Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
Notice (8): Undefined variable: urlPrefix [APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8]news-clippings/postmodern-principles-should-form-the-foundation-of-jnnurm-by-sameer-sharma-270.html"/> न्यूज क्लिपिंग्स् | Postmodern principles should form the foundation of JNNURM by Sameer Sharma | Im4change.org
Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Postmodern principles should form the foundation of JNNURM by Sameer Sharma

THE ongoing negotiations with the World Bank provide an opportunity to urban policymakers to reinvent the present form of JNNURM (called v1.0). Thus far JNNURM v1.0 has focused on upgrading macro-level dimensions of city’s environment, ignoring the social and economic diversity (e.g., mixed uses and building types) prevailing in urban areas.

The top-down urban ‘renewal’ model underlying the present version of JNNURM is largely founded on the planning practices of Moses the ruthless New York bureaucrat who, regardless of real lives, forced highways through neighbourhoods, leading to what Peter Hall calls the “great planning disasters” of the west.

Attention of urban planners, accordingly, shifted from modernistic strategies envisioning a “sweeping, rational engineering of social life” to post-modern notions, advocated by Jane Jacobs, Richard Florida, Iris Young, and Leonie Sandercock, that inclusion of the local context and “thoughtful citizen involvement” during the planning process was important.

Such post-modern ideas, that account for multicultural and multiethnic Indian cities, have the potential to become the foundation of the remodelled form of JNNURM (labelled v2.0); additionally, mitigate the effects of rising temperatures and increased flooding in an era of climatic uncertainty.

And, these notions can be made operational through neighbourhood-level planning and real delegation based on Stohr’s concept of ‘subsidiary’ units.

Neighbourhood-level strategic planning: The basic premise underlying the paradigm shift is that residents are best positioned to understand what changes are most likely to lead to neighbourhood improvement; therefore, a key ingredient of the second version is citizen participation, using standard tools of the communicative approach (e.g., charrettes).

Moreover, citizen involvement is expected to strengthen civil society organisations to advocate the varying needs of diverse communities, provide for strategic leveraging of resources to meet green growth objectives, and induce voluntary action to address the local effects of climate change.

Accordingly, preparation of contextualised neighbourhood improvement strategic plans based on local history, culture, issues, and resources, as opposed to the project-by-project delivery of services articulated in JNNURM v1.0, is the first element of the paradigm shift.

Given that the built environment has to be retro-fitted to alleviate the adverse effects of climatic changes (e.g., temperature increase) alternate zoning regulations, such as form-based performance, are required to be developed for Indian cities for use in local-level planning.

Presently, Indian cities practise Euclidean zoning, which leads to segregated cities by protecting localities by separating incompatible uses and ignores traffic congestion and air pollution.

Form-based regulations, on the other hand, promote mixed use development and pedestrian mobility, but relegate environmental issues (e.g., natural resources) to the back due to their focus on design. Therefore, crafting sustainable zoning and building regulations for local areas is another component of the new framework.

Finally, reliable and innovative resource generation tools, in addition to the funds provided by governments and donors are required to make JNNURM induced initiatives sustainable. Rather than increase property taxes, innovative instruments based on the principle that growth will have to “pay its own way” need to be created.

Typically, developers contribute to the cost of their impact on the local community through land dedications, impact fees (fee-in-lieu programmes, utility connection fees) and linkage fees.

Tax increment financing (TIF) is an instance of a creative instrument to help urban local bodies to finance their portion towards development activities. Essentially, TIF is a tool to harness future revenues to pay for current expenditures and neighbourhoods. One way is to designate local units, for which strategic plans are being prepared, as TIF districts to pay for their developments.

Decentralisation from below: To design neighbourhood plans that are owned by citizens, municipal bodies will have to evolve the traditional structures and means of delivering services to permit staff to collaborate with citizens to identify and implement local improvements (e.g., watershed management to reduce flooding). Generally, contemporary decentralised forms are variants of top-down approaches.

Functions which the higher levels are unable to perform or had little interest in are typically offloaded and local urban authorities are often left to fend for themselves without the required support and resources.

Moreover, despite noteworthy economic and technological progress, poverty, hunger, health hazards and exclusion from the benefits of globalisation have remained; therefore, development efforts are required to be directed at population cohorts and areas that are left behind, requiring local action as close as possible to the affected population groups.

Walter Stohr’s ‘Principle of Subsidiarity’, is an example of a real bottoms-up approach in which processes and decisions that can be best performed at local levels are executed there, and only those that cannot be satisfactorily done at local level are “delegated upwards” to higher levels of government, the private sector, or the third sector (e.g., non-governmental organisations).

Accordingly, a prerequisite to access resources from JNNURM v2.0 will be to complete the process of entrusting functions, funds, and functionaries to the lowest local unit and establishing public-private partnerships.

All in all, post-modern principles should form the foundation of the remodelled form of JNNURM v2.0. The objective will be to ensure a higher quality of life in growing Indian cities in an era of climatic uncertainty.

What is required is to account for the different needs of population sub-groups by creating multilevel city governance structures based on the notion of subsidiarity and retrofit the built environment in association with citizens, leading to “low carbon green growth”.