HABITATINTL. Vol. 16, No. 2. pp. 13-35,1992. Printed in Great Britain.

0197-3975/92 $5.00 + 0.00 @I 1992 Pergamon Press Ltd

OVERVIEW

Urban Planning and Development 1948-1989

A Personal Memoir

KENNETH WATTS Hemel Hempstead, UK

INTRODUCTION

In world terms, the theory and practice of urban planning now stands at an important juncture. On the one hand, the proportion of people living in urban areas is increasing at rates commensurate with those in Western Europe and North America at the time of the industrial revolution; and, on the other, it seems that attempts are being made - particularly by the World Bank and the UN Centre for Human Settlements - to bring urban planning and development more into the mainstream of development proper. The purpose of this memoir is to review and reflect upon personal experiences in this general field.

I entered the planning profession in 1948, and was a practising planner until 1971. This was a watershed year in my life, for it was then that I moved out of the profession of urban and regional planning and into that of general economic development. It was in the nature of a quantum leap: in terms of worldwide UNDP expenditures on technical cooperation projects, the amount spent on the human settlements sector is even now less than 5% of the annual budget of the entire system - though there is increasing evidence that the system as a whole is at last devoting the amount of attention that it so clearly requires.’ In the first part, therefore, I attempt a critical review of experience prior to 1971, when I was actively engaged in human settlements planning and development. The second part of this paper will be concerned with experience in the wider field of technical assistance across all sectors; the final part deals with my experience subsequent to my formal retirement.

To provide a perspective on current trends, I propose to examine my own experience over the past 40 years. The personal reason for this lies in the fact that I entered the profession in 1948; but, in more general terms, that year perhaps represented a high point in the history of town and country planning, most especially in Britain. The passage of the 1947 Act - a landmark in its own right - represented the culmination of a process which had started in the 1930s; a process which had produced the three great wartime commission reports of Barlow, Scott and Uthwatt. It resulted in a most unusual state of affairs for urban planning in which, as Foley characterised it in a book written soon after,* a conjunction had been achieved between public policy and doctrine. There was a

‘For example, see the Human Development Report 1990, recently published by UNDP, which contains a whole chapter on urban development.

‘Foley, D. ControNing London’s Growth, pp. 52-53.

W 16:2-B 13

strong desire to improve the environment for the benefit of all, and a kind of certainty about the means by which this could be achieved. It was indeed a most extraordinary time in which to enter the profession.

The essence of this doctrine was interventionist in spirit, based on the notion that government has an obligation to provide a decent environment for all. After a long and bitter war, it could well be argued that such a form of government was in the best interests of the country at that stage, as it is in the best interests of the developing world now. It will be one of the themes of this paper that, at the present stage in world development, there is little alternative to such a policy, but that active measures are necessary to .rtimulate and engage the latent energies of the people as a ;+hole in the development process.

The memoir is organised chronologically. I shall seek to review experiences as they occurred in my life. In doing so, one is bound to provide constructions on events which were not always apparent at the time. Furthermore, it is perhaps inevitable that such a memoir should emphasise the successes (and minimise the failures). Given the objectives of the paper, which are to derive benefit from a contemplation upon the positive aspects of one’s experience, when I review the past I am impressed by the fact that so much of the wisdom that 1 have gained in life has been the result of exchange of experience with others: and in this sense, the experience is a shared one.

EXPERIENCES IN URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

Singapore (1952-1956)

On the subject of the first four years of my professional career, I propose to say very little. I spent these years, between 1948 and 1951, in two local planning offices in Britain, an exciting time in many ways, when the 1947 Act was being implemented. However, I regard this experience more as a preparation for what was to follow, and prefer to concentrate on that.

In those days, Britain was regarded as the fount of all experience and knowledge in town and country planning, and was still a metropolitan power with some influence. It was therefore inevitable that some proselitisation should take place, and British planners left for all parts of the Commonwealth, setting up institutions and procedures modelled on those of the mother country. I left for Singapore in 1951. and was a member of a team working within the then government structure, whose task was to provide a planning framework for the future development of the island. We were led by Denis Komlosy, whose powers of leadership I look back on with much respect; and Sir George Pepler - the man who, more than any other, had been instrumental in converting the British Government to the then prevalent doctrine - was the nominal head and came every six months for consultation. We had no other short-term consultants; we relied on the resources of government, private enterprise and academia.

The result of this work was the enactment of a Master Plan for Singapore in 1958. and it is to Komlosy’s great credit that this plan still provides the legal basis for development on the island. As one writer” has recently put it:

Although the original Master Plan has been inadequate in some respects, the underlying principle of decentralisation and of new satellite townships to deal with urban growth is as valid today as when it was proposed .

Since the plan was gazetted at the time, and the legislation under which it was formally approved provided for five-yearly reviews, it has been possible to

‘Foe .4h Fang. Thesis (unpublished).

Urban Planning and Development 15

amend it in accordance with changing circumstances, thus maintaining its legal force. Since that date, the Singapore Government has requested the assistance of the UN to update its proposals, and a succession of missions visited Singapore during the 1960s including that of Charles Abrams and Otto Koenigsberger in 1965, in which the idea of a “Concept Plan to ensure that many separately planned Action Programmes grow into a coherent pattern” was first proposed. This work culminated in a major UN project in the late 1960s to prepare a Concept Plan on which the present development is based.

To return to the early 195Os, there was also another side to our work on the economic base of the island from which I derived benefit for the future. Through our studies and consultations, it became clear to us that the viability of Singapore as an entrepbt was becoming questionable, and that unless vigorous action was taken by the Government to expand its industrial base by interventionist policies, its economic future would be in doubt, and the effectiveness of the whole planning exercise would be greatly diminished. We had neither the means nor the time to explore this question in any detail; and, in any case, we were unable to convince the Government of the necessity of taking urgent measures at that stage. It was for the PAP administration to reach the same conclusion by independent means, to implement the policy with the necessary vigour, and to achieve the result for all to see. My point in raising this is not to claim great prescience on our part, but to point to the necessity of establishing linkages between economic and spatial policies, which, in spite of its pioneering nature, the British 1947 Act never succeeded in doing. I am quite sure that Singapore’s subsequent success in general development has owed much to the achievement of a marriage between economic and spatial policy, a consummation which has never been achieved with quite the same success elsewhere.

Nowadays, it would be customary to appoint a team of consultants to undertake such a job: indeed, in the major exercise to prepare the Concept Plan in the late 1960s this was the method which the UNDP proposed and the Government agreed to. Yet the method which was adopted in the present case - that of appointing an in-house team - does have advantages. We were totally accountable to the Government, which in those days was, of course, still a colonial one, a fact that was instrumental in securing the formal enactment of the plan. Furthermore, we were concerned with the task of developing local capability in town planning as well as with planning proper. Moreover, because we “lived off the ground” in terms of technical support, we were able to involve a wide range of people in our work.

There is, of course, a debit side to this, as I know well, having spent a lifetime working with or inside bureaucracies: a lack of freedom to operate, and of opportunities to influence decisions, both of which are often enjoyed by independent consultants - provided that their relations with the host authorities are good. These points I cannot deny. Yet, when Komlosy himself left in the early 196Os, an institutional capability to undertake the preparation of plans on this scale had been set up in Singapore, and is still in existence today. In my later career, I came to understand the importance of institution building, that institutionalising a process is in many ways just as important as producing a plan. Moreover, institution building is not a process which can be achieved in a short period: the 10 years that Komlosy eventually spent in Singapore is, in my view, the minimum period necessary to achieve the desired objective of an auton- omous institution.

