“Cities Must Move Away from Linear Model of Development to a Circular One”: Vijay Jagannathan

Cities have over 70 per cent share in global greenhouse gas emissions and 75 per cent of primary energy consumption. Many countries are pledging to achieve net zero emissions in order to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. This is a significant challenge, especially considering that by 2050, more than two-thirds of the global population will reside in urban areas, leading to greater infrastructure demands and heightened carbon emissions. To achieve this monumental feat, cities need to cooperate not only within their own nations, but also internationally and organisations like CityNet will play a crucial role in this effort. Vijay Jagannathan, Secretary General of CityNet, an association of 140+ urban stakeholders committed to sustainable development in the Asia Pacific region, and an adjunct professor at the Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington University spoke with Abhishek Pandey, Editor, Urban Update on the importance on circular economy in cities, international city-to-city learning and many other topics

FIRSTLY, I WOULD LIKE YOU TO TELL OUR READERS ABOUT THE EVOLUTION OF CITYNET AND HOW IT STARTED.

CityNet started as an initiative of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) in the 1980s. Many realised that for better development of cities, they should learn from other cities, transcending national boundaries. That is how the idea to set up a network where people will share their experiences and build capacity based on shared learning resulted in the origin of CityNet.

The other thing UNESCAP proposed is that the more advanced cities should host this city network. That’s how we got our first host, Yokohama City in Japan, which hosted CityNet for about 30 years. After that, Seoul in South Korea became our new host city. The Mayor of the host city serves as the president of CityNet. They provide us with our budget, housing, offices and capacity building our members may need.

Today, CityNet has about 160 members. Unlike other networks, we not only include cities, but we also have what we call partner agencies, meaning any NGO, university, or even a company, (Microsoft was a member of CityNet for a few years) can come and join CityNet to promote more exchange of ideas within the network.

IN ADDITION TO KNOWLEDGESHARING AMONG CITIES, CITY-TOCITY PARTNERSHIP AND CAPACITY BUILDING, WHAT OTHER AREAS DO YOU FOCUS ON IN CITYNET?

The focus area right now would be the SDGs, for which we barely have six and a half years left, and how we can support cities in achieving the SDGs. Since 2015, after the signing of the Paris Peace Climate Agreement, political and national leaders have begun to realise that if they want to reduce the impact of climate change, they have to focus on cities. Cities are where people are building a lot, buying cars, cutting trees, and cities are the ones that suffer the most each time there’s a climate problem.

The focus has now shifted to figuring out how to work with cities, and that’s where the network comes in. We can share the experience of what others have done and what others have learned. If you have seen the news a few days back, you could see that the Frankfurt Airport was also submerged, meaning that extreme weather events like urban flooding are happening everywhere and are not just a problem of north or south.

WE ALSO SAW THAT WILDFIRES IN CANADA HAVE BEEN GOING ON FOR ALMOST 31 DAYS, AND JULY WAS THE HOTTEST MONTH EVER RECORDED. SO WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUR CITIES?

What is wrong is that we have moved away from nature’s way. Nature has a way of recycling everything, and nothing is wasted. But while building modern cities, we introduced a linear model, meaning we bring technology, cement, and iron and construct a beautiful city. This city produces jobs for people living there and throws the waste out.

Unfortunately, it has taken us years to realise that we should be walking nature’s way. Cities also have to be circular, not linear, just like nature. But we never had that concept. All waste,whether human or organic, we are just throwing it out that pollutes the river, creating the problem downstream. Changing to a circular economy model is one of the biggest challenges of this century. The idea is gaining momentum as people realise they have the most to gain. For example, if you have a house and install PV cells, what you get is clean electricity. On top of that, it is economical because you have to pay less money to the power company.

However, such initiatives can only succeed if citizens start adopting them seriously at the local level. It is essential to localise everything for greater success, including SDGs.

WHAT EFFORTS HAS CITYNET MADE IN THIS DIRECTION?

The thing is that people always consider and adopt these things only when they see somebody doing these things and achieving better results. That is why we put our efforts into improving knowledge exchange among cities. Let me give you a small example which has been picked up in many cities, about 20 years ago.

There’s a mayor in New York called Mayor Bloomberg who realised that the only way to change people’s behaviour in New York is by barring some of the most important roads for cars. There were huge protests involving taxi drivers, politicians and shop owners. But he just blocked Times Square for cars.

What it did was it changed the character of the city. Because then you could have more people walking on the street, less accidents. Though cars had to be parked far away, people could enjoy the city a lot more. This has happened in many Indian cities too.

BACK IN TIME, WHEN YOU JOINED IAS IN 1972, INDIA WAS A VILLAGEORIENTED AGRICULTURE SOCIETY. SO, WHAT KIND OF CITIES DID YOU SEE THEN? WHAT HAS CHANGED IN INDIA’S URBANISATION FROM 1972 TO 2023?

