Different European countries entered the crisis at different times, and the impacts of the economic crash have not been even. Ireland, like the UK, Iceland and the Southern European counties have seen the largest reverses in GDP per capita since 2007. In eastern Europe, the countries worst hit between 2007 and 2011 were Estonia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Croatia.
In marked contrast, much of Scandinavia and the north and east of continental Europe has experienced growth in per capita GDP over the period of the crisis. Poland and Macedonia lead the way, but Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Switzerland, Turkey and Latvia are not far behind.
While domestic economies may remain weak, exports have shown upward trends. Countries like Germany with things to sell on global markets have suffered relatively little; the damage in the Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland, countries that were converging towards the European average through strong pre-crisis growth, especially in property and construction, have been badly set back. As Adrian Healey (Cardiff University) highlighted, recovery in terms of jobs is strongest in the continental core of Europe.

The crisis in Ireland

Coming into Dublin through the north of the city, the traditionally poorer part of this historically divided capital, the shopfronts tell of the migration into the city during the boom years, as migrants from near and far came chasing jobs and money. But then the long lines of taxis waiting for fares depicts today’s economy. Temple Bar somehow sustains its carousing bustle, but in other parts of town the bars are empty by 9pm. The radio carries reports of Gaelic football teams folding as the young men migrate to Sydney, New York, Hong Kong or London in search of work.

Before the crisis hit, the Irish cities had one of the leading positions in Europe in terms of a low rate of early school leavers, an important measure for cohesiveness and competitiveness in the knowledge economy. This contrasted with very high drop-out rates in some Spanish cities, e.g. Valencia and Alicante. Now Spain is one of the few places where metropolitan centres have suffered worst in the economic crisis.
Ireland plans for recovery

Dick Gleeson (Dublin’s Head of Planning) gave a passionate argument for using place-making and urban design as a way to generate growth. He highlighted the strategies past, present and future to regenerate the east side of Dublin, the area of the Docklands that connect the city to the sea.
Similarly, Niall Cussen from Ireland’s ministry responsible for Environment, Community and Local Government, highlighted the importance of the new National Spatial Strategy as a tool for economic recovery. He put the case for planning as an “energiser”, not just a form of statutory regulation. As Cussen noted, a key reason why Ireland now faces such great challenges is that it had become “an economy based on selling property to each other”. The country was no experiencing the costs of not planning.

The Irish papers report signs that the government is moving to try to stimulate the economy again, after the long period of austerity. 6.4 billion Euros is being moved from the National Pension Reserve Fund to a new investment fund . On the radio I hear that a regeneration project is to be launched in run-down town centre of Limerick, Ireland’s fourth largest town. Pity about the permissions given in the boom years for out-of-town retail parks near to the city.
Competitiveness, cohesion and community initiatives

In the ESPON seminar, Michael Parkinson from Liverpool John Moores UnIversity argued that there was a great risk that in the crisis, the gains made by Europe’s second cities before the crisis will be lost. Parkinson’s message was that we need to retain capacity through these difficult times. There is too much fear and too little money: public action is crucial; planners and policy makers need to lead, not blink.

I facilitated a workshop that looked at infrastructure and transport. Klaus Spiekermann, who is working on the ESPON research on transport and accessibility, argued that a pattern of transport investment to support the large and medium-sized cities is likely to offer the best trade-off between competitiveness and cohesion.

Eduardo Dias suggested that we need to change our ideas about “smart cities”: efficient technology helps, but ultimately smart cities are made by smartpeople. Dias pointed to the way that citizens are using smart technology to create new relationships to governments. One example is Hack der Overheid which looks fo “Hacks of kindness” and has run “Hackathons” to explore ways to use open source data.

A fundamental restructuring of services and places

I came away feeling that the scale and significance of the restructuring that is taking place has still not been fully grasped. The crisis has altered patterns of investment by the private sector. Banks are only lending to low-risk investments, and are particularly cautious about property investment. The result is that investment is increasingly concentrated on the capital cities. Smaller towns faced with disinvestment will fall further behind.

To sustain the banks public services are being cut. This process again has a strong spatial component. One way to reduce spending is to “rationalise” and centralise service provision, e.g. through closure of schools and hospitals, or through creating larger units of public administration. Yet public service jobs have been crucial parts of the economy in non-capital city regions.

I cannot help but reflect on the ways in which the development of Europe’s regions and the policy context has changed since the European Spatial Development Perspective  was agreed by the then 15 member states in 1999. Remember, it was subtitled “Towards balanced and sustainable development of the European Territory”. The three key objectives then were economic and social cohesion; conservation of natural resources and cultural heritage; and more balanced competitiveness across Europe. Fourteen years on, who can claim that these objectives define Europe’s trajectory, or the recent history of Ireland?

The European Council of Spatial Planners has just published a book to mark “A Centenary of Spatial Planning in Europe”. It is a compendium in which the Introduction is followed by 32 chapters that range far and wide in their concerns and approach. What does the book tell us about where planning in Europe has come from and where it is heading to?

The “centenary” is less precise than it sounds. Gerd Albers in the opening chapter muses on “the years around 1910” which he rightly identifies as a “formative phase”, albeit one that developed from a range of endeavours over the two previous decades. Albers charts the early events and professional formations in France, Germany and the UK, as well as the growth of international contacts between 1910 and 1914. However, he does not probe the legacy of the divides between the three traditions – French urbanisme, German Städtebau and British “planning”.

Past performance, today’s challenges

Louis Albrechts, now an emeritus professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, strikes a much more challenging note. He argues that planners in Europe need to find ways to make different things happen, what he calls “transformative practices” that go beyond “technical/legal regulation and a mere technical/rational use of instruments”. He asks whether European strategic spatial planning exercises can really shift territorial development trajectories? Or are they just “a cosmetic veil to hide the growing disparities within Europe”.

From Portugal, Paolo Correia also laments aspects of the performance of planning. The regulatory framework seems unable to really steer the “urban transformation”, and has been weakened by neo-liberalism so that trust in planning and planners has been eroded. Correia says “A proper planning process is one that seeks long-term solutions, wide participation and accurate information”.

Philippe Doucet highlights the contradiction that while planning and sustainable development seem to converge as concepts, in practice “environmentalists do not trust planning officials”. He goes on to argue the case for planning at cross-border and transnational scales. He points to examples of such initiatives in the Greater Mekong Region and the Johannesburg-Maputo Development Corridor.

Faludi and Healey chapters

Another distinguished academic, Andreas Faludi, describes the foundations for European spatial planning that were set in place in the last century. He starts with the 1956 Spark Report, which proposed a “regional fund” to support major European projects, and looks at the roles of the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. Then came Jacques Delors, cohesion policy and the European Spatial Development Perspective. Thus by the turn of the century, Faludi argues, “a firm European planning programme existed.” Its three main elements were: harmonious development; coherence of policies as they affect space; and co-operation with stakeholders

Yet another emeritus professor, Patsy Healey, also contributes a chapter in which she seeks to identify the “planning project…in our present times”. This revolves around the public realm and the “public life” in which citizens and stakeholders meet formal government roles. Her chapter concludes with some guides for today. These are: know your place (“how diverse people in multiple ways, experience an urban area through their daily lives and their histories and memories”); foster active and inclusive debate; and know your institutional context.

