Authors: Chauncie Bigler, Yuka Aota, Debayan Chatterjee, Corin Menuge (Graduates of MSc Urban Development Planning, Bartlett DPU, UCL)

Introduction

In the Autumn of 2019, a group of MSc Urban Development Planning students partnered with community groups in London’s Old Kent Road (/OKR) Neighbourhood to explore the potential of social audits as a tool for just urban transformation in the city. As part of the multi-year teaching partnership, our group had a specific objective of collaboratively designing a social audit tool with local community groups in OKR area. The purpose of this exercise was to both test the concept of social audits in London planning whilst also supporting community groups in the gathering of data on neighbourhood assets that held significant value for locals. At that time, interrupting the speculative real estate development planned for what had become a London ‘Opportunity Area’ (See Figure 1) was a key priority for the long-term residents, businesses and other groups in the area.

In July of 2021, almost two years later, we reached out to a highly-engaged community resident who had been involved in the 2019 engagement. Our intention was to ascertain whether the social auditing toolkit we had designed was still in use and, if possible, to compare its application in both a pre-pandemic and mid-pandemic context. This resident explained that the pandemic had sharpened the priorities of community organisers and those demanding more participatory development across London: “What we want is a plan B, in light of these huge changes in the last 18 months. We want a realistic appraisal of where things are at for the people who live here” (Community resident, 21 Aug 2021).

This experience of revisiting our research partnership after two years–and a global pandemic–later caused our group to reflect further on both our positionality as researchers and practitioners, and the role that academic partnerships such as ours may have in relation to the underlying goal to leave lasting and positive community impacts. Mere months after coproducing research with community activists – the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the ground upon which priorities and strategies would be developed.  As is common with planning praxis, all parties active in fighting for just planning in London, or globally, needed to reflect and react in order to move forward in highly changeable circumstances. Learning alliances such as the one we were engaged in must adapt, even in a global pandemic.

Revisiting Prior Engagement

Revisiting our study, the local groups see the multidimensional barriers of realising meaningful participation in planning. Many scholars (Fainstein, 2010; Healey, 2005) have tried to improve the UK’s institutionalised public participation system by highlighting the potential of a collaborative approach in planning and local governance. However, communities have continued to face difficulties in reflecting their insights on the OKR regeneration plan, such as when they could not attend in-person consultations due to COVID-19 pandemic impacts. Thus, this situation can lead to dominant decision-making over a particular plan (Arnstein, 1969). Community participation requires both Invited and Invented spaces (Miraftab, 2004). Invited spaces involve local authorities engaging with and integrating diverse perspectives during the initial phases of planning, acknowledging the value of individuals’ insights and experiences as future end-users (Ball, 2004). However, effective community participation also demands autonomous, Invented spaces for community knowledge development and counter-planning. Indeed the two should work iteratively.

Just Space, an informal alliance comprising approximately 80 community groups, is dedicated to amplifying local voices and perspectives from grassroots levels up to London’s major planning strategies. In their “Community-Led Plan for London” (Just Space, 2013), the alliance proposed to metropolitan planning authorities the adoption of Social Impact Assessments (SIAs) as a fundamental basis for making planning decisions. SIAs are essential in evaluating the potential impact of development proposals on existing residents and businesses within a neighbourhood. Recognizing the historical shortfall in communication and genuine participation, the Just Space network has been advocating for the incorporation of these impact assessments within borough and metropolitan planning frameworks to secure a more community-led planning process.

Later on, Just Space collaborated with faculty at the DPU to initiate a multi-year project, which our group joined in 2019. During our cohort’s involvement, we were briefed on the displacement pressures arising from the Old Kent Road’s designation as an Opportunity Area. Our primary task was to engage in propositional work: co-creating a “social audit” tool in collaboration with local communities. Social audits serve as a means to establish an evidence base that reflects the neighbourhood assets as perceived by community members. These audits are a part of the broader concept of Social Impact Assessments (SIAs), a tool which seeks to materialise a more ‘just city’ (Fanstein in Yiftachel and Mandelbaum, 2017). The overarching objective of SIAs is to empower community members to visualize and address spatial inequalities in their surroundings.

Drawing on interviews with community members and field research, the social audit handbook (See Figure 2) was designed to be a pre-emptive, modular, adaptable and reflexive toolkit for communities. The handbook visually shows the process for identifying local assets, collecting data, and seeking further support to protect what is valued by the community in the face of development. The handbook starts with contextual data on Old Kent Road and provides guidance on community goal-setting using existing data and the voices least likely to breach traditional planning approaches. Four types of community assets (green infrastructure, housing, social/community spaces and economic infrastructure) were showcased as data collection categories based on field research and interviews with Just Space (See Figure 3). The final section emphasises the significance of visualising local data and seeking options to deliver community needs (See Figure 4).

 

At the time of this action-research collaboration in 2019, the social audit handbook received positive feedback from the Old Kent Road activists and groups engaged in its coproduction. The exercise was also good practice for the budding urban development planners in our group. As students, we developed collaborative listening skills through rounds of interviews with residents, local business owners, and non-profit workers, as well as countless learning site walks. The research that underpinned the design of the tool involved an examination of best practices from social audit initiatives in different locations such as South Africa, Israel, and London. This exploration deepened our understanding of social practices within diverse contexts. The benefits to us as researchers were clear and immediate – but what about longer-term outcomes for the community groups and individuals who gave their time and insights to the work?

All components of the social audit handbook were designed according to the interpreted needs of communities at the time, yet since its original production so much has changed. Begging the question, how relevant does the tool remain in a post-COVID moment?

As one community resident noted in 2021, the city’s priorities shifted due to COVID related financial constraints. The Bakerloo line extension, upon which the original plan rested, has been effectively stopped ‘indefinitely’. What does this mean for the OKR? Perhaps counter intuitively, this withdrawal of committed public investment, combined with new local leadership within the Borough’s controlling Labour Party, could open an opportunity to achieve a more just development trajectory for OKR.

However, if this opportunity is to be realised and a Plan B is to emerge, then tools such as the social audit tested in pre-pandemic conditions may gain renewed relevance. Indeed, given that our 2019 research demonstrated how the aspiration to protect local assets is most impactful in the earliest stages of planning process, a social audit tool feels particularly salient. Rather than attempting to influence plans at a planning application stage when many decisions have already been locked in, a social audit would reflect community priorities and identify valued networks, local heritage, businesses, and public spaces as plans are being made and well before applications and capital investment arrive at the community’s door.

 

Principles for Strengthened Academic Partnerships

 

 

Through this retrospective re-examination of a project, the group synthesised three key themes which can prompt further examination by parties hoping to engage in academic-civil society co-productions and learning alliances:

(a) Barriers to collecting local information

Residents often face barriers when trying to access planning-related data and information about ongoing urban development in their neighbourhoods. While the toolkit outlines steps for data collection and visualization of community assets and needs to present to the government, updating it for longevity should include a clearer roadmap to overcome technical skill barriers. This might involve providing support for accessing and interpreting open-source community data for those with minimal formal training, suggesting low-cost programs for basic mapping and document creation, and offering straightforward project management and budgeting templates. Encouraging community members to assess their key skills related to social audits and formulating partnerships with students or business owners to address gaps could be a preliminary step. Nurturing interactions for creating living documents by connecting relevant information with residents requires time and planning. Despite community members’ superior knowledge of their needs, neighbourhood histories, and dynamics compared to decision-makers, capacity-building and skill-sharing are essential steps for promoting effective social audits or community-led plans.

(b) Ensuring Continuity of Moment-Driven Work within a Context of Rapid Change

The government can change urban development plans suddenly, making it difficult for communities to formulate interventions aligned with the government’s timeline and request them to amend formal plans. Thus, communities learn to respond rapidly to changes in local dynamics and political  priorities, and learning alliances must also face this reality.  Some of the ways that the DPU-Just Space learning alliance (See Figure 5) ensures continuity while continually adapting are by building multi-year partnerships, retaining faculty engagements around them, and designing new projects each year based on priorities from partners. The UDP cohort that followed ours (2020-21) first contributed to Just Space’s Community-led Recovery Plan for London and later shifted their attention to Southwark, where they examined the utilization, challenges, and potential of public land. This latter project connected with some of the community groups and ideas that emerged from the social audit work conducted previously. As seen in this example, COVID-19 revealed amplified inequalities of the people’s lives and has mobilised or reanimated a number of initiatives targeting alternative development visions for London. This project demonstrates a strong example of building on previous efforts while coping with changing circumstances, such as those presented by COVID-19. Under the guidance and direction of UDP faculty and with continual input from the learning alliance’s partners, later cohorts continue to support long-term attempts to promote community-led planning in the city.

(c) Structuring the Engagement for Mutually-Beneficial Outcomes

A key organising skill employed by the most successful  activist groups is never-ending creativity in the face of changing circumstances. Activists must adjust their strategies and efforts in order to seize opportunities as they come. This hard-earned skill-set can be even less straightforward to apply to an academic setting. Academia, even when a strong ethos of practice in community engagement is present, must balance adaptability with the structure needed for executing a project within a fixed academic term in a classroom setting.

The task of structuring academic co-production processes is not straightforward, and creative ways to extend the work could be explored to maximize what both the community and the students take forward from the engagement. For example, rather than attempt to theoretically frame, develop and part pilot a tool all in one term, the learning alliance could be split into curricula and extra-curricular components with students given the opportunity to continue their engagement with the project’s community partners after the completion of the assessed project. In the case of our project, such an approach could have allowed time for a more in-depth piloting and testing phase. Through that further coproduction moment, additional findings would surely surface from the community on its design, such as local capacity to collect and take forward the fact-based data, which would provide even more support towards sustainable realisation of the community’s needs. That said, given such an approach relies on voluntary capacity and will, there is a small risk that momentum wains without the incentive of assessment.