Calcutta is a very good example. Unlike Mumbai, after partition, Calcutta and Delhi were two cities that got a large number of refugees. The difference was that when refugees came from Punjab to Delhi, many branched off to different careers and by the next generation, they had all moved up the economic ladder. But refugees that came to Calcutta were the poorest Hindus from the villages of Bengal. Since they had nothing, they took shelter in the streets, creating huge slums.

When I was in urban development in Calcutta, there we had a programme called the Basti programme. Thirty lakh people were living in very bad conditions in Basti, exactly like a village with little thatched huts without bathroom, toilet, etc. India we had had extreme wealth, on the one hand, and extreme poverty, on the other.

The big change came about from the time when Atal Bihari Vajpayee started the Golden Quadrilateral idea. Ultimately, connecting with good highways is what makes you grow. Exactly like America did under FDR and China did by copying America in the 1990s. Doing so revolutionises your concept of village and city, by creating opportunities for people in rural areas to earn money.

Then, India opened up its economy. Everybody started buying two-wheelers, then a car and then people went after an air conditioned car meaning that people were creating a very unhealthy city but didn’t realise it. It’s only now you realise that when you see the air quality in these cities. It’s like breathing two packets of cigarettes a day you are out on the street.

To answer your question about SDGs, the reason it’s important is because it’s trying to tie up all these loose ends together. Everything earlier was complaints, but now we are saying no to that. If you want to improve your lifestyle and that of your children, you have to follow the broader concepts summarised under the SDGs. You could say that SDGs, at one level, are very vague goals. But at the local level, you have to bring it down to something more operational.

What does reducing inequality mean? In a city crowded with slums, equality means everybody should have access to a toilet and drinking water in their house. These are some of the things the government is doing, exactly what you have under the philosophy of the SDG. The toilets you create for everyone may not have been used by 30 per cent people earlier, but by the next generation, everybody will be using them.

WE HAVE SEEN FLASH FLOODS, WE ALSO TALKED ABOUT BAD AIR QUALITY BECAUSE OF THE GHG EMISSIONS. SO WHAT, ACCORDING TO YOU, ARE THE FAULT LINES IN CITIES?

The city’s biggest fault line is the lack of consideration for planning. Its political leader who decides the course of development, and then the real estate developer implements it. Many problems we see in every city in India, in fact all over Asia and Africa, is because of what you call bad governance and poor planning because city leaders don’t give responsibilities to planners, a very important people in the development process. So what went wrong is basic governance, which ultimately comes from common sense.

DO YOU THINK OUR URBAN LOCAL GOVERNANCE, ESPECIALLY THE ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES, IS NOT THAT STRONG IN INDIA COMPARED TO KOREA, JAPAN OR EUROPEAN COUNTRIES?

Definitely. In India, everything goes back in history. In 1880, they passed the first decentralisation act, allowing the formation of three presidency towns of Calcutta, Mumbai and Madras. They allowed local governments to manage local activities, just like in England. That created leaders like Balgangadhar Tilak, Gopal Krishna Gokhale because they got elected and got political power. British were so worried that they decided to kill the local government institutions in the early 20th century.

BUT THEY MADE BUREAUCRATS VERY STRONG.

They made bureaucrats strong because political people were going to challenge the British authority. Before Gandhi ji came in, the entire challenge to British authority was coming from local government officials like Lala Lajpat Rai. That is why the English government decided to weaken the local government institutions, and that weakness persisted even after independence. Even today, you find that state governments don’t want to give power to the city.

DID SOMETHING CHANGE AFTER THE 73RD & 74TH AMENDMENTS?

There was hope, but it hasn’t happened. Politically what happened is that for the head of the state government, the city is the most important source of power, especially if you have a mega city like Bengaluru, Mumbai or Pune.

For example, CMDA in Calcutta, which I was the secretary of, had a budget in the 1980s of about 600 crores. A large amount of money used to come from the government of India, the World Bank etc. Now, the CMDA reports to the chief minister. Although all our work was in the city, I had no line of responsibility to the mayor. So why would I bother about the mayor? The mayor could use my money better, right? That’s been the problem in all the Indian cities. You find that the Chief Ministers are making all the deals. But the origin of the problem is British mischief. They did it years ago because they didn’t want the local leaders to be strong, and that is unfortunately found only in India and Pakistan.

BUT IF IT WAS BECAUSE OF THE COLONIZATION IT DID NOT HAPPEN IN OTHER COLONIES LIKE PHILIPPINES OR EVEN KOREA.

In the Philippines, they followed the American system. Like we had our 73rd amendment, they also have a local government act, but they made one big difference. Every year, central government transfers a large amount of money to every local government. It’s called transfer and not grant because they’re saying that your local government are as much a government as we are. Based on the population, you will automatically get a fixed portion of the money.

