Urban planning in Singapore

Urban planning in Singapore has formulated and guided its physical development from the day the modern city-state was founded in 1819 as a British colony to the developed, independent country it is today. Urban planning is especially important due to land constraints and its high density.

The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) is Singapore's national land use planning authority. URA prepares long term strategic plans, as well as detailed local area plans, for physical development, and then co-ordinates and guides efforts to bring these plans to reality. Prudent land use planning has enabled Singapore to enjoy strong economic growth and social cohesion, and ensures that sufficient land is safeguarded to support continued economic progress and future development.

History

Initial planning
The founding of modern Singapore in 1819 by Sir Stamford Raffles was arguably a planning event in itself, as it involved the search for a deep, sheltered harbour suitable to establish a pivotal maritime base for British interests in the Far East. This was also to protect her maritime trading routes on the East-west axis. Hence, the settlers found the waters of Keppel Harbour suitable, and the entourage of eight ships anchored off the mouth of a small river on January 28 1819. Raffles made landing on the north bank of the river, and discovered favourable conditions for the setting up of a colony. The area on the side of the river's north bank which he was on was level and firm, although the southern bank was swampy. Abundant fresh water was found, and the river itself was a sheltered body of water protected by the curved river mouth. This river was to become the nexus from which the new colony would thrive, and the immediate surrounding areas would form the core of the island's business and civic areas.

Upon its formal establishment with the signing of a treaty on February 6 the same year, Raffles left the settlement, leaving Colonel William Farquhar as the first Resident of Singapore. By the end of May, Raffles returned, and while noting the rapid development of the city, realised the need for a formal urban plan to guide its otherwise disorganised physical expansion. He left the colony again, instructing Farquhar to designate residential, commercial, and governmental land uses for the colony.

When he returned more than two years later in October 1822, however, Raffles was dismayed by the way the colony had grown. He therefore formed a Town Committee headed by Lieutenant Philip Jackson to draw up a formal plan for the colony, which came to be known as the Jackson Plan, and was to become the first detailed city plan for Singapore. This plan was to lay the groundwork of the city's street and zonal layout, the essence of which continues to exist today. For example, the allocation of civic institutions on the north bank of the Singapore River and the creation of the main commercial area in what was then known as "Commercial Square" on the south bank has today evolved into the Civic district and the CBD on either side of the river. The grid-like street pattens continue to exist, while the ethnically segregated residential zones, despite having been largely depopulated by now, have continued to exist as ethnic enclaves attracting the attention of tourists, such as in the Chinatown, Little India, and Kampong Glam districts.

Post-Raffles
Raffles's foresight and well-intended efforts to maintain orderliness in the city's growth started to spiral out of control just eight years after the Jackson Plan was drawn up. With no updates and no new plans drawn up by the British, the city soon outgrew itself, and the plan soon proved completely inadequate. When Raffles arrived in 1819, the population numbered about 150. By 1911, this figure had mushroomed to 185,000, resulting in severe overcrowding, particularly in the Chinatown area. The road system, planned for travel by foot and horse carts, also could not handle the exploding traffic, particularly when motorised vehicles came to Singapore en masse in the 1910s. The 842 private cars in 1915 had multiplied to 3,506 by 1920.

With the severe overcrowding in the city centre, the population, particularly the better-off, started to move into the suburbs. The better-off families moved especially to the East Coast, where they often operated plantations and maintained large sea-side homes near the beach at Katong. Several wealthy Malay families were to leave a legacy in the area through their family names, including those of Aljunied and Eunos. Less well-off families tended to move into the southern parts of the island as a natural extension of the Chinatown area. Subsequently, however, they also moved into other areas, including the East Coast, spreading the problems of overpopulation to the suburbs with the creation of squatters. This growth also resulted in suburban roads becoming congested by traffic, particularly along Geylang Road which leads to the East Coast.

Public Housing
In 1927, the colonial government attempted to arrest the situation by setting up the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), with the main aims of alleviating urban congestion and the provision and upgrading of public infrastructure, particularly in the widening of roads to accommodate rising and modernising traffic. Their efforts were evident only in localised areas, as the body did not have the legislative power to produce comprehensive plans or to control urban development. The Second World War also disrupted their efforts during the Japanese occupation from 1941 to 1945.

Singapore emerged from the war in physical ruins and with a large number of homeless residents. A Housing Committee was thus formed quickly in 1947, and reported an acute housing shortage facing the city, where the population had already reached a million by 1950. With 25% of the population living in 1% of its land area, and with some shophouses housing over 100 people, the SIT's efforts were clearly inadequate in its attempts to rehouse the population into new multi-story apartment blocks.

Under the People's Action Party, which came into power when it won the 1959 Elections of Singapore, the Housing Development Board was founded in 1960, replacing the Singapore Improvement Trust. This proved to be the turning point in the history of modern Singapore. Within five years, the HDB had constructed more than 50,000 housing units, which was several times more than the SIT had constructed within the time span of more than 20 years. Within the 1970s, most of the population had found adequate housing. Most of the current urban planning policy is derived from the practices of the HDB.

Flats 10-15 storeys high were initially built. With time, they reached over twenty and thirty storeys, and at present, fifty-story housing complexes are under construction.

Current policy

The current policy of Singapore's urban planners who come under the Urban Redevelopment Authority is to create partially self-sufficient towns and districts which are then further served by four regional centres, each of which serves one of the four different regions of Singapore besides the Central Area. These regional centres reduce traffic strain on Singapore's central business district, the Central Area, by replacing some of the commercial functions the Central Area serves. Each town or district possesses a variety of facilities and amenities allocated strategically to serve as much as possible on at least a basic scale, and on the regional scale, an intermediate one. Any function of the Central Area not served then is allowed by the regional centre to be executed efficiently as the transport routes are planned to link up the regional centres and Central Area effectively. The Housing Development Board works with the Urban Redevelopment Board to develop public housing according to the national urban planning policy.

As land is scarce in what is the most densely populated country, the goal of urban planners is to maximise use of land efficiently yet comfortably and to serve as many people as possible for a particular function, such as housing or commercial purposes in high rise and high density buildings. Infrastructure, environmental conservation, enough space for water catchment and land for military use are all considerations for national urban planners.

Land reclamation has continued to be used extensively in urban planning, and Singapore has grown at least 100 square kilometres from its original size before 1819 when it was founded. The urban planning policy demands that most buildings being constructed should be high-rise, with exceptions for conservation efforts for heritage or nature. A pleasant side effect is that many residents have pleasant views. Allocating primary functions in concentrated areas prevents land wastage. This is noticeable in Tampines New Town in comparison to the housing blocks found in Dover. Housing blocks turned into complexes, which occupied a large area with thousands of apartments in each one as opposed to smaller high-rise blocks with hundreds. This allows for efficient land use without compromising the standard of living.