National and city reviews

As well as general overview essays such as these, there are several country-specific chapters. These cover planning in Ireland, Switzerland, Cyprus, Slovenia, Poland and Belgium, as well as one on the Western Balkans. There are also chapters that focus on specific cities – Bratislava, and the four Nordic capitals, plus a case study of a local development proposal in Kent by Robin Thompson, ex-head of Strategic Planning for the County.

There is also a chapter on maritime and coastal spatial planning (a theme of one of my recent blogs) . This is written by Elias Beriatos and focuses on the Mediterranean. My own chapter is on territorial impact assessment. It draws on short surveys of practitioners that I undertook in the UK in 2008 and in some other EU countries in 2010.

Why is there a gap between what planners say and what planning does?

The European Council of Spatial Planners (and especially their Past President Joao Teixeira) deserve credit for taking on the challenge of producing a multi-authored book encompassing contributions from practitioners and academics from many different parts of Europe. It was no easy task, and a hiccup meant that a text largely put together in 2010 has only just appeared. This means that none of the chapters can adequately address the current planning problems of Europe, where austerity policies are widening the regional divides, while the follies of under-regulated speculative development stand as “ghost estates”.
In the circumstances in which the book was produced, probably it was not realistic to expect some attempt to pull the strands together and provide a critical evaluation of the past and a visionary gaze into the future. The chapters are in alphabetical sequence based on the author’s name. This arrangement sidesteps considered reflection on how different chapters relate to each other.

A more in-depth and critical consideration of the last 100 years of plannng across Europe has yet to be written, and would be a formidible task. There would need to be less generalisation than is found in the essays in this volume and a stronger attempt to grapple with why, under differing political systems and economic eras, there has usually been an alarming gap between the rhetoric of professional planners and the outputs from the statutory practice of planning.  The intellectual foundations of planning mean that too often well meaning aspirations have been built on a weak platform of theory and evidence. The power of the market and the power of governments have determined outcomes.

In addition, such a book would look not only at spatial planning in Europe, but at the export and imposition of European planning ideas, practices and institutions through Europe’s colonial powers.

Riga's historic centre is a World Heritage site

My previous visits to Riga were in the winter. Fading light on gloomy afternoons, sleet and snow chilling the soul, forcing me to seek the refuge of a warm bar or café. Now I am here in vibrant springtime, with a crescent moon in a crimson night sky after a day of warm sun. Suddenly, light green leaves have burst the grip of the long, bare winter. There is a promise of better days ahead: this great European city looks to the future with new confidence.

A great European city

Riga is the biggest city on the Baltic between St.Petersburg and Hamburg. It was a Hanseatic port where east met west, trade was done and craftsmen thrived. Once the town’s ramparts were demolished in the mid-19th century, there was a bold plan to transform that land into a circle of green space and boulevards, as in so many German-influenced cities. This legacy is still enjoyed by citizens and tourists: high value land close to the city used for public enjoyment rather than private profit. The city then spread with style beyond this ring: the extent and quality of the Art Nouveau architecture testifies to the wealth and culture of Riga before the First World War.

Riga’s physical fabric suffered surprisingly little damage from the horrors inflicted on Latvia during the Second World War (occupation by Russia, then by the Nazis then by Russia again). Riga became a Soviet city. The stamp of Stalin is still evident in the townscape, not just in the skyline “wedding cake” of the Academy of Sciences, Moscow’s familiar fraternal 1950s gift. The main built environment legacy of Soviet era is the suburban panel-construction flats from the 1970s and 80s, enduring signifiers both of the old regime’s losing battle to nurture acceptance and of its determined importation of ethnic Russians into Latvia.

Managing the historic centre – a World Heritage site

After Latvia regained its independence, and embraced market forces, Riga produced a ten year development plan in 1995. Heritage preservation was a key aim. As a review of the plan reports, the policies and principles were not always “consistently observed in practice”. The historic environment in the city centre “has not been adequately protected against unfavourable development tendencies”. City development policy became “secondary or even non-existing (sic)”. Development pressures mounted, there was no time to prepare detailed plans for the historic core, frustrated developers lobbied local politicians, and decisions became politicised.

Mixed use had seemed an exciting new concept in the heady days of 1995, but the failure to carry through into Building Regulations basic controls on illumination, noise, air pollution and traffic generation created very practical problems. There was a tendency to set planning policy aside in favour of the economic benefits that a development would bring, not least to the local authority itself. Eventually there was a public backlash, led by the Environment Protection Club, and a moratorium on development pending the adoption of a plan.

In fairness, the location of some of the largest commercial developments was on the periphery of the historic core, and a credible case could be made for them. The Origo shopping centre adjoins the Central Station on a site intended for the railway’s passenger terminal in the 1995 Plan; nearby the Stockman complex of shops and cinemas developed on land planned for “transport infrastructure”. However, there has also been loss of green space for car parking and an extension to the National Theatre.

Given the numerous edge city retail parks, the lipstick on the urban collar of consumerism, the city centre shopping galleries look functionally sensible. So many of the users are the multitude of young women working in the new service industries in the historic centre, their jobs and appetites for shoes, clothes, coffees and mobile phones unimaginable to the elderly men who ran the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Overall my impression is that Riga’s planners have done a better job, all things considered, than in some of Europe’s other post-socialist cities. The World Heritage status of the centre remains justified. Tourists flock to see it. There are delightful narrow lanes adding intrigue alongside the grander ecclesiastical squares. The grassy banks of the city canal provide repose despite the heavy traffic nearby. Where there has been new development within the once-walled area, existing building heights have been respected, though elsewhere the egotistical architecture of big business is making its mark on the skyline.

In all of this it is important to remember that Riga has undergone strong economic growth over the last 15 years, notwithstanding the serious slump that hit in 2008. Latvia as a whole has lost an estimated 300,000 of its 2.3 million population to international migration, but Riga, by far the prime city, has kept the national economy afloat.

Regional imbalance and rural decline

However, the scale of the regional imbalance and the pace of depopulation in the remoter rural regions in the east of the country are creating a different crisis. I was speaking at a conference on regional growth, in the town of Valmiera, about 90 minutes drive from the capital through woods and forests.
The event focused on the “9+21” development strategy proposed in the Latvia 2030 sustainable development strategy, and endorsed in the new National Development Plan that was adopted last year. In essence this proposes concentrating public investment (notably EU Structural and Investment Funds) on 9 main towns and 21 smaller ones. The rhetoric is that these places will function as regional growth poles, spreading the benefits to their weaker rural hinterlands. Predictably, there were expressions of anguish from representatives of the villages and small local authorities. Civil servants in Riga visit such about as often as government officials from London make a trip to South Shields.

