The Urban Vision | Nidhi Batra

Name: Nidhi Batra

Bio: Nidhi Batra is a Consulting Editor-Urbanism with ‘The Urban Vision’. She is a practicing Urban Designer and Architect from Delhi, with 4 years of experience and educational background of School of Planning & Architecture, Delhi and T.V.B. School of Habitat Studies. She is a keen learner and practitioner exploring works in new dimensions to understand the theory and practice of urban design and architecture in a comprehensive manner. She observes built as a coordinated function of design, planning, and economic development and thereby her experience in the field has ranged from social relevant research and work in organizations such as Urban Design Research Institute, Mumbai and Global Studio working for the Millennium Development Goals directed towards improving the lives of slum dwellers in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has also contributed to the commercial realm, with large scale projects such as Townships, SEZ, Streetscape & Cityscape Projects through her ventures at S.K. Das Associated Architects, Delhi, RSP Design Consultants-Bangalore and Dickson Rothschild India Pvt. Ltd, India. She also has experience in aspects of Conservation, having worked with Navin Piplani through Taj Mahal Conservation Collaborative, on conservation work of Taj Mahal,Agra. She has been an inquisitive and meticulous student who has been awarded for her works during education, receiving Best Dissertation Award on the subject of ‘Adaptive Reuse’. She has also been awarded the First Prize and a Scroll of Honor by the Institute of Steel Development and Growth (INSDAG) jointly with two other teammates for the year 2003-2004, for the Best Innovative use of Steel in Architecture. She has been a sponsored participant by Rockefeller foundation for the ‘Global Studio-2007’ in Johannesburg – South Africa and further represented the Global Studio, in Rockefeller Urban Summit- Bellagio, Italy 2007. She is also directed towards theorizing about architecture and design. Her paper on ‘Modernism and Isolation of Heritage’ selected as part of poster session in International Meet of INTBAU held in Delhi. She has been a contributor towards the book ‘Century of the City’ by The Rockefeller Foundation.

Posts by nidhibatra:

The Race between Cities.

March 22nd, 2010

photo credit: Niyantha

Urbanization is a chase for economic development and revenue generation for our states and cities. Urban areas are attempting to be magnets of growth, alluring the essential entrepreneurs and investments providing impetus for growth and development. This is the changing definition and spatial behavior of urbanization in the present and post globalization.

What exists today is “urban entrepreneurialism”, where cities compete for economic growth, restructure “growth machines” to enhance their “competitive edge” and defend old niches from global challenges or craft new opportunities from globalized markets (Leitner and Sheppard 1998). David Harvey defines it as ”that pattern of behavior within urban governance that mixes together state powers (local, metropolitan, regional, national or supranational) and a wide array of organizational forms in civil society (chambers of commerce, unions, churches, educational and research institutions, community groups, NGOs and the like) and private interests (corporate and individual) to form coalitions to promote or manage urban/regional development of some sort or other” (Harvey 2001:402-3).

Also the intensity of inter-urban competition has increased, enhancing the importance of turning “place-in-itself” into “place-for-itself”, particularly for middle-ranking cities with an opportunity to improve their significance for outside investors (Smart and Smart 2003). Urban entrepreneurialism is one response to an uneven negotiating table for capital and localities in an era characterized by enhanced mobility, due both to technological change and to governmental deregulation. The terms of exchange are structured by the “hyper mobility” of capital: if a city doesn’t play the game on capital’s terms, they are likely to lose investment, resulting in economic decline and out-migration. Those who go along with the demands of the dominant capitalist actors are more likely to obtain or retain investment and experience population and economic growth.

These Competitive Cities are fundamental not only for driving up the economic performance of regions but also for achieving wider policy goals about sustainable communities and greater social cohesion. Competitive cities are vibrant places where people want to live - and will come from many different backgrounds in order to do so.

Urban policy has often revolved around what has to be done in order to create “business-friendly” environments in these competing cities. These primarily include

Financial incentives, subsidies, and public-private partnerships;
Infrastructure, especially for information technology (e.g. smart buildings, smart cities, and fiber-optics backbones) and logistics (airports, freeways, ports, cyber ports);
Institutional infrastructure: modifying regulations and free-trade zones, and reforms in intellectual property rights and transparency;
emphasizing the development of the right kind of human capital and targeted expenditure in education;
emphasizing social capital (networks, obligation and trust) and learning ecologies
branding cities
cultural strategies for a symbolic economy
Paying attention to environment protection and pursuing sustainable development

This new entrepreneurial paradigm in spatial development has established itself in countries planning activities as a main reference. The new planning philosophy puts stress on market based approaches, vision building and integration of socio economic and environment preservation goals. One of tis important aims is to use business sector instruments to increase efficiency and develop a more project friendly environment.