Urban planning policy also relies on the effective use of public transport and other aspects of Singapore's transport system. Singapore's Mass Rapid Transit system allows the different districts to be linked by rail to all the other districts without having to rely on roads extensively. This also reduces strain on traffic and pollution while saving space. The districts with their different functions are then allocated strategically according to 55 planning areas.

Post-independence Singapore government, with the exception of public housing in Chinatown, has largely shied away from allocating too much housing in the Central Area and especially the Downtown Core, but with increasing density and land reclamation in Marina South and Marina East, there are current plans for new public housing close to the Downtown Core.

Singapore's land is increasingly crowded, and hence the placement of a district of one function that obstructs more infrastructure development in that area (such as building an expressway tunnel or a rail line), as opposed to the placement of a district of a different function that would accommodate future infrastructure, has become increasingly likely. A district of one function could be inefficient if it does not have proper access to another district of another function, or on the other hand, if it is too close. Public amenities have to be strategically placed in order to benefit the largest number of people possible with minimum redundancy and wastage. A major feature of urban planning in Singapore is to avoid such situations of land wastage.

Article Source:  www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Urban_planning_in_Singapore

Urban Poverty and Urban Slums in China

By. Peter Foggin

Between 1978 and 2004 the urban population of China grew from eighteen percent to forty-one percent of the total population, commonly said to be 1.3 billion.(1) Given the annual increments in this massive urbanization process, it is not hard to estimate conservatively that China’s urban population is now close to forty-five percent of the total number of people in the country. 

By 2010, probably close to one half of the national population will be urban dwellers. That’s 600-700 million urbanites of one sort or another, the most massive single urbanization in the history of the world. 

The Floating Population 
One of the compounding factors in getting a true figure is the phenomenon commonly referred to as the “floating population”—rural migrants who temporarily move to urban areas, most often living in ghettos filled with people who come from the same province. The proportion of returnees varies: one study says between two and fifteen percent of migrants return to their rural communities2; another suggests the number is closer to thirty-three percent.3 

In China, there have been two classes of urban dwellers: those 
who have the official city residential permit and the more 
recent arrivals who do not. 

Thus in Beijing, for example, one finds the so-called Zhejiang village (the name of a coastal province south of Shanghai) with its tens of thousands of densely-packed people of living in conditions of squalor and a total lack of physical and social infrastructures. Michael Dutton4 describes the police action reflecting the Beijing government’s desire to suppress the “floaters” or mangliu of Zhejiang village, which (along with many other such “villages”) are generally considered to be a “blight” on the urban landscape of the national capital. 

In China, there have been two classes of urban dwellers: those who have the official city residential permit (the notorious hukou) and the more recent arrivals who do not. These latter people are part of China’s floating population. People’s Daily reported in July 2005 that “China's floating population has increased from seventy million in 1993 to 140 million in 2003, exceeding ten percent of the total population and accounting for about thirty percent of rural labor force.”

The Hukou System 
According to Hong Kong’s Department for International Development (DFID), the hukou system in China was designed to prevent the free movement of people from rural to urban places and to protect industrial development in the cities in the planned economy. By attaching different welfare entitlements (subsidies) to urban and rural hukou, the system divided the people into two societies separated by an invisible wall. 

However, as the market economy has deepened, particularly as rural migrants have become an indispensable part of the urban economy, the need for the traditional hukou system is being challenged. The recent relaxation of the hukou system began in 2001. At that point, the government fully recognized the importance of urbanization for overall development and began to develop its new strategy for its tenth 5-year-plan. The hukou system has been further relaxed and the importance of the hukou permit for migrants is now much diminished. In Shanghai and many other big cities in China, a “green card” system, in which there is no basic difference between the local residents and the green cardholders, is emerging.

It is doubtful that more than a small portion of these were even counted in China’s most recent census in 2000. Migrants do not have any of the entitlements—such as subsidized food and housing (even with the growing trend to purchase private housing, interest rates are subsidized and therefore very low), schools, and healthcare—of the official residents of the city. The migrants come to the city because there is no work for them in the regions from which they come, and the jobs they do manage to get are usually comparatively low-paid and often temporary (e.g., domestic and construction workers, menial factory jobs, illegal sidewalk vending of goods or services). 

According to the DFID report, about one-fifth of the entrants in the urban labor force come from rural areas. In spite of their economic fragility, most of these workers manage to send or take a large portion of their meagre wages back to their rural families. A recent report estimated that the approximately 100 million rural residents who work away from their villages sent or carried home a total of 370 billion CNY (about thirty-five billion USD) in 2003, an increase of 8.5% from the previous year. Estimates of the amount sent/brought back by migrant workers range from between three and four thousand CNY.

About one-fifth of the entrants in the urban labor force in China come from rural areas. 

Instead, we have the phenomenon of migrant, disenfranchised, and underprivileged people grouped in villages in each major city. 

Urban Villages 
The eventual goal of Beijing's onslaught is still unclear. A government survey in 2002 found 332 villages with a total population of more than 800,000 migrants in the eight urban districts of the city proper—nearly one-third of the total migrant population of Beijing. Urban villages6 are a unique phenomenon that is part of China’s urbanization process. 

The villages appear on both the outskirts and the downtown segments of major cities. They are surrounded by skyscrapers, transportation infrastructures, and other modern urban constructions. Urban villages are commonly inhabited by the poor and transient, and as such they are associated with squalor, overcrowding, and social problems, and are considered by some as no better than Chinese slums. However, they are also among the liveliest areas in some cities and are notable for affording economic opportunity to newcomers to the city. 

Endnotes 

1. National Bureau of Statistics. 2004. China Statistical Yearbook 2004. Beijing: China Statistics Press. 32. 

2. Bai, Nansheng and Yupeng He. 2003. “Returning to the Countryside Versus Continuing to Work in the Cities: A Study on Rural Urban Migrants and Their Return to the Countryside of China.” Social Sciences in China. Winter, 151. 

3. Zhao, Yaohui. 2002. “Causes and Consequences of Return Migration: Recent Evidence from China.” Journal of Comparative Economics 30: 376-394. 

4. Dutton, Michael. 1998. Street Life in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 147-159. 

5. Bai and He in http://www.dfid.gov.uk/countries/asia/China/urban-poverty-study-english.pdf. 

6. Chinese: 城中村; pinyin: Chéng Zhōng Cūn; literally: "village in city"


http://www.lausanneworldpulse.com/urban.php/977/07-2008

Urban vs. Rural Sustainability

by. Toby Hemenway

Over ten years ago my wife and I moved to the country. One of our many reasons for leaving the city was to finally pursue the dream of self-reliance: to create a permaculture homestead that would trim our resource use and let us tap in more fully to nature’s abundance. And in the back of my mind was the quietly nibbling worry that someday the overconsumption party would end—the oil would run out, and things might get ugly. I wanted to be settled where we could be less dependent on the fossil fuel umbilicus when the cord finally snapped.

