Delhi: rapid transport helps integrate some parts of the city

The workshop on integrated development in India was valuable, but it would be naïve to expect that one an a half days would give all the answers. It was good to get a range of experiences from India as well as International inputs from Cities Alliance, World Bank, (Capacity Development for Infrastructure in Asia (CDIA) and Metropolis.
For me, the significant points were:

• 1) First that the conference took place and the Ministry took an active and leading role;
• 2) the recognition of the  issue of limited capacity at the local level and the need for strong leadership from the local level, both political and technical;
• 3) the openness to listen to experiences from South Africa, Nigeria, Philippines Korea, and to open up the thinking on the Indian situation;
• 4) the highlighting of the  need for both statutory and strategic planning and for the relationship to be made more operational.

I talked about the need for real benefits from integration and  the concept of “smart connections” between plans. This is not very complicated.  It means that in the rules and during the process questions have to be addressed as to how the plan being worked on relates to other plans. How  conflicts are recognized and avoided, and perhaps more important, that synergies should be identified and  actively pursued.  This “common sense” approach does, however mean that some people, leaders, managers, planners need to actively pursue the goal of achieving better results.   The difficult task is to introduce this   approach in situations where local government is weak.

Lessons

• The potential benefits of an integrated approach need to be clear to drive the process. This realization should be widely held, especially by leadership and not only by the technical staff involved.
• As far as is possible, it is good to keep the initial sophistication at a basic level for smaller, weaker municipalities . A progressive development through incentives can be used to simulate stronger municipalities.
• Examples from other countries showed that with will, initiative and creativity it is possible to make changes. However, this does not come easily, a strong integration of capacity development is vital.
• The main focus was lessons to feed into the second phase of the the national programme JNNURM to support local integrated infrastructure development, but it was recognised that the City Development Plans (CDP) are a tool with much wider potential use.

Questions

Do you have comments or further examples?  You can post here.

I also posted a link to groups on LinkedIn (urban planning and IHS Alumni) and you can also follow some of the discussion there if you belong to those groups.