Latvia represents today’s global development challenges in microcosm. The young and able, especially young women, are moving to the cities, where there are education opportunities and service industries demanding their skills and offering the lifestyle to which they aspire. Urban land is needed for offices, apartments, logistics centres, leisure complexes and shops perpetually re-stocking designer-ware and gadgets as last year’s models become obsolete. Riga today is more like Paris, New York or Shanghai that it has ever been, economically, socially and culturally, and its planners and designers have to keep up with the pace.

The secondary cities – places like Valmiera – hang on, often with distinct strengths; in the case of Valmiera, an excellent local brewery and a university committed to being an active partner in regional development. But beyond them, in the fields and the forests, fewer and fewer men labour, and the villages lose their means and reasons to exist. I doubt that the 9+21 strategy will be able to save such places.

Stornoway, Western Isles: new EU concern for Blue Growth could open opportuntiies for coastal communities.

The concept of maritime spatial planning has been given a significant boost by a couple of recent actions in the European Union. As Maria Damanaki, EU Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, has commented, “Governments are waking up to the fact that we have just about reached the limit of what can be squeezed from the 29% of the planet that is land. Therefore, it becomes clear that we need to look even more to the sea.” Now the EU is proposing a Directive that would require Member States to develop coastal management strategies that coordinate planning for activities in coastal zones across the different policy areas. This comes just as a pioneering report on Europe’s seas has been published.

Connecting land and sea

A team led by planners at the University of Liverpool have produced “European Seas and Territorial Development: Opportunities and Risks”.  It is part of the ESPON research programme, in which I also do some work and for which the RTPI is the UK Contact Point.
The report notes that for a long time there was a disconnection between the way that land and marine environments were viewed. While the planning of the use of land is long established, the idea that the seas also need planning is relatively new. It was only in 2002 that the EU parliament and Council issued a recommendation in favour of Integrated Coastal Zone Management.

However, there is now growing recognition of the significant inter-linkages between marine and terrestrial areas, and the opportunities and risks presented by the marine environment. More particularly, the report points out that there is a realisation that the interactions between land and sea extend beyond the coastal zone. However, responses have been rather fragmented.

The authors comment “The intensity, nature and extent of sea use and these interactions with the land have created a complex web of governance arrangements at a variety of different scales (global, regional seas, European, bilateral and transnational, national, regional and local as well as sectoral depending on particular interests that want to use sea space).”

This points to the need for maritime spatial planning as a way of allocating space amongst potentially conflicting users, and regulating and managing seas in the cause of sustainable development.

Jobs, Ships, Cables and Energy

Some coastal settlements depend heavily on the sea for jobs. This is true in Iceland, Norway, Estonia and Latvia, the UK, parts of northern Spain, northern and central Italy, southern Portugal, and many European islands including the Canaries. There are also highly urbanised regions where there are a lot of jobs in major ports, such as Antwerp, Hamburg and Rotterdam.
Some seas are rather congested. The Southern North Sea and Channel are the major focus for marine transport and cables in Europe, with other hotspots around major ports in the Mediterranean, in the Baltic around the Danish Straights and Gulf of Finland and around the Canaries.

Sub-sea oil is important, not just in the North Sea. Growth in fossil fuel exploration is envisaged in the Arctic and there have been hydro-carbon discoveries off Cyprus and Greece. In the Black Sea there are production fields for offshore oil and (mainly) gas off the Turkish coast, at Galata near the Bulgarian coast and the Ana and Doina fields off Romania.

Renewable energy in various forms is envisaged in many areas most notably the Atlantic and North Sea where wind and wave and tidal power potential is greatest. The southern North Sea has Europe’s main concentration of offshore wind farms. In the longer term there is the possibility of carbon capture and storage in exhausted oil and gas fields in the North Sea and the Baltic.

Add in fisheries, aquaculture and environmental risks and it is easy to see why maritime issues are rising up the policy agenda, at least in the EU.

A new move

In March the EU announced a new draft Directive. It will require Member States to map the range of maritime activities that I have sketched above. They will have to produce maritime spatial plans, and develop coastal management strategies that will coordinate measures across the different policy areas that apply to activities in coastal zones. “Respecting the minimum requirements proposed by the Directive, Member States will need to ensure that their maritime planning and coastal management supports sustainable growth, while involving relevant stakeholders and cooperating with neighbouring states.”

Planning of land brings economic benefits through providing certainty to investors. Maritime spatial planning is expected to have similar benefits. The Directive is proposing a one-stop shop principle, so that the process of gaining approval for maritime developments such as fish farms or wind farms can be streamlined.

Blue Growth

The agenda is being driven by the EU Directorate responsible for Maritime Affairs. It is part of the promotion of Blue Growth. Blue Growth is a long-term strategy that embraces the economic. social and environmental aspects of Europe’s seas. It focuses on activities as diverse as short-sea shipping, coastal tourism, offshore wind energy, desalination and use of marine resources in the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries.

Opportunities in the new European Structural and Investment Funds (2014-2020)

The new round of EU funding that begins next year seeks better integration between what were previously separate funds covering regional development, rural development, fisheries and the social fund. There would seem to be real opportunities for coastal communities to develop proposals for investments that seek to deliver on the Blue Growth agenda and “push out the boat “ (sorry, I couldn’t resist that one) on maritime spatial planning.

Tuvalu from the air (photo courtesy of Dr.Julia Edwards)

This blog provides a front line report from Tuvalu, a small island state in the Pacific. Tuvalu is going through urbanization on a scale it has never experienced before, and is also struggling to adapt to the impacts of climate change. This remote and tiny place, so far removed from the global cities which are shaping its future, provides a laboratory specimen of the fate of a small island state in today’s world.

Small island states

I have written before about the development challenges that small island states are facing: see my blogs on Brunei and the Maldives. However, these small states are so often overlooked, and their problems are so immediate, that they bear repeating, though each country remains unique in its culture and circumstances. The trigger for writing about Tuvalu was the receipt of a newsletter from Julia Edwards,  based in a church project in Fiji, reporting on a recent visit to Tuvalu. Tuvalu is officially categorised as a Least Developed Country, but is paying a heavy price that has been imposed by the kind of development that much of the rest of the world takes for granted.

16 square miles, 10,600 people

Tuvalu is one of the world’s smallest states. Its land area amounts to only 16 square miles (26 square kms). Any country that size will have a very limited natural resource base and can ill afford to lose any of the land that it has. In Tuvalu’s case the land is scattered across  five coral atolls and four tiny reef islands. The land rarely reaches 3 metres above sea level.

The economic limitations are all too evident: a miniscule domestic market and a vast distance to cover to reach other places. Half-way between Australia and Hawaii, Fiji is roughly 500 miles away; Brisbane is over 2000 miles; Bali over 4000. Internal communication is also a problem. The islands are spread over 310,000 square miles (500,000 square km) of sea.