We went a good way toward making that dream come true. The red clay of our former clearcut turned, in places, to chocolate loam, though I noticed that even as our trees matured I still seemed to be needing more wood chips from the electric company or manure from a stable two miles away. From the garden flowed a steady procession of fruit and vegetables, but I confess I tried to ignore how much well-water we were pumping once our rain catchment ran dry partway through Southern Oregon’s four-month dry season. 

We became involved in the local community: Master Gardeners, an environmental group, town meetings. Although we were busy in regional life in the beginning, eventually I found I preferred to drive the hour to see friends in progressive-minded Eugene than fight the pro-logging consciousness that permeated our county. Over the years my few local friends fell away as I became more drawn to the mind-set of those in Eugene, and as the local economics made it necessary for me to be away for weeks to teach and do design work. We were on good speaking terms with all our neighbors, but never found much common ground with them. Local parties began with watery beer and often ended in drunken fights, and neither was to our taste. 

Slowly a mild paranoia set in. I started to wonder whether, if the Big Crash came, I was really in the right place. We had the best garden for miles around, and everyone knew it. If law broke down, wasn’t there more than a chance that my next door neighbor, a gun-selling meth dealer and felon, might just shoot me for all that food? How about the right-wing fundamentalists past him, who shot Stellar’s jays for fun and clearcut their land when they suspected spotted owls lived there? Or the two feuding families beyond them—one had fired a pistol during an argument, and neither would give way when their cars met on the road. I began to sense the outlines of a pattern that replicated one in society at large. We have the technical means to feed, clothe, and house all humanity. But legions starve because we have not learned to tolerate and support one another. People’s real problems are not technical, they are social and political. Down in Douglas County, I’d solved most of the technical problems for our own personal survival, but the social hurdles to true security were staring me in the face.

Our isolation also meant we were burning a lot of gas. A simple drive for groceries was a 40-minute round trip. Fortunately we both worked at home and had no children, so we could go for days without using the car. But the odometer was whirling to higher numbers than it ever had in the city. A couple of families had moved off our hill because they were exhausted by two to four round trips each day down our steep, potholed gravel road to work, school, soccer practice, music lessons, and shopping.

We cherished our decade-plus in the country, but eventually the realities began to pile up. There wasn’t a local market for the work we did. Community events left us saddened by the gulf between our way of life and theirs. And we were still tethered to the fossil-fuel beast, just by a much longer lifeline of wire, pipe, and pavement. That the beast looked smaller by being farther away no longer fooled us. 

There was a positive side, too. We had achieved what we’d set out to do: to make sense of our lives, find the work we loved, and grow into ourselves. The portents now spoke clearly. It was time to return to where the people were, and to be in the thick of things once more.

So we have moved to Portland, and into the heart of town. We love it. The first of many good omens was the bio-diesel Mercedes across the street sporting a Kucinich sticker. And it’s a pleasure to be within walking distance of a bookstore, good coffee, and Ben and Jerry’s.

During the first few days in the city I would stand on the back porch, eyeing our yard with permaculture dreams in my head. The sole tree is a sprawling European prune plum. Other than that, the yard is a blank slate, dominated by a brick patio, a lawn, and an old dog run. And it’s small. I wondered how I would I fit all my favorite fruit trees in that tiny space. 

The answer soon came. The plum tree straddles the fence we share with our neighbor Johnny, who has lived next door for 55 years. One day, on opposite sides of the fence, Johnny and I were gathering a small fraction of the branch-bending loads of plums when he called out, “Do you like figs?” I said I did, and soon a tub of black mission figs wobbled over the fence toward me. 

We kept returning the basin to Johnny, but it found its way back almost immediately, full of figs. “You weren’t here in time for the apricots I’ve got,” Johnny told us, “But next year you’ll get your fill of them.”

As the buckets of plums began to fill up the yard, I tried to unload some on Theressa across the street. “Oh, no,” she said, “I’ve got my own tree. But when the Granny Smith’s come on, you’d better help me with them. And next year’s peaches will knock you out.”

When I met our neighbor Will, he begged me to take some of the pears that were plopping onto his yard. The American chestnuts up the street are bearing heavily, although the Asian community is all over them each morning before I wake up. I’ve cracked a few of the local walnuts, and they’re pretty good. And yesterday I discovered a nearby strawberry tree dotted with creamy mild fruit.

This informal assessment of local resources has revised my mental landscape design. I don’t need to grow all my favorite trees, only the ones that my neighbors lack (I’m thinking Asian pears, persimmons, and some early and storage apples). My neighbor’s yards are my Zones Two and Three. [Ed's note: a common feature of permaculture design is the zoning of a property up into areas, numbered one through to five or so, relating to proximity to the house and levels of required maintainence. -AF ] Plus, Stacey and Troy on the next block have persuaded the owner of a vacant lot to let eight families create a community garden on the site. A local tree service will soon be dumping chips there for sheet mulch, and next year we’ll be awash in food.

The Big Rural Footprint

I had always assumed that cities would be the worst place to be in bad times. I’m revising my opinion. Granted, Portland is an exceptional city. (Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone!) But I can’t help comparing this neighborhood to our old one. There, we were twelve families on two miles of road, driveways hundreds of feet long, all served by long runs of phone and electric wire, individual septic systems and wells, each commuting long distances. And with political and social views so divergent that feuds, gossip, and awkward conversations about safe topics were the norm.

In the city, an equal group of twelve families use 10% of the road, wire, and pipe needed in my old neighborhood. Many neighbors bus or bike to work, or at worst, drive single-digit mileages. And our social and political views are close enough that I am fairly confident we can work in mutual support if times get tough. 

This is not the place to go deeply into the question of whether cities are more sustainable than contemporary American country life, but at each point where I delve into the issues, I find suggestions that urbanites have a smaller ecological footprint per capita.

Over the last two decades, millions of people have moved out of cities. Many of them are people of modest means, driven out by the high costs of urban life. Unfortunately, they have brought their city ways with them. Our neighbors in the country all clearcut their land and planted acres of grass. Many built enormous houses, since low interest rates made more square footage affordable. Some put up glaring streetlights in their front yards. They bought boats, ATVs, RVs, and other gas-guzzling toys. Unlike earlier self-reliant country folk, these are simply city people with really big yards. And there are millions of them.