Conclusion

During the autumn academic term of 2019, our cohort of 11 UDP students actively immersed themselves in the Old Kent Road project, forging connections between academic theory and practical application. Through engaging with community leaders and collaborating closely with community groups and Just Space members, the cohort shaped the framework and toolkit. Student groups navigated the intricate local political landscape, stakeholder dynamics, Social Impact Assessments (SIAs), planning procedures, and inclusive engagement approaches. UCL, as a global university, sends its Master’s graduates into diverse sectors worldwide. Our cohort’s immersive experience enriched subsequent chapters of our journeys: from supporting grassroots initiatives at the Japanese Embassy in New Delhi, to a role as an Urban Designer in Dubai and Germany, Green Infrastructure Planner in the U.S., and a contributor to London’s social housing sector. While challenging to quantify, the impacts of such alliances extend beyond classroom walls and the Old Kent Road. Academic research underscores the notion of ‘seeding’ hope for communities grappling with injustices by both recognising and amplifying their campaigns and also nurturing a new generation of planning practitioners attuned to the diverse needs and aspirations of cities worldwide.

The multiyear learning collaborations between UCL and community groups emphasize the pivotal role of community planning and the potential to transmit the principles of socially just planning to the succeeding cohort. By introducing the social audit handbook to communities, we supported Just Space in  testing a responsive tool aligned with the community’s strategies within specific times and conditions as well as amplifying an idea whose time may yet come. This endeavour aimed to integrate a degree of procedural justice into practice by transforming environmental governance through inclusive engagement that values diverse voices and perspectives (York and Yazar, 2022). It’s crucial to acknowledge that existing communities are integral participants in regeneration, capable of enhancing their neighbourhoods, and the outcomes of their collective efforts can ripple throughout the entire city (Ball, 2004). Tools like the social audits we examined can serve as valuable documentation of neighbourhood changes and shared lessons, facilitating action planning for like-minded communities and organizations. Nevertheless, as exemplified by disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, what holds greater resilience than specific tools are the skills cultivated in response to the inherent complexities of multi-stakeholder engagement in development planning. Primarily, this involves the ability to be adaptable and strategic in action planning, consistently reassessing the scope for manoeuvring (Safier, 2002) toward community objectives.

OKR Team (2020). “Our Neighbourhood – a guide to giving power to the voices of a neighbourhood’s people to shape its future”.

 

Reference

Arnstein, S.R. (1969). ‘A ladder of citizen participation’, Journal of the American Institute of planners, 35(4), pp.216-224.

Ball, M. (2004). ‘Co-operation with the community in property-led urban regeneration’, Journal of Property Research, 21:2, pp.119-142, DOI: 10.1080/0959991042000328810.

Fainstein, S. (2010). The Just City, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Healey, P. (2005). Collaborative Planning (2nd ed.), Basingstoke, Macmmillan.

Just Space (2013). Towards a Community-Led Plan for London Policy directions and proposals. [online]. Available at: https://justspacelondon.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/just-space-a4-community-led-london-plan.pdf.

Langlois, A. (2023). ‘TfL Bakerloo line extension, Southwark to Lewisham: Part of tunnel design work restarted’. LondonWorld. National World Publishing Ltd, 1st June 2023. [online]. Available at: https://www.londonworld.com/news/traffic-and-travel/tfl-to-restart-part-of-tunnel-design-work-for-bakerloo-line-extension-4077412.

Safier, M. (2002). ‘On Estimating Room for Manoeuvre’, City, 6(1). pp.117-132.

Yiftachel, O. and Mandelbaum, R. (2017). ‘Doing the Just City: Social Impact Assessment and the Planning of Beersheba, Israel’, Planning Theory & Practice, 18 (4). pp.525-548.

York, A. and Yazar, M. (2022).’Leveraging shadow networks for procedural justice’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Vol.57. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2022.101190.

 

Bio Statement:

This group reflection comes from four DPU alumni from the 2019-2020 Urban Development Planning cohort, on the work Social Impact Assessment as a tool for Just Planning in  Southwark, London. Yuka, Chauncie, Debayan, and Corin are now in four different parts of the world (India, USA, Germany, and the UK, respectively) working within differing sectors, all engaging with the core themes from this community-led planning practice module in some capacity. The group thanks the module leaders, Tim Wickson and Barbara Lipietz, and countless community organizers past and present for the ability to participate in this work.

This housing story follows my Mum’s journey. It provides valuable insight into the history of housing policies in Mauritius and how they have evolved. Given Mauritius’ location, it is prone to cyclones that cause devastation to homes, which made it critical for the government to prioritise better structures to address inadequate dwellings. However, as my Mum’s story will illustrate, government schemes were not always accessible, resulting in more informal community financing schemes. Incremental approaches to housing development were widespread in Mauritius alongside gradually diminishing access to public spaces due to government policies prioritising real estate development. I will explore these wider factors throughout her story.

 

Growing up in Triolet 

The story is set mostly in Triolet, a small town in post-independence Mauritius, beginning in 1972 and ending with her leaving Mauritius in 2002. Mum was the eldest of five, living with her parents and grandmother on inherited land. Mum’s grandfather adopted her father after he lost his parents as a child, and the land was divided between Mum’s father and his step-sister. This was unusual, as land and property were commonly inherited and split between male family members only, whilst women tended to marry and move in with their husband’s parents. This exception may have occurred because Mum’s aunt was a young widow with children to care for. Furthermore, Mum recalls that “people often lived close to relatives and it was common to extend the homes when the families grew, if there was space.” Although the Mauritius Town and Country Planning Act (1954) outlines that permits are needed for housing construction, it was not strictly enforced. Mum recalls that planning permission for home extensions or improvements was informal and usually involved seeking permission from relatives who lived in the surrounding area.

Mum’s earliest memories were of her home consisting of “two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a toilet.” They stood as three separate structures built with corrugated iron roofs and wood. Mum remembers several cyclones that particularly affected Triolet and nearby areas, some leaving a trail of housing destruction in their wake. However, Mum’s experience was again uncommon, as homes built with corrugated iron sheets and timber frames had decreased significantly during the 1970s (Chagny, 2013, p.6). Destructive cyclones in the 1960s led to workers being offered interest-free loans to build concrete houses for “personal occupation” (Ministry of economic planning and Development, 1986). As a result, housing structures improved drastically. For example, in 1960, 60% of housing in Mauritius was substandard, with only 4% considered durable; by 1972, only 7% were considered substandard, with around 40% considered durable (ibid). Mum’s experience may have been the exception because she lived in a rural area which may have been overlooked because it was not a highly commercial area and so was deprioritised for funding.

It is worth mentioning that there is a limitation in obtaining region-specific data, as Mauritius is a small country, and figures for smaller rural areas away from economic centres are not readily available. Hence, country-wide data has been used instead of data specific to Triolet.

Building a stronger home 

In 1980, Cyclone Hyacinthe severely damaged Mum’s home. During this time, Mum’s family decided to rebuild with cement and bricks to withstand severe weather conditions better. Unfortunately, the family didn’t qualify for the government scheme providing interest-free loans to workers for constructing concrete houses for personal use (Chagny, 2013, p.7; Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, 1986) because my Mum’s dad, an informal sugarcane worker, did not have the relevant documentation.

Therefore, to finance the repairs and future improvements, they relied on an informal community financing practice known in Creole as a “sit.” A “sit” involved pooling money from numerous people (relatives and friends) in a neighbourhood into a general fund. This fund could be used for household expenses, but many used it to improve or repair homes. Every month, each household would pay the same amount into the pool, and a designated collector would distribute the pool to one household randomly until all households had received the pool at least once and then the cycle would start again.

In contrast to bank loans, the “sit” was an attractive alternative since it was interest-free. This arrangement was helpful for Mum’s family, who couldn’t provide an acceptable form of collateral to banks, lacked a credit history, and had limited awareness of how formal credit systems worked. Unlike formal bank loans, “sits” didn’t require collateral or have transaction costs (Karaivanov & Kessler, 2017). However, these practices had downsides. For example, if a ‘sit’ participant can’t pay into the fund for one month, it could impact their relationship with everyone in the community, having a high social cost (ibid). Mum recalls that contributors could swap with the weekly recipient if they required the fund earlier for an emergency, and if someone couldn’t pay for a particular month, they could work out an arrangement with the collector and contributors. It was a system built on trust; in Mum’s experience, “there were never any major issues, and it was essential in difficult times.”

The prevalence of informal community financing practices highlights the failure of government schemes to trickle down to low-income people in rural areas who may have owned land but required financing for materials to build adequate and sustainable homes. So, although private ownership was high, for example, in 1972, 94.6% of all housing units were privately owned (Ministry of Planning and Development, 1986), Mum’s experience illustrates that people that needed suitable and adequate housing were effectively left unsupported by the government.

 

Continuing home improvements 

In 1981, Mauritius was challenged by a sugar crop failure coinciding with a global price drop (Gupte, 1981). Mum’s dad owned a piece of inherited land where he cultivated sugar cane, and the family heavily depended on this for their household income. The poor harvest and lower market prices, left the family significantly impacted; finding themselves relying on Mum’s grandmother’s pension. This also halted their much-needed home improvements and repairs. The country’s economy, which was still heavily reliant on sugar exports, also suffered detrimentally, with nearly 60,000 out of 960,000 people unemployed (ibid).

In late 1981, Mum’s dad secured a job working for the government as an irrigator, qualifying him for an interest-free government scheme to help workers improve their housing structures, with 3,000 rupees a month offered towards sturdy building materials. Mum told me “It was not much, but it was something. We would use this to buy some materials and build slowly.”

For Mum’s family, constructing their home was a slow and steady operation. Even with the government loan, building materials had to be accumulated over a considerable period before construction could start. The family continued participating in the ‘sit’, hoping it would come in handy in speeding up construction work.

