Urban Resilience: Key for sustaining future cities

All India Institute of Local Self-Government (AIILSG) organized a webinar at Infocomm India GoVIRTUAL 2021 on September 15 on ‘Key Considerations for Future Urban Development and Planning in India’.

The webinar addressed some of the most relevant question of current times – how COVID-19 pushed urban planners to think about redesigning more resilient cities, and how investing in green and energy-efficient infrastructure can help build a sustainable city? The aim of the discussion was to enhance new and improvise the already existing initiatives that have been taken up for making cities resilient.
The webinar was moderated by Abhishek Pandey, Editor, Urban Update. He commenced the session by inviting the esteemed panelists for the discussion, which included Golagani Hari Venkata Kumari, Mayor, Greater Vishakhapatnam Municipal Corporation; Saleha Sapra, Co-Founder, City Sabha; Sanyukta Bhatia, Mayor, Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC); and Prof (Dr) Ashwani Luthra, Director, Centre for Sustainable Habitat, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar.
Bhatia was invited first to share her views on urban resilience-related initiatives that have been undertaken so far to build resilience in Lucknow city in the post pandemic world. She started off by expressing her concern over the situations that this pandemic has landed us in. “It made us a prisoner of many restrictions. However, the habits that we accustomed ourselves to during the lockdowns are a part of our lives now,” said Sanyukta Bhatia. According to her, governments are working towards devising plans and strategies in combating such unprecedented situations and curbing its impact. However, these situations have forced us to think new strategic infrastructural planning. In Lucknow, especially, LMC has taken COVID-19 into special consideration while devising and executing any infrastructural plans. Keeping in mind the significance of green infrastructure, LMC has taken up the responsibility of reviving and taking care of 1000 parks and utilized government funds for their development. Moving ahead, she mentioned the surge in deforestation across Lucknow and said that LMC has improvised an artificial forest with a diverse variety of plants and trees to counter it. “Till this year’s World Environment Day, we had sown around 1.5 lakh plants and trees in the artificial forest,” Bhatia said. This forest has opened its doors to a variety of animals and birds, thus adding to the city’s green infrastructure.
Golagani Hari Venkata Kumari talked about proper urban planning, which is crucial for the development of cities and the country. “Our cities are diverse in geographic location and nature. Our first thought should be to make them sustainable, while keeping other key factors of planning and urban development in mind. We have seen how COVID-19 impacted countries. Taking a lesson from this, we need to strengthen disaster risk reduction, health infrastructure, and build resilience in face of such unforeseen situations in future. As COVID-19 has been such an unpredictable disaster for all of us, in order to become sustainable, we need to accept and acknowledge the change and plan accordingly,” Kumari said. Speaking of COVID-19 management, she mentioned that they had the advantage of ward system and village ward secretariat systems in Andhra Pradesh, which the ULB incorporated in creating awareness and conducting surveys and various other voluntary services. “To make cities resilient and more sustainable, we should focus on green growth health management, environment management, low carbon development, and good governance,” said Kumari.
Next, Prof Ashwani Luthra presented his remarks on urban development and planning. He mentioned that demographic and accumulated social and environmental changes are important to be taken into consideration and it is also important to take note of social and cultural transformations. It is in this regard regionalization of urbanization has to be followed. “We are forgetting regional planning in master planning. We need to shift from master to strategic planning approach,” he said. “If people would have taken note of these plans, they would have been more successful. We see floods and we term them urban floods because the terror is not taken care of. We must take note of climate sensitive planning,” Prof Luthra added. He appreciated Lucknow’s initiative for developing green infrastructure and said that green agenda should be formulated by all the states and cities in the true sense and all urban local bodies and stakeholders should take responsibility of these initiatives. For making human settlements and cities inclusive, making places livable should be the aim, which includes waste management to resource efficiency, optimality, good governance and financial security as its key constituents. “Our cities are still lagging behind because issues such as livability and livelihoods are in question. We are stressing more on smart cities but this may not be enough, as attention is not being paid to 40 per cent of population which is still below poverty line. The gap can be bridged only when infrastructural needs of this segment of population are met. Only then can we be sure of moving ahead. These are some of the key considerations in urban planning of cities,” concluded Prof Luthra.
Taking the discussion further, Saleha Sapra flagged off by quoting Mahatma Gandhi -“Future of India lies in its villages.” Tweaking it she said, “It lies in its communities and this is one of the most granular lessons that COVID has presented us with. According to her, for urban areas to be resilient, the concept of VUCA world, which stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous world, must be realised. The pandemic has brought migrant crisis, fractured urban informal economy, and collapsed public health systems. There have been multiple levels of unseen consequences, which include lack of governance and demographic spaces. “We must adopt the bottom-up planning approach and educate people of the places they reside in so that they know what is required to be done to develop it further. This way, we will be able to develop better communities and safer environments,” said Sapra.
Taking questions from the attendees, Pandey posed the first question to Sanyukta Bhatia and asked the percentage of population which participated in the development of parks in Lucknow. Replying to the question, Bhatia said, “When we undertook development of parks, residents came forward with great enthusiasm because people learnt how ‘health is wealth’ ever since COVID-19 spread across the country. That is why people have inclined themselves toward such initiatives.”
Pandey posed the next question to Prof Luthra asking, “What are the policy levels ULBs should focus on in making cities livable and resilient?” Prof Luthra replied saying, “ULBs are financially staffed bodies and they get funds for the projects but we are yet to see their independent development policy. Local bodies might have their own policies but they are confined to execution only, not in drafting policies. However, the major challenge is decentralization. Some cities’ local bodies have taken up their own policies but for their execution, they still have to get them approved from the central government. Thus, decentralization is the need of the hour.”
Sapra was asked how cities can achieve Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. She answered by saying, “For building on benchmark governance at the lowest level, implementation bodies and citizens have to be acquainted with evaluation and assessment tools. This can be done only when process of planning is made more accessible in public domain.” The webinar brought out various important factors which must be kept in mind while planning urban development in India in the
near future.