This institutional result was not, however, achieved without difficulty. The planning team was initially an ad hoc body with the portentous name of the “Diagnostic Survey Team”, and attached to the Singapore Improvement Trust, the forerunner of the present Housing Development Board. Problems arose when it became necessary to incorporate the DST into the trust: where should it

16 Kenneth Warts

be structurally located, what should its relationships be with existing organ- isational subdivisions of the Trust, and, bearing in mind that “master planning” was likely to be more of a routine operation in the future than in the past, what should its future manning table look like? Although all of these problems were later resolved, the experience left me with a fundamental distrust of ad hoc bodies, which have tended to proliferate in urban development generally. The rule would appear to be that wherever possible, one should work through the existing administrative structures of government or, where this is not possible, the full policy and administrative implications of the new body should be thought through beforehand. This is particularly the case if new pay structures are introduced.

Jakarta (I 956-1959)

An appointment of the kind that I accepted for Jakarta would not be possible today. On the day of my arrival as a United Nations “expert”, I was told by the Resident Representative that my main task would be to assist in the preparation of a plan for a city whose size nobody knew for certain, whose services were already strained to the utmost after a decade of neglect, but yet was the capital of the fifth most populous nation of the world. The groundwork had been laid by Professor Clifford Holliday, who had spent six months in Jakarta working with local planners in the early 1950s. Based on this work, I undertook the assignment with the very real and valuable assistance of George Franklin and Lucien Petit who joined me in 1958 -whose friendship and support were to be of inestimable value in the later years. This lack of other external technical assistance was to emphasise the importance of Indonesian colleagues in the whole exercise, an eventuality that I considered to be of great importance at that stage in Indonesia.

What, it would now be asked, is it possible to achieve under circumstances such as these? In terms of the kind of work product now expected of an urban planner, the plans that were produced were extremely limited in scope - though one has to say that certain elements of the present development framework of Jakarta, such as the ring-roads and the development of the northern coast for much-needed recreational purposes, were put forward in those early plans. In retrospect, however, what seems to me to be of equal, or perhaps greater, importance lay in the fact that the whole exercise became one of technical cooperation rather than technical assistance, of discovering the strengths of one’s counterparts and building on that, rather than the bringing in of wide-ranging technical advisory services. It of course takes time to establish the necessary mutual confidence to do this; but I feel myself to have been rewarded by the continued friendships of those such as Ir S. Danunagoro, whose judgement and support, as Director of Public Works in Jakarta, were called into play all the time. And there were many others in executive positions at that time, such as the City Planning Officer, Ir L. O’Brien, now regrettably deceased, who was, with Ir Danunagoro, a joint author of the plan. The very fact that we internationals were so thin on the ground meant that we could only proceed at a pace commensurate with the absorptive capacity of the institutions within which we were working. This included the necessity of attending the committees of the City Council to explain and defend the contents of the proposed plan, a procedure which was rewarded by its eventual approval by the Council.

The need to set up a locally based centre of higher education in urban and regional planning was another preoccupation at the time. During my assignment, fellowships were arranged for quite a few Indonesians in the USA and elsewhere, but it became very clear that the impact of such programmes on the numbers of professionals needed in a country of the size and importance of Indonesia - at that time there were no more than eight urban planners in the

Urban Planning and Development 17

entire country -was likely to be minimal, and that the need could only be met domestically.

It was fortunate that there were two other like-minded Indonesians: Prof. Ir Hadinoto, who exerted a great influence on all matters concerned with human settlements in Indonesia at that time, and Ir Soefaat, who was undergoing postgraduate training in Harvard. Together, we put together a package for the consideration of, and eventual approval by, the Government and the academic establishment at the Bandung Institute of Technology on the one hand, and the United Nations and the MIG-Harvard Joint Center on the other, for the setting up of what is now the Division of Regional and City Planning at BIT. The agreement with the Joint Center was negotiated by Martin Meyerson, and was a model of its kind. It provided teaching staff from Harvard and MIT, who served for a year at a time in Bandung; in the event, people of very high calibre came out, such as Bill Doebele, Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, Bill Alonso and Jerry Voss. Whilst appreciating the formidable difficulties likely to be experienced by any academic establishment in implementing an arrangment such as this, one has to record the success of this one in achieving its objective; in fact, the institutional base that had been set up by the Joint Center was sufficiently strong to survive the enforced pull-out by the UN of all personnel in the mid 1960s. It provides further evidence of the great results that can be achieved when the level of commitment by all parties is high.4

Back in Britain (1960-Z963)

During these years, I served in the Tropical Division of the Building Research Station (BRS) - as it then was - in Garston, which was under the leadership of George Atkinson. The job involved the provision of advice, particularly to Commonwealth countries, on all aspects of physical planning; and the location of the Division in BRS enabled one to pursue lines of research.

Under the heading of research, I became interested in the development of small towns. I wrote papers on this subject at the time, and will take the liberty of quoting from the concludin part of one that was published in the Town Planning Review of April 1963 B (italics added now):

The trend towards increasing urbanization is universal and no policies yet devised have had the lasting effect of reversing it. Although the short-term effects of this trend often pose extremely difficult problems, it cannot but be beneficial in the long run . . . Present difficulties are caused because too much of this urban flow is directed towards the big cities, bringing congestion, under-employment and real social hardship . . . [This paper] marshalls certain arguments in favour of small town development in South and South East Asian countries. It urges that this would not only have the effect of deflecting migrational flow from the giant cities, but would constitute a sound investment policy for a developing country in that the cost to the community of settling migrants in small towns is much less than that of settling them in big cities. This, it is emphasised, does not involve the activation of growth in places where it does not already exist, but the utilization of a dynamic which is present in most countries of South Asia today.

There is nothing wrong with that as a statement of policy; indeed, a whole literature has grown up around the subject, recently by Hardoy and Satter- thwaite at IIED. Small town improvement is increasingly becoming an important

“Doebele, W., in Town Phnning Review, 1960/61. “Small town development in the Asian tropics: problems and possibilities, in Town Planning Review

XXXIV (l), 25. April 1963.

element in urbanisation policy in many countries of Asia, accepted by governments, the development banks and UNCHS alike. The problems arise when one comes to implement the policy, and I am not sure whether these have yet been entirely overcome. If, as I firmly believe, one accepts the concept of universality - that some measure of assistance should be provided to every small town and that this development assistance should be based on a full appreciation of each town’s uniqueness (a point that Hardoy and Satterthwaite make in their paper) - this raises very serious practical difficulties. One has, indeed, to define the nature of that uniqueness in terms of the contribution that the town makes, however small, to the economy and administration of the country as a whole; and to devise aid programmes that will at once define, and capitalise on, this uniqueness while at the same time responding to locally identified needs. This, in a country the size of Indonesia, for example, with 500- 600 small towns with populations of more than 10,000, is a task of formidable complexity. (I shall return to this theme later in this paper.)

The plan for Gaberones

The advisory side of my work was extremely varied, and perhaps the most interesting was the consultation on Gaberones. When the decision was made to grant Independence to Botswana, it was also decided to relocate the capital on a site along the line of rail between ~afeking in South Africa and Bulawayo in Zimbabwe, the cost of which was to be met by grants from the Commonwealth Relations Office. A draft plan duly arrived which could not be accepted in the form submitted. A visit to the site was therefore arranged, which was then a featureless, gently sloping landscape of low bushes and small trees. Intensive discussions took place with the architects and engineers there, resulting in an eventual agreement on the form of a plan, and this was to provide the basis for the city as built. In it, I had specified, amongst other features, a central pedestrian mall, and the layout of the residential areas on the “‘Radburn” principle - much in vogue at the time - that Clarence Stein had used in Radburn, New Jersey in 1929, to separate pedestrian from vehicular traffic: strictly non-indigenous solutions.

A host of issues are raised by this experience: what, for example, should the design parameters be for such work; to what extent should so-called “Western” solutions be used for a town such as this, bearing in mind the differences in economic and social background that exist between the so-called North and South; and, indeed, what is the role of design in general for Third World towns and cities? To take one further issue, that of population projection: in my report,’ I noted that:

Although nearly three times the size of the United Kingdom, the population of [Botswana] is only 350,000 . . . the estimated present rate of natural increase is 1 percent, low by African standards, and would only add 100,000 to the population in 25 years . . . In these circumstances, it is possible to fix the minimum size of Gaberones with some accuracy, but difficult indeed to define its ultimate size. This minimum value can confidently be set at 2- 5000 . . [with an] increase to 10,000 or even 15,000 . . . over 20 years.

