social exclu-sion, economic development,the environment and even de-mocracy at the local level. With

governments compelled to devote increas-ingly more resources to the built environ-ment, a number of societal policy issuesare emerging. In the 21st century the hu-man condition remains threatened andfragile. If no attention is paid to ideology,particularly that part of urban ideologythat seeks equality and justice, the citiesof the 21st century may become socialbattlegrounds.

Jos Maseland is Chief Technical Advisorof UN-HABITAT’s SustainableNeighbourhoods Programme.

Mega urban regions: marrying planning, politics and the economy

Greater Tokyo (26.4 million people) is considered theworld’s largest city. However, the creation of integrated,urban-based regional economic platforms is rapidly lead-ing to hyper-agglomerations that defy comprehension.Hong Kong, for instance, through the integration of theHong Kong Special Administrative Region withGuangdong, the Shenzen Special Economic Zone andextension into the Pearl River Delta, is rapidly develop-ing into a hyper-urban region with more than 100 millioninhabitants. The Delta Metropolis of The Netherlands,the Flemish Diamond in Belgium and the German Rhine-Ruhr area are becoming a single, integrated Europeanmega-urban region, as is ‘Megalopolis England’ (Lon-don, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds andSheffield).

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portant social and economic problems, toa large extent, inclusive and productive.

With few notable exceptions, inmost of the cities of the developing world,urban planning has not managed to cre-ate equitable and sustainable urbangrowth. Cities are far from achieving theirpotential, and only a handful work as ef-fective engines of growth. Today, the re-ality in many African, Asian and LatinAmerican cities is manifest in high crimerates, limited basic services, precariousshelter, and local authorities ill-equippedto manage the rising demands. In fact,most citizens have lost their faith in localinstitutions, local governance and urbanplanning.

Despite impressive technical andtechnological advances in urban plan-ning, positive changes in developing cit-ies can only be expected if personal val-ues, ideas, ideology and make-up do notdetract from the vision of the future. Cur-rently, urban plans are mere drawings thatlack the sociological, political, economi-cal and cultural ingredients indicatedabove.

A new approach to strategy de-velopment and planning in developingcountries needs to recognize that plansare not and should not be the ultimateoutcome of the planning process. A freshunderstanding of strategic thinking andplanning in poor and developing coun-tries is required to generate the outcomesfundamental to the future of the city.Among the wide range of available meth-ods and technologies, the most promis-ing are those that transform data into in-formation and thereafter into urban poli-cies, such as:• Local and national data systems that

collect and analyse comparable, reli-able and up-to-date information at cityand sub-city levels. This can be donethrough local observatories that pro-duce and disseminate information.

• Small area statistics: Pockets of pov-erty in cities, populations at risk andareas of exclusion can be identified ifthe information is disaggregated at ap-propriate levels (e.g. neighbourhood).There is a need to produce local datafor local problems, and small area sta-tistics techniques and intra-city analy-sis can help to allocate resourceswhere they are most needed and keeptrack of improvements.

• Satellite mapping and remote sens-ing: High-resolution satellite imagesare increasingly becoming available.These can serve as an objective datasource of the current land use in a city(see the image of Hargeisa below).They are extremely useful for identify-ing new settlements (e.g. slums in peri-urban areas), forecasting urbangrowth, estimating population densi-ties or mapping hazard areas.

• Geographic Information Systems(GIS): Large amounts of geo-refer-enced data-sets can be mapped intodifferent information layers on key is-sues such as social development, in-frastructure, environmental degrada-tion, poverty or traffic flows. This toolcan facilitate planning discussionsamong different stakeholders and evenparticipatory mapping.

• Information-based planning systemsthat use urban indicators data and GIStechnology for strengthening citymanagement, policy-making and gov-ernance.

These tools and techniques aredeployed in a very limited way in devel-oping countries. In the cases where theyare used, the emphasis is often on pro-duction of “fancy” maps with generalprescriptions. Fundamental ingredientssuch as broader social and political par-ticipation, accountability and transpar-ency often lag far behind these great tech-nological advances.

Eduardo López Moreno is the Chief ofthe Global Urban Observatory, UN-HABITAT

By Eduardo López Moreno

In the developed world, conventionalurban planning has managed to produce effective, economically viable

and habitable cities over the last 30 years,perhaps even longer. The planning pro-cess was often framed around questionslike: where are we now? Where would welike to be? How do we get there? How dowe track our progress? What action mustwe take to get there?

This type of conventional urbanplanning worked in stable political andinstitutional environments with well-co-ordinated mechanisms, sound develop-ment strategies, functional markets andeffective intervention strategies to ad-dress market failure.

In these cities , the plan (and otherrelated urban planning tools) served todemarcate the areas of protection,maximise the economic base of the cityand reduce risks of natural hazards. Theplan therefore plays a larger role thanbeing only a socio-spatial model of thecity. It has multiple functions:- technically, it is a visual portrayal of

the city now and tomorrow that relieson urban information to facilitate de-cision-making and define priorities ofintervention.

- sociologically, as a “code of socialconduct” that orders actions, encour-ages certain activities, and punishestransgressions. It is a tool to organizeboth space and society.

- politically, it is the written expressionof political commitments and compro-mises that help to build consensus andsocial and economic stability.

- economically, it is a blue print thatdefines and regulates the modes ofuse/appropriation of local resources(i.e. land, water).

- Culturally, it provides a frame of ref-erence for the different actors that com-prise the city, and helps define theiractions in an agreed societal environ-ment.

All these aspects are possible be-cause of efficient structures of gover-nance that clearly link actions to re-sources, and the complementary roles ofgovernments at the local, regional, andnational levels. Conventional planning inthe developed world has been instrumen-tal in avoiding serious conflicts of inter-est, producing cities that are, despite im-

Agenda for a new urban planning strategy

A satellite image showing part of the city ofHargeisa in Somaliland ©: Quickbird

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By Shipra Narang

Urban planning has often beenblamed for failing to respondadequately to changes in the

pace and scale of urbanisation, or to phe-nomena such as widening inequalities,rising crime or the deteriorating physicalenvironment of cities. Many argue thatplanning as a concept has been super-ceded by that of “good governance.”

In a lively discussion at a net-working event entitled, Urban PlanningRevisited on 17 September 2004 duringthe Second World Urban Forum inBarcelona, perspectives on planning inAfrica, Europe and the transition coun-tries were debated. It was clear that ur-ban and spatial planning has come fullcircle with growing recognition that sus-tainable urbanisation is impossible with-out effective urban planning.

“Planning is imperative, but itneeds to be based on knowledge ratherthan technique,” said Professor Akin L.Mabogunje, Chairman of the PresidentialTechnical Committee on Housing and Ur-ban Development of the Nigerian Presi-dency. Whatever the model adopted, hesaid, planners needed to understand thepolitical economy of the society, custom-ary land ownership systems, how mod-ern land markets function, and the socialcontext within which they prepare plans.

Indeed, there is no single plan-ning model. Master plans still reign su-preme in many parts of Asia, such as In-dia and China, and in the transitioneconomies. Detailed spatial planning andstringent zoning are the order of the dayin countries with limited land for urbandevelopment like, for example, Japan andThe Netherlands. But strategic planningapproaches with a focus on public-pri-vate-community partnerships are gainingground in countries of the north as (e.g.The Netherlands, United Kingdom), wellas the south (e.g. Brazil and South Af-rica). The question now being asked, iswhether there is anything that bringsthese diverse planning approaches to-gether?

Professor Cliff Hague, of the Com-monwealth Association of Planners, citedthe fact that a common problem with plan-ning today was that it was not really un-dertaken by planners. Urban planners in-

creasingly operate as regulators and ad-ministrators, rather than thinkers andstrategists. He said there was growingrealisation that urban planners had to re-focus on addressing socio-economic in-equalities, making cities more inclusive,and ensuring sustainable development.

“In a situation where govern-ments cannot govern, is it a surprise thatplanners cannot plan?” asked Mr. RodHackney, former President of the Interna-tional Union of Architects. Planners, hesaid, had to use their skills to developcontextually appropriate models, andwork with communities with the ultimateaim of empowering them.

Mr. Gert Ludeking, UN-HABITAT’s Chief Technical Advisor inKosovo, said that special plans could gowrong in the absence of a modern legis-lative and regulatory framework, andwhere local capacity to develop newplans was limited. He said this was exem-plified by 7,000 illegal and irregular con-structions in Pristina, the capital ofKosovo. With no straightforward solu-tion in sight, such a situation requireslong-term vision needs combined withaction projects to address immediate“flash-points”. It is where strategic plan-ning becomes imperative.

The debate in Barcelona revealedthat the basic issues in both developingand transition countries are not very dif-ferent. These range from a legacy ofcentralised, top-down planning,demoralised and disempowered local au-thorities and planners, an urgent need todeal with situations of conflict betweencommunities, the significance of an equi-table land market, and the importance ofaddressing informal settlements to theimperative of applying and incorporatinggood governance into planning.

