found 05 - 10 guiding principles

by Cyrus Guzder to guide future urban Planning, each of fundamental importance and together internally consistent.

1. Make Mumbai an attractive place to live in and work in for all its citizens. Any planning initiative that undermines this goal, will deprive the city of investment; and both visitors and residents will prefer to move elsewhere. Conversely, if we achieve this goal, much else that is desirable will follow.
2. Encourage job locations in the city that are consistent with minimizing infrastructure costs and maximizing the quality of urban life. Jobs attract population - job holders, their families and those that need to service them. In 1950, Professor Lakdawalla calculated the ratio as 1: 13.5 and the ratio must now be larger because of increased demand for services. But, different types of jobs attract more or less service jobs; and often concentrating population and jobs in given areas lead to more efficient use of transport and infrastructure. So we need to evaluate which options are more desirable so as to lead to outcomes consistent with all our guiding principles.
3. Encourage preservation of the character of the city. We should seek to exploit the city’s admirable features - landmark buildings, its unusual geography relative to the sea - to underline and enhance its distinctive character.
4. Encourage the development of Rental Housing; and facilitate home ownership loans for all income groups. If the Rent Act is politically difficult to repeal, at least provide that it does not regulate future tenancies created hereafter. Today, no housing agency finances housing for the poor, because if they fail to repay, they cannot be evicted and their property repossessed. Our laws need to be modified to permit re-possession. For every one such case (of hardship admittedly), 99 others will get a loan for home sponsorship which they otherwise would never have received.
5. Provide Municipal Services to all income groups in the city. Jaime Lerner, Mayor Curitiba, Brazil, said years ago “the poorer you are the better services you should have”. Water supply, sanitation, power and quick transport are the fundamental elements of infrastructure for a healthy and functioning city. They must be available to all citizens. Charges can well vary from one locality to another, higher for the wealthier localities and rates increasing per unit of floor area occupied.
6. Public Transport has priority over Private Transport. The city is primarily for the convenience of its people not its cars. Each segment of transport should receive funding in proportion to the number of its users. This leads to a corollary: discourage the use of cars through use of technology and pricing; and make public transport sufficiently attractive for car owners to use it.
7. Expand Green Spaces, Make them accessible to all and within walking distance of home they live. Enrique Penelosa, former Mayor of Bagota, Columbia says “When people’s open spaces are nibbled away they don’t protest too much. But, when they do have them, they derive from them ‘ceaseless satisfaction’.”
8. There should be no free housing for anyone. After berating slum dwellers as encroachers and thieves of public land, our Slum - Redevelopment policies - reward them with a pucca in-site housing - a highly damaging development policy which has created a moral hazard encouraging further encroachment by slumlords, unjust encroachment by developers and dangerously unfulfilled expectations for the city’s poor who are, in any case, prepared to pay for housing. Meanwhile, floor area is added to already dense localities without regard for infrastructure, especially water and transport.
9. Government’s policies toward land ownership require it to give priority to the public interest, not to maximize monetary profits. Where lands are owned by Government; Government should not act in the name of a private landlord but needs to consider the broader public interest, and then put the land to the best possible use called for by that interest.
10. The “public interest” can be protected only if a plurality of voices is heard. A democratic plurality is the best guarantee to ensure that either planning theory or vested interest driven policies undermine the citizens quality of life, present and future.