Rural poverty, urban growth

This has been a rural country, but now there is an “urban area”. Funafuti, the capital, is now home to around half the population of Tuvalu. Funafuti’s population increased by 40% between the censuses in 2002 and 2012. Speaking in 2010, the Minister for Home Affairs observed “The need to develop and manage urbanization is critical since Funafuti is increasingly transforming into an urban area and at present there is no proper institutional set up to coordinate develop and manage this transformation.”

Part of the growth of Funafuti is the result of people moving there in the hope of getting work. There is increasing poverty of opportunities for people in rural areas. Traditional subsistence agriculture is in decline as the economy has become more monetarised.

Tuvalu is a poor country: GDP per capita is around $5000 and a quarter of the people live below the national poverty line. Average household size in Funafuti is 7 persons, the highest in the country, indicating pressure on the housing stock. The density in the Funafuti is 1470 persons per square km. It is hard for incomers to get title to land. The urban growth is creating problems of waste disposal on the island.

A bizarre feature exacerbates the problems in Funafuti. Deep holes, known as ‘borrow pits’, run down the centre of the island. During World War II, American forces literally dug out large sections of the middle of the atoll, using the soil to build a military airstrip. Seventy years on, the ‘borrow pits’ still remain, in-filled with sea water and rubbish.

An innocent victim of climate change

Although Tuvalu has contributed an infinitesimal amount to global greenhouse gas emissions, it is very sensitive to extreme climatic events. In 2011 the government was forced to declare a state of emergence because of a drought, which was blamed on the La Niña weather pattern. When drought hits, small islands have little resilience, because their water catchment area does not enable them to store much water for a (non-)rainy day.

But Tuvalu is not so much an island state, as a state made up of extremely small islands that are very low-lying. Tuvalu has no surface water, and water storage on Funafuti is almost non-existent. Deforestation as a consequence of urban construction has reduced the capacity of the island to store water naturally. People used to tap groundwater resources for household use. However, pollution by saltwater intrusion and waste leachate has made groundwater no longer suitable for human consumption.

As Julia Edwards reported at the time, “People in Funafuti were forced to bathe in the sea and kill their livestock. Limited emergency supplies meant that each household was rationed to just two buckets of water a day (one distributed in the morning and another in the late afternoon). Many families were without water, and drinking-water supplies in the capital were down to just 2 or 3 days.” Australia and New Zealand came to the rescue with emergency supplies.

The new migrants from the countryside were the hardest hit by the drought. Most live in informal settlements around the edge of town. That means they were furthest from the points where emergency water supplies were distributed: by the time they got there, they were literally the last in the queue.

When Julia went back recently, it was the rainy season, which runs from November to April. She says, “Several weeks of untimely severe gales and heavy seas had combined with the usual downpours to disrupt shipping and to bring island life to a virtual stand-still. Unaccustomed to walking, and without re-supplies of petrol because of the rough seas, the 6,200 population of 7 miles (12-km)-long Funafuti, were left almost paralysed by the empty tanks of their motorbikes and scooters.”

Adaptation to climate change

With extreme weather events expected to become more common in future, and the western coastal areas exposed to cyclones and storm surges, how is this “tropical paradise” adapting to the threat? The Tuvalu government has a National Adaptation Programme of Action.  Julia reports that in preparation for the next drought the Tuvalu Waste, Water and Sanitation project is supplying a second private-tank to each household, to increase household-storage capacity. AusAID is funding communal tanks to collect rain water from roofs.

In the longer term, possible relocation of people cannot be ruled out, though for now it does not feature in Tuvalu’s climate change policy. In contrast Kiribati, another small island state in the Pacific, is negotiating to buy land in Fiji so that some of its citizens can escape from the consequences of rising sea levels.

Coastal erosion is literally eating away at the limited land resource. It also brings problems of salination. Soil removed through erosion is deposited on adjacent corals. This is adversely affecting fisheries in the lagoon areas. There are reports that shellfish are in steep decline, with the problem worst in the waters close to land and most vulnerable to pollution.

Most people live on the coast, putting further stress on vulnerable marine eco-systems. Essentially there has been no planning control over development, so much of the surge in development that has occurred is in places that are at risk to the impacts of climate change.

While expensive infrastructure has been provided, such as tarred roads that do improve the connectivity of rural parts of Funafuti to the town itself, the maintenance costs are high and again the threat of damage by extreme weather is a factor.

Food security

The porous soils of Tuvalu have limited fertility, and saltwater intrusion due to sea level rise is adding to the problems of producing food. Climate change is expected to decrease fruit tree yields significantly. This will affect in particular the livelihoods of rural residents on the outer islands where employment is limited. More migration to Funafuti should be expected.

Julia Edwards reports that the Tuvaluan Association of NGOs (TANGO), a group of 48 organisations, has been active in climate-related projects for the last decade. She says “Food security is a key component of its work (other important areas include water, sanitation, and biogas) and many projects are undertaken on the outer islands. For instance, swamp taro (pulaka), highly prized in Tuvaluan culture, but difficult to grow because of saline soils, is now being grown in raised, cement boxes on Nanumaga Island. Similar raised boxes of pulaka can be seen in Funafuti.”

What is to be done?

Aid agencies have helped Tuvalu to ride out immediate crises. International bodies are also helping. These include the Asian Development Bank, the Commonwealth Local Government Forum, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and UN-Habitat. However, it seems impossible to forge a workable future for Tuvalu within current parameters.

It is in this scattered group of small islands, so far away from most of us, that the remorseless equation between water, land and the use we make of land is being played out.  The prospect of people being forced to relocate from their homeland as a consequence of environmental changes caused by others, and over which the people themselves have no control, is deeply immoral. However, from a technical point of view it looks inevitable; a question of when, not if.

Meanwhile, it is important to recognise that the issues are about how to manage urban development. Things could be done. Facilitate voluntary migration; put in place participatory but effective systems for managing land use change and the land/sea interface; manage waste better; try to stimulate economic development on another island to take some of the pressure off Funfuti – and fill in the borrow pits!

Also see this presentation.

Cliff Hague in Pingyao, a historic city now part of a much larger and growing agglomeration

I have referred to Chinese urbanisation several times in these blogs, but make no apologies for returning to the topic. What is happening in China should be of interest to planners, urbanists, environmentalists and economic development professionals everywhere. In part this is because of the sheer scale of the changes – a rural to urban shift on steroids! Since the economic reforms began in 1978, China’s urban residents have increased by over 500 million. We now have an English version of China’s own State of the Chinese Cities 2012-13 report. It claims that “China has entered a new path of sustainable urbanization with its characteristics such as integration and coordination of urban and rural areas, interactive development between industries and cities, saving and intensive use of natural resources, ecological and liveable environment, and harmonious development.”