Many countries in the Northhave brought good governance into theirplanning recently. For example, the inclu-sion of participatory processes in landuse planning regulation in Finland is asrecent as the year 2000. Gender concerns,especially the issue of participation ofwomen in planning processes, still remainto addressed in many countries.

An interesting approach of “mar-rying” governance and planning was of-fered by Mr. Andrew Boraine, Chairper-son of the South African Cities Network.Spatial planning as a concept has been

replaced by “integrated developmentplanning”, with a strong focus on publicparticipation and action projects. Spatialplans exist, but are subordinate to Inte-grated Development Plans.

The debate reached three mainconclusions. First, that planning and gov-ernance are inextricably linked. Strategicplanning is essentially an exercise in ef-fective, efficient and participatory gover-nance, and spatial plans are one of thedevelopment tools available.

Second, planners need to developtheir skills in a manner that emphasisesknowledge and understanding of thesocio-economic context, as well as tech-niques and tools. They need to aim to-wards reducing inequalities, improvingsustainability, and promoting equitableaccess to land.

Finally, planning has an importantrole in reconciling the growing diversityand conflict in today’s world. The needsof women and men, rich and poor, differ-ent ethnic and racial groups, themarginalised and the vulnerable, must beaddressed adequately through planningsolutions.

The planning profession is cur-rently in transition. The World Urban Fo-rum discussion brought together regionalvoices and perspectives on planning, andhelped to share the approaches employedsuccessfully in different parts of the world.It also helped to establish linkages be-tween UN-HABITAT and planners’ net-works, such as the Commonwealth Asso-ciation of Planners and the Canadian In-stitute of Planners, with a view to holdinga wider debate on these issues at the ThirdWorld Urban Forum in Vancouver, in 2006.

Shipra Narang is an Associate HumanSettlements Officer with UN-HABITAT’sUrban Governance Section.

Revisiting urban planning at the Second WorldUrban Forum in Barcelona

In a packed convention room at the SecondWorld Urban Forum in Barcelona, the audi-ence listen intently as panelists discuss the com-plexities of urban planning in the modernworld. Photo ©: UN-HABITAT.

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By Diane A. Dumashie

The International Federation of Surveyors (FIG), led by Surveyors inSpatial planning and Develop-

ment (Commission 8), is currently devel-oping a statement on the capabilities androles of land economists and planningsurveyors in the process of improving thelives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.It will be published in 2006.

FIG is a UN-accredited NGOwhich represents the interests of survey-ors throughout the world. The federationachieves its work through technical andprofessional commissions, each of whichis concerned with a different aspect ofthe multi-disciplinary work of the landeconomist and surveyor.

Commission 8 work is inextrica-bly linked to the geography of people andfocuses upon settlements, disaster man-agement and public-private partnerships.Spatial planning development surveyorsconcentrate on policy, project develop-ment management and research arisingin urban and peri-urban areas, typicallylinking economic decision making tophysical planning strategies in city plans,with the ultimate objective of achievingsustainable urban development.

Commission 8 activities are car-ried out through four working groups.Working Group (WG) 8.3 concentrates onsupporting development in the informalsector. This Group is leading a cross-Commission effort to explore how mem-bers of FIG can contribute to the chal-lenge of the city planning and develop-ment process, in partnership with inter-national agencies and local governanceinstitutions.

The work of Commission 8 willlead to a publication to be presented atthe FIG World Congress to be held inMunich in 2006. It will set out theCommission’s view on the issues arisingin informal settlements, collating into onesingle document the multi-disciplinaryfacets of land economics and surveying.It will also examine how members of FIGcould increase their awareness so thatthey have the appropriate knowledge andskills for good project planning and man-agement based on city context, needs andresources. It will draw on internationalcase studies in participatory planningpromoted by lead programmes andorganisations such as UMP and UN-HABITAT.

The publication will also identifyin detail, potential areas of collaboration

Bringing informal settlements into city planning

with branches of UN-HABITAT (particu-larly Urban Governance and Security ofTenure Campaigns) in managing the de-velopment planning process to integrateinformal settlements into city planningand governance strategies. Finally, it willseek to establish the next steps of a prag-matic and practical approach to take theresulting conclusions forward over theperiod 2006-2010.

Dr. Diane A. Dumashie is the Chair ofFIG’s Commission 8 on Spatial Planningand Development

Under the Sustainable Dar es SalaamProject (SDP) informal construction likethat shown in this picture is intended to giveway to a better planned city for all. Photo©: UN-HABITAT.

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Geographical Information Systems for city plannersBy Martin Raithelhuber

Urban planners in a Kenyan town were recently surprised by the discovery that several large buildings in thecity centre had been built right across access roads and road reserves. During a period of rapid urbangrowth, this development had gone unnoticed by the local authority which did not have the means to update

old city maps.To cope with such a rapidly changing urban situation, the city introduced a Geographical Information System (GIS)that links plot boundaries with digitized information on buildings and roads. The system uses a high-resolutionsatellite image that can focus down to 1 metre. It thus enabled new urban development to be immediately detectedfor appropriate action. As our cover photo shows, UN-HABITAT is able to similarly assist the northern Somali city ofHargeisa using the latest technology.

Similar situations exist in many cities in developing countries. Often, maps date back to colonial times, andinformation on even the most basic amenities such as water connections is fragmented, incomplete or misplaced.Bringing together this information into a unifying system, which is based on an interactive electronic map, allowspolicy-makers and planners to pin-point problem areas and target their scarce resources more efficiently. Often, themost vulnerable groups living in informal settlements are not even visible in official records.

Satellite images in combination with GIS analysis can help those most in need because they show slumswhere they are, rather than where people might think they are. The GIS maps are a powerful communication toolthat can easily be understood by non-technical people or even illiterate persons. Participatory planning becomes areality when disadvantaged citizens can help map and plan their own neighbourhood together with the local author-ity using a simplified GIS interface.

Martin Raithelhuber manages UN-HABITAT’s 1000 Cities GIS Programme

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By Akin L. Mabogunje

In African countries the pace ofurbanisation has been so rapid in thelast half century as to overwhelm any

attempt to control or direct it through theuse of urban planning. Traditionally it hasdepended on the formulation and produc-tion of master plans and even of strategicplanning as the preferred methodologyfor guiding and directing the growth anddevelopment of cities.

The methodology of master plan-ning, however, assumes a relatively slowpace of urban growth whilst that of stra-tegic planning is closely tied to invest-ment decisions.

Indeed, it is estimated that by theyear 2025 more than half the populationof the African continent will be living inurban centres and particularly in metro-politan areas and megacities.

It is the inadequacy of thesepresent approaches in guiding such rap-idly changing urban growth and devel-opment that has cast considerable doubton the future of urban planning especiallyin Africa. Moreover, given this rapid rateof growth, governments in many devel-oping countries have been unable to meetthe demands of the heavy streams of mi-grants and even of existing residents ofcities for decent housing and gainful em-ployment. The result has been the domi-nation of informal sector activities in theeconomy of their cities, and the mush-rooming of slums and shanty towns.

To improve on the situation, it isbelieved that there must be a decisive shiftof emphasis towards decentralisation anddevolution of power and resources to lo-cal governments and greater inclusive-ness and participation in decision-mak-ing of neighbourhood communitieswithin each urban centre. Only such ashift could make for effective urban gov-ernance which responds to the increas-ing diversity and multiculturalism of cit-ies. It would have to deal effectively withwide-ranging environmental problems,promote greater willingness on the partof residents to meet their civic responsi-bilities of paying taxes and rates, and en-sure greater accountability on the part ofthe municipal authorities to all the resi-dents of the city.

In such a context, the future ofurban planning can only be assured if, inits turn, it goes through a paradigm shifttowards more adaptive planning basedon a deeper knowledge of the people andof the physical, economic, social and po-litical systems of the city.

Two experts, Bent Flyvbjerg ofDenmark and Lisa Peattie of the UnitedStates suggest that the type of knowl-edge required such adaptive urban plan-ning must derive a lot from what Aristotledefines as phronesis or the knowledge ofwhat to do in particular circumstances.This is to be distinguished from epistemeor universal knowledge and knowledgeof the art or craft of doing things. It issuch a significant paradigm shift that can

enable urban planning to build on itspresent strength and correct existingweaknesses, especially in respect of guid-ing and directing development in rapidlygrowing cities such as those in Africa.

Ms. Peattie, in fact, suggests thatthe type of knowledge that the urban plan-ner will require in meeting the challengesof the situation in many developing coun-tries will constrain him to focus on a num-ber of methodological issues such as val-ues, power, closeness, minutiae, practices,concrete cases and context. It will entailurban planning going beyond just land-use or physical planning to a concern withcollecting and analysing social data basedon cadastral units in each and all theneighbourhoods in the city, such that itsactivities covers not only the developmentof new areas of the city but extends si-multaneously to the renewal of the olderparts of the city and the slum upgradingof peripheral shanty-town areas. Indeed,slum upgrading must be seen as a centraltask of urban planning in this situationsince this is the most important means ofintegrating spatial development in the cityas a whole. This will also entail usingsome of the most recent information andcommunications technology such as sat-ellite images, geographic information sys-tems and global positioning systems toreduce the costs of these activities.

