World Town Planning Day tomorrow:

Towards healthy people and healthy cities

by Dr. Jagath MUNASINGHE

The World Town Planning Day would be celebrated in all parts of the world tomorrow under a timely theme 'Healthy people, healthy cities'.

A well-planned city

Sri Lanka too is celebrating the occasion with a few events led by the Institute of Town Planners Sri Lanka. However, any occasion is 'proudly celebrated' when the celebrators find some level of dignity of what they have achieved.

Over the past two decades we have witnessed the run-down conditions of the few cities in Sri Lanka including Colombo and the large number of medium and small-scale towns which are scattered in all parts of the island. They are ill-fated in many ways. Many of their local roads are badly constructed and impassable on rainy days. Drains are filled with garbage and sludge. The water stagnating in them provide breeding grounds for mosquitoes, flies and other insects. Waste dumps have become a common sight in almost all of them, an eyesore as well as a pollutant. Prolonged traffic congestions are a common experience for all those who visit these cities. The environmental conditions have been worsened by vehicular emissions and noise.

Paddy, marshy and agricultural lands were increasingly reclaimed. These physical developments go hand-in-hand with increasing heat and stuffy atmospheric conditions. Inconsistent modern-styled buildings have added hyper-realistic characteristics to the towns although they could irritate the inhabitants. Disorder, chaos and disregard have become integrated elements of those settings.

Users of the towns, especially care-needy pedestrians such as children, the elderly and the differently abled have become helpless creatures amidst these gigantic mobile machines that have swallowed almost all possible free space in the streets.

What can be done to get out of this messy situation?

Management deficiency

If one examines this scenario carefully, it is not difficult to understand that the sad situation is caused by a few common deficiencies. The first is the management deficiency that has led them to the present state. Management is a process that is geared towards achieving a set of objectives or targets through orderly, legitimate and economical means. Good management is supported by the determination, updated knowledge and range of managerial skills, space for wider participation and the adoption of sustainable practices. Hence, any organisation that aspires to the good management of its affairs needs to have persons equipped with the knowledge and skills and determined to achieve their targets.

The local authorities need to have urban managers who will take them from their unhealthy situation and keep them in a good state. Almost all local authorities in Sri Lanka, Municipal Councils, Urban Councils and Pradeshiya Sabhas have enormous resources untapped and underutilised.

They all have numerous ways of collecting revenue, as provided by the statutes, under which they have been established, yet uncollected due to ignorance, lethargy and lack of will.

Local authorities

If these resources are well mobilised and if the revenue is duly collected, the local authorities have no reason to rely and depend upon central government funding. They will be able to maintain their own roads, drainage systems, waste disposal and town spaces. It will be the task of the urban managers to revitalise and activate the relevant systems within the local authorities.

Urban managers will also be responsible to develop wider awareness among all citizens and get their participation in all matters of the local government. Only through such processes will we be able to achieve healthy cities. Town planners will be the ideal candidates to bear the positions of these urban managers.

Hence, it is time that town planners deviate from their conventional task of land use planning and shoulder the responsibilities of urban management.

The second is the information deficiency that hampers all local authorities from engaging in progressive work. One of the prerequisites for an efficient management of the revenue, services, and the environmental quality of a town is the readily available base of information. The progress of any work depends much upon the availability and the reliability of the information. All local authorities have heaps and heaps of documentation work related to different kinds of information.

Good town planning

Sadly, these records reveal facts and figures that are collected on a timely basis but slowly updated; revealing many facets, but least integrated; rather comprehensive, but less versatile to handle. Any information related to street lines; conditions of properties, their owners, occupants, market values, rents, legal status; waste collection; drainage network; road conditions; within an area of a few square kilometres can be obtained by a citizen only after many visits to the office of the local authority. In some instances, the information is not easily accessible even to the relevant officers.

This situation not only causes unnecessary delays related to development activities in towns, while adding huge unnoticed costs on local authority budgets, but also provides a good ground for bribery and corruption. The way out is the establishment of broad information systems within local authorities.

On one hand, these organisations are not aware of such improved technology and state-of-the-art information systems, thus, limiting themselves to existing outdated processes. On the other hand, they do not have persons who are equipped with the requisite skills to develop and maintain such information systems.

Hence, it is time that all local authorities recruit information administrators who are well trained in geographic information, remote sensing, systems analysis and information management. Their task will be to establish and maintain updated spatial information systems for areas of jurisdiction of the local authorities and provide information to the urban managers.

Although there can be many professionals good at handling information technology, town planners, well equipped with spatial information management skills, are the ones who are aware of the purpose and the type of information required for the development work in towns. Hence, town planners may think of diversifying their activities to include management of information into their scope of work.

Urban design deficiency

The third is the urban design deficiency that all urban areas have suffered over the past two decades.

The prevalent trends of development in towns cannot be regarded as healthy at any level. Their physical developments are disorderly and at most instances destroy the precious character of space, disturbs natural geographic features, mask invaluable vistas that added beauty to those places and impose alien structures on them.

Despite the fact that 'planning is meant for public interest' one may wonder whether our urban plans and development projects over the past few decades were meant for the public. Statistics show that while more than eighty percent of the people use public transport and walk, only less than twenty percent travel in motor cars in towns to get their work done. Yet, our towns have less space for pedestrians but more space for motor vehicles. Even the smallest area demarcated for pedestrians is sometimes forcibly occupied by parked vehicles. To get their work done users have to walk longer distances from one facility to another.

The walk is mostly not smooth as the walkways usually have potholes, debris and uplifted drain-cover blocks. At the same time, users are always helpless in tropical climatic conditions that prevail throughout the year.

A traffic jam in Colombo

They are victimised alternately by the hot sun and heavy rains. Hence, these towns are healthy for motorists and motor vehicles, but certainly not for people. The need thus is to have skilled and well-trained urban designers, who can think beyond technical and economic aspects of urban development, employed in local authorities.

Their task is to develop and implement urban design guides for the development of towns within the framework provided by the apex authorities. The town planners in Sri Lanka today have more sensitivity to the environments they deal with and are equipped with urban design skills. Hence, it will be the responsibility of the local authorities to recognise these skills and make use of them.

In summary, to overcome the pathetic conditions of our towns, the local authorities need to strengthen their capacities. There are three areas where such strengthening is required, namely, urban management, information administration and urban design.

Both the profession of town planning and the authorities of our towns may give more thought to these aspects. If adopted, we will be proudly celebrating a Town Planning Day within the next few years, when Sri Lanka becomes the Miracle of Asia.

The writer is a Chartered Architect and Town Planner and is Head of the Department of Town and Country Planing, University of Moratuwa.