In late 1982, they started rebuilding the two bedrooms using bricks and cement, but since they couldn’t afford to hire ‘masons’ (Creole for builders), they employed a ‘maneve’ (builder’s apprentice) who required a smaller fee. It was customary for unpaid male household members and relatives to help with construction, some even travelling from far-away areas to help. To show appreciation for their hard work, they’d be offered a nice meal at the end of the day in lieu of payment. This approach was present in many other households; Mum recalls her dad and brothers helping build and improve relatives’ homes too.

The improvements were focused on the house structure whilst the kitchen and toilet remained outside, still made of corrugated iron and wood. Mum recalls the unpleasantness of bathing in winter and the frequent water shortages; using a ‘dron’ (large plastic barrel) to collect rainwater for showering. Eventually, the kitchen was added as an extension to the concrete home. Mum says the kitchen and bathroom were not prioritised because of a lack of infrastructure for sewage or freshwater, and she says “improving the bedrooms first made sense as it benefitted everyone in the house.”

This incremental approach to housing allowed Mum’s family to improve their homes based on their needs and resources. It also made high building costs more affordable. However, these small loans also meant slow progress. Hence, combining the government loans with the informal community financing was crucial to making this approach possible at all and was ultimately borne out of necessity.

 

Scarce land and the rise of real estate development projects

The declining price of sugar and the phasing out of preferential trade agreements for sugar exports to the EU led the government to seek alternative sources of economic revenue (Gooding, 2016). Hence, in 1985, the government initiated various real estate development projects to attract foreign investment (ibid). These legislative changes would accelerate into the 2000s with the Integrated Resource Scheme (IRS) in 2002, increasing the purchase of villas and hotels, particularly by white Europeans and South African investors (ibid) and the amended Immigration Act in 2002, allowing non-citizens to become residents if they invested a minimum of 500,000 dollars in a set of “identified business activities” (ibid).

These schemes resulted in properties that were commonly located along the coast, providing direct beach access and amenities such as wellness centres and golf courses, and so accordingly requiring vast amounts of land. While many resorts were erected around rural towns, little development or investment occurred nearby in Triolet itself. Indeed, these schemes led to unequal distribution of economic benefits. For example, tourists visiting Mauritius spent money on foreign-owned resorts and hotel restaurants. They were unlikely to venture further and spend on local businesses; thus, the local communities did not feel the economic benefits. (Ramtohul, 2016). Moreover, opening the real estate sector to foreigners caused discontent among the local population, given the sensitivity of land ownership in Mauritius due to land scarcity (Tijo, 2013; Gooding, 2016).

These coastal development initiatives also impacted local communities’ ability to access beaches. Despite it being enshrined in law that all beaches in Mauritius are public up to the high tide mark (Pas Geometriques Act, 1895), hotels and resorts built barriers that made it challenging for people to access the whole beach area. Wealthy investors and private owners who had bought homes with easy beach access followed the hotels barrier-building example and with little intervention by the government, were tacitly allowed to continue this exclusionary practice.

Going to the beach is a celebrated space, important to many Mauritians of different backgrounds who would head there on weekends. Indeed, it was one of the few public spaces available for leisure activities. For Mum, there were no gardens or play areas where she lived. Only a small plot of land behind Mum’s house was shared with her aunt to cultivate papaya trees and aubergines, and the family collectively shared the crops. Like many Mauritian families, they would walk to the beach on weekends. She recalls as she grew older, access to these spaces became more difficult due to the increasing number of resorts, hotels and holiday homes. Accessibility to these public spaces became a huge social issue. Mum recounts her and her family being “told to move from the beach near the hotels. We were made to feel really uncomfortable for sitting on the sand.”

The need to diversify its economic portfolio meant Mauritius focused on expanding the real estate industry as an alternative source of revenue. Unfortunately, the development of coastal areas led to unequal distribution and access to land and limited benefits for working-class communities. The government did not properly consider how these policies would negatively affect the livelihoods of local communities, instead choosing to prioritise scarce public spaces such as beaches for tourists and hotels only (Naidoo & Sharpley, 2015).

 

Moving to Vacoas

In 1994, Mum married and relocated to Vacoas, a town in the western part of Mauritius. Vacoas was a middle-income residential area closer to economic centres than Triolet. There were more amenities, and the area was generally more developed.

She shared a home with her in-laws, my dad’s brother, his wife, and their children. Similar to Triolet, the house was surrounded by the homes of my dad’s relatives, as my grandfather’s brothers owned properties on either side and in front of the house. Similarly, the male siblings all inherited the land from their father. From 1995 onward, their properties would also expand to include their sons once they married.

In 1999, Mauritius was faced with a drought, leading to a limit in water usage for most people in the country (The New Humanitarian, 1999). People had access to water for only one hour a day (ibid). Mum recalls this and says that “during that hour, each household would collect water and fill as many containers as possible.” Despite an improvement in Mauritius’ economy during this period, infrastructural issues still affected people’s daily lives, particularly women, who were expected to manage household chores, and care for young children.

Cultural housing practices continued throughout this period, whereby male family members inherited land, and women did not. After my grandfather died in 2000, the house was divided according to this practice. My dad’s brother began constructing a separate housing unit upstairs, eventually moving there after construction was completed with his family. The main house was split in two, with my dad and his older brother each inheriting half. These patriarchal housing practices can leave women without security, and a lack of land ownership can result in limited say in household decision-making (Archambault & Zoomers, 2015, pp5). It can expose women to vulnerabilities, such as finding it more difficult to leave their spouse if they experience domestic violence (ibid). It’s important to note that, as mentioned previously, if women were widowed or the family didn’t have sons, then the women would likely inherit property. Nevertheless, it is a practice that is ultimately unfavourable to women, leaving them insecure and effectively dependent on male household members; as a result, reinforcing gender inequalities.

Conclusion

In 2002, my dad found a job in the UK, and shortly after, Mum and I moved here for a new beginning. Mum’s housing story illustrates how Mauritius’ housing policies evolved rapidly from 1972-2002. It highlights how the devasting effects of cyclones meant the government had to push for the elimination of structures that could not withstand them. Although this can be lauded, due to the significant rise of concrete structures due to government schemes which provided affordable loans for workers to build sturdier homes; its inaccessibility, particularly for people living in rural areas, meant they had no choice but to rely on informal community financing schemes. The story also highlights the prevalence of patriarchal cultural housing practices whereby male family members inherited land at the expense of women, reinforcing gender norms. Finally, although the expansion of the real estate industry benefited the economy, it came at a cost for locals, who effectively lost their access to much-needed public spaces in favour of hotels, resorts and holiday homeowners in a country where land was already scarce.

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The Town and Country Planning Act 1954 https://business.edbmauritius.org/wps/wcm/connect/business/f27c44b5-c3d7-4c9a-ae12-9e502c26b390/THE+TOWN+and+COUNTRY+PLANNING+ACT+1954.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&ContentCache=NONE&CACHE=NONE

Mauritius Building and Land Use Permit Guide https://la.govmu.org/downloads/Blp%20Guide%20Updated.pdf

Pas Geometriques Act, 1895 https://attorneygeneral.govmu.org/Documents/Laws%20of%20Mauritius/A-Z%20Acts/P/PAS%20GÉOMÉTRIQUES%20ACT%2C%20Cap%20234.pdf

Planning temporariness

“Given the overwhelming evidence that cities are a complex overlay of buildings and activities that are in one way or another, temporary, why have urbanists been so focused on permanence?” (Bishop et al., 2012: 3)

Indian cities today are changing physically slower than the rate demanded by the pace of activities within. And the emerging trend of ‘temporary urbanism’ signifies a shift from traditional physical city-making paradigm to one which interprets the city as a backdrop for activities. Therefore, the contemporary urban practitioners need to revisit their conceptual association with urban permanence and explore possibilities of de-constructing the current mainstream planning narrative which is grounded in a dichotomy where space stood for fixity and time for dynamism, novelty and becoming (Massey, 1999). In this context, the introduction of Time-Space planning as an alternative narrative cherishes ‘seductive flexibility’ and openness by re-conceptualizing urban time-spaces as ‘multiple, relational, and co-produced’ (Ferreri, 2015; May et al., 2001).

 

Historically, cities in India have always celebrated temporariness in various ways. Religious festivals, periodic cultural events, and street markets are a few examples of such ‘embedded’ practices that have been an integral part of people’s everyday lives for years. After independence, it was the modernist city planning that tried to separate the time and space aspects of everyday practices, generated the thrust for fixity across the country, and created binary distinctions such as permanent versus temporary. However, the deliberate practice of Time-Space planning (at the local level) allows planning professionals and communities to learn from deeply ‘embedded’ temporariness, experiments with ‘intentional’/’experiential’ temporariness (Madanipour, 2017) and therefore, helps in the new imagination of urban places/ societies. These contemporary urban practices reinstate Lefebvre’s understandings of time that is something inseparable from space (1992) and validate that cities are ‘four-dimensional’ (Bishop et al., 2012). Thus, the above-mentioned changes demonstrate a clear shift from ‘solid’ modernity to ‘fluid’ modernity (Bauman, 2000) where, the urban is “…understood as a living pulse, assembling and disassembling itself in a reversible manner according to needs and opportunities, market demands and supply of resources, restrictions, and aspirations of inhabitants” (Mehrotra, 2016).

In my viewpoint, Time-Space planning emphasizes on the alternative conceptualization of cities “…by questioning the very assumptions, norms, values, and ideals” (Miraftab, 2009) that shape mainstream planning practices in India. The new planning narrative refuses to picture permanent ‘destinations’ for people and therefore, unleashes the possibilities of imagining ever-transforming environments that can sustain through the processes of ‘improvisations’ and ‘indeterminacies’ (Simone, 2019). This is a major analytical shift because planning here is neither obsessed with finding out the ‘ultimate solution’ for a given urban context nor dependent on the long-term projecting and forecasting. Such refusals lead to the much-needed liberation of current planning imaginations by provoking enough willingness “…to risk, to try different things, without necessarily needing for the results to come, in some sense, right away” (Simone, 2019). Such ‘incompleteness’ embedded within the Time-Space planning narrative allows the planners and the people to collectively experiment with the moments of ‘provisionality’ (Simone, 2019) and to maneuver rooms for future improvisations in India.