Sociologists Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford have each noted that during the Depression and other hard times, urban residents have generally fared better than ruralites. The causes mainly boil down to market forces and simple physics. Since most of the population lives in or near cities, when goods are scarce the greater demand, density, and economic power in the cities directs resources to them. Shipping hubs are mostly in cities, so trucks are emptied before they get out of town.

In the Depression, farmers initially had the advantage of being able to feed themselves. But they soon ran out of other supplies: coal to run forges to fix machinery, fertilizer, medicine, clothing, and almost every other non-food item. Without those, they couldn’t grow food. Farmers who could still do business with cities survived. Those too remote or obstinate blew away with the Kansas dust. 

Survival Skills

Today the situation for farmers has worsened. Few farmers grow their own food. Agribusiness has made them utterly dependent on chemicals and other shipped-in products. The main lack of cities compared to farms is food-growing, but farms lack nearly everything else—and most of that comes from cities. Setting aside for the moment the all-important issue of social and political cohesion, for cities to survive a peak-oil crash, the critical necessity is for them to learn to grow food. For country people to survive, inhabitants will need to provide nearly every single other essential good for themselves. And since many country people are simply transplanted urbanites lacking gardening or other land skills, but having the isolation that makes social cohesion unnecessary to learn (for now), their survival is even more doubtful. If catastrophe comes, the cities may be unpleasant, but I fear the countryside may be far worse off.

One important tenet of permaculture is to design for disaster. While giving a talk on the wildfire that destroyed his cabin at the Lama Foundation (see page 14 of this issue), Santa Fe designer Ben Haggard was asked what his biggest lesson was. “Plan for disaster,” he said. “Whatever is the likely catastrophe at your site, count on it happening. Because sooner or later, it will.”

A technique displayed in good design that also happens to be a way to deter disaster is to meet destructive forces with mechanisms or attitudes that transform them into productive, or at worst, harmless energies. When this machinery of transformation is missing, even seemingly mild events wreak havoc. A gentle rain falling on bare ground will quickly sluice away topsoil and wash downhill in gullies. If instead plants carpet that same patch of earth, the rain becomes not an erosive force, but life-giving moisture whose energy is damped and welcomed by the vegetation. Instead of gullying, the water is held by the plants, stored over a longer time for them and for the animals that feed on or live among the vegetation. This is one of nature’s secrets: knowing how to create structures and systems that convert gales to refreshing breezes, change baking sun into sugars and living tissue.

What nature doesn’t do, and humans attempt so often, is to treat large forces as enemies to be vanquished and destroyed. This summer, as hurricanes repeatedly battered the Caribbean, ridiculous proposals appeared in letters-to-the-editor columns: Let’s build giant fans on the Florida coast to blow away the storms. Pour oil over the Atlantic to smooth out the waves. And (inevitably), why can’t we toss a few nukes into those pesky hurricanes? (Whether it’s replacing the Panama canal or toppling Saddam, someone always seems to propose atomic bombs.) 

Sector Acceptance

The conceptual tool offered by permaculture in these cases is to view large forces as sector energies: influences from off the site that are beyond the control of the designer. We deal with sector energies by designing systems or placing elements to deflect, absorb, or harvest these forces, or allow them to pass unhindered. This is nature’s way as well, and how she does it offers, as usual, some profound lessons.

As ecosystems mature, biomass and complexity increase. Ecologist Ramon Margalef, in his landmark 1963 paper, “On Certain Unifying Principles in Ecology” (American Naturalist 97:357-374), suggests we think of biomass as “a keeper of organization, something that is proportional to the influence that an actual ecosystem can exert on future events.” In other words, we can think of biomass, complexity, and the other indicators of maturity as measures not only of the resilience of a system, but as a form of wisdom. That’s because as ecosystems mature, the aftermath of environmental tumult such as storm or drought depends more on the richness of the ecosystem than on the nature of the disturbance. A drought that withers a weedlot doesn’t faze an old-growth forest—the forest has learned what to do with drought. It has grown structures, cycles, and patterns that convert nearly any outside influence into more forest, and that protect key cycles during bad times. It has become wise.

Nature uses two principal tools to achieve this protection from catastrophe. The first is diversity in space—in size, shape, physical pattern, and composition. If all the pieces of a system are at the same physical scale—all the same size, or the same genetic makeup, for example—a disturbance occurring at that scale will wipe out the whole system. Diversity in scale brings protection. When a hurricane hits a trailer park, the trailers blow away, but the bacteria, mice, and other elements of very different size escape damage. A plague of cats, on the other hand, strikes at the scale of the mice, leaving the trailers and bacteria unscathed. Mature ecosystems have enough diversity in space that any catastrophe may knock out the pieces living at that particular scale but will almost never destroy the whole landscape.

The second protective tool of mature ecosystems is diversity in time—in rate, frequency, and schedule. Understory shrubs often leaf out earlier in spring than canopy trees, which lets the shrubs grab enough light to build plenty of leaves. Then when the trees grow leaves, the shrubs have the photosynthetic area to gather ample light in the dappled shade. Another classic example of diversity in time is the hatching cycle of locusts. Timed to emerge at intervals of years having prime numbers such as 13 and 17, they frustrate the predators whose more regular breeding period requires their food to arrive more predictably.

Permaculture designers use similar approaches to design for disaster. Instead of using concrete embankments and other brute-force tactics to resist flood, we place fences that can lie down, reed-like as rushing waters advance and then can be easily set up afterward. Rather than gouging enormous barren firebreaks into their hillside, Lama Foundation stacks roads, swales, and plantings together in a multiply functioning firebreak. When monsoon downpours arrive in Tucson, instead of standing by as flooding street runoff pours down sewers, Brad Lancaster harvests the water with cleverly placed curb cuts that lead to mulched food-tree basins. All these examples are detailed in Permaculture Activist #54 (November, 2004).

By observing nature’s wisdom, permaculturists follow nature’s lead and use patterning, succession, edge, and cyclic opportunities to convert large pulses of energy into smooth generators of structure, harvest, and nutrient flow. Permaculture design inquires into the nature of some of these “large pulses” and shows how they can teach us to use their energy, aikido-like, to benefit ourselves and the larger ecosystem.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author Toby Hemenway writes:
I was directed by a friend to a couple of blogs that were discussing an article I'd written on urban and rural sustainability, and the conversation there has gone way beyond that topic and has ranged into some interesting discussion of where permaculture fits onto society, of whether it is sustainable, its relation to earlier cultures, and even whether it can be co-opted as just one more way for elites to control people. The people writing seem remarkably intelligent and well-read (myself excepted, of course!), with no flaming. If this interests you, you should check out

anthropik.com/2006/01/urbs-versus-ruralis/
ranprieur.com/index.html villageblog.blogspirit.com/
villageblog.blogspirit.com/archive/2006/01/24/attack-is-the-best-form-of-defense.html#comments

And also links from those sites. I also recommend:
anthropik.com/2005/10/thesis-8-human-societies-are-defined-by-their-food/
as it makes it clear why gardening is such a central element of permaculture.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/3757

Suburban Despair

By.Witold Rybczynski

Is urban sprawl really an American menace?