The urbanization strategy

China has a strategy for urbanization. Not all countries do. Intellectually the strategy is rooted in the concept of agglomeration economies, or as the report puts it “the objective law of urban development”. China aims to use the large cities to drive the development of small and intermediate sized cities around them. The urban agglomeration with strong regional functions is the building block of the economic transformation. It is a model that is anathema to the urban containment traditions within planning that are still strong in many parts of the world.

The intention is build “urban agglomerations with better international competitiveness in the eastern region, and to cultivate and develop urban agglomerations in central and western regions where conditions allow.” In European terms (there is a formal EU-China Partnership on Urbanization) this is a polycentric approach to development. As in Germany, for example, the settlements at the second and third tiers in the hierarchy have important roles to play. It contrasts with mono-centric structures where the capital city region dominates political and economic development. In the last decade growth has slowed in China’s biggest urban regions but accelerated in agglomerations elsewhere, e.g. in inland and more remote cities.

A National Zoning of Major Functioning Regions was enacted in 2011. It regulates “the population distribution, geographic spread of economic activities, state-owned land use and urbanization patterns according to the resource and the environmental carrying capacity, current development strength and development potentials in different regions.” It also sets “the scope, function positioning, development orientation and regional policies for major functional zones.”

Rural to urban migration

China’s welfare policies have failed to adjust to the pace and scale of rural to urban migration. After 1949 welfare was sharply divided between urban and rural areas, with entitlements tied to a person’s official place of residence. It would be difficult to design a less appropriate system for a rapidly urbanising society. In these circumstances, considerable ingenuity was needed to make urbanisation possible. This has taken many forms, most notably the idea that rural residents can move “temporarily” to urban areas while still being denied full urban rights. Many are housed in high rise “urban villages” developed in what are classed to be “rural” areas that once stood outside the city but have now been engulfed in its spread. These are often developed to low standards in terms of construction and public services, while in the countryside there are “hollow villages” with a dwindling and ageing population.

In Shunde City, Guangdong Province, for example, the total population increase from 1998 to 2008 was 653,000, a rise of 46.4%. Of these only 149,000 were households with formal registration rights in the city, an increase of 14.2 %. In contrast, the population without household registration in Shunde increased by 504,000 (142.2%).

Something like 85% of the current generation of “rural migrants” have never worked in agriculture. The State of the Cities report recognises that these “rural” dwellers are indeed long-term urban residents. They make up more than half of the workforce in sectors that are vital to the urban and economic transformation of China – urban manufacturing and processing, construction, and services including sanitation, housekeeping and catering.

The report promises that “Great efforts will be made to enhance the equal access to basic public services with a view to attracting rural migrant workers to settle down in urban areas, to facilitate the urban residentialization of the rural migrant workers and the orderly settlement of qualified rural migrant workers in their places of employment, to rationally guide these population flows, optimize the distribution of rural migrant workers over cities and towns, and to promote sharing of benefits of reform and urban development.”

Environmental problems low carbon and eco-cities

The report is also frank in acknowledging the environmental problems that have come with rapid urban industrial growth. “In some key basins and coastal areas, water pollution is severe; in some regions and cities smog is a serious problem, and mission of major pollutants exceeds environmental capacity in many regions.” The main grain producing areas and the areas suitable for urban construction overlap.

A key part of the response is to develop low carbon and eco-cities. Shenzhen has been chosen as the first model city. The plan includes green architecture, public transport, ecological protection, environmental improvements, solid waste recycling, water management and industrial restructuring. In the very different environment of the Gobi Desert, Turpan New District in Xinjiang is focusing on solar energy. The project there will combine “the fields of urban planning, green architecture, climate forecast, smart micro-grid and green transport, (and) will establish a new energy system and management model featured by integrated solar energy utilization and building complexes, with the largest scale and the most comprehensive technological integration in China.”

Of course, in developing low carbon approaches to urban development, China is acutely aware of the huge potential that there is in global markets for such technologies and products. A planned approach to development is not “an anchor on enterprise”, rather a means of growing market opportunities.

Public participation

Of course, developers in China have not been subjected to the frustrations associated with local democracy and the capacity of local objectors to stall or even overturn projects. It is therefore interesting to see that there is a section on public participation in the report. It acknowledges that there has been a “weak organisational basis” for public participation in the past, but heralds a “new stage”.

It reports that in Beijing there is now “face-to-face interaction between planning professionals, representatives from neighborhood committees and community residents.” Meanwhile Shenzhen has initiated “the Program of Community Planner Participation, and effectively promoted the public participation in community planning.” Furthermore, “during the protection and transformation of the Ahuo community in the old towns of Kashgar, the local government has abandoned the traditional practice of taking charge of everything, and encouraged each resident to participate in the design under the guidance of architects, allowing the residents to experience the I-am-the-master-on-my-land situation.” There has even been the start of rural planning for the first time in China. In 2010 Chengdu sent out the first 50 planners to rural areas. They “were not only the publicity agents, participants and technology reviewers of village and town plans, but also the bridge between villagers’ expression of opinions and government decision-making.”

Conclusions

Planning in most countries is a local function defined by national legislation. Regulation of development and local politics dominate the practice. It is not surprising therefore that most planners have little interest in what goes on outside their local patch. Readers of this World View blog are exceptions to this rule, but in a globalised world where innovation is so important for economic development, this parochial vision is a serious, possibly fatal handicap to the profession. Similarly, there are well-meaning planners in the global North who assume that an international outlook means finding ways to “help” their professional colleagues in rapidly urbanising countries to “progress” towards a set of planning practices that are current in the UK, US, or whatever happens to be their own country. This again is a flawed understanding of planning in today’s world.
China is so important now and to our future that the state of its cities should be the source of global professional interest and debate. The challenges China is grappling with – notably those of equity within the city, using urbanisation to create jobs and growth, while managing the environmental consequences – are issues that planning practice everywhere needs to address.

Murmansk - a shrinking post-socialist city

Shrinking cities are a focus of growing concern. Globalisation has increased the vulnerability of cities to sudden adverse changes in their economic base. Austerity policies augment the problems. Loss of a key economic activity, can be followed by net out-migration of economically active age groups, falling tax revenues, an aging population but declining public services, “excessive” infrastructure that is expensive to maintain, empty property and gap sites. What strategies are being pursued in different parts of the world to address these challenges?

Something like 40% of all medium-sized European cities have lost a significant part of their population, according to the Shrink Smart project. The situation is particularly acute in the post-socialist cities of Eastern Europe.

Cities in America’s Rust Belt have seen some of the sharpest population declines in the country, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The US lost roughly one in three manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2010, so we should not be surprised to find that 10 of the 12 cities of over 100,000 with the largest population declines between 2010 and 2011 have economies based on heavy industry and manufacturing.

UN-Habitat’s State of the World’s Cities 2012-13 reports that Rome, Turin and Milan are shrinking, and so are Prague, Budapest and Bucharest, but also Seoul and Monrovia. However the list is dominated by Russian cities, in part of reflection of the more general demographic trends in Russia.