In point of fact, the population of Botswana in 1986, some 20 years after Independence, was 1,128,000, and that of Gaberones itself had reached 60,000 by 1980, and is still expected to grow very rapidly. Clearly, a whole series of

‘Watts, K.. The planning of Gaberones: report of an advisory visit, January 1063 (unpublished). Building Research Station, UK.

political and economic events had subsequently taken place which had not been foreseen by those who were concerned with policy in 1963. Of course, the plan did allow for considerable expansion, but what about the scale of the city: would the plan still work if, for example, the city were to double in size again? I was at that time much more preoccupied with the necessity of creating a liveabie environment within a growing city, “to design and execute the plan in such a way that the town is a complete unit at each stage of its development . . .“. Examples are plentiful of planned cities whose centres have remained - and still remain - in a semi-derelict condition over decades because money cannot be found to build the buildings that will eventually create a Washington or a Canberra; and I was concerned that this should not happen in a newly established capital for a newly independent country. But should this principle take precedence over others, such as scale; and can scale, so to say, take care of itself in the process of organic growth?

This opens up the more general question of the role of design in urban planning assistance to the developing world, which has become submerged in utilitarian environmental considerations. In providing advice on the develop- ment of small towns for example, should more stress - or indeed any stress at all - be placed on design’?

I spent the next 12 years of my life in UN Headquarters, the first period of about eight years being in the Housing Building and Planning Branch of the Bureau of Social Affairs, and the remaining four in the Office of Technical Cooperation. The former was a technical unit, which was eventually to become the Centre for Housing Building and Planning (CHBP) and finally the Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) when it moved to Kenya; whereas the latter is now the Department of Technical Cooperation and Development in the UN, and was concerned with the management of all technical assistance projects assigned to the United Nations itself - as distinct from FAO, ILO, WHO, UNESCO and the other UN specialised agencies - to administer. Insofar as CHBP was concerned, it had already become the focal point for all UN activities in the sector, producing and commissioning reports and papers on the subject from professionals throughout the world, and providing technical backstopping for most, if not all, UN projects in this sector throughout the world.

Under the leadership of Ernest Weissmann, the HBP branch graduated into becoming an independent centre in 1969, when Joe Crooks became Director. In those days, it was a comparatively small but active body, whose work has not yet been properly recognised: concepts were developed then which have later taken their place in the theory and practice of urban and regional planning and development, often thanks to the work of people like Charles Abrams, Otto Koenigsberger, John Turner, and, indeed, Jimmy James, who were - amongst many others - all working with the Centre. I came in to help develop the Centre’s technical assistance programme, working in the early years with Roger Aujame, whose judgement and friendship I continue to respect.

The development plan for Skopje

The first task that Weissmann set for me to do was to develop a UN-supported project for Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia in Yugoslavia. It was there, on 26 July 1963, that a massive earthquake had devastated large sections of the city, causing more than 1,000 deaths and countless injuries. This operation became a remarkable success, a record of which has been made in a

20 Kenneth Watts

book by Derek Senior’ from whose concluding section the following quotation is taken:

Never before had a town-planning exercise of such magnitude and complexity been conducted under the pressure of such desperately urgent social needs. The dearth of basic material and the imperative demand for speed made it quite impossible to follow orthodox professional procedures. A new methodology had to be improvised and developed as the work proceeded, telescoping the normal sequence of activities and making heavy demands on the ability of diversely constituted teams to work in multiple harness . . . It was an experience shared by many professional specialists from all over the world, and through them its implications will doubtless be distilled, digested and absorbed into the body of technical and organizational expertise that informs the practice of town planning and related disciplines

As far as I am aware, this was the first massive exercise in what one now may call a ~‘pre-investment” project in town planning, or one which provided a detailed framework for later investment decisions. The equivalent of US$600- 700 million were contributed by Yugoslavia’s regional governments to the reconstruction of Skopje, and the plan’s purpose was to ensure that this money - a high sum for those days - was effectively and beneficially used.

The fact of its success depended on the work of two outstanding men: Kole Jordanovski on the Yugoslav side and Adolf Ciborowski on the side of the UN. A truism which is often forgotten is that the implementation of the most splendidly designed project can founder if it is not managed by good people in the field; and a badly designed project can be rescued by good field managers. Jordanovski was assigned the task of a heading up a General Directorate for the Reconstruction and Development of Skopje, and was thus given ultimate management and technical responsibility on behalf of the Skopje authorities. Ciborowski’s experience had, up to that time, been as Chief Architect for the reconstruction of Warsaw, and he was therefore well used to the management of work on a large scale. Many of the difficulties which are faced in operations of this scale and nature were, in this case, overcome by factors that I have since come to regard as essential to good development practice: the existence of a powerful political will and commitment to the work on the part of the government; the presence of competent and open-minded national cadres of professionals willing to collaborate with internationals; a strong and knowledge- able management style; and above all, a willingness on all sides to recognise that there are times when it is necessary to insist that often passionately held views should prevail, and other times when compromise is necessary.

The project also refuted a generally held view that one of the main advantages of appointing a consultant firm to take over a job of this magnitude is that it guarantees a consistent viewpoint. The Skopje experience incorporated the work of a vast range of international town planning expertise from such people as Doxiadis Associates, Maurice Rotival and Kenzo Tange; of seismological scientists and engineers from the Soviet Union, Britain and Czechoslovakia; of the US transportation engineering firm of Wilbur Smith Associates, and so on, and the contribution of each was maximised by effective management.

Was Skopje a “flash in the pan”, an exception that proves the rule that project success can only be guaranteed by a general consistency in approach by external advisors? It is not, of course, possible to reach a final judgement on this, since each project presents its own difficulties and challenges. What is irrefutable is that governments often seek a wider range of approaches and views than a single

7Senior, D., Skopje Resurgent: the Story of a United Nations Special Fund Project. p. 355. United Nations, New York. 1970.

Urban Planning and Development 21

consultant can provide on such politically sensitive matters as town planning, and the view is often stressed that the presence of a dispassionate body such as the UN will in some way guarantee that this will take place.

National physical planning - Bangladesh

In an extremely varied experience covering the next eight years or so, it is indeed difficult to single out those episodes which now appear to be of importance. I shall choose one which seemed to me to shed more light on the processes of urbanisation than any other, even though its achievements were not nearly the same as in Skopje. This involved a project for the country that is now called Bangladesh -then East Pakistan - in which the UN was requested to prepare a physical plan for the future urbanisation of the country. It must be remembered that even though, at that time (1966), more than 60 million people were living in Bangladesh, there were only three cities of any real size: Dhaka, with a population of about one million, Chittagong, with about 300,000, and Khulna, with 150,000. The country was clearly at an early stage in the urbanisation process.

We appointed the late Gerard Hanning as our Chief Advisor on the project. Hanning had worked with Le Corbusier on Modulor, and had undertaken work with him in Algeria. Altogether, he displayed a penetrating grasp of the essentials of both the work in general and of the dynamics of development in Bangladesh in particular. Under his guidance, work was initiated on the formulation of a “Physical Planning Strategy” for the country, and, to my knowledge, this was the first time that this particular terminology had been used for a region of this size. Although the work did not attain the levels of sophistication which are now expected of such studies, the main issues were presented in a coherent way. Hanning identified river development as the main determinant of spatial planning in the country, the main centre of power being the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA). Nobody who has served in Pakistan or Bangladesh can doubt that this is true: the roles played by the rivers in both states are primary to their development, as the recent disasters in Bangladesh, and to a lesser extent Pakistan, grimly testify. A plan which ignores this fundamental fact, or the tremendous power wielded by the WAPDA, cannot therefore hope to succeed. Indeed, the point came home to me more clearly in Bangladesh than ever before that to succeed in development generally, it is always necessary to identify the most important power sources and work with them closely. These may not always be those that are conventionally listed, such as planning commissions, important though the latter may very well be.