 

Unpacking time-space planning & its principles

In my opinion, the conceptual formulation of the Time-Space approach stresses on a few urban trajectories as follows;

– The alternative planning practices challenge the foundations of modernist planning and its obsession with permanence and imposing order;

– New urban imaginaries celebrate flexibility and fluidity; deliberate planning for temporariness sits within a mix of time-scales;

– Active involvement of a range of actors and recognition of their power relations are necessary for inviting necessary improvisations in the urban-making process. The actors’ collective roles/ responsibilities change with the context. It liberates ‘planning’ from the ‘professional planners’;

– Transformative local practices use a palette of (time-based) strategies and tactics to fulfil the need of marginalized communities. Here, planning refuses its mainstream norms and discipline, follows unorthodox processes, and therefore celebrates incompleteness;

 

 

Thus, contours of Time-Space planning can be distilled into four key principles;

Principle 1: Liberating planning imagination

“Cities are subject to continuous change and restructuring. There arises, inter alia, a fundamental tension between the rigidity of the urban built environment and the relative fluidity of the socio-economic processes that produce and are accommodated by it” (Henneberry, 2017: 1). Unlike the top-down planning approaches, Time-Space planning improves the relations between the former and the latter and allows smooth urban transformations. The new adaptive planning practices enforce alternative imagination of cities by amplifying ‘reversibility’ and ‘openness’ in the space production processes. In short, these careful measures assert a new consciousness that “…aims at decolonizing the planning imagination by taking a fresh look at subaltern cities to understand them by their own rules of the game and values rather than by the planning prescriptions and fantasies of the West” (Miraftab, 2009: 45).

Principle 2: Embracing a hybrid/ in-between development approach

Temporary urban interventions “…may arise completely spontaneously or be supported wholly or partly by the state or established private actors” (Henneberry, 2017: 256). The long-term sustenance of these time-bound interventions neither solely dependent on the support from the state nor the communities. Rather, the collective efforts from both the government and the people decide the fate of alternative place-making practices. Time-Space planning goes beyond the binary of the state-led and citizen-led practices and develops a ‘third way’ of development that ensures active participation of all mainstream and marginalized actors in the urbanization process. Understanding the negotiations involved in the process is crucial to produce social innovations.

Principle 3: Amplifying socio-spatial justice

“Temporary activities can provide a vehicle for local consultation” (Lehtovuori et al., 2012: 35), and help to build a bridge among state, developers, and (marginalized) communities. Such collaborations are essential to enable the marginalized communities to actively take part in their city-making process. Time-Space planning protects these weak actors and facilitates them to address various forms of injustices by re-using available city structure; re-adjusting structural forces; and reinforcing strategic temporary-use regulations. Thus, temporary urban interventions are capable of producing socially just built-environments in cities (Klanten and Hübner, 2010; Oswalt et al.,2013). The new imagination of cities not only focuses on minimizing harm (/inequalities) but on doing measurable good.

Principle 4: Triggering experiment-driven planning practices

Time-Space planning is “…experiment driven development, not planning led” (Lehtovuori et al., 2012: 36), and therefore, it involves a range of decision-makers and users, and aims “…to foster change by producing alternative visions and projects whose aim is not to be sustained but to evolve with space and its users” (Andres n.d.). These practices follow the conceptual architecture of Insurgent Planning and hence, shift the theoretical objectives from ‘planner to planning’ (Miraftab, 2009). As a result, the alternative urban-making processes democratize planning practices and re-define the planning limits by allowing various community activists, professional planners, city councilors, employed/ unemployed residents, etc. to decide the necessary planning measures focusing on conditions and not on the action itself (Miraftab, 2009; Lehtovuori et al., 2012).

Mainstreaming time-space planning

It is important to understand that mainstreaming the Time-Space approach won’t be an easy task for the new-age urban planners. And failing to do so, the future will be “…less open and more predetermined as persistence and perpetuation of the present” (Miraftab, 2017: 284). So, they can ‘imagine’ the ‘unimaginable’ only when; (a) Place-making practices identify ‘impermanence’ as a ‘potential’ and not a ‘failure’; (b) Planning becomes reflexive and not prescriptive. Hence, the focus shifts from top-down forecasting, projections, and improvements to grassroots improvisations; (c) The interested communities/ planners/ government officials have the appropriate technical knowledge/skills related to time-bound planning, construction, maintenance, and demolition/ transferal of temporary urban interventions; (d) Government is willing to modify its rigid administrations and reduce bureaucratic obstacles that hinder ‘spontaneous’ and ‘unorthodox’ practices; (e) All the actors stress on just collaborations and the newly formed alliances have enough courage to experiment with ‘non-linearity’, ‘fuzziness’ and ‘openness’ in planning; Without satisfying these prerequisites, planning will be always afraid to celebrate its ‘incompleteness’ in true sense.

The purpose of this article is not to stress on replacing the long-term interventions with time-bound interventions. Rather, it celebrates the notion of adaptability and openness in planning, and discusses how embracing ‘temporariness’ in urban planning allows new-age urban planners to explore appropriate possibilities to ‘improvise’ urban lives in India.

 

References

• Bauman, Z. (2004) Liquid ModernityANSE-conference. Leiden, The Netherlands.
• Bauman, Z. (2006). Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
• Bishop, P., and Williams, L. (2012). The Temporary City. London: Routledge.
• Ferreri, M. (2015). ‘The seductions of temporary urbanism’. ephemerajournal, 15(1), pp. 181-191.
• Henneberry, J. ed. (2017). Transience and Permanence in Urban Development. UK: Willey Blackwell.
• Klanten, R. and Hübner, M. ed. (2010). Urban interventions: personal projects in public spaces. Berlin: Gestalten.
• Lefebvre, H. (2004). Rhythmanalysis: Space. Time and Everyday Life. Translated by S. Elden and G.Moore. London: continuum.
• Lehtovuori, P. and Ruoppila, S. (2012). ‘Temporary uses as a means of experimental urban planning’. SAJ Serbian Architectural Journal, 4, pp.29-54.
• Madanipour, A. (2017). Cities in Time: Temporary Urbanism and the Future of City. UK: Bloomsbury.
• Madanipour, A. (2017). ‘Temporary use of space: Urban processes between flexibility, opportunity and precarity’. Urban Studies, 1-17.
• Massey, D. (1999). ‘Space-time, “science” and the relationship between physical geography and human geography’. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 24(3), pp.261-276.
• Massey, D. (2004). ‘Geographies of responsibility’. Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, 86, pp. 5–18.
• May, J. and N. Thrift (eds.) (2001). TimeSpace: Geographies of temporality. NewYork: Routledge.
• Mehrotra, R. and Vera, F. (2015). Kumbhmela: Mapping the Ephemeral MEGACITY. India: Niyogi Books.
• Mehrotra, R., Vera, F. and Mayoral, J. (2017). Ephemeral Urbanism. London: Listlab.
• Mehrotra, R. and Vera, F. (2015). The Indian city kinetic: consuming, reinterpreting and recycling spaces. [online]. Available at: https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/the-indian-city-kinetic-consuming-reinterpreting-and-recycling-spaces/10030442.article. [Accessed 03 August 2020]
• Miraftab, F. (2009). ‘Insurgent planning: Situating radical planning in the Global South’. Planning Theory, 8, pp.32–50.
• Miraftab, F. (2017). ‘Insurgent practices and decolonization of future (s)’. In M. Gunder, A. Madanipour, & V. Watson (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of planning theory, pp. 276–288. London: Routledge.
• Oswalt, P., Overmeyer, K. and Misselwitz, P. ed. (2013). Urban catalyst: the power of temporary use. Berlin: DOM Publishers.
• Simone, A.M. (2019). Improvised Lives. Cambridge: Polity Press.

 

Mr. Debayan Chatterjee is a Commonwealth Scholar from India, who has finished his MSc in Urban Development Planning at University College London with distinction in 2020. He also earned a Master of Urban Design degree from SPA-Delhi and a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He is an academician and artist too. Currently, he is working as an urban designer at Jacobs India.

This post was prepared by Balint Horvarth, Mateo Lu, Fernando Toro, Nada Sallam and Karlene Stubbs with editorial support from Tim Wickson and Barbara Lipietz

 

Introduction

It is not every day that 35 post-graduate students from 21 countries have the opportunity to travel to a new country, partner with local organisations and policy makers and learn from the urban policies and practices at play there. In May 2018, this opportunity was presented to us through our MSc Urban Development Planning field trip. After months of desk-based preparation, we left London for Colombo (Sri Lanka) with only one certainty in mind: we were going to learn, not to solve. Our ambition was to listen to the city and reflect on what the different voices were telling us.

Guided throughout by Sevanatha Urban Resource Centre, a local non-governmental organisation (NGO), our work in Colombo focussed on exploring upgrading and resettlement in the context of an active state-led Urban Regeneration Programme (URP). The URP aims to deliver a slum-free Colombo by 2023 by moving 75,000 households out of so-called under-served settlements and into high-rise housing projects. Implemented by the Urban Development Authority (UDA), the programme’s financial model rests on a combination of end-user repayments and market cross-subsidy generated by the release of liberated land for private sector development.

Working in collaboration with recent planning, sociology and social work graduates from three local universities, our research benefited from in-depth discussions with affected local communities; face to face meetings with government officials; as well as structured inputs from a host of Colombo based experts and activists. Based on these experiences, we were able to build up nuanced understandings of how urban and housing policies operate at different scales in Colombo; problematise the under-served settlement and slum-free discourses; and begin exploring cracks for alternative urban development approaches in the city.