What are cities doing about it?

Within Europe research  suggests that policy makers face a choice: whether to accept the decline and try to manage it, or to pursue a growth strategy to counter it. Spatially the choice translates into trying to regenerate the declining areas or look for market-led green-field development to deliver a revival. Cities in Western Europe tend to favour adaptation and regeneration, while post-socialist cities in the east chase foreign investment to create jobs and growth.

Typical components of a response in the west are a focus on SMEs, housing refurbishment, green infrastructure and social inclusion. At the same time there are still restrictions on edge city development, with the principles of sustainable and compact cities to the fore. A mix of pro-active policies (e.g. place marketing or targeted sector-based strategies) and re-active policies (e.g. taking some land out of economic use) are usually found. Fundamentally, when past economic activities have gone, it is necessary to confront the issues of identity and branding, and to build broad support for a credible new vision of the place.

In eastern Europe, faith in markets and distrust of government intervention remains strong. These beliefs impact on the approach to shrinking cities. Infrastructure, private investment and jobs are sought. Less attention is given to “soft” measures such as those targeting environmental improvement, housing or culture. EU funds underpin the choices of many cities: urban development strategies are defined by what is available through funds, rather than assessment of local development needs. In smaller towns local government may simply lack the expertise to deliver a new vision and capitalise upon local assets.

Halle

The Shrink Smart Framework 7 research project has some interest case studies illustrating these general patterns. Halle is especially fascinating as it shows a transition from the eastern, “growth model” to the western “adaptation model”. Like most other East German cities it experienced massive deindustrialization and shrinkage in the 1990s. During that period it tried to retain its chemical industry, but the growth strategy proved unable to deliver re-industrialization. In 2000 the German federal government produced a programme “Urban Restructuring East”. This led to a shift in policy in Halle towards managing shrinkage with a target of stabilising the city’s population at around 200,000.

Makiivka

Makiivka is a heavy industry city in the eastern Ukraine. It still has steel works and metallurgy and is in a coal-producing region. Its population is about 390,000. Makiivka plans to remain an “industrial city” while improving environmental conditions. There is no coherent urban regeneration strategy and policies are described as “short-term crisis management”, e.g. through cost-cutting exercises. Like UK cities, Makiivka is mainly dependent on central government for its funds, so managing the budgets becomes the prime focus of local government activity.

Urban Hierarchies

Both Halle and Makiivka are secondary centres urban regions. Halle is overshadowed by Leipzig and Makiivka by Donetsk. There is some evidence that these larger centres are more able to make the switch into a “services and culture” economy than are their smaller neighbours. Both Leipzig and Donetsk were able to be centres for major football tournaments (the 2006 World Cup and the 2012 Euro-Championships respectively). Infrastructure upgrades were achieved on the back of these events.

Conclusions

Shrinking cities present a significant challenge to planners across Europe, but also in other regions such as North America. The dynamic is usually driven by deindustrialisation, but is also spurred by demographic structures and aging populations. The longer the economic downturn lasts, the more cities are likely to have to confront the symptoms most evident in shrinking cities. With the global economy as fragile as it is, and external environmental shocks an ever increasing threat, places that are currently stable or growing may find lessons from the experience of today’s shrinking cities.

Shrinkage rapidly presents planners and policy makers with a range of problems – derelict (and often contaminated) land, vacant properties, schools that are under-capacity, declining municipal budgets and a general loss of confidence that can be associated with policies of denial. Conventional planning approaches rooted in regulating pressures for land development can be a handicap when the problem is disinvestment not growth.

Each city is different, and as the Halle/Leipzig and Makiivka/Donetsk examples show what works in a larger centre may not work for its smaller neighbour. Nevertheless, the Shrink Smart project offers some general guidelines. These include: restrict suburbanisation; demolish the worst building stock; refurbish the most attractive neighbourhoods and the town centre; decontaminate and re-use brownfields, not just for commercial purposes, but for parks, open spaces and urban forests too.

It is a list that planners in urban Britain outside the south-east of England will be very familiar with. However, is it enough anymore? Shrinking could be viewed as a route to affordable housing, reduced congestion, cheap premises for business start-ups and increased capacity for local people to take control of their towns if the blockages to transfers of land ownership could be overcome. It would not be easy, it would need some exceptional local leadership, but it would be interesting.

Hopefully, the new urban emphasis in the Cohesion Funds 2014-2020, and particularly the emphasis on Community-Led Local Development, might lead to more integrated approaches than in the past, but don’t bet on it.

Resource-efficient cities need to look after their city centres through design that keeps them attractive: Seventh Street, St.Paul, Minnesota

One of the positive outcomes to emerge from the Rio+20 summit last year was the UN Environment Programme’s Global Initiative for Resource Efficient Cities (GI- REC) In trying to plot a way towards sustainable urban development it aims to reduce pollution and infrastructure costs while improving efficiency in cities across the world. The GIREC will work with local and national governments, the private sector and civil society groups to promote energy efficient buildings, efficient water use, sustainable waste management and other activities.

What will the GI-REC do?

The GI-REC will support sustainability efforts in cities through three core activities:

• Promoting research on resource efficiency and sustainable consumption and production;
• Providing access and advice for city decision-makers on technical expertise, capacity building and funding opportunities for improving resource efficiency; and
• Creating a network for cities and organizations to exchange experiences and peer-review projects for mutual benefit.

Cities with populations of 500,000 or more are invited to join the initiative, which aims to attract 200 members by 2015. The website lists a number of cities that have signed up, though none from the UK are there. GI-REC is an example of a bottom-up approach and the belief that there is more political will to deal with major environmental challenges at local government than at central government level.

Why do cities matter so much?

Today, urban areas account for 50% of all waste, generate 60-80% of all greenhouse gas emissions and consume 75% of natural resources, yet occupy only 3% of the Earth’s surface. As regular readers of this blog will know, this is only the start. A combination of natural increase and rural to urban migration means that we are already witnessing a surge of urban development across the planet that has no precedent. There are expected to be over 3 billion additional people living in cities in a time-span of just 80 years, primarily in Africa and Asia.

However, if the cities are the problem they are also the solution. They are where practical action now can make a difference. Furthermore, like any UN report in the urban field, the call is for pro-poor and pro-people strategies developed through participatory processes. While the idea of “pro-poor planning” gets virtually no airing, still less practice, in highly urbanised countries like the UK, it appears regularly in UN documents, which are global statements from the international community, and not just about the rapidly urbanising countries of the Global South. At a time when governments across Europe are pushing their poor into deeper deprivation, the call for “pro-poor planning” needs to be heard more widely.

How can cities transition?

A report produced to support the initiative says that four things are needed to achieve a successful transition.  These are:
1. a city based approach, with
2. integrated planning,
3. adequate platforms for wide-ranging collaboration, and
4. engendering values that support sustainability.