Such a shift in the methodologyof urban planning will ensure that it playsa pivotal role in promoting and deepen-ing the growth of an urban land market,which gives some economic and ex-change value to even the relatively smallparcels of land of the urban poor in shantyareas and enhances their capacity to re-spond appropriately and with economicrationality to the dynamics of urban land-use changes in the city.

It will also ensure that urban plan-ning can be a vital hand-maiden of effec-tive urban governance. It will help citiesand metropolitan areas mobilize theirpopulation better for greater competitiveeffectiveness in a globalizing world wherecities as well as nation-states are engagedin a veritable contest of attracting to them-selves significant amount of foreign di-rect investments and employment-gener-ating enterprises.

Akin L. Mabogunje is the Chair-man, Presidential Technical Committeeon Housing and Urban Development, ThePresidency, Abuja, Nigeria.

An African Perspective

In the bustling Senegalese capital, Dakar, urban planning combined with democratic gover-nance sets it apart as one of west Africa’s most modern cities. Photo ©: UN-HABITAT.

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By Rod Hackney

Many new immigrants to Europeand North American cities migrate to the older inner cities,

where they find the cheaper housing, ei-ther for purchase or rent, and where theycan establish themselves close to othersin a similar situation of starting a new life

in a new country. The housing though isoften old, dating in some cases to 19thcentury, and thus in need of regular main-tenance.

Despite inadequacies, these prop-erties can be made into decent homesthrough community-centred approaches.What these communities require most isa good relationship with their local au-thorities including the planners, so theycan consolidate their housing and imme-diate environment and build a secure foot-ing in their new land. What an opportu-nity for community participation in plan-ning and community empowerment! How-ever, not everyone in local authoritiesagrees, and there is a danger that some ofthese communities will be bulldozed andthe residents homes demolished as partof new mass clearance programmes.

The central government in theUnited Kingdom, which ceased mass re-housing initiatives in the 1970’s, recently

launched the Pathfinder Programme. Thisprogramme began life as a reasonable at-tempt to address the issue of decliningtowns and cities where the collapse ofthe housing market resulted in negativeequity in property and where repairs hadbecame un-economic. However, some lo-cal housing authorities are using the Path-finder programme as a reason to revert to

mass demolition of complete streets andhousing areas.

The residents of Hannah Streetarea of a small town called Darwen, just afew kilometres north of Manchester, findthemselves on the front line, having re-ceived letters indicating that their prop-erty is unfit for human habitation. Theyhave got together and formed DRAG(Darwen Residents’ Action Group), in apanic move to hang on to their homes.The locals are made up of a combinationof long established residents and new-comers. Race relations are good and crimeis low compared to the newer estates. Allthe residents think it is a safe place tobring up families. To those who like longlines of stone buildings with slate roofs,they could be classed as part of a con-servation area. Despite the fine architec-ture, the residents have been told thatthey live in slums.

Jozef, who is 80 years old, with

his wife Edna Jurkowski, has lived in hishome for 40 years. He argues that it is adecent place to live out the rest of his life,and having improved his house, it willremain a good home for his wife.

Natasha Lea Jones, the DRAGChair says, “we are fighting for them toleave us alone.” The Council disagrees.Officials argue that even if all the houseswere all brought up to standard, theywould only be given a 30-year official life,whereas new houses are classified ashaving a 100-year life. Nothing though ismentioned of the human cost of disrup-tion, the worry people will have to en-dure, and the weakening of a strong com-munity structure. It is easy to condemnolder housing and once the blight setsin, residents find their area is doomed.Mortgages dry up, financial institutions‘red-line’ (decline to invest in) the area,some people get out quickly and theirproperties get boarded up. This spiral ofdecline caused by clumsy administrationhas to be halted.

There is an urgent need for sym-pathetic professionals, including Commu-nity Architects, to come and live and workin these threatened areas to help the resi-dents cope, strengthen their networks,and persuade the Government to changeits mind and give their homes a now leaseof life.

Only when professionals live inan area, can they fully understand what acommunity is. Only when they under-stand the mechanics of how such com-munities tick, can low key improvementsbe made.

Whole scale destruction of viablecommunities will only be stopped whenthe acquired local knowledge is translatedinto planning. It is easy to condemn hous-ing areas from a quick glance at computerstatistics and pinpointing mass clearanceareas that will qualify for central govern-ment money, which local authorities canthen use to carry out demolition.

Easy really. But what has beenachieved apart from human misery, andno guarantee that what will be re-built willbe any better than what has been demol-ished?

Rod Hackney is a community architectand former President of the InternationalUnion of Architects

Europe and North America - communityparticipation in planning

Participatory planning – members of the Peckham Youth Forum researching accessibility offood shops in their area. Photo ©: Planning Aid for London.

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By Jay Moor

I was educated in a good planningschool where social responsibility andpublic service were implicit. Through

that education I came to believe that themain role of city planning is to help ar-ticulate collective values and to help dis-charge our fiduciary (trust) responsibil-ity to future generations.

Without public planning, we haveno mechanism to carry out these neces-sary functions. The market has little in-terest in subordinating itself to either thecollective or the future. Politics is largelyincapable of addressing future genera-tions. And, religion can be capable ofignoring the collateral damage caused bybad behavior here on earth, promising abetter existence elsewhere. Only systemsof governance that rely on civic engage-ment, that envisage the future, that makeuse of objective analysis in setting policy,and that are willing to regulate the activi-ties of individuals and corporations inorder to move toward a shared visionhold the power that is planning.

In recent years it has been fashion-able to declare planning moribund, use-less, dead weight and even just plain dead.It was, so they say, a victim of its ownirrelevance and of the incompetence ofits practitioners. The evidence in thewestern United States was clear. Un-bridled growth, urban sprawl, the domi-nance of cars and trucks, slum-like neigh-borhoods, environmental degradation,crime and nearly every other nasty prob-lem was blamed on the failure of planningand of planners.

Planning ‘out west’ did not die ofirrelevance or incompetence. It was mur-der, pure and simple. People receive theplanning that their economies demand,and the western American economywanted planning stone cold, face down.Land use planning was worse than both-ersome. By the 1970’s it was still a practi-cal pursuit by which governments triedto carry out their responsibilities to cur-rent and future generations. This meant,among other things, incorporating theconcerns of ecologists and sociologistsinto city and regional plans. It meant re-flecting those concerns, based on goodscience, in regulations.

But the robustness of the western

American economy in recent decades hasbeen largely due to housing construction.A major factor in the highly competitivebusiness of residential development island cost. Distant and ecologically frag-ile lands tend to cost less on the marketthan vacant and peripheral urban plots.Planners, in their role as analysts, wouldpoint out that certain locations could notsustain development because of a lack ofwater, critical wildlife habitat, soggy soil,steep slopes or because they would beunserviceable from existing mains andfacilities.

In the western US, where large tractsof fragile land were being bought up onspeculation, building and developmentinterests began to fight planning. Firstthey fought the laws, invalidating zoningand planning ordinances on technicali-ties. Then they packed elected and ap-pointed bodies with like-minded citizens,who happened to have real estate con-nections: engineers, architects, builders,lawyers, major land owners and develop-ers themselves. These city councils,county commissions, planning commis-sions and zoning boards would oftencountermand the advice of planners with-out bothering to look for a good argu-ment. They allowed housing many kilo-meters from existing development whereit could not be served either with water orby fire brigades in case of fire. They al-lowed development on steep slopeswhere houses would slide into theirneighbors after a heavy rain. They al-lowed variances based on the flimsiest ofsob stories by shoestring developers.

In many western American citiesand towns, planners no longer plan.They keep cadastral records up to date,manage the GIS system, sit at the zoningdesk to answer questions and fight toretain their integrity. Meanwhile, theeconomy hums along. A problem occursand it may be addressed, if at all, after thefact – after an aquifer has been polluted,a habitat destroyed, an historic districttorn down or a slum formed.

In the American West, with somenoteworthy exceptions, planning hasfailed only in the manner that life fails.Eventually there is not enough strengthleft for it to breath. In the 1960’s the fed-eral government made local developmentgrants contingent upon the locality hav-

ing a properly enforced developmentplan. In the 1970’s, the federal govern-ment introduced ‘block grants,’ bucklingto pressure from local politicians. Thismeant that the use of federal grant mon-ies became discretionary, and eventuallyall general planning requirements wereabandoned. The 1980’s and beyond havebeen the heyday of unfettered business,which considered planning to be one ofthe most restrictive of fetters. Most statesstill require their municipalities to main-tain development plans, but the contentof such plans varies widely from state tostate and from city to city. Enforcement ismostly a local responsibility and can bearbitrary and capricious. In one westernstate, a governor erased the category,Planner, from the state employment ros-ter and removed all planners from policypositions.

Throughout much of Europe, plan-ning has been more effective in callingdevelopment interests to account. De-velopment has not been foreclosed byplanning, it has been channeled. Look atthe Netherlands and ask where it wouldbe without rigorous spatial planning. But,again, a nation gets the planning itseconomy demands, and the Netherlands,with its water-based economy, could notpossibly control its own water regime with-out land use planning.