During our time in Colombo, we were encouraged to blend an appreciation of theory with an awareness of how urban practices get materialised in the city. This approach helped unpack relationships between different actors; and exposed the differential impacts of vested interests and influences at different scales. We worked with communities from across three sites in Colombo – Muwadora Uyana, Nawagampura and Mayura Place – and each contributed uniquely to our picture of the city.

 

Site 1: Muwadora Uyana

In the case of Muwadora Uyana, we chose to investigate how the Urban Regeneration Programme had impacted the quality of life enjoyed by those families and individuals who had been moved from settlements across the city into the high-rise housing complex that is Muwadora Uyana. As far as possible, and given the limited research time available, our (action) research and propositions were guided by the ideas and themes that arose from initial discussions with residents themselves. This approach enabled us to identify what quality of life meant to the relocated residents; avoiding the imposition of a normative framing.

 

Building out from this embedded definition; we pursued a mixed-methods approach comprised of floor by floor spatial analysis; participatory mapping with young people and children; and semi-structured interviews with over 30 residents. In so doing, we were able to unpack why it was that some people who are relocated into high-rises are able to thrive, whilst others struggle to survive.

As well as highlighting the importance of embedded research and face-to-face dialogue with effected communities, this project served to challenge the assumption that all people have the capacity to adapt to living in high-rise conditions. In fact, for many groups and individuals, their agency for adaptation is limited. As such, by introducing agency as a crucial determinant of quality of life, our research problematised the fairness argument often-used to defend a relocation policy based on standardised, one-size-fits-all apartments. Indeed, we argue that this reframing creates space to consider alternative options for both current and future residents alike.

 

Site 2: Nawagampura

Nawagampura is a thriving neighbourhood originally established as a relocation site under the Million Houses Programme in the 1980s. Over the past 35 years, the settlement has evolved and consolidated, stitching its residents into the fabric of the city. However, despite its centrality, the buzz of daily economic activity, and residents’ access to a range of services and facilities, the neighbourhood is still classified as underserved. In the main, this classification relates to the fact that many residents still lack secure tenure; although a number of structures also lack individual toilets and others suffer from periodic flooding issues.

 

The diversity in residents’ experiences and opinions of their neighbourhood served as an interesting point of departure for our research. In the context of state-led efforts to transform Colombo into a world-class city, all neighbourhoods classified by the state as underserved have been slated for future relocation. Though not under imminent threat of relocation, Nawagampura presented a rare opportunity to challenge the stereotypical depiction of underserved settlements and communities that underpins much of the state’s thinking around resettlement in Colombo.

Working directly with residents, community-leaders, and members of resident-associations we sought to provide a more nuanced picture of the challenges and opportunities associated with living in settlements such as Nawagampura. By helping reframe underserved settlements as complex and varied communities, this approach allowed for the development of grounded strategies in defence of in-situ upgrading as a just alternative to one-size-fits-all relocation. 

 

Site 3: Mayura Place

Mayura Place (or Lakhmutu Sevana), sits at the edge of an area previously dominated by textile mills and weavers’ colonies. With the wider site long since shuttered and cleared for luxury real estate development, Mayura Place development is often depicted as a success story of the UDA’s Urban Regeneration Programme’s (URP); an exemplary demonstration of how underserved working-class communities can be successfully resettled into purpose-built high-rise towers. However, as our research unfolded, a more complex picture began to emerge.

 

On the one hand, the experience of Mayura Place residents reinforces the value of keeping communities together during relocation from horizontal settlements to high-rise apartments, as well as relocating communities as close as possible to their original homes. Such an approach, contrasting with larger URP projects that drew residents from across Colombo and constituted new communities through a lottery allocation process, has clearly limited the disruptive impact of relocation on the social fabric of Mayura Place and offers valuable learnings for the UDA.

On the other hand, a number of issues were brought up in discussion with inhabitants, questioning the ‘success story’ of Mayura Place. In particular, many residents are grappling with the shortage of common and private space necessary to realise a dignified existence, whilst the appropriateness of high-rise living for certain household industries was raised by a number of our interlocutors. Importantly too, the extent to which the burden of management and maintenance is born equally between residents and the UDA remains unresolved. Meanwhile, there remain serious issues regarding the fact that not all of the original Mayura Place community received rehousing in this block, due to an inconsistency between the UDA’s apartment for a house replacement policy and the reality of multi-family occupancy in former dwellings. Additionally, for those who have received replacement housing, many still lack official documentation recognising their right to secure tenure status.

Whilst our discussions with the UDA hinted at an apparent openness to debate and institutional learning, it remains to be seen how far this is constrained by the programme’s overarching ambition to liberate commercially valuable land and beautify Colombo. Overall, when considering the exceptionality of Mayura Place within the UDA’s broader urban regeneration programme, it is important to look beyond the façade and embrace this case in all its complexity.

 

Closing Reflections

Working across three distinct communities in Colombo provided a unique insight into the overlapping processes of regeneration, resettlement and upgrading at play in Colombo. Whether working in Muwadora Uyana – a labyrinthine high-rise housing complex home to 5,000 residents from across Colombo; Nawagampura – a vibrant working-class neighbourhood that is still classified as underserved despite significant upgrading initiatives; or Mayura Place – a former weavers colony now verticalised and stacked within Colombo’s largest luxury residential enclave – it was clear that the voice of Colombo’s diverse communities was almost entirely missing from formal plan-making in the city.

Delving into this issue further, our time in Colombo focussed on exploring and elaborating the cracks for alternative policy and practice to gain a foothold in the city, proposing grounded strategies for change and laying a foundation for future fieldwork projects to build upon. Example strategies included:

• Community-led Building Management – Increasing Transparency through Community Contracting: Building on Sevanatha’s existing experience with community-contracting models, this strategy was proposed for two reasons. First, to recognise the capacity of relocated residents to take ownership of common areas within high-rise developments; and second, to increase transparency around the way in which UDA-controlled maintenance funds are currently deployed.
• Learning Platforms – Bringing People to Policy: This strategy was designed to help systematise and extend the existing learning practices employed by the UDA through the creation of multi-actor learning platforms. These platforms would institutionalise multi-directional communication between actors from the state (UDA, Colombo Municipal Council etc.), representatives from academic, activist and civil society organisations, and local communities. By bringing together conversations and relationships that currently exist in isolation, this strategy aims to build synergies between actors helping identify and resolve issues within existing housing stock and planning processes and allowing the lived experience of residents to inform forward looking policy and design decisions.
• Changing Planning Language – Challenging the discourse of Underserved Settlements: Building on Sevanatha’s earlier mapping of Colombo’s underserved settlements, this strategy proposed the development of neighbourhood profiles (based on resident survey data, asset and risk mapping, documentation of upgrading etc.). These profiles would then be used to both challenge the idea that all underserved settlements suffer from an identical set of challenges; and strengthen the negotiation position of communities in the context of relocation.

Embedded in the lived experience of three specific communities, the tentative strategies proposed during this project sprung from a common source – the need to reintroduce complexity, diversity and fluidity into a planning context intent on sorting Colombo into the static, binary categories of underserved and regenerated; world class and working class; planners and the planned for. By failing to account for the multiple realities and capacities of Colombo residents, this reductive framing shuts down the space to think differently about urban development in Colombo and encourages the proliferation of top-down, standardised development models. In contrast, a reframed understanding of Colombo’s communities as dynamic, diverse, capable and connected creates room to advocate, adapt and evolve planning processes towards the achievement of more just, people-centred development. This reading of Colombo planning resonates strongly with ongoing work by academics, activists and civil society organisations in the city, some of whom are already actively engaged in efforts to develop and convey this message onwards to decision-makers. In this way, the fieldwork project enabled the DPU to add its voice to a growing call for more socially, spatially and environmentally just development.

Lastly, we would like to express our gratitude for the fantastic support provided by the MSc UDP staff team as well as all of our project partners in Colombo. In particular, special thanks is owed to Chularathna Herath (Executive Director of Sevanatha Urban Resource Centre) and Ruchika Lall (DPU alumna and DPU/ACHR/CAN Young Professional).

This is a short story from a contested place: the town of Kilkis, located 40 km’s away from the border between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) where, as in other rural areas in Greece, the economic crisis brought unemployment and depopulation. For its crucial location at the crossroads of migration routes, Kilkis has also been at the centre of the tragic events during the so called refugee crisis of 2015. Over a mid-November night that year, Macedonia, Croatia and Serbia decided, almost simultaneously, to close their borders and modify the conditions of entrance to those in transit towards Northern Europe.

Thousands of people found themselves stranded in a small village of 154 inhabitants. This is how Idomeni became the largest unofficial camp in Greece and remained such for more than a year. In the absence of international aid, activist and citizen groups were active in the area since the summer of 2015 providing basic assistance to those living in the camp or in transit. Lately in 2016, with the arrival of international agencies, two military-run camps were formed in the surrounding areas of Kerso and Nea Kavala hosting 4.000 persons each.

Camp accommodation remains an inadequate and hopeless response to displacement, generating exclusion and contributing to increase physical and social segregation between residents and newcomers, preventing any form of encounter and reinforcing the narrative according to which displaced population constitute a threat to the local community. The unsustainability of the situation became evident to a group of local volunteers from Kilkis who soon started mobilising local resources to find a better solution to the crisis. Capitalising on hospitality practices rooted in the history of the country (Greece welcomed displaced population after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and from the Republic of Turkey between 1918 and 1930), families in Kilkis opened their doors to refugees.

It is in this context that the OMNES volunteer association started operating to implement a three-folded pilot project based on: 1) providing dignified housing for vulnerable people; 2) facilitating trust-building between residents and newcomers through the creation of an inclusion centre; 3) supporting income and skills generating activities to promote social and economic development starting from local resources. OMNES’ holistic approach to inclusion recognises home as the core of physical, social and psychological wellbeing of its occupants (Dayarante & Kellet, 2008) with the belief that, by providing dignified housing solutions, people in transit become better able to find security and trust toward collaborating with the local community.