There was another outcome from this work which, although not as relevant today as it was then, is perhaps worth recording. In a brief paper to an urban development seminar convened under the auspices of the Asia Society in New York, I attempted to explore a notion that had arisen as a result of discussions with Hanning in Dhaka. Bearing in mind the extremely high rural population densities in Bangladesh, and the low level of urbanisation, could we not (I wrote)?

. . . regard these densely settled areas as analogous to a vessel filled with gas saturated with water vapour in which condensation is taking place. This process of condensation seems to me to provide a clue to the formation of small towns and to lead us to a tentative statement of a line of action to take.

‘Watts, K., Small town development: a re-statement of case, Discussion paper prepared for Urban Development Seminar. South East Asian Development Group (SEADAG), the Asia Society, New York, November 1968.

H4B 16:2-C

22 Kenneth Warts

For, on the basis of this “condensation” theory, one might examine whether or not it is possible to control the process or at least experiment with it so as to enable condensation to take place in the most suitable places . Small town development is taking place spontaneously, [and is] responsive to local needs, but cannot comprehend a wider pattern of infrastructural and resource development and metropolitan growth which will be imposed on the countryside in the process of modernization. The question is whether by judicious small scale investment in chosen locations, we could attempt to affect the condensation process in such a way as to fit into these wider plans and still, to some extent. keep our options open; so that if a particular location does not appear to justify further investment, we can cut our losses and try again elsewhere

In other words, an empirical approach to small town development, which involves close observation of the processes of urbanisation at the local level, and attempts to control it in directions which are consistent with national objectives - or at least a wider view than can be comprehended by purely local considerations. (Later in this paper, I shall be discussing the whole question of national urban strategies, and will return to this theme.)

One final episode will serve to sum up this period. In 1966, David Owen called me to say that he had been invited by the Center for Urban Studies of the University of Chicago to deliver a lecture on urbanisation in the developing world,’ and would I be prepared to write it for him? Since David Owen was the father of the UN development system - a great Welshman who was subsequently knighted, and whose qualities included a fine intellect and considerable modesty - I could not but accept, and took considerable pains to ensure that the paper accurately reflected the state of the art at that time, as seen from the perspective of CHBP in UN Headquarters.

On re-reading this paper after a gap of more than 20 years, it perhaps does not come as much of a surprise to find that many of our present concerns were then being thought about and worked on. Quite a lot of progress had already taken place by the early 1960s - John Turner’s work in Lima, which had alerted us to the true nature of the so-called squatter phenomenon, Otto Koenigsberger’s ideas on action planning, which he had put forward in a report on Singapore, and the concept of strategy planning which had emanated from the PAG report here in the UK. The WHO had designated “Man and his Cities” as the topic for World Health Day that year, and the paper quoted from a WHO expert committee”’ on the subject, which stated that:

. . . from the point of view of economic development, the provision of social overhead capital is not an end in itself; it is rather a basic investment to provide the services needed to support the directly productive activities such as mining and manufacture .

This may seem to be a trite statement; yet it seems to me that this point has not yet entirely got through to policy-makers.

On reflection, there are perhaps two salient ways in which attitudes have changed. The first is that, whereas the paper presents the issues from the humanitarian point of view, recent writing has become more political, stressing the need for fundamental changes in society itself in order to correct underlying inequalities. To a certain extent, this was inevitable: as a UN official speaking on a subject such as this, a political statement would not have been possible. But it was certainly not that we were unaware of the plight of the poor: quite apart

‘Owen. Sir D., Urbanisation in the developing world. University of Chicago. April 1966. “‘Environmental Health Aspects of Metropolitan Planning and Development, World Health Organisation

Technical Report Series 297. 17. 1965.

Urban Pkmning and Development 23

from our own constant contact with the developing world through our work, attitudes were being formed by men like Oscar Lewis, who was writing about the “culture of poverty”. Although polemical literature was certainly beginning to appear, the tone of the discussion on urbanisation could still be set by Lewis who, in the Introduction to the “Children of Sanchez” (1961),” wrote:

It was not until the later 1960s and 1970s that the political dimension took

In the nineteenth century, when the social sciences were still in their infancy, the job of recording the effects of the process of industrialization and urbanization on personal and family life was left to novelists, playwrights, journalists and social reformers. Today, a similar process of culture change is going on among the peoples of the less-developed countries but we find no comparative outpouring of a universal literature which would help us to

improve our understanding of the process and the people. And yet the need for such an understanding has never been more urgent . . .

centre stage. In the mid-1960s we were still able to pose these problems in non- political terms, and take the view that, as with health, education and mankind’s general welfare, questions of the urban environment were somehow beyond politics, and would be addressed by mankind in the longer run. How wrong we were.

This raises the second point, which is that we were more sanguine then about our ability to plan for change. There appears to be an underlying assumption in the paper that, in the longer run, planning could be an active rather than a reactive process in the developing world, though the paper is silent on the means by which this could be achieved. The paper even ended with Burnham’s heroic words - after all, Owen was speaking in the place where the “City Beautiful” movement had been founded -that one should “make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood . . . . Make big plans; aim high in work and hope . . ..”

The underlying reason for lack of progress in coping with the problems posed by urbanisation does indeed lie in a comparative absence of political will in the Third World to come to grips with the urban problem. But, as I was soon to find, this is just one manifestation of a more profound problem, which has to do with the need on the part of many Third World governments to secure the very basis for their survival. When the macro-economy is in disarray, there is scant time to deal with the problems posed by urban development, important though these may ultimately be. Food, water, and health take precedence over shelter in the ordering of basic needs priorities; and when even these cannot yet be provided for, there are simply no resources, and very little inclination, to set up and implement a satisfactory human settlements policy.

One must recall that it was not until the middle of the 19th Century that more than 50% of the population of Britain lived in urban areas, and the great investment programmes in urban improvement were not implemented until this milestone had been reached. Apart from Latin America, this degree of urbanisation has been attained in only a few of the more highly developed countries in the Third World. The task of urban planners therefore seems to me to lie in convincing governments that, although they may not yet have sufficient resources - or indeed the political imperative - to initiate wide-ranging programmes of urban improvement and reform, now is the time to plan for a future when these will certainly become a necessary part of their political agendas.

“Lewis, 0.. The C~~fd~e~ of Sanclzez, p. xxiii. Vintage Books, New York, 1961.

EXPERIENCES IN THE MANAGEMENT OF TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

At United Nations Headquarters (1971-197.5)

In 1971, my career changed direction, when I took up a management appointment with the United Nations Office of Technical Cooperation or OTC. This office, which has now become the Department of Technical Cooperation and Development within IJN Headquarters, is a Specialised Agency of the UN development system. The significance of this move can only be understood within the context of the way in which the United Nations technical assistance system works: in summary, the system as it now operates is fully responsive to the perceived needs of individual governments in that their central coordinating agencies ultimately make the decisions as to which agencies of government should be assisted, and in what ways. This, however, is not always the case for the much larger hilaterul programmes of technical assistance and aid which are funded directly by donor governments, and which still tend to operate oyt a system whereby i~n~~rtant decisio~~~~ on c~~oice ok project are made by the donors rather than the recipient governments themselves. Furthermore, there is also a strong predeliction towards annual, rather than multi-year, programming of resources because this is the way most governments work. There is a great deal of concern on the part of recipient governments about this practice, and a polemical literature of quite large dimensions has been written on it.

This practice of donor decision-making on choice of projects may have a detrimental impact on the approval of urban projects and programmes, not only because the sector does not always enjoy a high priority in both recipient and donor countries, but also because the annual time frames within which these bilateral programmes often operate are too restricted for a sector in which five years is an absolute minimum period within which to work. Not until there is a move towards dei,~~~ltrali~~i?~g ~~ec~~~~o~~-m~~ki~~g in this respect to the countries themselves, and the acceptance by donors of longer time frames for development projects, will urban programmes be assigned the priorities that they deserve.