Planning is a simple and powerfulconcept. It is a uniquely human activitythat follows from our ability to anticipateconsequences. To enlist it as a reaction-ary pursuit – only to help smooth the wayfor development decisions already made– is to kill it off by other means. Planningis what it is, and each society needs toassess its benefits and costs. My experi-ence has told me, and I in turn tell thistale, that where greed and short term eco-nomic interests ignore future generationsand where freedom to be irresponsible isvalued over community need, planningwill lie gasping in the gutter until it is fi-nally swept away with other useless pur-suits.

Jay Moor is a planner who hasbeen through the land use battles in thewestern United States. He is Chief of Stra-tegic Planning, UN-HABITAT.

Planning bites the dust –a cautionary tale from the American West

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world, the projections on which long-termplans are based often go haywire. Theneed for change arises almost as soon asthe implementation process begins.

Furthermore, conventional mas-ter plans are prepared through a top-down approach, with limited participationof stakeholders and hardly any consulta-tion with the private sector.

Even if well prepared with all theavailable inputs for satisfying the de-mands of logic and rationale, a plan thataims at addressing development needsin an integrated manner needs to bebacked by a well-oiled administrativemachinery, which simply does not exist.Instead, a plethora of organizations hasemerged in the form of development au-thorities, housing boards, infrastructuredevelopment corporations, slum clear-ance boards, line departments of the cen-tral, state and municipal governments,and parastatal agencies such as watersupply and sewage disposal undertakingsand electricity boards. These organiza-tions, instead of coordinating their efforts,are actually often found to be working at

cross-purposes and add to the problemsrelated to implementation of the plan.

In many parts of the country, pri-vate developers are not allowed to en-gage in large-scale assembly, develop-ment and disposal of serviced plots. Theentire burden of releasing additional ser-viced land in the market rests with devel-opment authorities. These agencies, how-ever, are invariably unable to pace them-selves up sufficiently to cope with thesharply increasing demand for servicedland, and end up being the chief causefor reducing the supply of developedland in the city. Yet another glaring ex-ample of a bad policy that genuinely re-duced supply of serviced land in India

was the Urban Land (Ceiling and Regula-tion) Act 1976. This Act was to exercisesocial control over scarce urban land re-sources, with the ultimate objective of en-suring equitable distribution amongstvarious sections of society and avoidingspeculative land transactions in cities.But, as a result of hurdles faced duringimplementation, the spirit and purpose ofthe Act was lost. Large chunks of urbanland were entangled in legal battles andthus could neither be acquired norbrought to the market. The resultingshortages in supply greatly hindered thedevelopment process. The Act was ulti-mately repealed earlier this year.

According to the latest estimatesprepared by the Town and Country Plan-ning Organization of the Government ofIndia, master plans have been preparedfor some 2,000 towns and cities in Indiato date. Most of these plans have notbeen implemented. However, the irony isthat despite the implementation problemsof master plans, the main concern of townplanning directorates and departmentscountry-wide is to prepare more such

plans. Alarmed by the rising

criticism of the master plan in In-dia, the Ministry of Urban De-velopment in recent years ar-ranged a national conference onthe theme, Alternatives to theMaster Plan. After extensive dis-cussion and debate over threedays, the meeting concludedthat the only alternative to themaster plan is a better masterplan! A more meticulously pre-pared plan, a structured plan, astrategic plan, an innovative

combination of all these, or a new con-cept altogether? However, just thinkingabout an alternative plan concept will notbe enough.

There is a need to think afresh aboutthe broader urban management and gov-ernance framework, including institu-tional structure and capacities, coordina-tion mechanisms, implementation proce-dures and resource mobilisation. Thereis a need for carefully thought-through,forward-looking land legislation and de-velopment policy. Without this the best-laid plans can come unstuck.

Jamal H. Ansari is the former Di-rector, School of Planning and Archi-tecture, New Delhi, India.

By Jamal H. Ansari

Contemporary planning in Indiastarted modestly at the beginning of the 20th century in the form

of piecemeal town planning schemes ofbeautification, road-side plantation, roadwidening, land sub-division and devel-opment. These efforts were largely physi-cal in orientation, being mainly concernedwith the arrangement of plots for residen-tial, recreational, educational, health andother such activities.

To this day, the master plan isprojected as the key official document forplanned development of a town or city inIndia. But politicians, scholars, a sectionof academia and practicing planners havealso been opposed to the master plan-ning methodology and the long-drawnprocess which leads to grandiose plansthat are never implemented.

While emphasising physical plan-ning and civic design aspects, the Mas-ter Plan touches upon the social and eco-nomic dimensions of the proposals onlyperipherally. Little attention is paid to theimportance of setting develop-ment priorities, in the light ofthe fiscal and administrativeconstraints of governmentsthat are ultimately responsiblefor implementing the plans.

The regional context isoften forgotten, and the essen-tial symbiosis that exists be-tween urban centres and thesurrounding rural area is hardlyever considered. Critics alsosuggest that master plans, iftruly comprehensive, should beable to show what integrationand forethought can achieve in terms ofresolving urgent needs of the urban com-munity, while economising on scarce mu-nicipal funds and mobilising resourcesthrough partnerships. What emerges in-stead is largely a bundle of half-bakedideas incorporated into a proposed landuse plan that planners insist should beimplemented in its entirety, at all costs.

The process of preparing masterplans is time-consuming, and the plans,even if meticulously prepared, are rigidand often outdated by the time they areenforced. The framers aspire to prepare“perfect” plans: once-for-all statementsabout the future shape of cities 20 or 30years hence. In a rapidly urbanising

Time for a new approach in India

The Delhi Master Plan of 1962 provided for a mini-mum plot size of 100 sq. yards (80 sq. metres ap-proximately). But this was unaffordable to the largemajority of residents. Likewise, in the most populousIndian state of Uttar Pradesh, the minimum plot sizeand infrastructure standards, specified at the levelsestablished under the Regulation of Building Opera-tions Act of 1958, were affordable only to wealthiestfive per cent of households. The people who cannotafford these standards obviously have little choice butto settle in unauthorized colonies and squatter settle-ments.

Opinion

16


By Edésio Fernandes

There are many myths in the debateon rapid urban growth, especiallyin developing and transition coun-

tries. Two of these remain largely unques-tioned.

First, that the growing process ofsocio-spatial segregation in cities is dueto a lack of spatial development planning,and second, that spatial planning is inef-fective, as most master plans, zoningschemes and urban planning laws are notproperly implemented and often aban-doned.

Apparently contradictory, sucharguments express the frustration felt byurban managers, policy-makers, andabove all by city dwellers who feel in-creasingly powerless in the face of thespeculative, socially unjust, and environ-mentally unfriendly market forces and po-litical interests that govern land use anddevelopment.

In many countries, the scope forState intervention through urban plan-ning legislation is substantially limitedby the prevalence of longstanding tradi-tions of individual rights. Most cities inthe developing world do not have com-prehensive urban legislation expressingclearly defined urban planning values andspatial development policy directives. In-deed, many countries do not have na-tional legal guidelines on land use anddevelopment.

More recently, another argumenthas gathered momentum: that where ur-ban planning laws do exist, they havebeen socially ineffective or detrimental tothe urban economy, and thus should bemade more flexible or abandoned.

However, a more critical analysisof urban legislation justifies the argumentthat, far from being ineffective, urban lawshave been a powerful factor in determin-ing the process of socio-spatial segrega-tion. Failure to enforce such legislationhas resulted in range of problems. Theseinclude conflicting judicial interpreta-tions, institutional inaction, social unrestover legal ambiguities, economic ineffi-ciency and high urban management costs,mistrust of legal-political institutions,endemic corruption, and the developmentof informal justice mechanisms. Needlessto say, all have contributed to maintain-ing the status quo.

Urban laws - from simple perim-eter laws to complex zoning laws – have,

however, worked well for economic inter-ests that regard the city solely as place tomake money. Master plans and spatial de-velopment laws may not work for themajority of the people in urban areas, par-ticularly the most vulnerable, and theymay not address other social, environ-mental, and cultural needs adequately.But, they have been instrumental in de-termining land values and housing pricesin the formal market. In most cases, as forexample in large cities such as São Pauloor Rio de Janeiro, urban laws have pro-moted a generous distribution of presentand future economic land values to pri-vate landowners, without being accom-panied by compensating value capturemechanisms and proper land taxation.Colombia is one of the few developingcountries in which there is a consistentattempt at recapturing surplus value gen-erated by urban legislation.

Urban laws have therefore alsodetermined the place - and the space - forthe urban poor who find themselves inareas no-one else wants or to which theydo not have formal access.

In recent years, many cities suchas Porto Alegre, Horizonte and Recifehave approved increasingly sophisticatedurban planning laws, but these have fre-quently contributed to the establishmentof lengthy, bureaucratic, and costly pro-cedures. They have also often failed totake into account the capacity of localgovernment for action and urban man-agement, monitoring and repression. Asa result, they have been disrespected byrich and poor alike.