As part of a small initiative funded by seeds research funds of DPU and embedded onto a longer term action research engagement with local governments and NGOs operating in refugee housing provision and hosting practices in Southern Europe, I embarked on a visit to Kilkis during an international workshop/Urban Laboratory held in Thessaloniki between 12th-15th of April. The initiative, ‘Planning for Inclusive Cities’, aimed to bring together Mayors, Institutions and CSO from Greece and others cities in Europe to open a cross-country dialogue  and a learning exchange platform on inclusive practices.

As the Vice Mayor of Athens argued during the workshop “Inclusion is our future challenge and cities are the ‘battleground’”; but “cities” another participant argued “cannot be left alone in dealing with inclusion. The task requires the broad involvement of state actors and the effective coordination of multiple stakeholders”. Across the discussion panels, from both politicians and local actors, Kilkis’ pilot project was regarded as the paradigmatic case for the promotion of inclusion through local development.

Nevertheless, despite its successful outcomes, some questions arose. What is the long-term sustainability of a pilot project if it remains an isolated case within an atomised landscape of accommodation practices? How could the Kilkis project be scaled up at country level, and what is the potential applicability in cities such as Athens or Thessaloniki that present a completely different social fabric? What became clear during the three-day workshop is that Greece is working toward the decentralisation of reception, accommodation and housing for refugees, as part of a national effort to reconcile inclusion and development.

The challenges to think differently the city, its design and its management in this era of increased migration and movement are great therefore calling for more action research to experiment solutions and policies that could inform new visions for city. The workshop, and the alliances that emerged with locally active NGOs as Help Refugees,  OMNES, Philoxenya International, Greek Universities such as Harokopio, Crete and University of Macedonia in Thessalonikki , and the involvement in European pilot projects for Urban Integration (UIA Urban Innovative Actions)  will be conducive to the development of a research proposal aligned to existing DPU projects led by Camillo Boano, Giovanna Astolfo and Ricardo Marten, including Refugee Cities and Borders and Camps; it also capitalises on and creates further opportunity for the annual BUDDcamps and the DPU SummerLAB 2018 in Athens.

 

Carlotta Fontana Valenti is a recent graduate of the MSc In Building and Urban Design in Development. Trained as architect, she works between Italy, Portugal and France. Recently, her research interest focus on migration studies, reception practices and the relationship between society and space.

While only lasting for a few weeks, the field research trip is an intense experience that provides in-depth learnings that go beyond the research outcomes themselves. One of the key highlights for me was how a good field research technique is about combining learnings from human interactions as well as using planning and organisational tools to reduce the uncertainty that surrounds field research.

Part 1: Learnings from the people – Disillusionment in the periphery

I’m standing here on the dark distant slopes of Villa Lourdes Ecológico, a settlement without water, sewerage or electricity access, looking down at the city of Lima that stretches as far as the eye can see. We have just had a focus group using headtorches with a group of mostly women, their kids playing at their feet. They came to meet us with hope, a hope to be listened to. They feel forgotten and right here, in this dark spot, I can relate to this disillusionment.

Since arriving in Lima, I have heard many heartfelt sentences from people who have lost hope and no longer believe in the transformative change we came here to seek. Vicente Chavez, a leader of the fog catcher initiative from this community, wants to move back to Cusco instead of “waiting here, hoping for the water to come from the sky”.

A few days before, at a march on water access, I came across the slogan “stop fighting is to start dying”. Whilst extreme for effect, I do believe that when people feel disheartened about their situation, they stop engaging and driving change.

 

Without pressure on decision makers, they may well be forgotten.

I can already observe the direct negative impact of the lack of hope. With the fog catchers project, people lost hope in official support and decreased engagement to the point that they were not making use of a solution that was already available to them. Some community members did not even know that they were entitled to a piece of land to cultivate using water from the fog catchers.

And yet, people’s support and buy-in are rarely mentioned in policy briefs as a key prerequisite to foster participation. It appears critical that our recommendations consider how to help restore people’s hope in the potential for transformative change in order to ultimately foster their participation and make them instrumental in their future.

Two crucial factors to regain this confidence from the people: transparency and action. Communities explicitly asked for “no more lies” about their situation. They need to understand better the short to long term plans to organise and decide accordingly. Not knowing often means that they linger in the fear of taking action that could damage their current situation. They also need to “see proofs” that improvements are made whether in the form of electricity access or small-scale infrastructure work such as stairs. When projects reach their community, people feel heard and that change is possible thereby increasing their likeliness to engage.

This gave me an additional purpose and some guidance for our research. As future planners, we have the duty not only to bring to light these forgotten realities but to also deliver recommendations that aim at overcoming people’s disillusionment when requiring their participation. In other words, the role of a socio-environmental planner is to make sure that no one is left out in the dark without hope.

Part 2 – Learnings from the process – Networking, my ally for achieving holistic research

As Lima was my first field research trip I was aware that data collection would be the most challenging phase of the research process. As a project manager, I am used to things being planned from A to Z before a project even starts. As a result, I was fearing data collection as I viewed it as uncertain and unpredictable. Thankfully, I discovered a great ally that changed my perspective and allowed us to bring structure to data collection: networking.

I understand networking as interactions with a system of interrelated primary and secondary connections that hold different roles, views and power about a given topic. To have a holistic data gathering, it is important to network with a diverse range of actors of various opinions. However, not all stakeholders play the same role in data collection. In the field, when time is limited, it is vital to be flexible and to learn to also rely on secondary connections. While they may provide a smaller share of information, these connections can be more engaged and transparent. In our case, we met with an engineer working on the ecosanitation project from Sedapal who could be considered as a secondary connection given his operational clout in the project. His insights, provided anonymously, proved even deeper than information provided by the key project partner AguaEcosan.

Having recognised the importance of networking, it became critical to integrate it in our research process as a key planning tool for data collection. Recognising that these connections may not always happen organically, it is important to have the methods in place to foster networking and adapt it constantly in the field. Clear research objectives and actor-mapping were critical to  framing our networking. By knowing the data we needed, the current gaps and the existing actors we could interact with, it became easier to prioritise connections and make the required substitutions when needed, understanding the implications for our research.

The role of networking as a planning tool for data collection was critical in achieving our research objective to understand better the eschemas model, a publicly-driven city-wide framework from Sedapal to provide water and sanitation services to 100% of the population. Making a direct connection within Sedapal had not yielded any result so we mapped potential actors that could help us gather similar data and decided to network upwards from the communities. We leveraged our existing relationship with the NGO Peruanos sin Agua to connect with a leader from an eschema committee at a water protest march. While the march itself had little importance from a data collection perspective, the contact had the potential to be the missing link we needed to connect with Sedapal as the march was organised in collaboration with the worker union from Sedapal. This allowed us to achieve our initial research goal.

First, these key learnings about the methods to network efficiently allowed me to overcome my fear of data collection by understanding that data collection can be planned and is not as uncertain as I saw it originally. Furthermore, recognising the existence of this system of interrelated primary and secondary connections enabled me to use networking as a key ally to engage with these connections and collect data in a holistic and efficient way. Ultimately, this ultimately has a positive impact on the quality of our research outcomes.

 

Conclusion

It is undeniable that pre-research plays a key role in research trips as it allows to gain deep knowledge about a given field of analysis and form initial hypotheses to verify during the research. However, once on the ground, the reality can challenge assumptions and reshape priorities… but after all, research is about ‘trusting the process’. While tools such as networking should be used to help reduce uncertainty, planners should remain flexible and embrace the research journey to gather findings that go much beyond pure research outcomes.

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The Seminar on EU-India Cooperation on Sustainable Urbanization took place in Pune, on the 15-16^th September 2016 in a cooperative and multi-disciplinary atmosphere. The workshop was organized by the Global Relations Forum from Pune and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Academic Foundation and it was supported by the European Union’s Delegation to India and Bhutan. During the two days, delegates discussed what is smart in the territorial and demographic transformations associated with urbanization in India.

‘Smart’ is a multidimensional promise for better services, better environments, more educated people. The discussions suggested that, in many ways, smart is nothing else than a variation on the preoccupations about the shortcomings of the city in the twenty-first century: Eco cities, sustainability, future proof cities… are all labels that indicate a will to improve the livability of our cities. They all have something in common: an interest on the simultaneous possibility of technological and social transformations. Yet, focusing on characterizing the city as smart, low carbon, green, or ecological may distract from actually thinking through practical solutions to address the challenges of urban life.

In my talk I focused on two questions which I think are, specifically, useful to understand the urban energy transition in India. The first question is: why does energy matter to city dwellers? It is a way to also ask: what is the lived experience of energy in each city? The second question is: what kind of interventions can bring about an energy transition?

With regards to the first question, my insights draw from my project ‘Mapping Urban Energy Landscapes’, funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, which aims to understand from a comparative perspective how energy is embedded in everyday existence. The first insight from this project is that social and material relations with energy in any given city are unique. They belong to its city as they depend on the local culture, on the specific history of infrastructure development, and, given the political character of energy, on the way in which energy politics are played at the local level.

For example, some of the case studies I have been comparing have been Hong Kong, Bangalore and Maputo. Of the three cases, Hong Kong is the only one which has a homogeneous energy landscape, based upon traditional models of fossil fuel electrification. In contrast, Mozambique’s population relies mostly on charcoal and other biomass fuels, with electricity covering only 8% of the total energy consumed. The energy landscape of Bangalore is characterized by its diversity. All manners of energy sources and means of provision coexist in the city. Energy needs are as unequal as unequal is the society of Bangalore. Generally, the intermittency of energy services characterizes the energy landscape. In conclusion, each of these cities has to be looked at independently, in relation to different problems. In Bangalore, we know that increasing the availability of electricity alone, for example, is not improving the reliability of the system, let alone facilitating energy access to the urban poor. We need context-tailored solutions, in which attention is paid to the specific factors that shape the provision and use of energy in every city.