It very soon became apparent to me that, in the life-and-death struggles which are waged by a very large number of countries in the Third World, particularly in Africa. the problems posed by urbanisation were of a second or third order of priority. Within two years, the Sahel drought had wrought havoc in Central Africa, and this was unlike any other previous famine in that the ecological dimensions of the disaster began to be perceived, and long-range programmes were needed to assist in the rehabilitation of the region, in addition to short-term famine relief. World public opinion is fickle: it has taken about 20 years and a global crisis to raise ecology to its present status on the world political agenda, in spite of the warnings of Rachel Carson, Barbara Ward and countless others, and of tragedies such as that in the Sahel; how long, one wonders, until urbanisation attains this level of public attention?

Cairo (197%1976)

In September 1976, I was posted to Cairo as UNDP Deputy Resident Representative. I was to spend one year there, and to some extent be involved in the implementation of the Canal Zone project. It has to be remembered that the role of the UNDP field offices in project execution is a general one, providing financial and administrative management support to all projects in the programme, monitoring them and reporting on their progress, identifying problems and suggesting ways of overcoming them. Field offices are not equipped, nor do they have time, to provide substantive support to projects; this is the role of the Specialised Agencies of the United Nations system (e.g. FAO,

Urban Planning and Development 25

WHO, UNESCO, and the UN itself) which, in the case of the Canal Zone projects, was the Office of Project Execution (OPE) of UNDP Headquarters. The Canal Zone project was only one in a programme of some 60-70 other UNDP technical assistance projects across practically the entire spectrum of Egypt’s economic development; though, by reason of its complexity, cost and high profile, it occupied more of the office’s time than any other project. Since so much has been written about the Canal Zone project, and it has been used as a case study, I feel it is important as an actor in the drama at that time to review the experience from the point of view of an agency representative.

First the context: during the period to the Arab-Israel conflict of 1973, the three Canal Zone cities of Port Said, Ismaelia and Suez had been substantially evacuated for the military reason that the Israeli Army was entrenched on the other side of the canal itself. As a result of negotiations which took place subsequent to the conflict, Egypt was enabled to re-occupy the zone, which had lain barren of all human activity for some years. At the same time, the policies of President Sadat took Egypt back into the mainstream of world politics, and interest was stimulated in the West to assist here in post-war reconstruction.

By the middle of 1974, the Ministry of Housing and Reconstruction (MoHR) had been reorganised under Osman Ahmed Osman, a powerful and successful building magnate brought in by President Sadat to oversee the reconstruction work. Within the Ministry, Osman set up a small high-level task force called the Advisory Committee on Reconstruction (ACR), who were directly responsible to him for the speedy implementation of this work, including a broad urban strategy for the future called the “New Map of Egypt”. This strategy envisaged the establishment of new satellite cities in desert areas around Cairo designed to deflect development away from the capital; and an important element was to be the reconstruction of the three Canal Zone cities. By the latter part of 1974, contracts had been let with three British consultant firms to undertake master plan studies for these Canal Zone cities.

In the autumn of 1974, a proposal reached UNDP Headquarters from the Government through the field office in Cairo that UNDP should take over the funding of these contracts. Its total cost was in excess of US$lO million, and was, therefore, too large to be accommodated within the normal UNDP country programme for Egypt; so if it were to be done at all, a special appeal would have to be made to donor governments, on an exceptional basis, for additional funds for the purpose. Soundings were taken with interested donor governments, and these were positive. A decision was then taken at the highest level within the organisation to go ahead. The exceptional nature of this decision, not only of the method of financing, but also in the ex-poste facto approval the project after the contracts had been let, must be stressed: in fact in all my years within the system, I never came across a similar case.

Before giving the final go-ahead, however, the UNDP Administrator directed that a mission be despatched to Cairo in late November 1974, to appraise the project. I led that mission on behalf of the UNDP, with Evner Ergun (subsequently, alas, cut down by an assassin’s bullet) representing CHBP, and Professor Sigmund Grava of Columbia University as an independent member. As result of our deliberations, we finally informed the ACR that we were prepared to recommend that the project be approved, but had a number of reservations which were included in our report, and fully discussed with them at the time. We also made proposals for ways to overcome these perceived anomolies.

The principal problem was that the coordinating machinery that had been set up to implement the project was inadequate. The late Mr Sulieman Abdul Hai was the sole technical member on the ACR, and was indeed an experienced professional with fine judgement. But, although he had the services of an in-

house expatriate team from an American firm of consultants, he did not have a substantial Egyptian staff, presumably on the grounds that a small, high- powered management structure would be more efficient than a larger one. The result was that although strong management was certainly exercised over the work of the individual contracts, less attention was paid to the non-technical aspects of the work, such as training and institutional development. In our report, we strongly recommended that stronger measures be taken to coordinate the plans, and a UNDP coordinator was eventually appointed. But by then, most of the action on the Canal Zone planning had taken place, and work on the three Canal Zone contracts had proceeded more or less independently.

This led on to our second cause for concern: the lack of an overall regional framework. The whole project could have provided an excellent opportunity at that formative stage to give a regional context to the Canal Zone: what, for example, would its future role be within the country as a whole. and what kinds of national investment decisions were necessary to set the individual plans of the Canal Zone cities in proper context ? Certainly, the ‘New Map’ could give no guidance in this respect. T firmly believe that the preparation of a regional strategy need not have held up work on the individual plans, and could have been developed concurrently with them. In the event, the UNDP eventually funded work on regional strategy, and the local emphasis in planning was later to be corrected to accommodate these wider issues - but not without a certain amount of difficulty.

The main dilemma is the familiar one of the impact of political events upon the way in which projects are implemented. In all projects of this type, there is a necessity to show early results. In Skopje, a courageous administration was able to resist local pressures for a time, in order to get the plan right before starting major reconstruction works. But for the ACR, the pressures came from a much higher level, and were therefore much harder to resist. Their responsibility was to secure the early reconstruction of the Canal Zone cities, and the ‘eye of the Pharaoh’ was upon them. Under such circumstances, longer term concerns will always take the back seat, and impatience will be shown towards bureaucratic formalities.

Our third concern was the comparative lack of institutional infrastructure in the Canal Zone cities themselves, and we could foresee that difficulties would arise when the complexities of the plans emanating from the contracts were explained to, and ultimately implemented by, local administrations. This, we considered, could not be achieved within the time frame of the projects. It is normal practice in UNDP projects for assessments to be made of local capabilities at all levels before a project is approved, but this was not done thoroughly enough in this case. Although this practice never eliminates problems, it does at least provide a basis for subsequent negotiations on the subject. Over and above this, there is always a need for a prolonged and sustained effort of interaction, beyond the life of the then short-term projects, between consultants and counterparts to ensure that there is a useful institutional outcome as well as a more practical one of project identification. This was only later achieved through the continued support of the UNDP and ODA - and a long-term commitment on the part of the firms themselves.

There were undoubtedly many useful outcomes from the project over the longer run, particularly in the identification of specific projects. Indeed, it was an undoubted fact that the planning exercises were greatly used as vehicles for this purpose, an understandable objective at the time. But this practice does raise the issue as to the extent to which town plans should be used for this purpose, and with the increasing interest being given by the development banks to urban development, this is becoming a live issue. Recent evidence points to an acceptance, at least by the World Bank, of the social basis for urban planning,

Urban Planning and Development 27

but in the hectic days of the Canal Zone, it was perhaps relegated to a lower priority than was desirable. I return to this issue later in the paper.