Reversing this situation will re-quire significant changes in the rationale,content, and conditions of drafting ur-ban legislation. A tradition of comprehen-sive regulatory spatial planning does notmean giving up on the idea of a regula-tory framework altogether: the challengeis getting the regulatory framework right.The necessary balance would consist ofregulating less or more in some areas orsome processes, as well as regulating bet-ter in others.

There is also a need for signifi-cant change in the political-institutionalprocess of urban planning and law mak-ing, so that there is a truly participatoryand inclusive decision-making process atall levels. The simplification of criteria,standards, requirements, language andprocedures is a must. An interestingexample here is that of the successful

Popular Urban Planning School started inFortaleza, Brazil, by the NGO CearahPeriferia.

The Brazilian experience of urbanlaw reform that has already produced the2001 City Statute has given some indica-tions of how this can be achieved. How-ever, one of the main lessons to be drawnis that urban law and urban managementhave to be conceived together, under acomprehensive urban and land gover-nance framework.

Above all, the enormous challengebefore Brazilian cities, as well as othercountries and cities that are promotingurban law reform, is to guarantee the en-forcement of the newly approved laws.Urban planning is a very powerful pro-cess. If urban laws have long been capit-alised upon by certain economic groupsand have thus directly contributed to theprocess of socio-spatial segregation, thepromotion of urban law reform may sub-stantially contribute towards creating theconditions for more inclusive and fairercities.

To put it succinctly, urban reformcannot be promoted without legal reform.

Reform of urban planning legisla-tion and practice in Brazil

The 1988 Constitution recognisedfive inter-related rights - collective rightsto city and spatial planning, environmen-tal preservation, the democratic manage-ment of cities, social housing, and theregularisation of informal settlements.

Both the 1988 Constitution and the2001 City Statute attributed to the masterplan legislation the power to recognisethe contents and reach of individual prop-erty rights. The urban law drafting pro-cess was both decentralised anddemocratised, and all municipalities withmore than 20,000 inhabitants have to ap-prove their master plans by 2006.

A particularly successful aspect ofthe Brazilian urban regulatory frameworkhas been the creation of “Special Zonesof Social Interest”, corresponding to bothurban areas occupied by consolidatedinformal settlements and vacant privateland reserved for social housingprogrammes. Such zones have specificurban regulation and their own participa-tory management processes.

Edésio Fernandes, a Brazilian jurist andcity planner, is co-coordinator ofIRGLUS, the International ResearchGroup on Law and Urban Space.

A view from Brazil

Case Studies

17


By Andrew Boraine

At the advent of the transition todemocracy in South Africa in1994, conventional master and

spatial planning responsible for decadesof racial segregation and apartheid spa-tial social engineering, was thoroughlydiscredited as a planning tool.

The focus since has been on thedevelopment of strategic planning toolsover the past 10 years, at national as wellas city level. A huge effort has gone intoestablishing an effective system of de-velopment planning in South Africa since1994. This has included Integrated De-velopment Plans (IDPs) – legal require-ments for all municipalities since 1996.These have evolved into sophisticatedinstruments in some of the larger munici-palities.

Municipal IDPs are required toaddress service backlogs and inequali-ties; co-ordinate and align all municipalresources to meet the economic and so-cial needs of the community; involve thepublic through a process of participation;have indicators for monitoring and evalu-ation; and provide physical and spatialplans as subordinate components.

More recently, there has been afocus on a system of intergovernmentalplanning, coordination and alignment,based on the IDPs. The Government hasa national IDP capacity-buildingprogramme for smaller municipalities.

Many South African cities, withtheir added resources, have become sitesof planning innovation and creativity.City development strategies are nowviewed as necessary and appropriateplanning responses to the new chal-lenges, high levels of complexity and rap-idly changing circumstances facing cit-ies, particularly as they become incorpo-rated into the global economy.

Much of this city planning expe-rience and information is collected andshared through the South African CitiesNetwork (SACN), a knowledge-based net-work of the nine largest cities. The Stateof the South African Cities Report 2004provides an evaluation of the planningprogress. It has identified a number ofplanning challenges facing cities. (seePublications, page XX).

South African cities and theirpartners have collectively identified seven

strategic planning challenges for the nextdecade:

Challenge One: Linking long termvision to short term action plans. Thereis still a tendency to focus on short-termoperational plans rather than a long termcity vision – both are needed.

Challenge Two: An integrativeframework for development. Each city hasdeveloped its own locally-appropriatestrategic planning framework, whichseeks to integrate the planning compo-nents in various ways.

Challenge Three: City-wide re-source mobilisation. There is a need todifferentiate between a municipal planand a plan for the municipal area/city. Bothare necessary. The former focuses onmunicipal resources, while the latter ad-dresses a collective city vision involv-ing all stakeholders. The main focus ofthe plan is to put governance arrange-ments in place between the public sector,business and civil society, based on anallocation of responsibilities with incen-tives for performance.

Challenge Four: Strong guidancefor coordinated public sector spendingand asset management. There is a needto focus on the full range of governmentinterventions within a city area, and notjust on municipal powers and functions.This means improving the alignment ofall public sector initiatives, recognisingthe different forms that integrated plan-ning can take, i.e. policies, planningcycles, expenditure, projects. It is particu-larly important to focus on the role ofparastatals and public agencies.

Challenge Five: Integration andalignment of sector policies and plans.At city level, there are often insufficientmechanisms to ‘mainstream’ cross-cuttingissues such as growth, poverty reduc-tion, HIV/AIDS, transportation and envi-

ronment strategy, etc. It is important tofind ways in which the plans of the differ-ent ‘line function’ departments can be co-ordinated through the city developmentstrategy to lay the basis for making ‘trade-offs’ between plans, and confronting theproblems of ‘parallel planning’. This canbe done by utilising outcomes-basedplanning.

Challenge Six: Planning beyondboundaries. Many trends affecting a citydevelopment strategy are global or re-gional in nature, and therefore have animpact beyond the area of municipal orcity jurisdiction. In particular, there is aneed to maximise urban-rural linkages inpolicy and planning.

Challenge Seven: Implementation.At the end of the day, well thought-outplans, be they master, spatial, strategic orcommunity in nature, mean nothing un-less they are implemented and make a dif-ference. Professor Lyndsay Neilson of theDepartment of Infrastructure, State ofVictoria, Australia, has identified a num-ber of classes of instruments usuallyavailable to government, i.e. policy, leg-islation and regulation, fiscal, financial,institutional, public asset management,knowledge management, and advocacyand leadership.

Implementation strategies oftendo not cluster these tools together. Forexample, in South Africa, there has beena tendency towards an over-reliance onlegislation, regulation, government expen-diture and institutional restructuring toaddress various development issues. Thechallenge is to utilise, coordinate andalign all instruments available to ensureimplementation and delivery.

Andrew Boraine is Chairperson of theSouth African Cities Network.

A new approach towards urban planning inSouth Africa

Case Studies

In many informal settlements in and around Cape Town, new roads are being built as part ofnew metropolitan plans to bring services to the poorest of the poor. Photo ©: Vincent Kitio/UN-HABITAT

18


By Gert Ludeking

Building democratic institutionsthat respect human and civilrights is a cornerstone of the on-

going international support to Kosovo.As Kosovo adjusts to market circum-stances and requirements, integration,tolerance and social cohesion are prin-ciples that guide the process of strength-ening its local and central government in-stitutions.

Since the end of the conflict in mid-1999, Kosovo has taken halting but defi-nite steps towards democratization. TheProvisional Institutions for Self-Govern-ment in Kosovo, also known as theKosovo Government and Assembly, aregradually becoming better prepared tomanage the challenges of regenerating astalled economy and reducing high un-employment, while maintaining the cur-rent fragile political stability.

An upsurge of ethnic violence inMarch 2004 and the simmering national-ism, however, are clear signs that democ-ratization and stabilisation must be ac-celerated to prepare Kosovo for integra-tion within the wider Europe. Congestedcities, illegal construction and loss ofquality of life are characteristics of mosturban areas in Kosovo after the conflictin 1999.

UN-HABITAT has thus intro-duced a concept of inclusive, strategicand action-oriented spatial and urbanplanning in Kosovo. Adapting to inter-national standards required new planninglegislation, institutions and practices. Itsoutdated spatial planning legislation hasbeen replaced by an inclusive and mod-ern multi-disciplinary planning approach.

A new Spatial Planning Law wasdrafted with the help of UN-HABITATand approved by the Kosovo Assemblyon 3 July, 2003. It was promulgated bythe Special Representative of the UN Sec-retary-General on 10 September 2003.

As one of the main principles ofthe new law, municipal planning depart-ments are increasingly involving citizensin setting goals and priorities for localdevelopment. The spatial and urban plan-ning approach today is oriented towardsstrategic planning and genuine publicparticipation in all phases of spatial de-velopment. Both the public and privatesector are expected to gain here becausethe inclusion of stakeholders in urban

Inclusive and strategic planning for Kosovodevelopment is not only a civil right, butis also considered a useful means of in-creasing and direct urban investments.