My second question is thus, where are the possibilities for action: not just what to do about global energy challenges, but also who should do it and how. Past research on global climate change action included the review hundreds of climate change innovations, concluding that experimentation is a key means to create positive action all over the world, Europe, India, you name it.

This means appreciating the value of localized, context-specific, scale-appropriate alternatives which respond directly to the needs of urban dwellers. Here, I am particularly interested on what is the role of planning? In Bangalore, for example, there is an urgent need to understand the interactions between the system of urban planning and that of delivering energy services, as they both operate in a completely uncoordinated manner. Planning has a big role to play, not necessarily in a spatial sense, but rather, as a means to facilitate partnership building and build up collaborative institutions. Planning is a key instrument whereby local needs can be met by bridging different forms of knowledge, bringing together top-down and bottom-up approaches, and, ultimately, making possible strategies for co- designing livable cities.

 

Further reading:

A survey of urban climate change experiments in 100 cities by Vanesa Castán Broto and Harriet Bulkeley

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Vanesa Castán Broto is a senior lecturer and co-director of MSc Environment and Sustainable Development at the DPU. Her work spans a range of issues in developing cities, including disaster preparedness, climate change adaptation and energy supply.

Cities are socio-technical systems, precariously integral, capable of growing as well as becoming smaller and fragmented but still functioning. Even though they have a resilient inherent quality, many cities around the world are witnessing slow death. The reasons could be many – environmental and social degradation, diminishing opportunities for the young population, shifting economic centers, poor governance, loss of character, etc. The dying city is reflected in everything thereafter, in its form, function, and most important the functionaries – the city dwellers. The first sign of decay is visible in the urban form, which instead of undergoing a constant transformation, stops in time and becomes redundant.

Smartening the Cities

The smart city concept brought out by the current government in India, urges planners to design innovative future cities to address the urban transition India is experiencing. In 1900, around 15% of world’s population lived in cities where as in 2015 more than 55% lived in cities. By 2050 it is estimated that 70% of world’s population will be living in cities. According to United Nations, Cities are using only 2% of the entire planet’s land mass and 75% of the world’s natural resources, accounting for approximately 80% of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions. The challenge ahead for city planners is to accommodate the 70% population which will be living in cities by 2050 in the 2% of land available to them.

Improved access to global markets, rapid advances in technology, as well as rising expectations of citizens is fueling the growth engines of urbanization. Cities around the world are embracing a smart agenda. There are several definitions of what it means to be a “smart city,” thus giving an opportunity to governments to define their own programs, policies and procedures, responding to their own unique priorities and needs. Famously, the word SMART as an acronym stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based goals. Most of smart city frameworks in the developing world comprise projects and programs that feature smart grids, smart buildings, clean technology and smart governance. However, apart from meeting basic needs, smart cities need to also improve livability, give its citizen a sense of pride, ownership, identity and belonging.

Reviving the urban fabric

Every city has a peculiar character, represented by elements such as smell, form, colour, texture, sound and culture, commonly described as the urban fabric. A smooth texture, a ragged landscape, a dense weave, a focal point, an intriguing maze, etc., all represent the city’s unique character. Thus, just like a fabric, a city also has a print, a pattern and a colour and when it evolves with time, more often than not, it changes these inherent characteristics. In other words, by accommodating migrant population, welcoming new cultures and traditions, the city voluntarily or involuntarily absorbs elements – and loses its basic essence for better or worse.

Delhi is a historic city, between 3000 B.C. and the 17th century A.D seven different cities came into existence in its location. The remnants of each of these seven cities can be seen today in structures such as Gates, Tombs, Water Bodies, Economic Activities and Streetscape, though most features have lost their fervor with time. An organic city by nature, Delhi has seen drastic changes in its urban form. Several rulers conquered Delhi and adorned it with their symbols, Turk introducing Minar, Mughal Domes, Persian coloured tiles, Maratha’s shikhars and British Bungalows with Gardens.

 

 

However, in modern times, the urban design is not dependent on rulers and thus before a city involuntarily transform we need to plan the inevitably transformation. The launch of four flagship Missions (Smart City, AMRUT, HRIDAY and Swachch Bharat Mission) by Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India represents a realization of a paradigm shift which is taking place in addressing the challenges this evolving unplanned urban transition. These interlinked Missions built on broad overarching objective of creating clean, sanitized, healthy, livable, economically vibrant and responsive cities propagate ‘Planning’ as a fundamental tool for providing realistic direction and cohesive development.

The question however still remains – will smart cities revive the decaying urban fabric? The cities of today need a renaissance movement to make them more inviting, sustainable and vibrant. Art can be instrumental in renewing the look of the city and thus the new trend of using graffiti in portraying emotions, conveying messages and giving dimension to the otherwise plain façade is an idea which is fast catching up in cities around the world. An individual’s expression, graffiti – triggers different reactions from onlookers. Where, many relate to them, some also find these obscure and obstructing. Besides, igniting different feelings amongst people they are being welcomed more and more as part of the urban form. In addition to urban features like, street furniture, signage, kiosks and structures; art and colour are becoming popular urban elements reversing the slow death a city is prone to undergo.

Art on the walls of houses, schools and community spaces is not new to India. Women have been painting their homes from outside by drawing specific geometric patterns. Folk art and strings of mystical stories are common illustrations found in villages with lined mud houses, helping to differentiate the otherwise similar looking brown facades.

Continuing with this tradition, Delhi has recently endorsed graffiti on its vertical frame changing the streetscape altogether. One of the first public intervention adopted by the residents of Lodhi Colony in Delhi has helped convert their residential area into an art district. Several Art Volunteers from across the globe have been tasked to reform the plain walls of the residential blocks into masterpieces. The art portrays – mythology, technology, nature, Indian ethnic patterns, future but above all it portrays pride. Pride which every citizen needs to feel for their larger abode – the city in which they live to respect and to protect the space.

 

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Daljeet Kaur is Associate Director – Knowledge Management with IPE Center for Knowledge and Development (http://ipeckd.com/ipeckd). IPE CKD is the knowledge management arm of IPE Global Limited (www.ipeglobal.com), which was established in 2013 to extend the frontiers of knowledge and promote experimentation for innovative solutions to global development challenges. Alongside her work, Daljeet pursues her passion of painting, sketching and drawing under the banner madhURBANi.

Originally published by Urban Transformations

Will 2016 be an urban year in international development policy? In September 2015, the United Nations Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to supersede the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). One notable feature was the introduction of an ‘urban goal’, Goal 11: “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. Planning is at the centre of the new urban goal. It includes an explicit planning target, Target 11.3: “By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries.” Target 11.3 synthetizes a long history of international development thinking to make cities sustainable through planning.

The target also emphasises the relationship between inclusive development and sustainability. In doing so, the target expresses explicitly the interconnection between social and environmental issues in planning. By emphasising capacity, the target also points to a fundamental issue in planning for sustainable cities: that institutions with the power to carry on sustainable action, or even to understand what sustainable action is, are frequently absent. The target specifies how planning has to be: it has to be participatory, integrated and sustainable. This last adjective emphasises that sustainability is both a characteristic of the output, i.e., a sustainable city, and of the process whereby that output is achieved: i.e. participatory, integrated.

To a certain extent, Target 11.3 follows on from the guidelines of Chapter 7 in Local Agenda 21 that was later consolidated in the Habitat II agenda in Istanbul, 1996. The assertive formulation of Target 11.3, putting at its core both participation and integrated planning, suggests an association of planning and urban management with social and environmental justice objectives. As part of the preparations for the Habitat III conference in Quito 2016, UN-Habitat has promoted the slogan “the transformative force of urbanisation”. The slogan is designed to harness the energy emerging from positive views of urbanization which do not just see it as an unavoidable global phenomenon, but embrace it as a positive force with the potential to change unsustainable societies. The use of the word ‘transformative’, however, suggests a radical departure from business as usual scenarios, a deep structural change that will not only reconfigure cities but also, will reconfigure contemporary societies and economies towards a fairer world which respects its environment. Overall, the link between inclusive and sustainable cities, the emphasis on the sustainability of both processes and outputs, and the framing of planning as a tool for radical change towards a better society all point to a greater interest on achieving environmental and social justice in urban areas. The central question that should be asked in the road towards implementation of SDG 11 and in the preparations for Habitat III is: what kind of planning can bring about cities that are both sustainable and just?

 

The protection of the Earth’s life-support system and poverty reduction are twin priorities for development. In relation to the new urban agenda, this is akin to achieving ‘just sustainabilities’ through linking social welfare and environmental protection (Agyeman et al. 2003, Agyeman 2013). Just sustainabilities approaches have the potential to reinvigorate notions of sustainability in the new urban agenda, helping link environmental concerns with the needs and perceptions of citizens, and their articulation in social movements.

The notion of just sustainabilities emerged as a response to the 1990s debates on sustainable development, and how sustainability goals in an urban context reproduced, rather than prevented, the conditions of inequality and environmental degradation. In urban planning, there has long been a concern about the limitations of using sustainability-oriented urban policies to address social justice issues (Marcuse 1998). Political theorists have questioned broadly where social justice and environmental sustainability are actually compatible (Dobson 1998, Dobson 2003). However, for proponents of just sustainabilities, social justice and environmental sustainability are interdependent problems that challenge existing power structures (McLaren 2003).

