[Urbanstudy] Urban Development: Leaders Lead, But People Do the Planning

[Vinay Baindur]

http://thecityfix.com/urban-development-leaders-lead-but-people-do-the-planning/


Urban Development: Leaders Lead, But People Do the Planning
Submitted by Victoria Broadus <http://thecityfix.com/author/toryb/> on May
4, 2011
[image: Photo by Gerardo Arévalo
Tamayo.]<http://www.flickr.com/photos/8513413@N08/4517484085/>

TransMilenio in Bogotá, Colombia was launched as a short-term goal that was
part of a long-term vision for urban improvement. Photo by Gerardo Arévalo
Tamayo.

The inclusion of all stakeholders in urban planning was a recurring theme
yesterday at the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development event,
“Sustainable Transport and Infrastructure Policies in Latin America,”
organized by the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean (ECLAC) <http://www.eclac.org/default.asp?idioma=IN>.  To
punctuate the point, presenter Morana M. Stipisic from Columbia Earth
Institute’s Urban Design Lab
<http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/1791>quoted Chinese philosopher
Lao Tzu: “When the best leader’s work is done, the people say ‘We did it
ourselves.’”

Ricardo Sánchez<http://www.eclac.org/cgi-bin/getprod.asp?xml=/noticias/paginas/2/21712/P21712.xml&xsl=/tpl-i/p18f-st.xsl&base=/cooperacion/tpl-i/top-bottom.xsl>,
chief of ECLAC’s Infrastructure Services Unit, led the presentations.
Sánchez focused explicitly on the role of transport and urban infrastructure
development in reducing inequality in the region and stimulating economic
and social development, neither of which can happen without the other.
Infrastructure development as a tool for poverty reduction is something we
have written about frequently. Transport infrastructure and more livable
built environments<http://thecityfix.com/learning-livability-locally-new-pbs-series-imagines-future-of-american-communities/>can
dramatically
increase<http://thecityfix.com/unep-brt-key-to-sustainable-urban-development-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean/>poor
people’s access to economic opportunities. These benefits can be even
more striking for the disabled
poor.<http://thecityfix.com/access-for-all-transport-for-the-disabled-poor/>Unfortunately,
as Sánchez pointed out, the “infrastructure gap” in transport
persists. Policymakers in cities around the world continue to let urban
infrastructure languish, even as demand for new infrastructure booms and
despite the axiom that infrastructure development boosts economic
productivity.

Sánchez highlighted the main challenges to sustainable and inclusive urban
infrastructure development in Latin America, which hold true in cities
around the world. These include tightness in space or shortage in provision;
inconsistent views among policymakers on best practices; institutional
failures (e.g. cities that rely on one agency to plan housing, another to
govern the streets, and still others to govern transportation); and a lack
of sustainability criteria in infrastructure design policies, a weakness
that Sánchez suggests is particularly glaring in transport and worse in
landlocked countries.

So how should we move forward in the face of all of these challenges? To
address this question, Dr. Stipisic from Columbia presented a preview of
forthcoming guidelines for sustainable and inclusive urban development,
called “Are we building sustainable and competitive
cities?<http://www.unescap.org/esd/environment/infra/documents/UN_Sustainable_Infrastructure_Guidelines_Preview.pdf>”
The guidelines establish three measures for urban infrastructure
development: quality of life, competitiveness and environmental
sustainability. They also clearly identify “counter-intuitive bad policies,”
such as widening roads to accommodate more cars, rather than focusing on
building cities for *people, *and responding to increased waste with more
landfills, rather than promoting and incentivizing “reduce, reuse and
recycle.”

But increasingly best practices are standing out and becoming more difficult
for policymakers to ignore. The U.N./Columbia publication highlights six of
them. Policymakers should *lead the change*, as Jaime Lerner did in
Curitiba<http://thecityfix.com/cities-in-focus-curitiba/>with his
commitment to transforming public transportation in the city.
Curitiba’s bus rapid transit (BRT) system continues to serve as a global
model <http://www.embarq.org/en/city/curitiba-brazil>. Policymakers must
also *bridge the gap,* linking short-term goals to a long-term vision for
urban improvement. Bogotá’s successful implementation of its BRT system,
TransMilenio <http://thecityfix.com/why-is-transmilenio-still-so-special/>,
can serve as an example. As EMBARQ Senior Transport Engineer Dario
Hidalgo points
out <http://thecityfix.com/why-is-transmilenio-still-so-special/>, Mayor
Enrique Peñalosa started the project from scratch and then seamlessly passed
it on to the next administration.

The third guiding principle is to *integrate sectors, actors and
institutions*. Think of the city as a living organism, where the
contribution of each unique part is crucial for the organism to thrive.  The
fourth and fifth guiding principles focus on the financial phenomena that
penetrate all urban ecosystems: *leaders must recognize the value of
sustainable infrastructure, and incentivize it appropriately*, while
pursuing policies that turn sustainable development into a profitable
business opportunity. And finally, the principle that we began with: *build
a city for the people, by the peopl*e. Public-private partnerships like Atal
Indore City Transport Services Ltd (AICTSL)
<http://www.embarq.org/en/project/indore%E2%80%99s-ppp-transit> in Indore,
one of India’s fastest growing cities, are emerging as a crucial tool to
promote transparency and include more stakeholders in the urban planning
process.

Ricardo Jordán<http://www.eclac.org/cgi-bin/getprod.asp?xml=/dmaah/noticias/paginas/1/9031/P9031.xml&xsl=/dmaah/tpl/p18f.xsl&base=/dmaah/tpl/top-bottom.xsl>and
Willard
Phillips<http://www.eclac.org/cgi-bin/getprod.asp?xml=/portofspain/noticias/paginas/8/35238/P35238.xml&xsl=/portofspain/tpl-i/p18f-st.xsl&base=/portofspain/tpl-i/top-bottom.xsl>closed
the session, again citing social inclusion and poverty reduction as a
central aim for urban planners. Jordán emphasized the urgency of making the
correct choices today, which governments can encourage by creating
appropriate incentives. Examples could include identifying economic losses
from congestion and implementing congestion pricing; providing reward
mechanisms for non-polluting companies; and removing “wicked” subsidies for
fuel and subsidizing research and development for sustainability, instead.
Phillips, who is the economic affairs officer heading the Caribbean regional
office, then spoke of the challenges particular to the Caribbean region,
which we can easily overlook when considering urban development in a global
context.  Extremely high population density on tiny Caribbean islands means
any developments will happen in someone’s – and likely a lot of people’s –
“back yard,” aggravating spatial and political challenges at once. Also, for
these service-dependent economies, a focus on international transport is
much more crucial than in larger nations, yet too much focus on tourism
fosters economic development enclaves rather than socially inclusive
development. Phillips’s speech reminded us of the need to contextualize any
best practice for every region, country and city.
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