With funding provided by TheNetherlands, a guideline and trainingtoolkit for urban planners on InclusiveSpatial and Urban Planning was draftedby UN-HABITAT as the basis for theongoing training of approximately 95 ur-ban planners from all 30 Kosovo munici-palities.

This inclusive process is break-ing with the previous “expert-driven, top-down” less transparent approach of mas-ter planning. It supports the ongoing ef-forts of building capacity for municipalself-government in Kosovo.

The new planning system envis-ages an active role and interface amongthree key “entities”: civil society, the pri-vate sector and the public sector. Theestablishment of a database for urbanplanning enables civil society organiza-tions and the private sector to cooperatewith the public sector in an informed man-ner. Transparency in the planning docu-mentation helps keep civil servants ac-countable during the planning processas well as when issuing urban permits,which is an important revenue source ofthe municipalities.

In addition to being more inclu-sive, the planning process is also morestrategic. Strategic planning allows plan-ners, together with stakeholders, to de-fine an overall development perspective,identify priority areas for action, and fo-cus implementation on those areas ratherthan make plans for the entire city. Grandplans cannot be implemented becausethey require huge financial resources,which are invariably unavailable, particu-larly in post-conflict situations.

The new Spatial Planning Lawthus stipulates that municipalities makeplans that prioritise requiring action interms of funding and deadlines. It pro-vides the municipal assemblies with so-lutions that can be implemented and aretailored to specific urbanisation problems.This is in line with current European trendof making the public sector more effec-tive by involving civil society and the pri-vate sector.

Making the new inclusive plan-ning system sustainable involves long-term consolidation of procedures andpractices. At the same time, changes havebeen made to prepare new legislation,

strengthen the skills of urban planners,establish institutional mechanisms formulti-disciplinary planning, and train anew generation of spatial and urban plan-ners. A Masters-level programme preparedby UN-HABITAT with its partners, wasintroduced at the Pristina University in2004.

This combined effort is made toensure that everyone involved in plan-ning is familiar with the new inclusive ap-proach as outlined in the new Spatial Plan-ning Law.

However, to prevent territorial iso-lation of Kosovo and to promote eco-nomic growth, it is crucial that the Gov-ernment be involved in the ongoing dia-logue with European planning networksand international funding institutions tointegrate Kosovo into the current regionalinfrastructure initiatives. Its absence inthese consultations is alarming becauseit limits the possibilities for regeneratingthe stalled economy.

Planning for a sustainable futurein Kosovo and adapting to internationalstandards can best be achieved througha consistent effort of seeking coherenceamong planning systems in the widersoutheast European context. The capac-ity that has been built in the past three tofour years in Kosovo planning institutionsis an important contribution to meetingthe challenges of European cooperation.

Technical cooperation for inclu-sive and sustainable development is a vi-able platform for growth and stability inthe troubled Balkan region.

Gert Ludeking is UN-HABITAT’s ChiefTechnical Adviser in Kosovo.

Pristina, capital of Kosovo, is set to benefitfrom new planning legislation as it graduallyintegrates with the wider Europe. Photo©:John Hogan/UN-HABITAT

Case Studies

19


their comparative advantage, can expecteconomic returns. Finally, cities that plantheir strategic moves over decades willwaste fewer resources “catching up” withrapid growth and poorly sited facilitiesand services. Many cities have shownthat managed growth can extend servicesto low income populations in a way whichallows graduation to higher standards ofservice in accordance with public andprivate capacity to pay.

Although the seven CDS citiesvary in terms of their size, economic andsocio-political conditions, it was possibleto adopt a participatory process in each.

The pro-poor focus must be em-phasized from the outset. Municipal gov-ernments are the key drivers of the CDSprocess. But their credibility with stake-holders is important.

A locally ‘owned’ CDS, as opposedto one that is donor-driven, is more likelyto succeed in mobilizing all stakeholdersand raise local resources. A strong andcommitted leader, like the mayor, is es-sential to drive the process..

The presence of organized stake-holder groups, especially the poor, is im-portant for the consultation process. Itsupports sustainability andinstitutionalisation of the process.

By Dinesh Mehta

The Urban Management Programme(UMP), a UN-HABITAT implemented multi-donor programme, in

collaboration with the Cities Alliance pio-neered the first set of City DevelopmentStrategies (CDS) in seven cities – Bamako(Mali), Cuenca (Ecuador), Colombo (SriLanka), Johannesburg (South Africa),Santo Andre (Brazil), Shenyang (China),and Tunis (Tunisia).

The idea is to develop pro-poorurban governance in cities within the fol-lowing framework:

Making cities work means thatvalue added to development can berealised through participatory processes.First, inclusive cities provide their resi-dents, especially the poor and themarginalized, the opportunities and ca-pacities to participate in the decision-making process and share equitably itssocial benefits. Second, well-governedcities can expect to improve the efficiencywith which their scarce resources are al-located. A third area of value added is inexpanded productivity, both in the pri-vate and public sectors. Cities that un-derstand their competitive position, andmove wisely and quickly to capitalize on

City development strategiesThe CDS cycle needs to be placed

within the context of the ‘life’ of the localgovernment. A ‘fast track’ approach forCDS using tools of rapid appraisals forpoverty and economic analysis is moresuited for conducting a CDS within a rela-tively short period.

It is critical to show concrete re-sults at the earliest possible stage, thusreinforcing commitment in the participa-tory process. Small but highly visible ac-tions and results at intermediate stagesof the consultation process lead to sus-tained interest.

A CDS can and should capitalizeon existing initiatives in cities. Coordinat-ing and building on existing participatoryefforts and creating partnershipsstrengthens the CDS process and im-proves the likelihood ofinstitutionalisation of participatorymechanisms.

Action plans need to strike a bal-ance between being realistic and, at thesame time, incorporating an agreed futurevision to bring real improvement inpeople’s lives.

Dinesh Mehta is Coordinator of UN-HABITAT’s Urban ManagementProgramme

By Ariella Masboungi

Decentralization reforms legislated in France in1981 resulted in the devolution of considerableresponsibilities for urban planning and city man-

agement to local authorities, city councils and the coun-cils of metropolitan areas.

But the State still remains responsible for harmo-nizing territorial and human factors. These revolve aroundfour key areas:

The preservation of the natural and man-made environment. The state has developed an arse-nal of legislative powers to safeguard what it considersinalienable. City centres and historical neighbourhoodsare protected by law and are watched over by theArchitectes des Batiments de France (Listed buildingArchitects), not to mention nature conservation legisla-tion. Solidarity. Through its “Urban Policy” programme,the State has responsibility for financing social housingand neighbourhood regeneration schemes.

Revival of the planning process to contain ur-ban growth and promote an urban strategy approach forfuture land-use allocation. Reorganization of local au-thorities. France suffers from having 36,000 municipali-ties for an area covering less than one million squarekilometres. Recent new legislation encourages local au-thorities, through financial incentives rather than by force,to group together for more efficient government at thelocal level.

Although public planning is open by nature, it doesnot automatically follow that the French State retains allpublic authority, or that there are no public-private part-nerships. On the contrary. By regulating the negative ef-fects of a totally free market, the state can entice privateinvestors to sites they would otherwise avoid, thus re-sponding to a particularly European, albeit not alwayssuccessful, notion of social diversity. Overall, however,France is less directive in this area than before.

Always linked to a context, urban strategies cantake a variety of forms. These can range from a large-scale strategic plan, a public open space programme,and the regeneration of deprived areas, to the creation ofnew neighbourhoods.

The underlying aims of sustainable developmentand a careful, considered use of space have to be pur-sued. At the same time, proper functioning of infrastruc-ture and transport and distribution networks must be en-sured. This can only be achieved through strong politicalcommitment to combat the social divide.

Ariella Masboungi is Architect-Planner in Chief, Di-rector of the Urban Strategy Programme of the Director-ate General for Town Planning, Housing and Construc-tion of the French Ministry for Infrastructure. This ar-ticle derived from a work published by Le Moniteur in2002 entitled, “Projets urbains en France” and financedby the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministryof Infrastructure.

Urban strategies à la française

Case Studies

20


How are we doing inBogotá?

A new How are we Doing? cam-paign to evaluate the development plan for Bogotá in Colom-

bia is aimed at improving efficiency andaccountability in governance throughcreation of awareness among the city’sseven million residents.

The campaign involves 10 resultindicators in health, education, the envi-ronment, public spaces, domestic ser-vices, road traffic, public safety, publicresponsibility, urban development, andpublic administration. These periodicallyevaluate whether the targets set in thedevelopment plan are being met, and theimpact they are having on the quality oflife. The project involves local citizens,and publishes evaluation results in thepress and on television. It also engagesin activities where opinions are ex-changed with the local population, andkeeps track of the system through sur-veys, opinion polls and focus groups. De-bates have been held with experts, mem-bers of the local population and publicofficers.

A major challenge has been howto turn technical subjects into popularnewsworthy information. Although thishas often been difficult, media like ElTiempo and City T.V. have documentedthe lives of ordinary people relating tothe sectors evaluated, and this has madeit easier to sell the technical informationfrom the indicators.