A key message is that new infrastructure alone will not solve the problem. Behaviour matters too, and there is a need for vision and leadership, implementation and coordination capacity, and monitoring and evaluation.

Public transport initiatives have a high potential to drive city-scale awareness and transition. They are described as reliable ways to bring about large scale changes in behaviour that will impact on energy use and emissions. Good public transport can relieve congestion (and so enhance productivity) and air pollution (and so improve health), improve access and mobility, create jobs, relieve alienation of the urban poor, and get more people onto the streets of the city rendering it a safer, more liveable and humane urban domain. The familiar examples of Curitiba and Bogota are cited.

Low-carbon, zero-carbon and eco-city approaches are also highlighted. For example, there is reference to the situation in Johannesburg where concerns with energy poverty and security have translated into the introduction of smart-grid oriented technologies that enable renewable energy, energy savings management and consumption at district scales and perhaps even at smaller scales (buildings, malls). Johannesburg has also developed the high-speed Gautrain (which I have ridden and recommend), and a new bus rapid transit system. Thus the aim has been to move to a more low-carbon, low-energy form of urban development while also addressing concerns such as energy poverty, unemployment, lack of small to medium enterprise growth and access and mobility.

Embedding sustainability across sectors

Place-based implementation that cuts across sectors is a key to more sustainable urban development, as the Johannesburg example illustrates. This requires institutions that can make the connections and break down traditional silos. This is a role that higher education or research institutes can fulfil, by knowledge and technology development and skills transfer. Observatories can also play a part in awareness raising and monitoring transitions. However, funding is also needed, but so is participation to open debates and build consensus.

Indicators

One key issue, which I touched upon in a previous blog, is what indicators to use for monitoring? A wide range of potential indicators is set out (in an Appendix to the report underpinning the GI-REC). They are separated into two broad categories, each with sub-categories, as follows:

• Measures by infrastructure theme categories – i.e. building energy efficiency, waste management, sustainable urban transport, water and wastewater and urban ecosystem management. While these measures are theme-specific, they also have cross-cutting impacts.

• Measures for integration and establishing aggregation criteria – city-scale decoupling, qualitative assessments of research, innovation, policy and business. These measures can be aggregated from measures within infrastructure theme categories.

Each measure is classified in terms of whether it contributes to the three broad categories of decoupling, liveability, and skills and innovation.

What now?

The firm Infrangilis,  which specialises in resilience strategies is working with Sustainable Cities International is to undertake a strategic mapping exercise of the leading initiatives around the world on resource efficiency in cities. Philip Monaghan from Infrangilis tells me that this will range from BioRegional’s ‘One Planet Communities’ and C40 Cities  through to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s ‘Urban Infrastructure Initiative’  and the World Economic Forum’ ‘Slim Cities’. The aim is “to understand barriers to taking action and identify gaps in existing knowledge in order to recommend priorities to UNEP on GI-REC work areas over the coming years. The strategic mapping exercise is part of a broader research project which includes a global survey on resource efficiency in cities, conducted by ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability. The project findings will be released in Summer 2013.”

Local resilience, global linkages
Better integration is seen as the key to achieve a more sustainable settlement. Other success factors for transition to sustainable, resource-efficient urban development include:
• addressing socio-economic divides within the city;
• the inclusion of bottom-up participatory governance processes in infrastructure change programmes;
• smart urban logistics and spatial planning;
• smart design, finance, technology and skills transfer and development
• innovation.

There are no great surprises in that list. The aim should be to progress to places that combine local resilience and global connections. However, we still lack the professional skills and political will to deliver on them. Too often the education and practice of planners and local politicians is still locked into the mindsets of land use regulation with a neo-liberal veneer. It is time to change.

The Randstad – an on-going search for an effective regional structure

For half a century and more the Randstad had iconic status amongst the regional planning community internationally. The Dutch seemed so integrated, consensual and rational in their approach; flying into Schiphol you could not fail to see the precise delineations of urban areas, the macro- and micro-management of the intensively used land. The very idea of the Randstad was a masterly and uniquely Dutch exercise in promulgating a loose concept at national strategic level that other tiers of government could comprehend and work with in this unitary but decentralized, “co-government” state. Dutch planning, as I told many students on numerous study visits to The Netherlands, as a classic example of a “comprehensive, integrated approach”.

The Randstad straddles four Provinces. However, the body working on co-operation across the region was abolished on 1 January 2008. This reflects a long-running unease with structures for regional-scale planning. The Provinces are historical units that do not fit today’s functional networks. There was a famous, failed attempt in the 1990s to create city regions. More than a decade later, in 2007, a law was passed requiring co-operation between municipalities over spatial planning, housing, traffic and transport, economic development and environment in eight identified city-based regions. The full story is too long to cover in this blog: readers who want more should see the case study.

Now, after the economic crisis and the attempts to cut back spending, there are new calls for simplification of administrative structures in the Randstad. Within this flux, perhaps the key question is whether redrawing of boundaries and reorganization of administrative units is necessary to deliver policy integration, especially in the spatial dimension.
Västerbotten – regional action creates national growth

The Swedish case study looks at the region based on Umea in the north-east of the country. Region Västerbotten was set up in 2008. There is a firm belief in Sweden that national economic growth depends on growth processes at regional and local level, and that regional expertise and action is the best way to nurture such growth. UK readers might go over that sentence again, and ponder how London’s global role as a finance centre underpins a very different national development model. The Swedes have a national strategy for regional competitiveness, entrepreneurship and employment.

Region Västerbotten is a legally constituted body based on co-operation by the municipalities in this sparsely populated part of Sweden. It has a Regional Development Strategy which is in line with the national strategy mentioned above, the EU Baltic Sea Strategy, and also includes the EU 2020 strategy of seeking smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. It is the link between such aspirations and the development plans at local levels.

The key vehicle for implementation of the Regional Development Strategy is the Regional Growth Programme. This targets sources of investment and particularly EU funds. It is revised annually. All of this is backed, in characteristic Swedish style, by a number of regional structures for co-operation and consensus building. These have played a key role in involving people in building the regional strategy and taking it from something owned by the state to a regional and local concern. Again, if you want the detail you’ll need to read the case study.

Zealand – from land use to business-led regional strategy

Region Sjælland is one of five administrative regions in Denmark. In 2007 the former 14 Danish counties were merged into five regions. Although it does not include a major city, parts of the region are within commuting distance of Copenhagen. The 2007 reforms cut back the regional planning role. Instead it introduced regional strategies set up by the regional council, but in cooperation with regional ‘Growth Forums’ and with the municipalities. These stakeholders must cooperate on broadly equal terms to formulate integrated regional strategies.

As in many other countries, spatial planning and regional policy have developed separately in Denmark, overseen by different ministries, and with different sets of professional practitioners. Regional plans were the middle tier of a hierarchical system linking national planning to municipal and site specific plans.
In the 1990s the focus of regional policy shifted from subsidy to competitiveness. There were initiatives based on local and regional networking between municipalities (‘forming urban circles’), regional councils and local business leaders.

