President calls for new direction to urban planning

He was speaking at the valedictory function of World Metropolis Cong

• Mankind was moving towards becoming an urban species
• Calls for providing urban necessities to all citizens
• Treat cleanliness as a non-negotiable requirement
• He describes slums as a curse and ugly scar on urban living

Hyderabad: President Pranab Mukherjee stressed the need to give a new direction and have new insight into urban planning as urbanisation has been sweeping across the globe.

The president who attended as the chief guest for the valedictory ceremony of the XI Metropolis World Congress on Thursday, said that the 19th century was marked as the century of ‘empires’, the 20th century is being remembered as the century of formation of nation states. But, for the first time in the human civilization, the 21st century would be shaping up as the century of cities. Quoting the UN, the president said that the mankind was predominantly moving towards becoming an urban species.

This is what brings in the importance of making concerted efforts in focusing on the urban policy and planning, governance, mobility and transport systems, equity in providing basic amenities and citizen services, to achieve cities for all, by infusing green and climatic complaint models in the days to come, to achieve sustainable development in urban governance, he said.

Mukherjee said one of the major challenges in the urbanisation has been providing equity in extending basic amenities and infrastructures to the people living in those urban conglomerates. He also stressed the need for firming up the urban governance and local finances in order to meet current demand and the challenges before the urban local bodies.

Underlining the importance of Green Deficit, he said besides the challenges in the context of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, the urban local bodies will have to provide basic services to all its citizens, through developing networks for water supply and transport, collection of waste, provision of equitable access to land and energy, building of green buildings, expansion of mass transportation systems etc. He called upon the urban bodies to treat cleanliness as a non-negotiable requirement. And, a city which only dumped waste but not processes it was not a smart city, he added.

Affordable mobility and providing transport systems, deployment of technology in providing online citizen services with minimal human interface, making the PPP model as an integral part of the policy planning in providing housing for the poor to prevent growth of slums, using technology and seeking people’s participation in making the cities safe were the other issues which the president said needs urgent attention.

He further said that the Centre had proposed to support the states in building urban infrastructure in 500 cities in the country. This was besides the proposed 100 smart cities.

Another important programme that the Centre was going to launch was a mission called Heritage City Development & Augmentation Yojna (HRIDAY). Under this programme sustainable development of heritage Centres would be taken up bringing together urban planning, economic growth and heritage conservation in an inclusive and integrated manner with focus on livelihoods, skills, cleanliness, security, accessibility and service delivery.