We hate sprawl. It's responsible for everything that we don't like about modern American life: strip malls, McMansions, big-box stores, the loss of favorite countryside, the decline of downtowns, traffic congestion, SUVs, high gas consumption, dependence on foreign oil, the Iraq war. No doubt about it, sprawl is bad, American bad. Like expanding waistlines, it's touted around the world as yet another symptom of our profligacy and wastefulness as a nation. Or, as Robert Bruegmann puts it in his new book, "cities that sprawl and, by implication, the citizens living in them, are self indulgent and undisciplined."

Or not. In Sprawl, cheekily subtitled "A Compact History," Bruegmann, a professor of art history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, examines the assumptions that underpin most people's strongly held convictions about sprawl. His conclusions are unexpected. To begin with, he finds that urban sprawl is not a recent phenomenon: It has been a feature of city life since the earliest times. The urban rich have always sought the pleasures of living in low-density residential neighborhoods on the outskirts of cities. As long ago as the Ming dynasty in the 14th century, the Chinese gentry sang the praises of the exurban life, and the rustic villa suburbana was a common feature of ancient Rome. Pliny's maritime villa was 17 miles from the city, and many fashionable Roman villa districts such as Tusculum—where Cicero had a summer house—were much closer. Bruegmann also observes that medieval suburbs—those urbanized areas outside cities' protective walls—had a variety of uses. Manufacturing processes that were too dirty to be located inside the city (such as brick kilns, tanneries, slaughterhouses) were in the suburbs; so were the homes of those who could not afford to reside within the city proper. This pattern continued during the Renaissance. Those compact little cities bounded by bucolic landscapes, portrayed in innumerable idealized paintings, were surrounded by extensive suburbs.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "sprawl" first appeared in print in this context in 1955, in an article in the London Times that contained a disapproving reference to "great sprawl" at the city's periphery. But, as Bruegmann shows, by then London had been spreading into the surrounding countryside for hundreds of years. During the 17th and 18th centuries, while the poor moved increasingly eastward, affluent Londoners built suburban estates in the westerly direction of Westminster and Whitehall, commuting to town by carriage. These areas are today the Central West End; one generation's suburb is the next generation's urban neighborhood. As Bruegmann notes, "Clearly, from the beginning of modern urban history, and contrary to much accepted wisdom, suburban development was very diverse and catered to all kinds of people and activities."

When inexpensive public transportation opened up South London for development in the 19th century, London sprawl took a different form: streets and streets of small brick-terrace houses. For middle-class families, this dispersal was a godsend, since it allowed them to exchange a cramped flat for a house with a garden. The outward movement continued in the boom years between the First and Second World Wars, causing the built-up area of London to double, although the population increased by only about 10 percent—which sounds a lot like Atlanta today.

It was not only by sprawling at the edges that cities reduced their densities. Preindustrial cities began life by exhibiting what planners call a steep "density gradient," that is, the population density was extremely high in the center and dropped off rapidly at the edges. Over time, with growing prosperity—and the availability of increasingly far-reaching mass transportation (omnibuses, streetcars, trains, subways, cars)—this gradient flattened out. Density at the center reduced while density in the (expanding) suburbs increased. The single most important variable in this common pattern was, as Bruegmann observes, not geography or culture, but the point at which the city reached economic maturity. In the case of London, the city's population density peaked in the early 19th century; in Paris it happened in the 1850s; and in New York City in the early 1900s. While the common perception is that sprawl is America's contribution to urban culture, Bruegmann shows that it appeared in Europe first.

Yet haven't high rates of automobile ownership, easy availability of land, and a lack of central planning made sprawl much worse in the United States? Most American tourists spend their time visiting historic city centers, so they may be unaware that suburbs now constitute the bulk of European metropolitan areas, just as they do in America. We marvel at the efficiency of European mass transit, but since 1950, transit ridership has remained flat, while the use of private automobiles has skyrocketed. Just as in America. "As cities across Europe have become more affluent in the last decades of the twentieth century," Bruegmann writes, "they have witnessed a continuing decline in population densities in the historic core, a quickening of the pace of suburban and exurban development, a sharp rise in automobile ownership and use, and the proliferation of subdivisions of single-family houses and suburban shopping centers." Despite some of the most stringent anti-sprawl regulations in the world and high gas prices, the population of the City of Paris has declined by almost a third since 1921, while its suburbs have grown. Over the last 15 years, the city of Milan has lost about 600,000 people to its metropolitan fringes, while Barcelona, considered by many a model compact city, has developed extensive suburbs and has experienced the largest population loss of any European city in the last 25 years. Greater London, too, continues to sprawl, resulting in a population density of 12,000 persons per square mile, about half that of New York City.

The point is not that London, any more than Barcelona or Paris, is a city in decline (although the demographics of European city centers have changed and are now home to wealthier and older inhabitants, just like some American cities). Central urban densities are dropping because household sizes are smaller and affluent people occupy more space. Like Americans, Europeans have opted for decentralization. To a great extent, this dispersal is driven by a desire for home-ownership. "Polls consistently confirm that most Europeans, like most Americans, and indeed most people worldwide, would prefer to live in single-family houses on their own piece of land rather than in apartment buildings," Bruegmann writes. So strong is this preference that certain European countries such as Ireland and the United Kingdom now have higher single-family house occupancy rates than the United States, while others, such as Holland, Belgium, and Norway, are comparable. Half of all French households now live in houses.

It appears that all cities—at least all cities in the industrialized Western world—have experienced a dispersal of population from the center to a lower-density periphery. In other words, sprawl is universal. Why is this significant? "Most American anti-sprawl reformers today believe that sprawl is a recent and peculiarly American phenomenon caused by specific technological innovations like the automobile and by government policies like single-use zoning or the mortgage-interest deduction on the federal income tax," Bruegmann writes. "It is important for them to believe this because if sprawl turned out to be a long-standing feature of urban development worldwide, it would suggest that stopping it involves something much more fundamental than correcting some poor American land-use policy."