Finally, in one sense, the project anticipated trends in programme develop- ment that are currently being practised by the UNDP, and even form the subject of resolutions by the UN General Assembly itself. These resolutions urge the UN system to move away from the strictly project approach, and develop clusters of activity, or programmes, that will make a significant impact on the development of whole sectors of a country’s economy. The Canal Zone project, with its impact on a vital element of government policy, and its emphasis on local management, provides an early example of this approach, and in this sense was ahead of its time. Indeed, as I shall later show, government execution of projects and programmes is becoming more and more prevalent, particularly in countries such as India and China. But in these cases, prior agreements are entered, which specify clearly the responsibilities of all parties, and these are carefully monitored.

As a case study, the Canal Zone project therefore has much interest, particularly in the field of urban plannig proper. From the UNDP’s point of view, however, it was so unusual that it cannot be taken as a good example of the way that the organisation customarily works.

Rangoon (1977-l 981)

In May 1977, I took up the post of Resident Representative in Burma. It coincided with one of those periods in a country’s development in which real progress seemed to be possible. After a prolonged period of stagnation during the 1960s and early 197Os, the influence of the World Bank and IMF began to be felt, and a mood of cautious optimism prevailed in all three of the meetings of the Burma Aid Group -the annual donor meeting convened under the auspices of the World Bank, at which the performance of the recipient country is reviewed and pledges made for the year ahead - that I attended during my tenure of nearly four years. It was the duty of my office to articulate, negotiate and implement a UNDP response in this emerging situation.

It is incumbent upon a newly appointed Resident Representative to seek a deeper understanding of the motivations and aspirations of the country to which he or she is accredited; and in the case of Burma, this was at once more difficult to do, but more rewarding in the longer run, than in other countries of my acquaintance. In the process of doing so, I was to find that it would be necessary for me to up-end many of my previously held views on the relationship between technical assistance and development, and indeed on the nature of development itself. It is safe to say that a project such as that for the Canal Zone could never have been set up in Burma: the Burmese were too concerned that every aspect of all projects, particularly those involved in decision-making, should remain in their own hands; they are a self-reliant people, and, within the somewhat limited bounds of their perceptions at that time, were almost pathologically concerned with the need for self-improvement. There was, indeed, always an insistence that the international personnel inputs of projects should be kept to an absolute minimum, and Cabinet even passed a decree to the effect that equipment costs should always be of the order of 60% of total project costs, which added to the difficulties of negotiation. They also required that each project should be so designed that it took account of the level of competence of the host organisation. I have always considered it fitting that in this, my last formal post in the UN system, I should revert to the lesson which I learned in Indonesia more than 20 years before.

There were reasons for this attitude which went beyond those attributed to political xenophobia, the usual one cited for Burmese isolation. For one thing,

28 Kenneth Walls

the Burmese are a highly literate people with a long history of achievement. Before Independence, Burma had been the rice-bowl of Asia; Rangoon University had been a centre of excellence for the entire region; and Bangkok’s present central position in air travel networks in South-East Asia could equally well have been taken by Rangoon. Until 1936, however, Burma had been administered out of Delhi as part of the Indian Empire, the result of which had been a civil service and economy which was, to a considerable extent, in non-Burmese hands. Although one can certainly not condone the excesses perpetrated by the Government that was set up after the 1962 coup, nor defend the so-called Burmese road to socialism, one could at least understand the need on the part of the Burmese to re-establish in some measure their own self- identity, and overcome their difficulties in their own way. A final fact which explains the preoccupation of the Burmese with security is that, in 1947, practically the entire cabinet - including General Aung San, the Prime Minister - was assassinated at the very moment of Independence, a dreadful tragedy from which, in one sense, the country has never really recovered.

There were, quite naturally, problems in dealing with these fiercely held attitudes. If one considered the position of Burma in the world, and the amount of leeway that had to be made up, the pace at which they were developing was far too slow. Anybody who was ambitious to assist the Burmese to achieve their rightful place in the world community would always find himself (or herself) in a constant state of tension with the authorities. But, for a country at Burma’s stage of development, such a tension will almost always exist between the donor and recipient, international “expert” and counterpart; and the art of technical assistance is to manage it productively and successfully, to the maximum advantage of the hosts. One must never forget that acceptance of the need for technical assistance implies acceptance, in some degree, of technical inferiority, a proposition which is not always easy for a proud new nation to acknowledge.

It was very soon apparent to me that the major problem confronting the country was that, after years of neglect, it was starved of investment: every conceivable item of physical plant, from roads to sawmills, from railways to oil refineries, was antiquated and in poor repair. Both the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank were seeking to assist the Burmese in overcoming this, and we decided that the best contribution that UNDP could make towards overcoming this would be to encourage studies that would lead to larger-scale investments across the whole spectrum of Burma’s economy, and particularly in agriculture and forestry, the traditional foreign exchange earners. But this always had to be accomplished within the framework described above; and the Burmese were very cautious borrowers: a senior minister who had recently signed a World Bank agreement for an agricultural project once told me that, when doing so, he “could almost feel the feet of my grandchildren trampling on my grave for incurring them in debt”. This was indeed a country that was run like a grocer’s shop, with old-fashioned virtue.

A consequence of this attitude of self-reliance was that the Burmese were better at repairing and rehabilitating machinery and plant than any other peoples of my acquaintance: the task, for example, of making and fitting a new blade for a power station turbine, and re-balancing it, was carried out as a routine operation, a truly remarkable feat. But this, of course, is not the same as the routine practice of preventive maintenance, which is so demonstrably lacking in many developing countries. Why, when new roads and buildings are con- structed, new machinery, equipment and plant are installed, are they not properly maintained? It is not that the concept of routine maintenance is not present in the culture: nobody who has observed the terraced rice fields of Asia can doubt that constant maintenance, as well as a high degree of communal

Urban Planning and Development 29

organisation, are responsible for preserving the very livelihood of the peasant farmers concerned.

Part of the problem is, of course, budgetary: even at the best of times there are often insufficient funds in routine - as distinct from development-budgets for tasks such as these, which are very seldom perceived to be of high priority. Another reason, which should never be discounted, is that psychologically one tends not to maintain those items that one has not paid for, or even asked for. This is particularly the case where insufficient care has been taken, through the medium of technical assistance, to set up the proper institutional and technical machinery for the maintenance of the items concerned; and insufficient foreign exchange has been budgeted to enable spares to be purchased when required. The gross errors of judgement by donor governments in supplying equipment and plant that is not related to the needs and capabilities of recipient governments, have been well publicised; what is less appreciated, even at times by the development banks themselves, is that the act of supplying any type of equipment, plant, building or other construction works has a strictly human dimension which must be thought through from the start: people must be trained in its use and maintenance, and permanent institutional structures, even at the village level, must be set up to do this.

Burma was certainly a prime example of a country in which human settlement development was of secondary importance. However, evidence of the lack of preventive maintenance was nowhere stronger than in Rangoon, where practically no construction had taken place since Independence, and where buildings were literally crumbling before one’s eyes. I had indeed visited Rangoon in 1956 on my way out to Indonesia, and observed the work of a Yugoslavian town planner called Antolic, also appointed under the UN, whose proposals for Rangoon’s expansion had been implemented in the early 1960s. Although work had gone on in the interim period with Russian and other assistance, all of these plans were clearly in need of detailed review. I, therefore, finally succeeded in convincing the authorities of the necessity for undertaking a planning project for the city, which was only implemented after my departure. What interested me most was that Rangoon was in a kind of time-warp, a city waiting for work to be done on it; but that work would have to be sympathetic to both its past and its future, and draw upon the experience and wisdom of the past 40 years in urban planning and development.”

EXPERIENCES IN ADVISORY AND CONSULTANCY MISSIONS

Since my formal retirement in 1982, I have undertaken a number of missions on behalf of the UNDP and UNCHS, which have continually given me new insights into both the urban sector in particular and development in general. In the concluding part of this paper, I shall attempt to summarise this experience.