Here it’s more about grants, meaning that when a mayor gets elected, he or she knows that he’s going to get this much money and can do whatever they like with it as long as they stay within the government audit guidelines.

Indonesia is a more interesting case because Indonesia started like India. They had the Dutch, and they also had a weak local government. But then President Suharto was thrown out, they made a new constitution, and at that time, they decided that mayors should become more powerful. So they gave power to the mayor and said that you are in charge of your city. They divided up what they called the megacities.

Wali Kota is the head of the mayor of a big city and has a lot of power. He can collect money and can get direct money from the national level. When they did that, the mayor automatically became powerful. Even the current president used to be the mayor of two cities.

The President said that they are going to move the capital from Jakarta because he realised that it was unsustainable. It is home to 20 million people, situated in an earthquake zone, and the seawater is submerging it. My point is that the local experience is the only thing that will make the city sustainable. The more you take it to a higher level, the less sustainable it becomes.

I WOULD SAY IN INDIA AS WELL SOME MAYORS BECAME MINISTERS EVEN AT THE CENTRAL LEVEL. BUT WE DON’T SEE MANY EXAMPLES APART FROM THREE STATES TAMIL NADU, MAHARASHTRA AND WEST BENGAL. SO WHERE DID OTHER STATES GO WRONG?

Again, you’ve got to go back to history because the British had three systems of land administration—Zamindari, Ryotwari and Mahalwari. They had the Zamindari system in Eastern India; the Rayatwari system in Bombay presidency, and South India. In the ryotwari system, they had local officials collecting money, maintaining records and all those kind of things. The entire bureaucracy, if you look at the administrative set-up in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Gujarat, is much, much stronger than in other parts of India because they’ve been doing this for 200 years. There is a certain respect for the authority, and there are a lot of local governance systems in every village. The Zamindari system was operational in West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, etc. But there was no one at the village level, and there was no patwari. The Zamindar was in control; the British would come every now and then to check the land. That weakness has come right through, even in the district administration. The ability of district administration to manage a city of the size of Sholapur or Nagpur isn’t there in eastern India. Since Calcutta itself was so big, there was some capacity. But you go outside, to Assam, Jalpaiguri, it’s a mess and when you go to Bihar, it’s even worse. In areas where the feudal system was dominant, the lower caste had no authority. Feudal automatically means that backward castes are left out,but in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat even the backward castes are pretty strong.

COMING BACK TO YOUR CURRENT ROLE IN KOREA, WHAT IS THE SYSTEM THERE? FOR INDIAN READERS, I WANT YOU TO TELL HOW KOREA WORKS, WHAT HAPPENS IN THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT, AND THE POWERS AND AUTHORITY THEY COMMAND.

After the Korean War, the area was heavily influenced by the Americans, just like in the Philippines. You see that the American system is very much decentralised. Mayors are powerful, and there is a council that takes care of the budget, and the mayor is not part of the assembly.

There could also be problems,like if the assembly and the mayor don’t get along and the council refuses to pass the budget. They realized that in order to grow, they needed to attract investment. They did not follow the Russian model of having state enterprises, like Indira Gandhi did. Remember, Korea in 1970 was much poorer, but by 1987, they reached a level to host the Olympics. Their model was to bring in private enterprise, for which you need infrastructure. So they started focusing on infrastructure that would make them business—friendly and that made a big difference.

Their politics is as complicated as anywhere else. However, everybody agrees that at the end of the day, what matters is how much investment you are getting into the city, which interestingly is happening now in India. India is doing right now what Korea did in the 1980s and China did in the 1990s, which is to say that plan your city in such a way as to attract as much investment as you can.

ARE MAYORS ELECTED DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY?

Mayors are elected directly separate from the Council. The mayor and the councillors may not be the same party. But mayors are powerful because they can set the taxes and revenues.

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE COURSES YOU MENTIONED EARLIER THAT CITY GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS IN INDIA CAN PURSUE AND GET THE ADVANTAGE?

What we have done as a first step, something you can even check on the website, is that we invited cities that had some good practices to contribute. These cities brief about what they did. It is something which you can directly learn from if you want.

Then the people looking at the website said we want more training,it’s not enough to know what a city has done. We also want to know how they did it, what rules they followed, etc. That is why we are starting these courses on different topics. These courses are available online and open to anyone. You can also take the tests online. Moreover, you get a diploma or a certificate if you pass. Some of those courses are very basic but useful for city officials as they could build the confidence essential for someone in a small town to learn about things.

We are also starting a regular course, which would also be online. It would be almost like being part of a regular Masters course. Let us say you finish two or three courses in urban planning and then you want to get a degree, then you can apply for that as well.