The linkages between environmental change and social justice are apparent in empirical evidence of how environmental degradation and resource scarcity is experienced by the urban poor. Unsafe and inadequate water supplies, inadequate provision of sanitation and waste management, overcrowding, lack of safety, and different forms of air and water pollution continue to shape the lives of many citizens around the world (e.g. Hardoy and Satterthwaite 1991, Forsyth et al. 1998, Brennan 1999, HEI 2004, WHO 2009, UNDP 2014). For example, almost 10% of deaths in low-income regions are directly attributed to environmental risks such as unsafe water, outdoor and indoor air pollution, lead exposure and impacts from climate change (WHO 2009). Poverty and inequalities in access to resources and livelihood opportunities increase the vulnerability of the urban poor to climate change impacts and natural disasters (Revi et al. 2014). By 2030, the global demand for energy and water will likely grow by 40%, while for food it may increase by as much as 50% (ODI/ECDPM/GDI/DIE 2012). This is likely to further hinder poor people’s access to even basic resources. For example, the number of people without energy access is raising, regardless of infrastructure developments or urbanisation rates (IEA 2014).

 

Incorporating notions of justice in environmental policy and planning emphasises both the distributional impacts of environmental degradation and resource scarcity and the need to adopt decisions that emerge from a fair and open process of policy-making. This also requires broadening the notion of justice beyond a narrow distributive conceptualisation with a recognition of how environmental problems are experienced by diverse groups of actors – especially those which are disadvantaged and struggle to make their views known – the extent to which they are represented and participate in environmental decision-making, and how environmental policy influences people’s opportunities for fulfilment (Schlosberg 2007).

Civil society organisations and local community organisations have already made substantial contributions to demonstrating and acting upon the nexus between social justice and environmental sustainability, which have in turn inspired the ideals of just sustainabilities (Agyeman et al. 2002). These are initiatives that recognise the need for people to participate in environmental decisions; the imperative to meet people’s basic needs’ and the normative requirement to preserve the integrity of nature for future generations (Faber and McCarthy 2003). Justice-oriented discourses are already inspiring environmental action for climate change in urban areas (Bulkeley et al. 2014, Bulkeley et al. 2013). Yet, addressing the environmental crisis will require a concerted action between public, private and civil society actors for a sustainability transition.

Demonstrating that just sustainabilities have purchase to deliver an urban future that is both just and sustainable will require operationalising this notion within current governance possibilities. In particular, following Rydin’s (2013) pioneering work on the future of planning, there is a need to think how just sustainabilities can help challenge and redefine environmental planning. Just sustainabilities emphasises the “nexus of theoretical compatibility between sustainability and environmental justice, including an emphasis on community-based decision making; on economic policies that account fiscally for social and environmental externalities; on reductions in all forms of pollution; on building clean, livable communities for all people; and on an overall regard for the ecological integrity of the planet” (Agyeman and Evans 2003; p. 36-37). It adopts an expansive notion of environmental justice which also recognises the just practices of everyday life (Schlosberg 2013). In doing so, it calls for a to move away from current dominant paradigms of growth, using planning as a means to address social and ecological concerns within an unsustainable and unjust economic system (Rydin 2013).

In this vein, just sustainabilities may be thought as the attainment of four conditions simultaneously:

1. Improving people’s quality of life and wellbeing;
2. Meeting the needs of both present and future generations, that is, considering simultaneously intra- and intergenerational equity;
3. Ensuring justice and equity in terms of recognition, process, procedure and outcome; and
4. Recognising ecosystem limits and the need to live within the possibilities of this planet (Agyeman et al. 2003).

There is already a body of empirical evidence about the practice of just sustainabilities (Agyeman 2005, Agyeman 2013). However, does it represent a viable perspective for sustainable planning agendas? Does it have relevance beyond the environmental justice movements from which it has emerged? Can it be integrated into current practices of environmental planning? These are open questions which will unfold as the New Urban Agenda begins to be implemented on the ground. The concept of just sustainabilities emerges as a positive discourse that can support action to deliver urban transformations. Clearly, there are tools available to deliver just sustainability action in urban environmental planning and management, but their applicability, effectiveness and impacts depend on the context in which they are implemented. More ambitious efforts are needed in the New Urban Agenda to redefine urban development possibilities and the way environmental limits are experienced in different cities. Local governments will play a key role in developing strategies to challenge growth-dependence paradigms and to enable collaborative forms of environmental governance.

 

REFERENCES

Agyeman, J., 2005. Sustainable communities and the challenge of environmental justice. New York University Press: New York.
Agyeman, J., 2013. Introducing just sustainabilities: Policy, planning, and practice. London: Zed books.
Agyeman, J., Bullard, R. D. and Evans, B. 2002. Exploring the Nexus: Bringing Together Sustainability, Environmental Justice and Equity. Space and Polity, 6(1), 77-90.
Agyeman, J., Bullard, R. D. and Evans, B., 2003. Just sustainabilities: development in an unequal world. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Agyeman, J. and Evans, T. 2003. Toward Just Sustainability in Urban Communities: Building Equity Rights with Sustainable Solutions. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 590(1), 35-53.
Brennan, E., 1999. Population, Urbanization , Environment, and Security : A summary of the issues. Comparative Urban Studies Occasional Paper Series. Washington.
Bulkeley, H., et al. 2013. Climate justice and global cities: mapping the emerging discourses. Global Environmental Change, 23(5), 914-925.
Bulkeley, H., Edwards, G. A. and Fuller, S. 2014. Contesting climate justice in the city: Examining politics and practice in urban climate change experiments. Global Environmental Change, 25, 31-40.
Dobson, A., 1998. Justice and the Environment: Conceptions of Environmental Sustainability and Dimensions of Social Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dobson, A. 2003. Social justice and environmental sustainability: ne’er the twain shall meet. Just sustainabilities: Development in an unequal world, 83-95.
Faber, D. and McCarthy, D. 2003. Neo-liberalism, globalization and the struggle for ecological democracy: linking sustainability and environmental justice. Just sustainabilities: Development in an unequal world, 38-63.
Forsyth, T., Leach, M. and Scoones, I., 1998. Poverty and environment: priorities for research and policy – an overview study. Sussex, 49.
Hardoy, J. E. and Satterthwaite, D. 1991. Environmental problems of third world cities: A global issue ignored. Public Administration and Development, 11, 341-361.
HEI, Health Effects of Outdoor Air Pollution in Developing Countries of Asia. ed., 2004 Boston.
IEA, Africa Energy Outlook. ed., 2014 Paris.
Marcuse, P. 1998. Sustainability is not enough. Environment and Urbanization, 10(2), 103-112.
McLaren, D. 2003. Environmental space, equity and the ecological debt. Just sustainabilities: Development in an unequal world, 19-37.
ODI/ECDPM/GDI/DIE, 2012. Confronting scarcity: Managing water, energy and land for inclusive and sustainable growth. Brussels: European Union Report on Development, 9789279231612.
Revi, A., et al. 2014. Towards transformative adaptation in cities: the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment. Environment and Urbanization, 26(1), 11-28.
Rydin, Y., 2013. The future of planning. Policy Press.
Schlosberg, D. 2007. Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature.
Schlosberg, D. 2013. Theorising environmental justice: the expanding sphere of a discourse. Environmental politics, 22(1), 37-55.
UNDP, Human Development Report 2014. ed., 2014 New York, 239.
WHO, Global Health Risks: Mortality and Burden of Disease Attributable to selected major risks. ed., 2009 Geneva.

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Vanesa Castán Broto is a senior lecturer and co-director of MSc Environment and Sustainable Development at the DPU. Her work spans a range of issues in developing cities, including disaster preparedness, climate change adaptation and energy supply. Vanesa is also Principal Investigator of the Mapping Urban Energy Landscapes (MUEL) in the Global South project at Urban Transformations.

 

The book ‘Participatory Planning for Climate Compatible Development’ advances a key argument about the need to involve urban citizens in local action for climate adaptation. The book present the insights from a CDKN-funded project called Public-Private-People Partnerships for Climate Compatible Development (2011-2013), which brought together policy makers, academics and activists from Mozambique with a group of ‘pracademics’ (or practice-oriented academics) based in the UK.

The project started by bringing together two fundamental concerns. First, we perceived that much of the response to climate change, both for mitigation and adaptation, related to the management of infrastructure at the local level. Here, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that in the absence of capacity and resources for coordinate action at the national or local level, a myriad of actors from small business to community organisations can play a role in delivering sustainability outcomes at the local level. Hence, we focused on the notion of partnerships as a means to build capacity through the collaboration between different types of institutions. We challenged the notion of public-private partnership as the only way in which effective partnerships happen, focusing instead on the variety of cross-sectoral partnerships that may improve service delivery at the local level.[1]

Second, we believe that creating long-lasting partnerships required a process of institutional development whereby sectors of the city whose voice may not always be heard could be incorporated in thinking about the future of their neighbourhood and the city as a whole. Participatory planning was conceptualised here as a means to develop such institutions, to establish a process of dialogue from the bottom up. Our insights suggest that, in an urban context, participatory planning not only does not pose an obstacle for effective climate action, but also may be the most effective means to deliver it.

Deliberative planning methods are appropriate to develop a democratic culture of partnership-making, which recognises the human rights of urban populations and how they perceive their life could be improved. Participatory methods are also efficient and fast means to find out what is the best way to improve the adaptation of communities that suffer the impacts of climate change. In that sense, this book reports on our own experience including: the need to tie climate change knowledge to personal experiences of extreme events such as flooding; the practical difficulties that we encountered to deliver participatory planning as a sequence of events; and the aspiration that participatory planning could lead to broader changes though a process of partnership building.

Our objective was to deliver an optimistic and forward-looking account of how to engage with communities for climate compatible development in a matter that makes a difference to their lives. The book also exposes, however, the limitations of a one-off engagement project to create lasting, transformative change. In this sense, we see this book as the beginning of a long engagement with the communities of Maputo, their aspirations, and the multiple possibilities to create a better city in the context of climate change.

[1]For a critical discussion see: Castán Broto V, Macucule DA, Boyd E, et al. (2015) Building Collaborative Partnerships for Climate Change Action in Maputo, Mozambique. Environment and Planning A 47: 571-587.