Strategic planning which emerged from the practice of large corporations has become a main tool for government to integrate competitiveness concerns in spatial strategies. Its extension to the sub national levels including cities and metropolises has been reinforced in a majority of countries by a general move towards decentralization of policies and granting more responsibility to lower tiers of government, according to the subsidiary principle. Cities have gained more margin for maneuver while city region linkages were emphasis. Another feature of the new planning model is a more pluralistic approach by public authorities based on public private partnerships. The pressure from more collaborative processes involving a much wider range of interests has increased. Previously planning was in the hands of public agencies working for the construction of the welfare state and therefore mainly orientated towards the delivery of social services. It is clear that an important prerequisite to augment city competitiveness is to better exploit the knowledge, innovative capacities and commitment of a greater number of urban actors.

This means that cities embark on programmes to improve the quality of urban life through various policies which is now the activity of urban local governments

Bangalore has reached the stage where it is now competing with other Indian cities (like Hyderabad and Chennai) as well as Asian cities (like Manila and Kuala Lumpur) to attract and generate domestic and international activities and investments. This can only be possible if it can ensure a high level of “urban efficiency” which stems from the absolute understanding of the current spatial issues and infrastructure requirements along with a strong capacity to anticipate the various social and economic needs and requirements of the multi-dimensional society.
In the Indian scenario this has resulted in large scale investments in ‘Mega Projects’, most significantly in infrastructure which forms the basis for these types of projects. One example is the billion Rupies ‘mega-city project’ which focuses on modernizing Bangalore by urban renewal and urban design. The funds allocated to Bangalore’s core agencies are for constructing fly-overs, ring roads and other grade separators, for the provision of fibre-optic services in high value industrial areas and for the construction of a new international airport at Devanahalli, 30km north of Bangalore as well as construction of the six-lane Bangalore Devanahalli expressway.

These ‘Mega projects’ (primarily infrastructure) receive a sizable investment (~10%) of the gross fixed capital formation in India. These investments have been made by both the government (central and state) and the private sector wherein the proportion of private sector investment has been increasing over the years.

Hyderabad is also marketing itself as a choice destination for ITES companies. While Gujarat is betting to be the new Mumbai for India and has its GIFT to boast. What do these competitions really mean for the economic geography of the nation is yet to be understood. It is also to be realized that competition does have the potential to be fickle and change the locale too soon. Also since the thrust of development through means of private led investment is increasing, loans by ADB, IMF which also proliferate privatization, the effects of the urban developments needs to take care of its socio economic equality within the cities geography. On one hand where this impulse of developments is favoring the nation as a whole, it might create inequalities at a local level. This new way forward, with its great potentials can be a tool to mediate the needs of a global competitive city as well as managing the resources for all creating a quality life.

References

Globalization, Mega-projects and the Environment: Urban Form and Water in Jakarta- Mike Douglass, Globalization Research Center and Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Hawai’i

Bangalore: Globalisation and Fragmentation in India’s Hightech-Capital – Christoph Dittrich

The cultural turn in interurban competition: globalization and the commodification of diversity – Alan Smart

Governance, economic settings and poverty in Bangalore- Solomon Benjamin

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Rethinking urban mobility

July 29th, 2009

Rethinking urban mobility : Sustainable Urban Transport

One of the key aspects of urban sustainability lies in the relationship between the environment and transportation. Transportation infrastructure and patterns are at the root of many environmental problems, including air pollution, increased reliance on non-renewable sources of energy that become a major cause for increase in energy consumption. Thus it is essential to include non-motorized transportation in the web of options to help create and plan for sustainable cities

NMVs offer low cost private transport, emit no pollution, use renewable energy, emphasize use of labor rather than capital for mobility, and are well suited for short trips in most cities regardless of income, offering an alternative to motorized transport for many short trips. Thus, they are appropriate elements in strategies dealing with poverty alleviation, air pollution, management of traffic problems and motorization, and the social and economic dimensions of structural adjustment. NMVs have a most important role to play as a complementary mode to public transportation.

Cities in Asia exhibit widely varying modal mixes. NMVs — bicycles, cycle-rickshaws, and carts — now play a vital role in urban transport in much of Asia. NMVs account for 25 to 80 percent of vehicle trips in many Asian cities, more than anywhere else in the world. Ownership of all vehicles, including NMVs, is growing rapidly throughout Asia as incomes increase. However, the future of NMVs in many Asian cities is threatened by growing motorization, loss of street space for safe NMV use, and changes in urban form prompted by motorization. Transport planning and investment in most of Asia has focused principally on the motorized transport sector and has often ignored the needs of non-motorized transport. Unless Non-Motorized Transport Strategies are adopted to slow or reverse this trend, problems related to traffic safety, air pollution, energy use, traffic congestion, urban sprawl, and the employment and mobility of low income people may spiral out of control, while increasing the speed of global climate change.

