Urban planning is still
considered as a casual work in many parts of our country. Many times Indian
government tried to improve the planning mechanism inside the country and as a
result the structure of governance in rural and urban areas had been changed.
The best part came with the 73rd and 74th amendment of
Indian constitution in 1992 where it was granted that the governance structure
would be formed by both administrative action and active public participation. The
urban governance structure was moulded by creating different administrative
institutions especially Municipal corporation, Municipality, and Nagar
panchayat. The idea of being “urban” is no more a fictional character in
understanding. As a general belief, people often get confused to rename any are
as urban by observing the infrastructure, facilities and transportation
services. But the major thing we neglect that the structure of governance. Government
of India defines any area as urban if
Let us understand the need of planning first. When we talk about planning, it means this would be a process where someone is associated to organize something. When this idea is transferred to Urban planning, then the understanding level will go little higher. A city or a town is a settled portion of land where people use this land for their different activities like residences, business, transportation, parks, etc. The work of a planner starts to study the inhabitants and their daily lifestyle, to understand the use of land and to organize the land in optimum usability by providing better functions and facilities. In other words, urban planners work for improving the standard of life. In this discussion we are not going to make a debate where improvement of economy is called improvement of life or not. Rather we would like to focus on different issues by which a planning mechanism can be better carried out. A life is composed of mainly two things-personal and social. Every human being lives for his own, his family and on the other hand he lives for the society. The importance of education and economy is directly associated with individuals where its affects are indirectly associated the society. Therefore whatever we do personally has some impact on the society in direct or indirect way. The society is composed of many classes and castes. There is always difference of age, sex, education, health and economy. When we try to focus on the urban India, we will see three different clusters. One is elite class with high level economic society, next one is general citizens for whom the markets, railway stations, bus stops are being provided and the last one is slum who work for cleaning and laborious work inside the city. But the interesting part as a planner to be seen is all live in the same geographic boundary. When one demarcates a land by its geographic boundary and calls it a city then definitely some sort of integration must be there regarding the daily life. A planner always observes the city as a whole. Different people have different types of issues and hence someone must be there to solve those issues and provide living facilities to the inhabitants. Here we need the administration. The urban administrative structure was never being formed by observing social issues. It was formed to facilitate the citizens by their preliminary needs in an organized pattern. What are the preliminary needs? You can say a place to live in, some water to serve both drinking and washing purpose, a street for communication, schools for education, workplace to work and earn, health and hygiene etc. Therefore planning spread to several sectors. The prime objective is how to organize the urban land and facilitating the services properly. But a city is always an organic form. It grows by population, by buildings, by facilities but it can’t grow by land. Land is always limited. A city grows by population and then the facilities also need to be grown equally. Population and facilities must stay in proportion; otherwise the balance of the city may decay. If demography is our first stage of analysis, then we see that a city mostly suffer from migration issues. People from adjoining parts of the city often migrate in search of job, education and health facilities which are not available in their place as per their need. If we can provide the same needs in their own places, then we can control the migration to some extent. PUARA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) is that function only by which government can facilitate the rural areas and take two ways profit; one is to control migration from rural to urban places and second is to improve rural life up to a better position. Urbanization is only a profit oriented settlement for all over the world. People love urban areas only for better facilities. Therefore, if we can sort out the facilities and transfer few to rural parts of our country, then a number of rural issues can be solved easily and then we can better improve the urban zones.
