STATE OF THE WORLD'S CITIES 2012/2013 Prosperity

exceptions, modern urban planning has failed to integrate
the urban poor in the socioeconomic fabric of the city.
As an expert in Bangalore put it, “The poor have survived
despite master planning.” 30 Understood primarily as a
technical tool, planning has been unable to address the
power relations that have been at work to the detriment of
the great majorities of urban populations. Planning has also
proved unable to prevent environmental degradation or the
formation of slums, and is notable for serious shortcomings
in terms of transport and urban mobility.
Conceived as a comprehensive, long-term strategy,
a master plan – the quintessence of modern planning –
typically represents an ideal end-state for a particular city
with serious gaps between the initial vision and actual
results. This has ensued in what a scholar in 1996 called
“the dark side of planning” 31 , something an expert in
Montevideo has referred to as “urban plans that are at odds
with the notion of prosperity.” 32
The shortcomings of modern urban planning have
triggered significant reform since the 1980s and 1990s, in an
effort to move away from comprehensive plans, top-down
decision-making and wide-ranging regulation. 33 A more
flexible approach was adopted to improve conditions in
cities, through ‘strategic planning’ and other methods that
are more pragmatic, incremental and typically focused on
‘getting things done’. However, too many ‘strategic urban
plans’ have effectively imposed an entrepreneurial view of
the city, promoting mostly economic prosperity and often
turning into marketing gimmicks in all but name, complete
with oversized architectural designs and mega-developments.
In emerging or developing countries, these initiatives
typically favour the gentrification of entire areas and, at times,
massive displacement in order to make room for highways,
skyscrapers, luxury compounds, shopping malls, etc., at the
expense of the habitat and livelihoods of the poor. 34
UN-Habitat policy analysis in 50 cities in Asia, Africa,
Latin America and the Arab States (2011) shows that up
to 80 per cent of local
experts believe that the
benefits of economic
FACT prosperity mainly serve the
interests of the wealthy and
politicians (a view shared
by up to 90 per cent of
African experts). Through
political influence, bribery
and corruption, these
powerful interest groups
Whatever
the planning
approach, powerful
political and economic
interests keep interfering
with the design and
implementation of
strategic plans and
the pursuit of urban
prosperity for all.
Innovating to Support the Transition to the City of the 21st Century
109
FACT
From Asia to Africa to Latin America, ‘master’,
‘blueprint’ and layout plans have had similar,
harmful consequences in countless numbers of cities: spatial
segregation, social exclusion, excessive mobility needs and
consumption of energy, together with poor regard for the
potential economies of scale and agglomeration that any city
can offer. 29
manage to distort urban plans, dodge spatial or legal rules,
reduce the production of public goods and manipulate
the power of eminent domain; in the process they
capture unfair shares of a city’s potential, resources and
prosperity to the detriment of large, poor majorities of
urban populations.
The New Urbanism Movement of the early 1980s
broke with conventional master-planning and introduced
a number of welcome innovations: liveable, pedestrianfriendly
cities, dense neighbourhoods with mixes of
housing and job-creating commercial and business sites,
together with mixed land uses having a diversity of
buildings in terms of style, size, price and function – all
of this with a strong focus on local communities. 35 For all
these fresh efforts, though, a conventional approach to
urban development has remained dominant to this day.
In developing and emerging countries alike, cities are still
hostages to a mix of homogeneous forms or functions on
the one hand, and spatial /social segregation on the other
hand. Urban areas continue to expand across endless
peripheries, with serious, pervasive problems of traffic
congestion, enhancing the dependence on motor vehicles
and intensive use of expensive fossil fuels. This dominant
type of city is detrimental to the built heritage and the
environment, including
surrounding agricultural
land, as well as biodiversity.
This is the pattern which
UN-Habitat refers to as
the “Global Standard
Urbanization Model
of the 20th Century”
(GS20C), 36 Today, the
FACT GS20C
model appears to be
predominant across
the world, being
largely driven by land
which
speculation and real
estate interests that
privileges individualism,
build cities according to
consumerism, new
financial and economic
(artificial) values and
parameters often
lifestyles, excessive mobility radically at odds with
and privatization of the
shared prosperity.
public space.
37