STATE OF THE WORLD'S CITIES 2012/2013 Prosperity

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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
State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013 RE-POSITIONING URBAN PLANNING AT THE HUB OF THE WHEEL OF PROSPERITy “The city has many scars to treat and many wounds to cure; urban planning is powerless to do that” 38 , claims an expert in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic). Still, in the 50 cities surveyed by UN-Habitat in 2011, efficient urban planning and urban management are perceived as the most important conditions for shared POLICy If urban planning is to be in a better position to address the shortcomings of the GS20C model, both theory and practice must come under serious review to ‘rescue’ the discipline from its role as a mere technical tool, restoring it to its rightful position in the public sphere. POLICy As a decisionmaking tool urban planning must better defend the ‘public’ against the menace of everexpanding ‘private’ interests and its consequences: shrinking public spaces and reduced provision of public goods, which affect more collective, intangible dimensions like quality of life, social interaction, cultural identity and social values. FACT Very often planning has failed to represent correctly collective values and agreements, instead of contributing to the perpetuation of the urban divide with daunting, outdated, irrelevant requirements. prosperity. 39 For any revival or reinvigoration of urban planning to take place in the pursuit of shared prosperity, four conditions must be met: (i) restoration of public confidence; (ii) repositioning of urban planning in decision- Box 3.2.2 Streetwise versus Petrol-Powered Prosperity 110 making; (iii) deployment of the fullness of its functions across the five dimensions of shared prosperity; and (iv) support for these functions with adequate financing. Restoration of confidence: Public confidence must be restored in the capacity of urban planning (alongside other urban power functions) to represent the interests of all the population – including the poor, women, children, youth, elderly or disabled people, immigrants and ethnic minorities – so that the public, collective interest prevails at all times and across the whole jurisdiction over any other, and more particularly the vested or special interests of the rich and powerful. Repositioning: If it is to play this stronger role to the full, urban planning must be re-positioned. No longer a mere technical functionality, urban planning must sit at the core of urban power. Urban planning can only be as good as the values it represents and the governance mechanisms that frame it. In Peru’s capital Lima, it has taken ‘only’ an open-air public staircase all the way downhill to the city centre to change the name of an informal settlement from fearful ‘Quick Sands’ to ‘The Belt of Hope’. This goes to show the regenerating power of planning for urban public spaces and their decisive role in shared prosperity – well away from the constraints of the outdated automobile-based model of urban development. Indeed, public spaces, as symbolized by ‘the street’, can make significant contributions to socioeconomic prosperity, if only they are adequately configured. The street acts as the interface between public and private spaces, with retail businesses and jobs dependent on the quality of the pedestrian environment. In British towns, customers were found to spend nearly twice as much when walking instead of driving. In Mexico, research has shown that ‘walkability’ improves home and land values. Public spaces provide the physical support for urban infrastructure. However, particularly in the developing world, streets are designed mainly for motorized traffic, overlooking the human dimension and only adding to congestion with more or wider streets. The resulting huge imbalance in transport options damages other aspects of urban functionality. A number of cities have sought to counter this trend in a variety of ways. As early as 1962 motor vehicles were banned from Copenhagen’s main street and bicycle commuting was facilitated. In Melbourne, improved sidewalks, new pedestrian streets, squares and urban design have together increased pedestrian traffic by 39 per cent in daytime and 100 per cent at night. Combined with other modes of popular transport like biking and walking, Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) has spread from Curitiba (Colombia) to Jakarta, Bogotá, Guatemala City, Guangzhou, Istanbul, Mexico City, Brisbane and Los Angeles, among others. Upgraded and better designed public spaces have the potential to improve overall quality of life. In Cape Town under the Dignified Places Programme, more than 40 projects have brought dignity, beauty and better functionality to various areas, in the process demonstrating that after decades of repression it was once again possible to meet and talk in a shared space.
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PRODUCTIVITY ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINA
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Copyright © United Nations Human S
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Foreword This is a time of crises.
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Acknowledgements CORE TEAM Director
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Chapter 1.1 Conceptualizing Urban P
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State of the World’s Cities 2012/
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Part Two
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Chapter 2.1 Productivity and the Pr
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Chapter 2.2 Urban Infrastructure: B
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