However, the future of NMVs in many Asian cities is threatened by growing motorization, loss of street space for safe NMV use, and changes in urban form prompted by motorization

Transport planning and investment in most of Asia has focused principally on the motorized transport sector and has often ignored the needs of non-motorized transport. Without changes in policy, NMV use may decline precipitously in the coming decade, with major negative effects on air pollution, traffic congestion, global warming, energy use, urban sprawl, and the employment and mobility of low-income people.

As an outlook towards sustainable cities, Non Motorized Vehicles are now being encouraged in various cities- for short trips. These cities are being designed for upgrading the transport facilities for NMV and pedestrians.

Aspects of NMT that illustrate its usefulness when access is limited are:

Flexibility

NMT provides a flexible form of transport that can be used for the door-to-door transport of persons and goods with improved travel time and route options.

Affordability

With low operational costs they provide an independent mode of transportation for users to commute to places of work and leisure.²

Ecological Sustainability

Promotion of NMT (Cyclists & Pedestrians) environment will provide an opportunity for city to reduce it’s consumption of non-renewable source of energy thus addressing the issue of energy efficiency/climate change.

As cities in Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, and several other European nations demonstrate, the modernization of urban transport does not require total motorization, but rather the appropriate integration of walking, NMV modes, and motorized transport. As in European and Japanese cities, where a major share of trips are made by walking and cycling, NMVs have an important role to play in urban transport systems throughout Asia in coming decades. Transport investment and policy are the primary factors that influence NMV use and can have an effect on the pace and level of motorization. To maximize transportation efficiency and sustainability, transport planning in Asian and other cities will need to focus more closely on stratifying different travel markets by trip length and encouraging different travel modes for various market segments.

In Asian cities there are many more complex issues surface when promotion of NMT facilities is considered. The motorization of Asian cities is at a vast rate, and NMVs are just considered as a mode for the poor. It is essential that the attitude towards NMVs as a whole in the city is changed through strong policies, encouraging NMV and discouraging expanse of Motorized Vehicle which Asian roads can’t even cater too. Solutions for our transport problems of increasing density, congestion, pollution doesn’t lie in concretizing and constructing massive flyovers, instead it lies in proper streamlining of traffic and propagating and promoting the Non Motorized Vehicle. Our roads need to be NMT friendly with proper facilities for the pedestrian and cycles. An attractive and effective design would encourage more and more people to take these modes of travel. Matters of design and policy can include

Make space for walking, cycling and public transport, at the expense of space used by cars and motorcycles
Restrict car & motorcycle use and access in the city-centre
Avoid road widening & construction of elevated highways in cities, instead planning for the kind of transport one wants in Asian cities
Provide good and sufficiently wide footpaths and NMV paths along all urban roads
Create low speed zones (30 km/h zones) and narrower roads discouraging more increase of motorized vehicle
Create cycle networks through out the city such that it formulates a continuous track and cycling thereby can result as a viable transportation mode, this accompanied with inter modal facilities at relevant locations in the city

Various Indian cities are now taking pioneering steps towards Promotion of NMT, with roads designed with appropriate facilities for the NMT. It is defiantly a positive step towards Sustainable Urban Transport. Integration of the hope of modernization of our cities, with increasing dependency on Motorized Vehicle and understanding and promoting Non Motorized Transportation within the same milieu are to be mitigated together in Asian Cities, and developing World Class Sustainable Cities.

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Approaches in transforming Informal settlements.

June 20th, 2009

Can we ever develop an all encompassing formula towards improving informal settlement that works in all situations?

We have discovered that there isn’t.

From an era of ‘mass slum Rehab’ & ‘Slum improvements’ to in-situ slum up gradation and surgical operations within the milieu of informal settlements – all have been approaches , with their fair share of successes and failures.
At present it is realized that the structure of an informal settlement, differs in all elements of form/semiotics/ syntax of built environment, landscape/open space and social order from a typical urban context. Therefore to approach an informal settlement with preconditioned ideas and design moves, emerging from a more urban understanding does not respect the underlying structure of an informal settlement, and thereby doesn’t necessarily translate to success. There are numerous distinct political/economical/social contexts within informal communities that demands discerning responses.
Here is an excellent article from Harvard design magazine with examples of transformations in informal settlements from Latin America which is known and acknowledged as a boiling pot , of inequalities and disparities but also full of possibilities and triumphs.

