Geneva, Palais des Nations - May 3-6, 2000
CITIES OF THE SOUTH:
SUSTAINABLE FOR WHOM?
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ESF/N-AERUS International Workshop Geneva, Palais des Nations - May 3-6, 2000
CITIES OF THE SOUTH:
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Darshini Mahadevia
School of Planning, Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad, India
Last two decades has seen large number of development policy changes. Particularly, the 1990s has witnessed a significant change in the paradigm of development at the global level, the shift being towards sustainable and human-centred or people-centred development paradigms. The new development paradigm emerging recognises the need to be inclusivist and not exclusivist; broad-based and bottom-up and not centralised and top-down. These ideas have been subsumed under the paradigm of sustainable development, alternatively referred as sustainable human development. There is therefore a very high and all-round positive feeling about the outcomes in the future.
While the overall feelings are positive, there is also a certain disappointment, with inability to achieve rapid results. Starting from, inability to functionalise the concepts and paradigm into actions, realising the inadequacy of the approach, inability to implement the programmes (that is, inadequacy of actions), dogged continuance of the old structures and systems of power and success stories not replicating, are the few setbacks of the new paradigm of development. Also, there is a lack of conceptual clarity; mainly because of the different meanings the term sustainability assumes depending on the philosophy, political ideology and reality in which the concept is operationalized. There are differences with regards to what the new paradigm should lead to, in other words, what is the utopia that one is working towards. Amidst these conceptual differences of sustainable development concept of sustainable cities has to be located.
Concept of sustainable cities is an amalgamation of number of independent ideas and processes; urban environment movement, decentralization of local governance, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992 and with it popularisation and then operationalization (through Agenda 21) of the concept of sustainable development, and Habitat II Conference of United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS) in Istanbul in 1996. Two other UN Conferences of the nineties, Beijing Women's Conference and Social Summit at Copenhagen in 1995 are other two influences, not much observed in sustainable city concept but definitely has reflection in the concept of sustainable development. As a result number of international efforts have been observed in the latter half of the nineties towards sustainable cities; Sustainable City Programme (SCP), Urban Management Programme (UMP) that is part of the SCP, setting up of Urban Environment Forum (UEF) and recording and supporting of Best Practices, setting up of International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), International Union of Local Authorities (IULA) and UNCHS's awards of Best Practices towards Sustainable Cities. While a good beginning has been made, the concept of 'Sustainable Cities' lacks conceptual variations emerging from differences in ideologies and contexts from which the approaches emerge (the current concept being moored in only one paradigm) and fragmented or extremely micro practices (giving a cause of pessimism when looked in the macro context). This paper reviews the concept of 'Sustainable Cities' locating it in the overall debate of 'Sustainable Development' and critically overviews the practices towards 'Sustainable Cities', in the context of the South drawing experience from India to enunciate the Southern perspective on 'Sustainable Cities'.
The second section, after this introductory section deals with the concept of sustainable development and following from there the concept of sustainable cities. The North vs South debate is taken up here. Then follows the section that addresses issues related to urban development in India, which is the second largest country in the world housing about 16% of the global population and even at such a low level of urbanization, urban India alone has population to become the fourth largest country in the world. Number of urban poor in India would amount to the population of the whole of Mexico. The fourth section overviews the implementation of programmes towards sustainable cities in India. Deliberately, the term SCP is not used as that would limit the discussion to only programmes supported by the international development agencies and to components identified by the SCP whereas there are many independent efforts at the national and city level that are not part of the SCP but can lead to sustainable cities. The fifth section overviews the spontaneous efforts from the grassroots towards sustainable cities. The last section discusses the issues of Southern Perspectives on sustainable cities. Within the South there is a South, whose perspective should be taken care of for in efforts towards sustainable cities.
N-AERUS: Network-Association of European Researchers on Urbanisation in the South
http://www.naerus.net