Vietnam (1985 and 1986)

When, in 1975, the Vietnamese peace agreements were concluded, the government started to lay down plans for the reconstruction of the country, and the UNDP authorised a huge US$14 million project involving the establishment of a string of six laboratories along the length of the country to prepare site maps, undertake soil surveys, and investigate local building materials, all of which would be needed prior to reconstruction. However, during the implemen-

‘*In recent years, I understand that the Government of Myanmar, as Burma is now called, has undertaken an extensive programme of city beautification, often employing Draconian means to do SO.

30 Kenneth Wutts

tation of the project, political circumstances forced a re-assessment of national priorities, effectively downgrading the importance of the project. Yet all agreed that, in the longer run, the project would be needed.

Agreements between the UN system and the government were in place, and it was possible for a well-placed UNDP Resident Representative to maintain momentum in this project, at a time when the political attention of the government was clearly elsewhere. When I, together with Dr Ramaiah (then Director of the Structural Engineering Research Centre of Madras), came to evaluate the project, we were able to build on this; and, with the good will of all parties, recommended measures that would secure its future.

The difficulties faced by both sides in this affair prompted two lessons: first, although political impulse is often needed as a motivating force, it is rarely a satisfactory guide in the more down-to-earth processes of project definition, for which cooler judgements have to be made on the capabilities of all parties than are possible under the dictates of political stress. In the second place, it would have undoubtedly been better to have started small, and built up experience, rather than front load the project with such large expenditures on expertise and equipment. However, as with the Canal Zone project, when the political heat is on, it is virtually impossible to resist.

Indonesia (1984 et seq.)

It has been my good fortune to be able to return repeatedly to Indonesia over recent years to review, and advise on, the National Urban Development Strategy (NUDS) project, and latterly on its successor, the Integrated Urban Infra- structure Development Programme (IUIDP). This is not the place for a full review of these highly complex projects, about which I have written separately. Instead, I shall use this experience to summarise certain conclusions that I have reached on future trends in physical planning.

Although the facts about Indonesia are well known, it is perhaps necessary to review them to provide a basis for the discussion that follows. The present propulation of the country is about 170 million, of which some 62% live on the Island of Java, at densities which are among the highest in the world. The mounting pressure on the land is such that increasingly large numbers of people cannot gain a livelihood from it, and are seeking alternative livelihoods. Although the Government maintains a policy of moving population from Java to the Outer Islands, this will never be on a scale commensurate with the rate of increase, and by far the greatest number of these people will gravitate to the towns. In 1980, the percentage of people living in urban areas for Indonesia as a whole was only 22%) and for Java, 25%. Thus, the urbanisation of Indonesia is still at a comparatively early stage, and an advantage would be gained if this process could be assisted and, to whatever extent possible, directed along lines which are likely to be of greatest benefit to the whole nation.

In 1978, therefore, discussions were initiated with the UNDP with the UNCHS (Habitat) as executing agency, to provide assistance in drawing up a National Urban Development Strategy. By 1985, a wide-ranging study had been completed, which I consider to be a landmark of its kind.‘” It concluded that:

. . . there is no reason for Indonesia to attempt to alter dramatically the urban pattern that is already emerging. There is a need for continued vigilance to temper the growth of the largest metropolitan areas and promote growth in selected small and intermediate cities. There is also a need to deal

“Kingsley. T. et al.. Executive summary. para. 7.3, in Report of the Notionul Urbun Development Strategy Project (NUDS), Ministry of Public Works of the Government of Indonesia and UNCHSIUNDP. September 198.5.

Urban Planning and Development 31

with less balanced urban patterns in some regions. These steps will require only the bending of recent trends, not attempts to substantially change their direction.

The question is, how can you “bend the trends”? What policy instruments are available to accomplish this?

The key is, of course, to achieve a blending of objectives between economic and physical planning policy, as we had sought to do in Singapore, and the PAP administration had successfully engineered; but, in the specific sense of being able to direct economic development into those urban areas that most need it, or whose further development would be most beneficial to the nation as a whole, this is extremely difficult to achieve in a country the size of Indonesia, for reasons that are very well known. Therefore, a strategy such as NUDS proposed, of selective economic development in certain urban areas, could never be given the legal strength of a national physical plan. This does not mean, however, that an exercise such as this is without usefulness. Quite apart from the more specific applications that I shall discuss below, there is, in my view merit in taking a synoptic view of a nation’s physical development at the time when the periodic economic plan is drawn up, in order to provide a reference document for the ordering of national development priorities. Providing it is done well, the very fact of its existence means that it is possible to assess the implications of decisions at the national level on such matters as the location of economic enterprises - which, in the absence of policy instruments such as location incentives, are usually made on political or commercial grounds, or a combination of both - on the future development of the nation.

This raises the whole vexed question of how physical planning and develop- ment should be handled at the central levels of government. Having observed the workings of many governments at first hand, I have come to the conclusion that the establishment of formal inter-departmental machinery for the co- ordination of physical and economic planning and development in the sense that corporate decision-making is taken on physical plans, is, in most cases, impractical at the national level. Except for policy formulation within planning commissions and similar bodies (see below), and decision-making, often ad hoc, on such matters as the location of nationally important investments and enterprises, there is simply no time to be spared by ministers or their staff on such matters. Furthermore, there are always vested interests at work in central governments which will tend to defeat such arrangements. Viewed in this light, the decision on the part of Minister Osman to set up a body such as the ACR to handle the Canal Zone project in Egypt, and allow it to ride roughshod over other ministries, is entirely understandable; but such an arrangement can never be other than ad hoc, and when it ends, the system almost always reasserts itself.

In point of fact, the Indonesian Government did set up a body called the “Coordination Team for Urban Development”, to facilitate the implementation of IUIDP by providing the apparatus whereby representatives of the four most affected ministries (the Ministries of Finance, National Planning, Home Affairs and Public Works) could meet14 primarily to:

. . . develop integrated policies and . . . programmes of infrastructure, financial resources and institutional development in the framework of cooperation between the central and local governments, and with community participation . . .

14The Coordination Team for Urban Development, Policies for Urban Development in Indonesia, August 1987.

32 Kenneth Wufts

This is far from being the “National Urban Development Coordinating Board” called for in the NUDS reports, but it nevertheless appears to be realistic in the sense of having a comparatively limited objective, and having the necessary administrative machinery to achieve it.

In my view, it is at an intermediate level, such as that of the region or province, that the required programme and project coordination has to take place, a level which, incidentally, is almost entirely lacking in Britain at present. Indeed, the chances of influencing location policy may well be greater at the provincial level, because the political stakes are not so high. In Indonesia, there are provinces with well-established planning and development staffs (the so- called “Bappedas”), which can be used as focal points for this vital task. It seems to me that to equate central government with policy formulation, provincial levels with regional planning and coordination, and local levels with town planning and implementation, is in general the correct prescription; and it is in this respect that Indonesia is as close as any other government to achieving success.

The possibility of influencing major investment decisions at central levels of government may not be high. But, at the local level, it makes sound economic and social sense to upgrade small towns by means of investment in small-scale public works programmes. The argument is the same as the one that I had explored previously: that most of the migrants who have been displaced from the land are likely to move to such towns to find work, and it therefore pays to improve them. Over the past 20 years or so, the Indonesian Government had in fact been allocating increasingly large budgets to the provision of water supply, sewerage, drainage and urban roads in small towns. But doubts began to arise as to whether a full assessment was being made of local needs; whether the right priorities were being assigned to the work, so that towns whose needs were judged to be greatest were dealt with first; and whether the programmes responded to locally perceived needs. It was realised that, although NUDS could identify the towns concerned, and undertake an assessment of needs sufficient for a preliminary assignment of priorities, more detailed work would be necessary to provide a proper basis for the programme itself.