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Emerging urban geographies

February 24th, 2009

Never in human history have we been faced with urban situations the likes of which we will see in the Asia Pacific Rim over the next 25 years. New urban forms are emerging in cities such as Bangkok, Beijing, Mumbai, Calcutta, Dhaka, Jakarta, Karachi, Manila, Osaka, Seoul, Shanghai, Tianjin and Tokyo.

The rapid growth of Asian cities has been taking place at a time when the impacts of free trade associations, the globalization of decision- making on investment location, and the impacts of the new information- based industries are having a profound effect on city development prospects. Logic of globalization presupposes that integration of cities like these in the world system operates in a hierarchical set up in which upgrading or downgrading of their respective nation states finally determines their actual placement in the system. Such an up gradation in these cities is happening via means of – Structural Adjustment ¹. SAP is causing a major shift in emphasis from the government sector as the engine of economic growth to the private sector as a dominant partner in achieving accelerate rate of economic growth.²

Intervention by capital in struggles over the built environment is usually done through the agency of state power. State intervention thus becomes an omnipresent feature in the complex process of shaping and reshaping of the built environment. Various state regulations, legitimizing control over space epitomize the abuse of monopoly power, as the latter is all too easy to accumulate in spatial terms. The exact mix of private market, monopolistic control and state intervention, however, varies from time to time in any urban development endeavor.

Effect of Structural Adjustment on Urban Form

In case of structural adjustment, the dual process of Cost of recovery and Debt servicing as generated out of the acquired loan for infrastructure and development projects, through the means of development credits via World Bank and IMF is being understood and impact of this economic restructuring is now criticized. The criticism is based on the process adopted by these banks for providing the loan, and in turn the steps that need to be adopted by the third world cities for recovery and paying its debt, eventually.

As understood, that World Bank adopts a four-phase program, while granting the loan being:

Privatization

Capital market liberalization

Market-based pricing

Free trade

Such a policy clubbed with the adjusting to the status of ‘world cities’ has resulted in various new emerging forms and geographies within the mega cities of Asia. Policies of liberalization and privatization are resulting in massive private enclaves. Regional plan of Mumbai and the present Master plan of Delhi are suggestive of the same.³

In India, has comes the advent of Mega- City projects, SEZs, Transport and infrastructre development projects, adjusting the Indian Cities to the world city status. Mumbai is one of the five cities included in the centrally sponsored Mega City Scheme launched by the Government of India in the Eighth Five Year Plan. The agencies like World Bank, USAlD, etc. have recommended that the Floor Space Index (FSI) in the central areas of the city should be increased so that multi-storied structures can come up, providing space for business houses, commercial activities and high-income residential units. This would lead to the creation of a few high-density business and high-income residential districts, pushing out households that could not afford the costs. A large number of the industrial units in the post liberalization phase have come up in the villages and small towns around the big cities. The poor are able to find shelter in the “degenerated periphery”, get jobs in the industries located therein or commute to the central city for work ⁴. The entrepreneurs etc., associated with modem industries and business, however, reside within the central city and travel to the periphery through rapid transport corridors. This process of segmentation, manifested in different variants in different cities, would bring the large part of rural migrants into the peripheral zones

Illustrative figure to exhibit, the phenomenon that would be generated by new east-west linkages in the city of Mumbai- inner areas of city are getting restructured and poor are relocated to periphery

The future that haunts new world cities in the Asia Pacific Rim, are centered at being ‘non- inclusive’, where the growth is emerging as highly uneven and lopsided. Tools of planning are not fully developed, and new policies of development are being adopted without responding to one entire sect of society: the poor. Result is not just a disparity between rich and the poor, but a whole realm of ghettotization and new geographies. Though the phenomena appears similar to the processes that the first world cities, went through, with liberalization in the pre 90s and 80s, the third world cities can never replicate it. It is for the mere fact, that third world cities would always play the role of both the consumer and the producer, thereby affected by the First world cities. The phenomena would continue, if the present day polices and processes continue. It would either result in a massive rebellion by the deprived, (refer to Muoroto Conflict in Kenya, for its political implications) which would fight back for the rights of an inclusive city, or would continue with lopsided development both economically (where half of the nation still is based on agriculture economy) and socially, and would go through the same adverse effects as undergone by African cities such as Kenya, establishing a direct and a disadvantageous link between structural adjustments and urban poor.

References

Books

E.Rodolphe

Shaping Cities: Studies in History, Theory and Urban Design

David Harvey

Post Metropolis & Condition of Post Modernity

Master Plan 2021

Articles

Swapna Banerjee-Guha

Ideology of Urban Restructuring in Mumbai: Serving the International Capitalist Agenda