Some answers

[Asmita Bhardwaj]

Class Test- II

Prepared by Dr. Asmita Bhardwaj

Principles of Planning

22 March, 2012

Exam Duration and Time: 1.5 hours, 10.00 am to 11.30 am, Thursday

Exam points: 100

 

Section I: Answer 5 questions 10 marks each.  (50 marks)

a)      Elaborate on transportation in metros and identify good transportation principles

 

Transportation scenario in metros

 

• On average, during peak hours in Mumbai, the actual occupancy in a suburban train is in excess of 4000 passengers, which have maximum desirable capacity of 2600 passengers
• A majority of motor vehicles in India are concentrated in urban centres and it is alarming to note that 32% of these vehicles are plying in metropolitan cities alone, which constitute just around 11% of the total population. It is interesting to note that Delhi, which contains around 1.4% of the Indian population, accounts for more than 7% of all motor vehicles in the country.
• The present urban rail services in India are extremely limited. Only three cities i.e., Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai are served by suburban rail systems. The rail services in these three main cities together carry more than 7 million trips per day. Interestingly, the Mumbai Suburban Rail System alone carries about 5.5 million trips per day. Delhi with a population of about 12.7 million is the only mega city in India, which does not have an urban rail system.
• Rapid growth, low incomes, and extreme inequality are among the main underlying causes of transport problems in developing countries.
• Unplanned, haphazard development at the suburban fringe without adequate infrastructure, transport, and other public services
• Limited network of roads, often narrow, poorly maintained, and unpaved
• Extremely congested roads with an incompatible mix of both motorized and non-motorized vehicles traveling at widely different speeds
• Rapidly increasing ownership and use of private cars and motorcycle
•  Inadequate roadway accommodations for buses and non-motorized transport
•  Primitive or non-existent traffic control and management, often without even the most basic street signage
• Extremely high and rapidly rising traffic fatalities, especially among pedestrians and motorcyclists
• Overcrowded, uncomfortable, undependable, slow, uncoordinated, inefficient, and dangerous public transport

• Extremely high levels of transport-related pollution, noise and other environmental impacts, especially in large cities
• Indeed, the lack of effective planning and land-use controls has resulted in rampant sprawled development extending rapidly in all directions, far beyond old city boundaries into the distant countryside. That has greatly increased the number and length of trips for most Indians, forcing increasing reliance on motorized transport. Longer trip distances make walking and cycling less feasible, while increasing motor vehicle traffic makes walking and cycling less safe.
• Aside from the increase in motor vehicle ownership and use, several other factors contribute to the safety problem:
• inadequate road supply and quality, often unpaved and in bad repair;
• unsafe driving behavior—which results from virtually non-existent driver training, extremely lax licensing procedures, and lack of traffic law enforcement; unsafe vehicles; inadequate or non-existent traffic signals and signage and lack of traffic management;
• almost complete lack of infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists;
•  forced sharing of narrow, crowded rights of way by both motorized, non-motorized vehicles, pedestrians, animals, and street vendors; overcrowding of buses, auto-rickshaws, and evenmotorcycles.
• Traffic congestion is probably the most visible, most pervasive, and most immediate transport problem plaguing India’s cities on a daily basis.
• Another important source of congestion is the very diverse mix of transport modes forced to share the limited roadway space in Indian cities. Slow non-motorized modes such as bicycles, hand-pulled and cycle-drawn rickshaws, pedestrians, and animal-drawn carts obviously slow down

 

Good Transportation Principles

 

• Improved traffic management
• Improved Transportation Services
• Privatisation of bus services
• State and local governments should be encouraged to revise their current land use and development regulations to promote higher-density development at rail stations and along key bus routes

 

Urban transport crisis in India

John Puchera,*, Nisha Korattyswaropama, Neha Mittala, Neenu Ittyerah

Urban Transport Trends and Policies in China and

India: Impacts of Rapid Economic Growth

JOHN PUCHER***, ZHONG-REN PENG†, NEHA MITTAL*, YI ZHU†

and NISHA KORATTYSWAROOPAM

 

 

b)      Describe TH marshall’s notion of citizenship in cities.

