Chaos and disorder in urban areas

The need for spacious planning at local level:

In an interview with Sunday Observer, Prof. S.T. Hettige of the Sociology Unit of the Colombo University discusses factors which may have contributed to the chaos and disorder of planning at Urban Council level.

Sri Lanka’s population density is only second to that of Bangladesh. This is understandable. The country’s population at the time of independence was about 6 million, compared with about 20 million today.

In spite of rapid population growth over the last sixty years, the vast majority of the population continued to live in rural areas exerting pressure on the available land resources in the countryside.

Successive governments took measures to distribute uninhabited and uncultivated land among the landless, while at the same time turning a blind eye to widespread encroachments on public land.

The resultant decline in the forest cover, besides other consequences, has driven wild animals into areas inhabited by people.

Today, we frequently hear stories of village families being attacked by wild elephants that roam around in the villages. Lesser creatures like monkeys and wild boar also do their rounds in the villages destroying crops.

In urban industrial societies where the vast majority of people live in large cities and work in manufacturing and service industries, rural hinterland remains sparsely populated.

While small family farms have mostly given way to larger commercial farms there, reforestation of large areas has also occurred side by side leading to restoration of natural forest.

This is what we observe in many developed countries in other parts of the world. The countryside in many of these countries has become a site for recreation activities such as camping, mountain climbing and gathering forest produce.

People who have migrated to cities in the developed countries are gainfully employed in industries and services. Their relatively high incomes have enabled them to find decent accommodation with modern amenities.

Systematic urban planning has created a livable urban environment characterized by proper environmental sanitation, open public spaces, efficient public transport, reliable utility services and effective maintenance of the public order.

Careful land use planning has been a critical aspect of all of the above. Such systematic urban physical planning has been possible due to certain preconditions created by the state in these countries.

These preconditions can be enumerated as enactment of enabling and supportive legislation, Development of institutions to give effect to such legislation,

Development and empowerment of key professions in the relevant fields, enforcement of legislative provisions without any undue interference by political and other vested interests.

As is well known, some of these basic conditions do not exist in Sri Lanka.

Though we have enacted legislation to regulate land use practices, they are often observed in the breach. Many institutions have been established and maintained at public expense but their effective functioning is severely hampered by undue external interference.

This becomes clearly evident when one looks at what has happened to reservations along railway lines, highways, rivers, beaches and canals. In urban areas, encroachment of reservations and public spaces is endemic and has led to serious health, environmental and safety issues.

The most appropriate authority to regulate land use practices at the local level is the elected local council. Yet, most of these councils do not have the capacity to do so. This is partly due to their steady marginalization over time by the central government politicians and supra-national bodies.

The latter often override the authority of local councils. Local-level elected representatives can hardly resist external interventions even when such interventions are detrimental to the well-being of local communities.

Ideally, the local councils should be empowered to manage and develop local resources according to a systematic plan. They should have the necessary resources and professional expertise to undertake surveys and develop data bases and zonal maps needed for planning purposes.

Yet, this is hardly feasible in most local council jurisdictions. Local authorities often cannot keep track of population movements, business activities and property development in their own areas. Rapidly increasing population density and haphazard development of business activities in urban areas clearly attest to this fact.

Sound land use planning at the local level is either facilitated or hindered by national policies in such sectors as housing, road development and transport.

While local authorities have little to do with what happens in these sectors, it is often supra-national bodies responsible for these sectors that have the greatest influence even at the local level.

Even in the most congested urban areas, there is little or no attempt being made to optimize land use for housing development. Private land developers sub-divide large blocks of land into minute parcels and sell them to individuals to build single story houses.

The state has done the same in many urban areas. The end result is the lack of any public space for community uses such as parks, gardens, plays grounds, etc. Haphazard filling of marshy land has blocked waterways leading to serious health and environmental problems.

When one travels through congested urban centres in all parts of the country, one realizes that local authorities have had little or no control over the development and management of these centers.

In fact, what one often observes is chaos or disorder. While it is obvious that the central government authorities cannot do much to sort things out, local authorities seem to be even more helpless.

How can we change the above situation? There is certainly no simple answer to this question. What is critically important is to build consensus on the need to make rational use of land resources available in a given area, particularly in densely populated urban areas.

Once various stakeholders such a political leaders, professionals, public servants, the private sector and the general public reach such consensus, it is easier to figure out what steps need to be taken to set in motion a process of rationalization.

As mentioned before, the most appropriate unit for land use planning is the local authority area. If each of the local councils can be empowered to undertake this responsibility, many of the issues connected with resource use that we observe today could be effectively addressed.

In this regard, the development of professional expertise in the relevant fields at the local council level is crucial. Other pre-conditions for success are mobilization of adequate resources, guarantee of local autonomy, public participation in the planning process and good governance at the local level.

It should however be emphasized that none of these things is likely to materialize unless a conscious effort is made by the authorities to initiate some concrete action on the above lines. On the other hand, authorities are unlikely to initiate action unless they realize that there is a public demand for change.