Lecture on Urban Management

A contact of Alex's, a former professor of Planning at Cal Poly, invited us to attend his first-of-the-semester planning class. It was a nice change of pace, to be able to just sit and watch the presentation being given to someone else, instead of giving or receiving the presentation ourselves. It was also nice to have an academic perspective to add to the government and private sector perspectives we have seen so far. This lecture outlined the main topics to be covered in the next 14 weeks of the course.

The main points to be covered are the challenges of small and medium sized cities (large city problems already get enough attention), rural-urban issues (including once again the issue of in-migration), and at the end of the semester, sustainability (which he says must include social justice as much as infrastructure planning). He had an interesting take on in-migration. We are used to hearing that in-migration is something that must be stopped or reversed, but he said it must be accomodated. Cities depend on in-migrants for growth, and countries depend on cities for the type of growth that is needed for developing countries in the 21st century. He also mentioned that mobility of economic inputs, including labor. The in-migrants are not jobless, they are just poor enough to not be able to afford transportation, so they must live near their jobs. He also showed some respect for the expanding informal sector that operates not just in slums.

At the end he listed some of the factors he felt would improve city planning in India. Those factors were decentralization (of land use decision-making power to the local governments), and transparency and the introduction of public hearing processes.