What this iconoclastic little book demonstrates is that sprawl is not the anomalous result of American zoning laws, or mortgage interest tax deduction, or cheap gas, or subsidized highway construction, or cultural antipathy toward cities. Nor is it an aberration. Bruegmann shows that asking whether sprawl is "good" or "bad" is the wrong question. Sprawl is and always has been inherent to urbanization. It is driven less by the regulations of legislators, the actions of developers, and the theories of city planners, than by the decisions of millions of individuals—Adam Smith's "invisible hand." This makes altering it very complicated, indeed. There are scores of books offering "solutions" to sprawl. Their authors would do well to read this book. To find solutions—or, rather, better ways to manage sprawl, which is not the same thing—it helps to get the problem right.

http://www.slate.com/id/2129636/

URBAN RENEWAL PRIMER

Urban renewal is a state-sanctioned program designed to help communities improve and
redevelop areas that are physically deteriorated, unsafe, or poorly planned. The Portland
Development Commission (PDC) uses urban renewal as a tool to help specific areas of the city
realize capital projects – parks, streetscape improvements, community centers, and the like – that would not happen on their own.

Began as a federal program to improve inner-city housing, urban renewal has evolved over five decades from a top-down effort characterized by large-scale clearance efforts to a more collaborate effort that aims to strengthen existing communities by relying on input from people in those communities. Though it has undergone many changes since its inception, urban renewal has endured as an effective way to reinvigorate portions of our central cities. Here in Portland, urban renewal has and continues to enliven and enrich our community. It has helped realize new public assets such as streets and streetcars, parks and plazas, and greenways and community facilities. It also has financed incentives for private investments that have created jobs, revitalized neighborhoods and provided a full range of housing options.

The following are answers to frequently asked questions about urban renewal.

THE BASICS

Q. How does urban renewal work?

A. The basic idea behind urban renewal is simple: future tax revenues pay for revitalization efforts. The City Council, acting on the recommendations of a community-based steering committee and PDC, draws a line around an area (the urban renewal boundary) and identifies desirable improvements within that area (the urban renewal plan). The city issues urban renewal bonds to pay for the identified improvements. As property values increase in the area due to new investment, the rise in property tax revenues (called “tax increment”) is used to pay off the urban renewal bonds. This financing method is called tax-increment financing, and it is the most common method of paying for improvements in an urban renewal area.

Q. How widespread is the use of urban renewal?

A. More than 40 Oregon cities and counties currently have urban renewal programs in operation. Since 1958, when PDC was established as Portland's urban renewal agency, the City Council has created 20 urban renewal areas in Portland. PDC currently administers ten urban renewal areas: River District, Downtown Waterfront, South Park Blocks, North Macadam, Airport Way, Convention Center, Central Eastside, Lents, Interstate Corridor and the Gateway Regional Center.

Q. What kinds of projects are funded by urban renewal?

A. Urban renewal funds can be used for a variety of capital investments, such as:

· Redevelopment projects, such as projects near light rail that combine retail and residential components

· Economic development strategies, such as small-business loans or loan programs tied to family-wage jobs

· Housing loans and other financial tools for ownership and rental housing which serve a variety of income levels

· Streetscape improvements, including new lighting, trees, sidewalks, pedestrian amenities, etc.

· Transportation enhancements, including light rail, streetcar, intersection improvements, etc.  

· Historic preservation projects

· Parks and open spaces

Q. What are examples of projects in Portland financed with urban renewal dollars?

A. Waterfront Park and Pioneer Square, two major civic resources downtown, both were funded
with urban renewal dollars. More recently, urban renewal funds helped finance the Central City
Streetcar, the Eastbank Esplanade and Airport MAX. Urban renewal dollars have also reached
into Portland's neighborhoods, funding improvements such as facade improvements along NE
Alberta Street, boulevard treatment along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and sparkling new
commercial and housing development in Lents. Newer urban renewal areas such as Interstate and Gateway promise transportation improvements, affordable housing, additional greenspace and cultural amenities.

Q. What are the roots of urban renewal?

A. Urban renewal emerged in the late 1940s as an attempt to revitalize central cities, which were losing population and resources to new post-war suburbs. Until the 1960s, urban renewal was a federal program used to clear large areas of land largely to provide what was then considered to be improved housing conditions for thousands of people. It also funded large projects such as hospitals, highways and civic centers. The funding mechanisms and purposes of urban renewal changed in its early decades, but the term broadly referred to a set of programs and policies meant to counter inner-city disinvestment and reinvigorate declining downtown areas.

Q. How has urban renewal evolved over the years?

A. Legislative changes, shifting federal priorities and voter initiatives all have changed the way
urban renewal is carried out. On a practical level, urban renewal has evolved from a program in
which sizable tracts of land are cleared for new, large-scale projects to one that collaborates with
residents to strengthen and revitalize their communities. Today, urban renewal agencies approach projects with broader revitalization goals and a more community-oriented mindset. As
Portland's urban renewal agency, PDC works within the existing built and social environment to
create and encourage redevelopment opportunities where those communities so desire. Unlike earlier practices, PDC now undertakes an extensive neighborhood-oriented public process as part of its urban renewal activities.

Q. Who designates urban renewal areas?

A. City Council designates urban renewal areas by adopting an urban renewal plan for a specific
area. The plan is the result of a community-wide visioning process, and is designed to revitalize
an area according to the community's goals and objectives in support of established
neighborhood, city and regional policies.

Q. What is the criteria for urban renewal areas?

A. Urban renewal areas must show evidence of some degree of blight, demonstrated by conditions such as poorly constructed buildings, faulty planning, lack of open spaces, deteriorated properties, an incompatible mix of uses and improper utilization of land.

Q. How are the actual boundaries of urban renewal areas drawn?

A. The size and composition of Portland's urban renewal areas vary widely, but each is designed to maximize the potential effectiveness of tax-increment financing. Boundaries are drawn with economic, legal and political considerations in mind. The boundaries of the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area, for example, expanded as neighborhoods in North and Northeast Portland expressed their desire to benefit from urban renewal programs and dollars. Residents of singlefamily neighborhoods encircling the Gateway Regional Center, however, asked that Gateway's urban renewal area comprise only the commercial and industrial core of the area. In both cases, an extensive public review process led by a citizen committee helped decide where the lines ultimately were drawn.

Q. How do urban renewal areas relate to goals put forth by neighborhoods, the city, and other policymaking bodies?

A. Urban renewal helps advance already-established objectives by providing a funding mechanism for implementation. Each urban renewal plan specifically lists how the plan will help achieve neighborhood, citywide and regional policy objectives. Recently, urban renewal areas were created in Lents Town Center and in the Gateway Regional Center to help realize Metro's 2040 Regional Framework Plan, a plan intended to enhance quality of life and preserve open space. They were also developed in keeping with their respective neighborhood plans as well as the Outer Southeast Community Plan.