It was thus that the Integrated Urban Infrastructure Development Programme (IUIDP) was established, the main characteristics of which are: l The preparation of rough structure plans (called “IUIDP Development

Assessment Plans”, or IDAPs) for all the towns concerned, the purpose of which is to identify specific urban works projects in the context of the overall development of the towns, and to assign priorities to the work. This is to be undertaken in close consultation with town administrations, so as to ensure local perceptions of needs are taken into account.

l The setting up of realistic annual and multi-year programme budgets (PJMs) designed to implement this work, in the process of which possibilities for enhancing local revenue contributions to the programme are to be reviewed and proposals made on this.

l The establishment of institutional arrangements at central government level to manage the programme, and the enhancement of capabilities at the provincial and local levels to coordinate and implement it.

This programme, which enjoyed extensive financial and technical support from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, as well as numerous bilateral donors, was initiated under the Indonesian UNDP programme with UNCHS once again as the executing agency. In particular, the contribution of the World Bank was crucial, through its massive Urban Sector Loan, and by its constant advice and support to the Indonesian Government on all aspects of this huge programme.

It seems to me that this programme goes a long way towards meeting the

Urban Planning and Development 33

criteria for small-town development which were raised earlier in this paper. The NUDS Executive Summary” had already stated that:

Schemes that classify cities either as “key cities” or not, fail to recognize that all cities above a basic size level merit attention. Overall priority rankings or classes . . . fail to recognize that most cities are likely to merit a higher priority for some types of government action than others . . . Differences between “priority for central government concern” and “priority for central government funding” must also be recognized . . .

The difference between concern and funding is a crucial one: it recognises that certain cities may require measures to be taken that do not involve direct financial intervention, either by virtue of the fact that they are able to fund their own development, or - at the other extreme - they have not yet attained a degree of importance that merits even small-scale works. But each case should be kept constantly under review, both to assess changing financial needs, and to provide such additional assistance as may be needed from time to time to ensure that the city develops. In a way, the approach is an empirical one, involving the establishment of a system of constant monitoring; and in this way it bears some resemblance to the model that I discussed above for Bangladesh.

The necessity of establishing universality in programmes was thus recognised early in the IUIDP approach. But to undertake a programme of this size and scope is bound to exercise enormous strains on the professional and administrat- ive resources of the country, particularly at the local levels of government: hence the large-scale technical assistance programme. It is, of course, a rather different kind of technical assistance than that discussed above; but it is an example of the way in which technical cooperation can assist in instituting a potentially profound social change in a major country.

Although the emphasis in IUIDP is on securing a satisfactory basis for the implementation of a public works programme, physical planning plays an important role in the whole exercise, at the national and local levels. At a time when urban and regional planning appears to be in a state of crisis in the developing world, may not this be a sign for the future?

To sum up, I do not think that it is practicable to aspire to national planning at present, for reasons already discussed above. Nor is it possible for physical planners to aspire to the same degree of influence in governments as economic planners, who are concerned with issues that are vital to the country’s very survival. However, it should be possible to contribute to national development policy through urban strategy exercises such as NUDS, which are able to provide the required spatial dimension for the major investment decisions. But, in this respect, there may well be a lack of perception on the part of national governments on the role of physical or spatial planning in national development; though in Asia, at least, one is finding this to be less and less the case. In any case, I would wish to reiterate my view that the level at which physical planning can contribute most is at the province or region; for it is there that the practical task of coordination is more likely to take place, and where decisions can be more readily influenced.

Another issue is that of establishing linkages between planning and implemen- tation, which has so far been achieved in the Indonesian example. I believe this to be of major importance in bringing physical planning back into the mainstream of development. But here one has to be careful not to use plans solely for the purposes of project definition; a plan should still be an instrument

“Kingsley, T. et al., Executive summary paras 7.4.1 and 7.4.2. in Report of the National Urban Development Strategy Project (NUDS), Ministry of Public Works of the Government of Indonesia and UNCHSIUNDP, September 1985.

34

for the implementation of social policy, and reflect the towns-people’s needs and aspirations.

This raises the final point: that of the role of design in preparing plans for small towns. It has to be admitted that many small towns that are now springing up in the developing world are characterised by a complete absence of form: they have just grown up along major roads as collections of shops and public buildings. In some cases, religious buildings and their surroundings will provide a focal point or set-piece; and, of course, in many places in Africa e.g. there is an indigenous architecture that is extraordinarily rich. In providing assistance in the planning and development of small towns, should design be given more emphasis? What are people’s perceptions of the place wherein they live? In only one study, by Larry Sternstein in Bangkok, have I come across work which tries to assess how the citizens of a Third World city perceive their environment; and the conclusions from this were that “neither the layout of Bangkok nor the form of the elements in its arrangement appear to have any great effect on the awareness of the respondents . . .“lh But is this the last word? Should we not, as town planners, be giving serious thought to this whole subject?

UNDP Headquarters (1987)

In the Meiji period (from about 1868 onwards), Japan started to modernise, and they sought the services of engineers and technicians from Europe to assist them. It was a straightforward commercial operation; and the Japanese very carefully defined the nature of the assistance that they required, and established the working environment of the foreign specialists in such a way that maximum benefit could be derived from their services. I have always considered this to be a most efficient and effective form of technical assistance, and during my period in HQ, I observed that this is increasingly the model adopted by the larger countries of Asia, such as India and China. In fact, it was from this kind of project that my friend Ramaiah had benefited. Technical assistance is being directed increasingly towards seeking expertise in extremely narrowly defined technologies in much the same way as the Japanese did in Meiji times, and for much the same reason. The argument is that the technological gap between the more advanced countries and the rest of the world is enormous, and UNDP provides an important source of funds by means of which this expertise can be obtained. So care is taken to ensure that every penny of UNDP’s limited resources is used effectively by identifying gaps in technological know-how, and using UNDP resources to fill them.

There is evidence of a different attitude towards UNDP assistance than was the case in the Canal Zone project. Rather than use UNDP assistance to undertake work more speedily - and more effectively - than perhaps would have been possible using local resources, the “Meiji” approach starts from the basis of existing knowledge in the country, and builds on that; it tends to deal more with specific objectives rather than with general policy advice; and it demands a higher degree of precision in defining the nature of the required assistance than was the case in the past. Incidentally, it also coincides with the introduction of far more rigorous processes for the screening of projects in UNDP Headquarters than previously. Insofar as all projects are concerned, and this applies as much to physical planning as any other, it will be increasingly necessary to define in detail the objectives and outputs required from the proposed project and the nature of inputs required to achieve them. In my view, as countries move into higher levels Q~developme~t, briefs ofthe Canal Zone type are likely to be more of a rarity in the future, und consultants will increasingly have

“Sternstein. L... The image of Bangkok, in Readings on Urhnnizarion. p. 1X5. Young and Lo (Editors).

Cuban Plannjng and development 3.5

to gear themselves to meeting highly specific objectives such as the installation of traffic control systems, computer applications for finance and management, the design and installation of low-cost utility systems, and the operational require- ments of specialised areas in cities such as those for shopping and commerce.

CONCLUSION

The point-of-view taken in this paper - at least in part of it - is that of a generalist looking at issues from outside the profession rather than that of a practising physical planner. This has both advantages and disadvantages: on the one hand, the detachment provides certain insights into the present status of the profession as viewed from the outside; but on the other, this very detachment may well distance one from the vital issues at present being confronted by the profession.

As I completed writing an earlier draft of this paper, I was about to depart for Asia to lead a mission whose task it was to undertake a UNDP funded multi- sectorial Needs Assessment Study as a first step in the rehabilitation of Cambodia after almost two decades of warfare and unspeakable suffering. In the course of our work, I discovered that although top priority would have to be assigned to the reconstruction of the basic components of modern living such as agriculture, fishing, forestry, small-scale industries, transport, roads, water supply, energy and so on - the list is seemingly endless - urban development policy certainly could not be ignored. With some 7040% of the urban population living in the capital city of Phnom Penh, how could equitable living standards be established, and later sustained, throughout the country as a whole? It is against this background that I offer this paper as a contribution to an ongoing debate on the future of profession in a changing, and rapidly urbanising, world.