This method may useful to work against uneven urban sprawl. Higher education institutions, good health care facilities, minimum job guarantee, improved transportation system and roads, hygienic living with a house all can be facilitate to the rural areas too. Indian rural citizens are facing the only problem that is negligence. Probably this matter of discussion can’t be concluded without pointing out the effective solution. Providing facilities can never give the planning strategy. What to provide, how to provide and for whom to provide these three are the major questions often arises in front of a planner. The active participation of citizen is more important than making of policy by government. Every citizen must understand their needs and must have a desire to make that possible at their own locality. This thing may carry transparency in planning policies and developing strategies. People should be active for demanding in proper way by understanding the issues. If we fail to participate, then perhaps government will become fail to implement. A planning must be inclusive from every manner. Planning should not be limited to urban areas completely; it should be spread to the rural zones too. Inclusiveness brings both administration and citizens together by which citizens can explain their needs and administration can examine and take proper policy work. India is considered as one of the rapid urbanized country in the world where we have approximately 40% of urbanization by 2013. But still the urban planning in our country is not satisfactorily developed. What could be reason for it? Till now, planning has been serving as a task of government, where there was no participation of citizens and hence many planning policies failed to achieve their goal in our country. The duty includes focusing out the actual potentiality of the area, whether it is urban or rural. Every urban area has some definite development potential. That development potential if hidden, then it is needed to be extracted. One may say about resources, water bodies, possible economic zones etc. A town planning work must look at every possible factors of development equally and appreciate the best. Even preparation of Development Control Regulation (DCR) is also considered as a challenging job. People often forget about the green belt, play area and many more refreshing zones for the hassles of concrete construction and hence the town planner too. Metros like New Delhi is likely to lose the safety concerns while upcoming major city like Raipur (Chattisgarh) is running away from environmental parameters and become polluted day by day. The prime importance of urban planning thus missing in our country and it is suffering from misguiding by lack of understanding of both Governments and citizens. If we planners fail to think about a safe and environment friendly city, then who will think for it? This is perhaps the important time to think about that inclusiveness. A city must be planned inclusively by social, physical, economic, safety and environment parameters. If we need to develop our urban zones, then we have to think for making self sustainable, self sufficient and safe cities. A real inclusive approach in planning, proper governance structure and active public participation may lead to next era of planning where we can dream for happy urbanization in India.
a)
It has an urban governance structure (Municipal corporation, municipality or
nagar panchayat),
b)
The population must be above 5,000,
c)
Density of population should be 400 persons per square km,
d)
More than 75% of male working population must be engaged into non agricultural
pursuits. These are general criteria for understanding what does “urban”
physically mean for.
This method may useful to work against uneven urban sprawl. Higher education institutions, good health care facilities, minimum job guarantee, improved transportation system and roads, hygienic living with a house all can be facilitate to the rural areas too. Indian rural citizens are facing the only problem that is negligence. Probably this matter of discussion can’t be concluded without pointing out the effective solution. Providing facilities can never give the planning strategy. What to provide, how to provide and for whom to provide these three are the major questions often arises in front of a planner. The active participation of citizen is more important than making of policy by government. Every citizen must understand their needs and must have a desire to make that possible at their own locality. This thing may carry transparency in planning policies and developing strategies. People should be active for demanding in proper way by understanding the issues. If we fail to participate, then perhaps government will become fail to implement. A planning must be inclusive from every manner. Planning should not be limited to urban areas completely; it should be spread to the rural zones too. Inclusiveness brings both administration and citizens together by which citizens can explain their needs and administration can examine and take proper policy work. India is considered as one of the rapid urbanized country in the world where we have approximately 40% of urbanization by 2013. But still the urban planning in our country is not satisfactorily developed. What could be reason for it? Till now, planning has been serving as a task of government, where there was no participation of citizens and hence many planning policies failed to achieve their goal in our country. The duty includes focusing out the actual potentiality of the area, whether it is urban or rural. Every urban area has some definite development potential. That development potential if hidden, then it is needed to be extracted. One may say about resources, water bodies, possible economic zones etc. A town planning work must look at every possible factors of development equally and appreciate the best. Even preparation of Development Control Regulation (DCR) is also considered as a challenging job. People often forget about the green belt, play area and many more refreshing zones for the hassles of concrete construction and hence the town planner too. Metros like New Delhi is likely to lose the safety concerns while upcoming major city like Raipur (Chattisgarh) is running away from environmental parameters and become polluted day by day. The prime importance of urban planning thus missing in our country and it is suffering from misguiding by lack of understanding of both Governments and citizens. If we planners fail to think about a safe and environment friendly city, then who will think for it? This is perhaps the important time to think about that inclusiveness. A city must be planned inclusively by social, physical, economic, safety and environment parameters. If we need to develop our urban zones, then we have to think for making self sustainable, self sufficient and safe cities. A real inclusive approach in planning, proper governance structure and active public participation may lead to next era of planning where we can dream for happy urbanization in India.
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