Post-2007 the regional authorities have to prepare spatial development plans for their region. The traditional land use focus at regional level is no more. These plans are non-binding and strategic, and about building support amongst stakeholders. A Regional Growth Forum, containing public and private stakeholders, is responsible for preparation of the regional business strategy and action plan. The regional development plan uses the regional business strategy as its core input.

So this is again an exercise in soft power and building co-operation. Perhaps the most crucial part of the arrangements is that the Growth Forums are seen as equal partners of central government, not subservient to it. Again to get the full story you need to go to the case study.

The West Midlands

The West Midlands case study tells the story of the abolition of the Regional Development Agency and the creation of the Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership. The researchers from the University of Birmingham report a general willingness to work with other neighbouring LEPs. However, they also point to likely problems in achieving policy coherence across spatial scales. For example, the Regional Growth Fund is disbursed directly to companies with LEPs having an advisory role at best. Enterprise Zones are designated by national government. The Growing Places Fund is being allocated for infrastructure projects but to Local Authorities. Whilst in not setting out a statutory role for LEPs government appears as an enabler, these funding schemes can cut across LEP priorities and hinder the achievement of territorial integrative strategic planning.

Regions and regional strategies

As the West Midlands case study reminds us, the Right Honourable Eric Pickles MP, Minister for Communities and Local Government, has said that “the whole concept of ‘regional economies’ is a non-starter and that [regions are] arbitrary dividing lines across the country for bureaucratic convenience…”. He could look to this ESPON project to confirm that the concept of a region is indeed rather loose, slippery even, and a recurrent focus for failed bureaucratic attempts to draw lines round areas in the hope that this can make delivery of policies and services easier.

However, the cavalier dismissal of “regional economies” is not supported by this project – or by the huge volume of research and evidence compiled on spatial economics over the past half century or more. This is not to say that public authorities have the power to determine the structure and trajectory of a regional economy: globalisation and privatisation have seriously “hollowed out” capacity in government at all scales. However, as this study has shown, regional scale action by public agencies, working now with multiple other stakeholders, and across different scales from EU to local, can help to steer a regional economy and increase the integration of policies.

This view is consistent with the message from another ESPON project on the roles of secondary cities. That study, led by Michael Parkinson from Liverpool John Moores University, makes the case that cities like Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds etc, and their continental equivalents, are significant forces in national economies. National policy needs to recognise this. But that story will have to wait for another blog.

Jagori (which means “Awaken, women”) is an Indian women’s NGO that has played a prominent part in research and advocacy on making places safe for women. It began work some 20 years ago, mainly with a rural focus, since in conservative rural India levels of education and awareness amongst women are low. However, some of its more recent work has directly tackled concerns about the safety of women in India’s rapidly growing cities.

In 2004 Jagori launched its Safe Delhi campaign. It argued that “A constant fear of violence and the day today incidences made the city non-inclusive, inaccessible and unsafe space for women and other vulnerable sections of the society. Such a fear plays into most of the decisions women take and influences their choices, which often ends up reducing the opportunities. For example, often, girls from South Delhi don’t take admissions in colleges in North Campus to avoid using public transport for long hours or lack of proper toilets in several communities adversely affects women’s health condition.”

Safety Audits

Jagori has used safety audits as a key means of collecting information and formulating solutions. For example, last year it worked with Parichiti, another women’s organisation, to conduct safety audits at three stations in Kolkata. The focus of this work was particularly on women domestic workers (WDW). Parichiti particularly works with poor and marginalised women and girls. It describes the WDW who commute into Kolkata on trains each day as “marginalised amongst the marginalised.” Their labour is vital to the metropolis but they are stigmatised.

The safety audits revealed not only harassment on the trains, but a catalogue of risks in and around the stations. For example, they highlighted the lack of access to drinking water, toilets and waiting areas, along with poorly-lit spaces and passages, so that people prefer to cross the tracks rather than use the bridges over the tracks. In addition, the stations were very difficult for people with disabilities: for example, there were no ramps or escalators.

Key messages

There are some encouraging signs that the message of groups like Jagori is being taken more seriously than in the past. The Delhi Development Authority has established a Unified Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure (Planning and Engineering) Centre (UTTIPEC) . Last month it put out a presentation about its draft ideas for making Delhi safer for women. It uses the work done by Jagori.

The UTTIPEC presentation shows how design of transport and the built environment can influence the vulnerability of women to sexual assault and harassment. Poorly lit and unwatched areas pose particular hazards, for example. It describes flyovers and grade-separated junctions as “rape dens”.

Many of the prescriptions are obvious and should not be controversial – e.g. better lighting of streets, walkways, bus stops etc. Traffic calming is seen as important – slow moving traffic that has to stop at traffic lights reduces risks. However, some insights gained from the Jagori research may be more difficult for traditionally-minded physical planners (who are already challenged by the idea that there is a gender dimension to their work) to accept.

Planning with informality – for safety and equity

For example, the draft guidance takes a positive stance towards hawking and street markets. It calls for the abolition of existing development control policies that require set-backs and boundary walls. Instead the call is for active uses alongside the edge of the road.

It advocates using simple markings and bollards to create “Multi-Utility Zones” (MUZ) along major routes to enable street vendors to operate there. The argument is that this is cheap, supports jobs for poor people, makes shopping more accessible and provides the “eyes on the street” to enhance women’s safety.

This idea draws on the innovative work on street improvements in New York led by Janette Sadik-Khan, who is the city’s Commissioner of the Department of Transportation. There is even the idea of creating a Ramblas-style vending zone down the median strip on wide roads, with frequent crossing places and fencing to safeguard against jay-walking.

More radically still in the local context, UTTIPEC is suggesting that vendors and rickshaw drivers should be allowed to sleep at night in the MUZ where they could access toilets and basic facilities. In this way planning could begin to engage with the realities of informality in a positive rather than repressive manner.

The vision is practical, far reaching and long term. The call is to put Transit-oriented development at the heart of planning policy across Delhi, not just for reasons of environmental sustainability or commercial benefit, but also as a means to make the city safer for women. Women’s safety guidelines and indicators should become a mandatory part of planning practice. “Women’s safety issues to be incorporated into Local Area Plans… Detailed check-list on women’s safety to be provided to all developers, public and private. Compliance and certification mandatory”. In addition, changes are proposed to planning education “to ensure that women’s safety issues are part of the training imparted to urban planners and designers”.

A call to action

While some aspects of these guidelines are necessarily specific to Indian urban conditions, the international interest sparked by the gang-rape and murder in Delhi demonstrates that the issues are global. The planning profession is weakened by its long term failure to engage with issues of women’s safety in the built environment, and by the lack of a global voice to put the issue on the agenda. Maybe as a New Year resolution planners could commit to active engagement, in partnership with other professionals and groups like Jagori, to tackle women’s safety, locally and globally in 2013.