Role of town planners in urban development

by M. T. O. V. Peiris and R. S. U. Kumarasinghe

(Continued from last week)

Urban development is mainly a government activity in Sri Lanka, and to legitimise this activity, it has to be backed by legislation.

Legislation is referred to as an instrument expressing the will of the legislature and therefore, planning legislation includes Government Ordinances, Laws and Acts, together with the subsidiary legislation.

Planning and development originates as a Local Government activity and with the establishment of the first Municipal Council in Colombo by Ordinance No. 17 of 1865, by which the power to improve streets, control the construction of new buildings, order the removal of buildings in a ruinous or dangerous condition was conferred on the Municipal Council.

The laws enacted by the legislature either give express authority to undertake certain functions or make provision for enabling legislation to deal with specific functions.

It could be seen from the foregoing that Sri Lanka does not suffer from a dearth of legislation in respect of planning and urban development.

Shanties in an urban area

The only problem is that they are temporarily separated. It has been mentioned in various fora that due to the inadequacy of the previous legislation specially brought about by new development control problems of a highly urbanised character; new legislation has to be enacted.

The early legislation [e.g.: Housing and Town Improvement (H&TI) Ordinance, Town and Country Planning (T&CP) Ordinance, Urban Development Authority (UDA) Law] have not been rescinded, shows that those are important even today.

The position in Sri Lanka is that once a law is enacted, till it is repealed by another Act, it remains a good law. However, when there is an overlap, the latter takes precedence over the former.

There is a multiplicity of enactments and institutions in the country dealing with planning, ranging from pure economic planning to strictly physical planning. However, a critical evaluation of these reveals two important shortcomings.

1. A lack of consistency and co-ordination between legislative enactments pertaining to planning and development, and

2. An artificial separation of economic planning and physical planning. Socio-economic and physical planning today are so well integrated and interwoven, that it is difficult to view each as a separate entity. It’s really like the two sides of the same coin. The Ministry of Finance and Planning may make investment plans without due consideration to spatial aspects.

The important thing is that any project has to be located on grounds that it would have repercussions on the society and the environment.

Similarly, physical development plans and projects will have to be viewed with an eye on the economic aspects. A good example is the location of Export Processing Zones (EPZs).

Although such estates have been established at various locations; it is rather doubtful whether at any planning stage of the physical planning agencies such as the Urban Development Authority (UDA) or the National Physical Planning Department (NPPD) were involved.

Apart from the institutions under the Ministry of Construction, Engineering Services, Housing and Common Amenities and Ministry of Defence (governing UDA), there are various other institutions whose activities impinge on physical planning, such as the Coast Conservation Department, Central Environmental Authority, Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka, Board of Investment (BOI) in Sri Lanka, Road Development Authority and Sri Lanka Ports Authority when they implement their schemes without consultation and involvement of the physical planning agencies, they would not produce the optimum benefits to the people and the country.

The idea of planning is to provide optimum benefits to the majority of people; in other words is to bring about opportunities for all to harness the individual potential of the citizens. If there is a proper definition of ‘urban’ it is also adopted, the share of the urban population in the national population is bound to increase.

This invariably calls for a larger investment in urban infrastructure and other utilities. In the absence of a suitable urban policy and strong legal framework, some of the existing problems will get further aggravated. It is only through proper legislation and institutional framework that a suitable urban policy could be implemented to solve the arising urban issues in Sri Lanka.