·        Citizenship and social class

·        Sociology of social rights

·        The ‘socio-economic element’ of the range of citizenship rights has been effectively defined as ‘the right to a certain share of resources, the right to share to the full in the social heritage, and to live the life of a civilized being commensurate with the standards prevailing in the society in question’

·        It is sufficient to say that he divided citizenship into three parts, namely, civil, political and social rights. The civil component embraced the achievement of individual freedoms and included such elements as freedom of speech, the right to own property and the right to justice. The rights to participate in the exercise of political power, in particular the rights to free elections and a secret ballot constituted the political component. Finally, the social component is the right to ‘a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilized being’ (Marshall 1950, p. 69). Borrowing overtly from Maitland's The constitutional history of England (190824. Maitland, F.W. 1908. The constitutional history of England , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Marshall claimed that these three aspects had evolved from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, becoming firmly established through various institutions that had evolved to articulate these rights. Alongside these three sets of rights, there existed institutions that gave them social expression, namely, the courts of justice, parliament and councils of local government, and the educational system and the social services. Because Marshall was primarily interested in social rights, the core of the theory is in fact an account of the emergence of welfare services as an amelioration of the condition of the working class.

·        Marshall's model of citizenship remains important because it is descriptively one of the best accounts we have of the growth of social rights in twentieth century Britain. Second, it provides a theoretical framework within which civil liberties and social rights can be seen as necessary not antagonistic elements of citizenship, and it reminds us that no civilized society can exist without common patterns of membership leading to social solidarity. Finally, within the post-war British context, his work on citizenship was a reminder that Britain, albeit in a partial and inadequate fashion, had become more civilized by the standards that had been set out in George Orwell's bitter exposure in 1937 of poverty in northern Britain in his The road to Wigan Pier (1986). We need a vision of citizenship in a world where citizenship is being eroded and the roots of common identity are being transformed by global economic changes that tend to fragment civil society.

 

 

 

 

 

 

c)      What are the key global environmental problems and how do they impact world cities.

·        1970 Stockholm Conference

·        1992 Rio Meetings

·        Climate Change

·        City planning and water- water scarcity in cities and global waterweek

·        Climate Change has direct effect on water

·        Cities and public health- need for better services

·        Pollution in Cities

·         

·        Biodiversity

·        Desertification

·        Look on convention websites

 

d)      Describe main planning institutions and the relationships between them.

 

Central

State

Union Territory

Local Governance

 

 

e)      How have social movements defined urban spaces. Write about an author who speaks of its role (Manuel Castells, David Harvey).

 

 

 

 

 

 

f)        Elaborate on the relationship between transportation and air pollution.

• Transport sector is the major contributor to air pollution in urban India. Emissions from motor vehicles pollute the air, which, in turn, affects the health of people who are living in the city. The problem of air pollution in Indian cities can be gauged from the fact that more than 2% of the people in the prime of their life (15 to 45 years) die prematurely in Delhi every year due to breathing and heart-related disorders caused by polluted air. There is a direct relationship between transport system and air pollution in a city. Vehicular emissions depend on vehicle -km, vehicle speed, age of vehicle, and of course emission rate of different vehicle categories.
•  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Section II: Answer 2 questions 15 marks each.   (30 marks)

a)       Elaborate on the political and economic forces that shaped Mumabi and the principles of good city design that Mumbai planners designed it for

 

 

 

b)      Describe one city that has a social movement play a major role in creating its landscape (Tiannemen square).

 

 

 

 

c)      What are the major problems faced by region of Mumbai called Vidharbha in terms of low level of economic development? To what extent are farmers suicides true?

 

 

 

Section III:  Compulsory Question (20 marks)

a)      What is urbanization? Provide examples from developing and developed world . What are the major challenges to urbanization and measures to create good cities and sustainable urbanization using case studies