Planning for better airquality in Canada

The City of Hamilton and Region ofHamilton-Wentworth has a population of 467,800 covering an area

of 1,113 km2, with an annual budget ofUS$ 510 million. Air quality and its impacton health have always been a concern tothe citizens of Hamilton-Wentworth. VI-SION 2020, Hamilton-Wentworth’s Sus-tainable Community Initiative, has beenon-going since 1990 to identify prioritiesin air quality management. The commu-nity has been empowered with the re-sponsibility of taking Hamilton-Wentworth on the road to sustainability.Partnerships are continually being devel-oped between government, industry andcommunity organisations. Hamilton-Wentworth’s Sustainable Community Ini-tiative is an example of how a community

visioning exercise can em-power citizens with the abil-ity and desire to make the fun-damental changes requiredfor sustainability. This projecthas seen thousands of citi-zens involved in a variety ofactivities leading to the devel-opment of the community VI-SION, a broad strategy formaking the vision a reality, andimplementation of those rec-ommended actions.

The strategy includesa Regional Tree PlantingProgramme, a system of moni-toring vehicle emissions, aswell as industrial smog, and an improvedstreet cleaning programme. Theprogramme has integrated formal policydevelopment, with financial decision-mak-ing and project planning within the mu-nicipality linked with several on-goingcitizen involvement activities.

Participatory planning inthe Philippines

The success of municipal servicedelivery depends on participationand empowerment of citizens. The

Naga City People’s Council (NCPC), in1995 formed “shadow government”, em-powering civil society to work closelywith the local government to design,implement and evaluate the City’s devel-opment plans.

Through civil society-organizedtask forces and committees, citizen inputis contributing enormously to the effec-tiveness and sustainability of develop-ment initiatives including a clean-up ofthe Naga River, the management of solidwaste and the revitalization of the NagaCity Hospital.

Social planning in France

The French town of Sotteville hasrenovated a once derelict railwaybuildings and turned it into an art

studio known as Atelier 231. It involvespeople involved in drama, dance, poetry,painting an sculpture who since 2000have held regular weekly art fairs that havebecome a major feature of what is a pre-dominantly railway town. The idea of ini-tiative forms part of cultural planning forthe town to bring art to the community.The idea is to initiate a cultural project ina city that had no prior experience and tomake it sustainable. It has helped build

and strengthen the social links of the city.

A people friendly city inAzerbaijan

M unicipal planners in theAzeri capital of Baku, have embarked on a new plan to make

the city more comfortable and inclusivefor people various nationalities, religionsand ethnic groups. Since 2001, the cityfathers in the new municipality have madehousing, infrastructure and an improvedurban environment their top priorities.

For the past three years theCaspian city has seen major works start-ing on new home construction, road reno-vation, the upgrading of its parks, orphan-ages and homes for the elderly.

Modern city managementin The Netherlands

The city of Tilburg has 165,000 inhabitants making it the seventhlargest city in The Netherlands.

Tilburg presents itself as a modern indus-trial city, a strategic vision for the future,which is key to the city’s development inmany policy areas.

The city is thus administered likea business venture. The municipality issplit into divisions, which operate likeprofit centers and produce clearly definedoutcomes. The basis for the new city man-agement was set in the first City Manage-ment Plan in 1989 and from that momenton, city planning and programming inTilburg was conducted in an organizedprocess with the participation of the resi-dents in the decision making process. Oneper cent of the city’s budget is reservedfor initiatives by citizens for local neigh-borhoods improvements.

Improved urban planning in Africa can reduce crowdedinformal settlements like the one shown here. Photo ©:Vincent Kitio/UN-HABITAT

Best Practices

21


Pro Poor Land Management:Integrating Slums into CityPlanning ApproachesISBN No.: 92-1-131710-8HS Number: HS/728/04ELanguage: EnglishPublisher: UN-HABITAT

This booklet on Pro Poor LandManagement is designed tohelp all stakeholders actively

involved in the campaign, includingmultilateral institutions, central andlocal government, non-governmentalorganisations, the private sector and grassroots action groups.It seeks to provide them with the information they need in theirown efforts to implement national strategies, and outlines spe-cific action plans for every category. In this, as in other respects,the Campaign for Secure Tenure complements UN-HABITAT’songoing Campaign on Urban Governance. Both aim to deliveron the commitments made at the 2000 UN Millennium Summitand the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. Bothpromote a vision of an urban future based on inclusion, socialand economic development - a future based on human opportu-nity and on hope.

It is an invaluable tool in our collective endeavour topromote universal housing rights.

State of the Cities Report 2004ISBN: 620-31150-9Language: EnglishPublisher: South African Cities Net-work

Published by the South AfricanCities Network (SACN), this report takes a hard look at the

forces that have transformed SouthAfrica’s nine largest cities over thedecade since the country’s first freedemocratic elections in 1994. The re-port gives an insight into which waythe winds of urban change are blow-ing, and through a detailed statistical almanac it analyses keytrends.

The 200-page report collates a range of indicators fromthe nine cities that are part of the network: Johannesburg, CapeTown, Buffalo City (greater East London), eThekwini (Durban),Nelson Mandela (greater Port Elizabeth), Mangaung (greaterBloemfontein), Msunduzi (Pietermaritzburg), Ekurhuleni (theEast Rand) and Tshwane (greater Pretoria).

The report - a special edition that is the SACN’s contri-bution to marking the decade of democracy - measures how farcities have come over the past 10 years.

Urban Trialogues: visions, projects, co-productions: Localising Agenda 21ISBN: 92-1-131709-6HS: 727/04ELanguage: EnglishPublisher: UN-HABITAT

A critical reflection on the process and outputs of themulti-lateral programme, Localising Agenda 21 (LA21).The programme was initiated in 1994 by UN-HABITAT,

a Belgian Consortium coordinated by the University of Leuven’sPost Graduate Centre Human Settle-ments (PGCHS), the Belgian Develop-ment Cooperation, and others in themunicipalities of Nakuru (Kenya),Essaouira (Morocco), Vinh (Vietnam),and Bayamo (Cuba).

This work seeks to make useof the benefit of insights from the LA21in these four urban contexts. Casestudies form the core of this book.Documented as independent chapters,each includes an overview of the con-text, urban history and the competinginfluences that define the urban space, the visions and strate-gic projects co-produced during the LA21 process. The workincludes a series of essays that conceptualise and develop par-ticular themes with reference to the case study cities.

It targets a varied audience including decision-makers,community developers, scholars, designers, students and in-terested individuals. Further information: http://www.unhabitat.org/programmes/agenda21.

A tool for advocating the provision ofadequate shelter for the urban poorISBN: 92-1-131716-9Language: EnglishPublisher: UN-HABITAT

This is the second edition of aconcept paper for UN-HABITAT’s Global Campaign

for Secure Tenure. This vital activity being imple-

mented by the agency’s ShelterBranch, encourages negotiation as analternative to forced eviction, and theestablishment of tenure systems thatreduce bureaucracy and the displace-ment of the urban poor by marketforces. It highlights the plight ofwomen, most of whom in developing countries cannot afford tobuy land or homes, unless they have the help or permission ofmale relatives. This 80-page document will be found useful togovernments, policy makers, professionals, slum dweller asso-ciations, civil society groups and others involved in housingrights and the provision of shelter.

Publications

22


Upcoming issues

From 28 February to 11 March, 2005, the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) will conduct theten-year review and appraisal of the Beijing Platform for Action (Beijing + 10) and commemorate the 30thanniversary of the First UN World Conference on Women held in Mexico in 1975. During 2004, regional

meetings were held to prepare for this review. The idea is to examine progress in implementing the Beijing Platformfor Action -signed by 189 governments- and the outcome documents. The next issue of Habitat Debate, Vol. 11,No. 1, will examine women’s role in human settlements development. It will carry the views of leading experts whowill weigh progress in an area where women still face considerable prejudice a decade after the 1995 Beijingconference.

UN-HABITAT welcomes readers’ letters to stimulate the debate for publication on this page. We alsowelcome brief articles of no more than 700 words related to topics in forthcoming issues.

The issues for the year 2005 are tentatively: Volume 11, No. 1 – Women in Cities. Deadline for the submis-sion of articles 30 January 2005; Volume 11, No. 2 – The urban downside: evictions, housing rights and streetchildren. Deadline 30 April; Volume 11, No. 3 - Keeping the Promise, a special World Habitat Day issue on theMillennium Development Goals. Deadline 30 June 2005; and Volume 11, No. 4 – Urban Management – the legacyof UN-HABITAT’s Urban Management Programme. Deadline 30 October 2005.

UN-HABITAT does not pay for articles submitted for publication in Habitat Debate. The decision to publish articlesor to edit these for format purposes lies exclusively with the Editor and the Editorial Board of Habitat Debate. Thesedecisions therefore cannot be appealed or discussed via e-mail or otherwise. Write to [email protected],or send a fax to +254-020-623477. Our postal address is: Information Services Section (Habitat Debate), UN-HABITAT, P.O. Box 30030 GPO, 00100 Nairobi, Kenya.