Q. Are there limits on Portland's use of urban renewal?

A. Yes. Under state law, the sum of all urban renewal areas in any one municipality cannot exceed 15 percent of its total assessed value or 15 percent of its total land area.

PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT

Q. How much say does the public have in the creation of new urban renewal areas?

A. A lot. Oregon law requires citizens be consulted throughout the urban renewal process, and
PDC is both proactive in seeking community input and responsive to community desires. Urban
renewal areas, their principles and the specific projects funded by them are conceived in
consultation with citizen committees who represent a broad spectrum of community interests. In
addition, three public bodies must approve any new urban renewal area: the Portland
Development Commission, the Portland Planning Commission, and City Council. Other
jurisdictions impacted by the urban renewal area -- such as the county and the local school board
-- are asked to issue a recommendation on the plan. Public comment is solicited and accepted
throughout the process.
 

Q. Can the public be assured that its voices will be heard even if City Council has the ultimate authority to designate urban renewal areas?

A. Oregon law permits local redevelopment agencies – in this case, the Portland Development Commission – to declare urban renewal areas within its jurisdiction, and City Council must approve the plans for such areas. However, the law requires – and PDC insists on – public participation at each step. The recent formation of the Interstate Urban Renewal Area is a good example of the extensive public involvement process PDC initiates in each proposed urban renewal area. In the Interstate neighborhoods, a citizen committee of more than 50 people – mostly residents and business owners from the affected neighborhoods – met for several months to draw the plan boundary and craft a list of 11 general principles that will guide public investment in the area. A similar process took place in Gateway, where a group of more than 30 citizens worked for nearly two years to envision the area's future and approve an urban renewal plan.

Q. What is the public's role after an area is designated an urban renewal area?

A. Spending in each new urban renewal area is overseen by a citizen advisory committee. The decision to allocate money for specific projects that meet the goals of the urban renewal plan are made each year through PDC’s budgeting process. PDC gathers suggestions for projects through several methods, including input from stakeholders through meetings and public workshops. The agency's budget is ultimately approved by City Council.

WHY URBAN RENEWAL?

Q. Why are public investments such as urban renewal needed to redevelop an area? Why not let private developers do the work?

A. In urban renewal areas, public investment is used to stimulate private investment on a much
larger scale. The amount of urban renewal funds invested in any one area is small compared to
the private investment that follows. Urban renewal is primarily used to update and improve an
area's infrastructure -- through capital expenditures on transportation improvements and parks, for example -- and to provide incentives for desired development such as affordable housing, family-wage jobs and building refurbishment. The result is that private investments pay for the lion's share of new building construction and renovation costs in urban renewal areas.

Q. Why is urban renewal sometimes preferable to other means of improving an area?

A. Urban renewal is a way to focus resources on a particular area, and to use public resources to stimulate and leverage much larger private investments. Specific public-improvement projects can come about as a result of local, state and federal grants, private investment and donations, city general fund allocations and other sources of public financing. Each of these options has its particular drawbacks. Competition for projects funded by the city's general fund is intense. Grant money is similarly competitive, time-consuming to obtain, and usually arrives with strings attached. Tax-increment financing is a simple and reliable financial tool.

 

COSTS OF URBAN RENEWAL

Q. Does urban renewal deprive other taxing entities, like the county and the school district, of tax revenues needed to pay for services?

A. Urban renewal does not directly affect a school system's operating budget because schools are
funded by the state on a per-pupil instead of a property-tax basis. Urban renewal does nominally affect voter-approved bonds because the affected education district has less property value to levy bonds against, resulting in slightly higher bond rates. Other taxing jurisdictions’ share of tax revenue from property inside the urban renewal area boundary is frozen for the length of the urban renewal area, usually 20 or 30 years.
Because of the massive public investments made during that span, however, those taxing
jurisdictions should see considerable increases in future tax collections. Over the life of an urban
renewal area, assessed values can rise to more than twice the amount projected without urban
renewal. Taxing jurisdictions also are protected from significant impact by state limits on how
much of a municipality can be designated an urban renewal area.

Q. Does urban renewal benefit only a few large developers and property owners?

A. No. Urban renewal is designed to benefit all people within the urban renewal area, in
surrounding neighborhoods and throughout the city and metropolitan area. The urban renewal
plan, which guides all public spending in the area, is conceived by citizens who are best able to
make decisions about how to improve their neighborhood. And everyone benefits from the
results of urban renewal, which often includes better planning, more open space, more efficient
traffic patterns, better transportation options, diversified housing choices and more enjoyable
amenities.

Q. How does the creation an urban renewal area affect a Portland resident's property taxes?

A. The formation of an urban renewal area does not result in new taxes. Urban renewal activities
are financed by bonds. These bonds are repaid from the property taxes generated by the increase in value, over time, of properties within the boundary. Although property values within an urban renewal area are likely to rise, property taxes are based on assessed values, which are limited to a 3-percent annual rise in most cases.

Q. Is there any danger of defaulting on urban renewal bonds and sticking taxpayers with the bill?

A. The city guarantees urban renewal bonds. Since the city practices conservative fiscal
management and is very concerned about maintaining a strong credit rating, it is very careful
about taking on any debt it is uncertain about paying off. In no urban renewal area has the city
had to rely on alternative methods of bond repayment.

FEARS ABOUT URBAN RENEWAL

Q. Does designating an area as an urban renewal area make living there less affordable?

A. Not necessarily. In fact, urban renewal can be a strong and effective tool to protect long-term affordability in revitalizing neighborhoods by financing the construction of affordable housing. For example, the first priority for housing money in the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area is to fund the development and preservation of housing affordable to people most at risk of displacement. Affordable housing projects in Portland recently financed using urban renewal dollars include Hamilton West (152 units at SW 12th and Clay) and Kafoury Commons (129 units at SW 13th and Jefferson). It is important to keep in mind that although property values are expected to rise in urban renewal areas, Oregon law limits yearly property-tax increases under most circumstances -- even in urban renewal areas.

Q. How frequently does urban renewal result in displacing people from their homes or
businesses?

A. Very rarely. In the past, urban renewal sometimes involved large-scale displacement. One notable example was the Emanuel Hospital project, when several hundred people and more than two dozen businesses were relocated, with benefits, to make room for new housing and the hospital's expansion. Today, however, urban renewal works to revitalize communities within the existing built environment.

Q. Does urban renewal create uncontrolled growth or traffic?

A. No, quite the opposite: Urban renewal monies can be used to control growth and improve transportation infrastructure. In the Gateway Regional Center, where unparalleled access has created a prime spot for new development, urban renewal emerged as the most realistic method to influence private development in a way that manages anticipated growth. Included in the urban renewal plan are ways to increase transportation options, better manage existing traffic flow and direct new construction in ways that enhance livability for current and future residents.

