Can poor urban planning be held responsible for emergence of congested and unplanned urbanisation?

This article is the second in a three-part series on unplanned settlements, urban planning, and the challenges related to water, sanitation, and stormwater management that are acutely felt in large, dense, unplanned settlements in cities of the global south, a research that Delhi-based think tank Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) is conducting in Delhi. Read part 1 and part 3 here.

Urban settlements in India are generally categorised as planned or unplanned. Planned settlements are those that have been constructed and developed by government agencies or housing societies according to officially approved plans. The development of these settlements takes into account various factors, including physical, social, and economic considerations, among others. 

In contrast, unplanned settlements arise without legal approval, either on government land or private property, in a disorderly manner. These settlements consist of both permanent or semi-permanent and temporary structures, often found near city drains, railway tracks, low-lying areas prone to flooding, or on agricultural land and green belts surrounding the city.

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A significant number of residents in unplanned settlements work in the informal sector, which typically doesn't pay adequately. Consequently, they often settle in areas where basic amenities are either lacking or completely unavailable, in an effort to reduce their living costs, including rent. 

These areas often include slums, jhuggi jhopri (JJ) clusters, unauthorised colonies and the like. Once established, these unplanned settlements continue to expand without any oversight from the government, causing further spatial challenges.

Informal and unplanned settlements are considered illegal and are thus denied formal services such as water supply and sanitation. An outbreak of cholera and gastroenteritis as recently as 1988 reportedly claimed more than 150 lives in the slums of east Delhi, prompting improvements to the municipal water supply and, eventually, to sewerage systems.

The large number of unplanned settlements in Delhi can be attributed to the significant imbalance between the supply and demand for land, housing, and related infrastructure. Policies and urban planning often overlook the needs of the urban poor, leading to an unequal distribution of resources between residents of formal and informal parts of the city.

As per Master Plan of Delhi (MPD) 2021, the goal of providing housing for everyone by 2022 required the construction or improvement of 4.8 million houses with adequate infrastructural facilities like water and sanitation. The proportion of these houses designated for economically weaker sections (EWS) would be 54 per cent of the overall.

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Three contrasting critiques of urbanisation failure

Since Independence, formal urban planning and planned urbanisation have been carried out in India through the establishment of urban development authorities in each state and city. Delhi Development Authority (DDA) was created in 1957 by an Act of Parliament as one of the first such bodies.

The first critique defends urban planning as a statutory minimum legal entitlement for the urban poor. It argues that by criticising urban planning and its formal instruments like the City Master Plan (referred to as the Development Plan), we strip away the only legal safeguard that the urban poor and middle class have against the predominantly private builder-led urban development witnessed in India in recent decades. 

The breach of urban planning norms has led to the eventual eviction of slum dwellers on one hand, while on the other, it has resulted in the conversion of valuable land (formerly occupied by factories or remaining public lands such as rivers and forests) into high-end elite commercial and residential use. 

The City Master Plan offers a statutory legal entitlement—the document is a legal framework—for all residents of a city to access the development rights and benefits of that city. Unlike welfare schemes and programmes, it can be legally enforced.

The second critique holds DDA responsible for its overly idealistic approach to land-use planning for urbanisation, ignoring the needs of low-income groups and the poor in a city like Delhi. It also criticises the emergence of ‘bourgeois environmentalism’ in the 1990s, which led to the eviction of both informal workers and informal settlements in Delhi under the pretext of reducing air pollution and cleaning Yamuna river.

Unrestricted urban development, with minimal urban planning by state agencies in the form of basic grid-based land use, no restrictions on the allocation of land for various purposes, and minimal constraints on construction, represents a neo-liberal market-led model of urbanisation, which is cited as the third critique of urbanisation failure. 

Read more: Global South water-sensitive cities: Framing the discourse

This critique builds on the criticism of formal urban planning instruments and appears to be inspired by the Town Planning Scheme (TPS), first implemented in Ahmedabad. The underlying premise of the TPS is the appreciation of land value that benefits landowners, their voluntary surrender of 40 per cent of their land for this purpose to the TPS Authority, and the provision in the TPS for 10 per cent of land to be used for low-cost housing.

Can TPS replace City Master Planning for the entire city, rather than just its peripheral areas for specific-purpose housing development? Could it lead to planned urban development outcomes not only for the urban poor (as outlined in the MPD 2021, which specifies that 54 per cent of new housing should be for EWSs) but also ensure adequate provision of other public land uses?

It is important to understand why City Master Planning came into existence and what other options we had post-Independence for a planned urban development in terms of spatial land use planning. Why did it fail? Was it an intrinsic fault of Urban Planning or the political-economy of urban land capture by the elite?

Gita Dewan Verma, independent planning researcher and writer and author of book Slumming India, stated: 

One can think of role of Master Plan in relation to urban land as one would think of the role of expenditure budget for family income. Both can help but not guarantee efficient and equitable distribution of resources for everyone’s needs and wants… Mere existence of Master Plan will not stop the powerful from squandering precious urban land to build unnecessary unplanned cyber parks or world-class shopping complexes as monuments to themselves’ 

Residents of slums located near the Yamuna River were identified as polluters and were removed in 2003-2004. However, this did not improve the pollution levels in the Yamuna, as untreated sewage from Delhi’s residential colonies and from neighbouring states was, and remains, the primary source of the river’s pollution. 

Thus, it’s true that the urban poor, who had been denied access to formal housing and basic services like water supply and sanitation, became the scapegoats of environmental activism in Delhi, despite being victims of systemic inequities. They were unable to stake the same claim to environmental activism that rural communities successfully did with the Chipko Movement and forest conservation efforts.

Read more: Global South water-sensitive cities: Here is how to make our urban areas water secure in a just and inclusive way

Sociologist and Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology & Anthropology at Ashoka University Amita Baviskar has stated: 

In all cases where rural poor have been successful in asserting their rights to resources, they have done so by mobilising a counter-narrative about their superiority of their conservationist ethics and practices, often performing the role of ‘virtuous peasant’ or ecologically nodal savage. Organisations of urban poor find it very difficult to Marshall similar moral claims that marry ecology with justice.’ 

The emergence of congested, unplanned settlements is not due to inherent flaws in urban planning. Instead, it is the result of the political economy of urban land as a limited commercial resource, compounded by factors such as rural unemployment and migration, which drive urbanisation. 

These elements combine to create significant obstacles to sensible spatial land use planning through formal instruments. If all other sectors of the economy are driven by private capital formation and an unrestricted push for accumulation that relaxes any constraints on its movement, can formal urban planning alone resist this momentum? No.

Formal urban planning provides legislative entitlements to the less privileged in the context of city development. It should be strengthened, not weakened, in the name of reforms, and must not be reduced to a mere water utilities sectoral planning and forecasting approach. Formal urban planning must incorporate a reimagined perspective on managing water supply, wastewater, and stormwater, not only at the city level but also at the regional planning level.

The concluding article will focus on how water supply is planned for Delhi and the possibilities for reimagining it.

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