Habitat for Humanity InternationalCongratulations on the last issue (Vol. 10, No. 3 Cities – En-gines of rural development). I was especially impressed withthe fine message of the Executive Director on Page 2 of thepublication.

Our work continues to expand both here in the UnitedStates and around the world. We now have a presence in 100nations. We have completed something over 180,000 housesfor more than 900,000 people. By late 2005, we will have com-pleted 200,000 houses for a million people.

Currently, new Habitat houses are going up at the rateof a new house every 26 minutes. Many of those houses arebeing built in urban areas and, as time goes along, I know wewill build more and more houses and apartments in urban set-tings.

Again, congratulations on your good message in yourpublication.

Millard Fuller, Founder and President,Habitat for Humanity International

The Asian Rural & Social WelfareCouncilWe receive Habitat Debate from from the office of the Commer-cial Secretary of Pakistan at Abu Dhabi. We appreciate this kindof work for humanity.

Best wishes and profound regards,

Engineer: Shaukat Ali Qureshi, Director,Asian Rural & Social Welfare Council,Sargodha, Pakistan.

“The problem with planning is that it has been overtaken by mathematical models - traffic, density, impactassessment, public costs etc. discarding common sense

and empirical observation. When the job seems too difficult, thetool is probably wrong.

– Andrès Duany, American architect, Co-Founder of Congressfor the New Urbanism, author of Suburban Nation and Devel-oper of Urban Transect Theory

Letters

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African Ministerial Conference onHousing & Urban Development31 January - 4 February, Durban, South AfricaTheme: Towards an enhanced framework for promoting sus-tainable cities and towns in Africa.This conference is convened by the African Union and theSouth African Government, in collaboration with UN-HABI-TAT.

20th Session of the UN-HABITATGoverning Council4-8 April 2005, Nairobi, Kenya.The GC will examine the work programme for the 2006 – 2007biennium, the budget of the United Nations Habitat and Hu-man Settlements Foundation for the biennium 2006-2007, andthe progress report of the Executive Director.

Special themes: Involvement of civil society in improvinglocal governance and Post-conflict, natural and man-madedisasters assessment and reconstruction.E-Mail: [email protected]

United Cities and Local Governments,Asia-Pacific Regional Section26-29 April 2005, Daegu, KoreaTheme: Glocalization for the future

World Habitat Awards 2005The UK-based Building and Social Housing Foundation iscurrently seeking entries for the World Habitat Awards 2005.The awards which carry prize money of 10,000 pounds ster-ling are presented each year on World Habitat Day on thefirst Monday in October. For information see: www.bshf.org

Future events

Events

New agreement with ACP Group

UN-HABITAT and the Brussels-based African, Caribbean, andPacific Group of States (ACP Group) signed a cooperation agree-ment on 25 October aimed at promoting sustainable urbaniza-tion and the eradication of poverty in ACP countries. The agree-ment also aims to help the international community to implementthe Habitat Agenda and the Declaration on Cities and otherHuman Settlements in the New Millennium.

New launches of Governance andSecure Tenure campaigns

Several thousand residents of an informal community gatheredon the outskirts of Ouagadougou on 12 October to witness thesignature of a plan of action to launch UN-HABITAT’s globalcampaigns on urban governance and secure tenure in BurkinaFaso. On World Habitat Day, 4 October, in Casablanca, Mo-rocco, the campaigns were launched by the Minister of Housingand other Government members.

Norwegian Prime Minister visits UN-HABITAT

Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik of Norway and the Nor-wegian Minister for International Development, Ms. HildeFrafjord Johnson visited UN-HABITAT headquarters on 12October and signed a Framework Agreement with the ExecutiveDirector, Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka, aimed at improving the lives ofslum dwellers and urban poor.

Kenya’s first Nobel Peace Prize winner

UN-HABITAT Executive Director Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka hailedProfessor Wangari Maathai on winning the 2004 Nobel PeacePrize saying that her award showed recognition of the courageand endeavours of African women. Professor Maathai, 64,Kenya’s Deputy Environment Minister, is the first African womanto be awarded the peace prize since it was created in 1901.

Senior Chinese leader visitsThe Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Chinese Na-tional People’s Congress (NPC), Mr. Wu Bangguo, visited theUnited Nations headquarters in Nairobi on 30 October. He waswelcomed by the Deputy Executive Directors of UN-HABITATand UNEP

Bringing Africa to the G8 agenda

Mrs. Tibaijuka met in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on 7October for two days of talks with members of the new Commis-sion for Africa that is preparing a report for next year’s meetingof the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations. Mrs.Tibaijuka is one of 17 internationally known figures on the Com-mission convened by the British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair.

The Second World Urban Forum

The Second World Urban Forum closed with a call from urbanleaders on governments to give local authorities more supportsaying the challenge of urbanisation is the greatest facing hu-manity in the new Millennium. The forum was held in Barcelona13-17 September 2004. Keynote speakers called for a reneweddrive for decentralization, and expressed concern that millionspeople in cities around the world still lacked access to safewater and sanitation, health care, education, shelter, and secu-rity of tenure. Mrs. Tibaijuka accepted Canada’s invitation tohost the Third World Urban Forum in Vancouver in June 2006.

HEADQUARTERSUN-HABITATP.O. Box 30030, GPO,Nairobi, 00100, KenyaTel: (254-020) 623120Fax: (254-020) 624266/624267/624264/623477/624060E-mail: [email protected]:http://www.unhabitat.org/

REGIONAL OFFICESAfrica and the Arab States

UN-HABITAT Regional Office forAfrica and the Arab StatesP.O. Box 30030, GPO,Nairobi, 00100, KenyaTel: (254-020) 621234/623221Fax: (254-020) 623904/623328(Regional Office)624266/7 (Central Office)E-mail: [email protected]:http://www.unhabitat.org/roaas/

Asia and the PacificUN-HABITAT Regional Office forAsia and the PacificACROS Fukuoka Building, 8th Floor1-1-1 Tenjin, Chuo-kuFukuoka 810-0001, JapanTel: (81-92) 724-7121Fax: (81-92) 724-7124E-mail: [email protected]: http://www.fukuoka.unhabitat.org

Latin America and theCaribbean

UN-HABITAT Regional Office forLatin America and the Caribbean(ROLAC)/Oficina Regional paraAmerica Latina y el Caribe (ROLAC)Av. Presidente Vargas, 3131/130420210-030 - Rio de Janeiro RJ,BrazilTel: (55-21) 2515-1700Fax: (55-21) 2515-1701E-mail: [email protected]: http://www.unhabitat-rolac.org

UN-HABITAT OFFICES

LIAISON OFFICESNew York Office

UN-HABITAT New York OfficeTwo United Nations PlazaRoom DC2-0943New York, N.Y. 10017, U.S.A.Tel: (1-212) 963-8725/963-4200Fax: (1-212) 963-8721E-mail: [email protected]

Geneva OfficeUN-HABITAT Geneva OfficeONU-HABITAT Bureau de GenèveMaison Internationale de l’Environnement 2International Environment House 27, Chemin de Balexert5th FloorCH-1219 Châtelaine, GenèvePostal address:UN-HABITAT Geneva OfficePalais des NationsAvenue de la Paix 8-14CH-1211 Genève 10, SwitzerlandTel: (41-0) 22 917-86 46/7/8Fax: (41-0) 22 917-8046E-mail: [email protected]: http://www.unhabitat.org

European Union OfficeUN-HABITAT Liaison Officewith the European Union andBelgium14 rue MontoyerB-1000 Brussels, BelgiumTel: (32-2) 503-35-72 (32-2) 503-1004Fax: (32-2) 503-46-24E-mail: [email protected] [email protected]: www.unhabitat.org

INFORMATION OFFICES

Central EuropeUN-HABITAT Information Office forCentral EuropeH-1124 BudapestNémetvölgyi út 41. 2. ep. 1.1.,HungaryTel/Fax: (36-1) 202-2490E-mail:[email protected]

IndiaUN-HABITAT Information Office5th Floor (East Wing)Thalamuthu Natarajan Building(CMDA Building)Egmore, Chennai 600 008IndiaTel: (91-44) 2853-0802/ 2855-5834Fax: (91-44) 2857-2673E-mail: [email protected]

ChinaUN-HABITAT Beijing Information OfficeNo. 9 Sanlihe RoadBeijing 100835People’s Republic of ChinaTel: (86-10) 6839-4750, 68350647Fax: (86-10) 6839-4749E-mail: [email protected]:http://www.cin.gov.cn/habitat

Russian FederationUN-HABITAT Executive Bureau inMoscow8, Stroiteley Street,Building 2Office 809Moscow, 119991Russian FederationTel: (7-095) 930-6264Fax: (7-095) 930-0379E-mail: [email protected]: www.unhabitatmoscow.ru

Habitat Debate Vol. 10, No. 4, A future for urban planning

Documents

Transcript of Habitat Debate Vol. 10, No. 4, A future for urban planning