Q. Does urban renewal mean condemnation?

A. No. Condemnation is a constitutional right reserved for public agencies and is altogether separate from urban renewal. Condemnation proceedings occur very rarely in urban renewal areas: Of the more than 60 properties acquired by PDC since 1990, only four involved condemnation proceedings. More importantly, in recently designated urban renewal areas, the issue whether to grant PDC the power of condemnation has been decided by citizen oversight committees in the respective communities. In Lents and Interstate, these committees voted to limit or prohibit condemnation in their respective urban renewal areas. In Gateway, the citizen advisory committee voted to allow PDC to use condemnation authority if certain criteria were met.

http://www.pdc.us/pdf/about/urban_renewal_primer

Urban Renewal?

By. Ron Moreau and Sudip Mazumdar | NEWSWEEK

Bangalore's poor infrastructure has sparked a bitter feud over city versus rural needs.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw has a lot invested in Bangalore, the mecca of southern India's new economy. She was born in the city--and in 1978, as a young chemist, she started the biotechnology company Biocon, which, over the past decade, has grown spectacularly. The firm has seen its revenues surge from $20 million to $200 million annually. And Biocon's work force has expanded to 2,000.

But Mazumdar-Shaw is not entirely happy these days. The CEO says she spends too much time dealing with issues related to Bangalore's crumbling infrastructure, which has failed to keep pace with the city's breakneck growth. Mazumdar-Shaw has had to install her own power-generating station to compensate for frequent electricity outages, buy a fleet of buses to transport employees to work due to a lack of public transportation and stagger working hours to overcome the city's horrific traffic jams. If the city's government doesn't do something soon to overcome those problems, the businesswoman asserts, "my next expansion will certainly not be in Bangalore. There are many other options for me today."

Such tough talk by one of Bangalore's top entrepreneurs ought to galvanize the political leaders of Karnataka state, of which Bangalore is the capital. If Mazumdar-Shaw or other frustrated CEOs were to start investing elsewhere, the business confidence in India's fastest-growing city would be shattered. The 1,500 high-tech firms in Bangalore produce $7 billion in software exports yearly, or 35 percent of India's total exports. But amazingly, little is being done to modernize Bangalore's dilapidated streets, drainage system and power grid. That's because the coalition government that runs Karnataka--a union of the Janata Dal (or Secular) Party and the Congress Party--is actively feuding with the city's business community. Some analysts say the government is more concerned with pandering to rural voters than responding to the frustrations of wealthy business people. Similar conflicts are playing out in other parts of India as politicians try to balance the concerns of rural constituents with the pressing need to improve the rickety infrastructure of fast-growing cities. Ramesh Ramanathan, a civic activist who heads the Janaagraha Center for Citizenship and Democracy in Bangalore, says his government "is spending most of its time trying to manage its [political] destiny, and I'm afraid it's not going to be able to [address] the crucial, larger issues of urban reform and development."

Deve Gowda, the powerful 72-year-old former Indian prime minister and veteran Karnataka political leader, is the bete noire of Bangalore's IT sector. He effectively controls the state in an uneasy alliance with Chief Minister Dharam Singh, an unexceptional Congress Party stalwart. A longtime champion of the rural poor, Gowda perceives some of Bangalore's business leaders as being greedy stalking-horses of the state's former chief minister S. M. Krishna, whom Gowda's forces defeated in the last state election, in early 2004. In Gowda's view, Krishna is trying to make a political comeback with the help of the business community, and in particular Narayana Murthy, the chairman of Infosys, one of India's most successful outsourcing companies. The two men have been jousting for months.

A close friend of Krishna's, Murthy has been at the forefront of IT industry lobbying efforts to modernize Bangalore. But Gowda resents the carping about city services, warning last week in an interview with NEWSWEEK: "Business people should not involve themselves in politics. Don't try to disturb this government by branding it as not extending cooperation to solve the infrastructure problem."

While claiming not to be an enemy of Bangalore's IT sector, Gowda doesn't seem inclined to help the industry either. One of the new government's first orders of business was to deep-six the Bangalore Agenda Task Force, a public-private partnership started by Krishna to reverse the precipitous decline of the city's infrastructure. The business bosses fought back by threatening to boycott last month's annual Bangalore IT.Com exhibition. In an effort to calm tension, Singh convened a meeting that included Gowda and Murthy. In his presentation, Murthy talked about the need to improve the coordination, efficiency and accountability of the city's many service agencies, including roads, public transport, power and water. And he said economic and political bridges must be built between the countryside and the city. At one point Murthy turned to Gowda and said, "Sir, we need your leadership," according to one participant. Gowda replied in a positive tone, saying he welcomed the sharing of ideas.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/51457

Description of Urban Renewal

Urban renewal (similar to Urban regeneration in British English) is a program of land re-development in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. This process began as an intense phase in the late 1940s and continued into the late 1970s with traces of it still occurring in the early 1980s. It has a major impact on the urban landscape. While largely abandoned in central cities, the current Atlantic Yards project in downtown Brooklyn stands as an exception. Similar mechanisms play an important role in the history and demographics of cities around the world, including: Beijing, China, Melbourne, Victoria; Saint John, New Brunswick; Glasgow, Scotland; Boston, Massachusetts; Warsaw; San Francisco, California; and Bilbao, Spain. Commonly cited examples include Canary Wharf, in London, and Cardiff in Wales.

Urban renewal is extremely controversial, and typically involves the destruction of businesses, the relocation of people, and the use of eminent domain (known as Compulsory Purchase in the UK) as a legal instrument to reclaim private property for city-initiated development projects. In the 1960s James Baldwin famously dubbed Urban Renewal "Negro Removal".

In the second half of the 20th century, renewal often resulted in the creation of urban sprawl and vast areas of cities being demolished and replaced by freeways and expressways, housing projects, and vacant lots, many of which still remain vacant at the beginning of the 21st century.

Urban renewal's effect on actual revitalization is a subject of intense debate. It is seen by proponents as an economic engine, and by opponents as a regressive mechanism for enriching the wealthy at the expense of taxpayers and the poor. It carries a high cost to existing communities, and in many cases resulted in the destruction of vibrant—if run-down —neighborhoods.

Urban renewal in its original form has been called a failure by many urban planners and civic leaders, and has since been reformulated with a focus on redevelopment of existing communities. However, many cities link the revitalization of the central business district and gentrification of residential neighborhoods to earlier urban renewal programs. Over time, urban renewal evolved into a policy based less on destruction and more on renovation and investment, and today is an integral part of many local governments, often combined with small and big business incentives. But even in this adapted form, Urban Renewal projects are still widely accused of abuse and corruption.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_renewal