~A3ITATlNTL. Vol. 16. No.2. pp. 127-134, 1992 Printed in Great Britain.

0197-3975192 $5.00 + 0.00 Per@mmn Press Ltd

Urban Planning in the Developing World: a Review of Experience

DAVID WALTON Llewelyn-Davies Planning Ltd, London, UK

INTRODUCTION

Reviewing my experience with the idea of contributing to the generation of ideas for the future, I approach the task in three steps: firstly, to trace my work experience in developing countries, trying to identify my main conclusions on each major assignment - either at the time, or now, or both; secondly, to try to draw some connecting threads from this, and thirdly, to put forward a few thoughts for the future. The paper is a review of some 21 years of experience, trying to recall my main professional reactions to the various assignments - ‘emotion recollected in tranquility’, or whatever Wordsworth said. This, however, is hardly poetry, but a stream of ‘off-the-top’ reflections of a pragmatic consultant.

RECOLLECTIONS ON INTERNATIONAL PRACTICE OVER THREE DECADES

I started off with two UNESCO assignments in Iran and Brazil, each a few weeks long and concerned with planning in a context of conservation of historic cities, economic growth and tourism. The focus of the first job was Isfahan and the second Bahia. My major reactions on the first job were how on earth can they be allowing insensitive modern buildings and infrastructure projects to do so much harm to the architectural and cultural context of Isfahan? Why do they have to import the worst sort of western modernism? How can it be stopped or rechannelled in less damaging ways? At the same time, a huge master plan exercise, undertaken by French consultants and on ‘French’ grand design principles was under way, and it was destined to either stimulate major damage to the city or be ignored. Both occurred in part and to great loss and little apparent benefit. In contrast, the Italian technical assistance on historic building restoration on the city’s monuments was superb in its quality and relevance.

An abiding memory is of the UN director of operations, who was far more interested in ensuring that I got my ‘duty-frees’ than in my mission: caution about aid and international agencies, their roles and motivations, started at this time.

A severe dislike of ‘military dictatorships’ and their impact upon urban life also resulted, and was reinforced by the next assignment in Bahia. This study of an architecturally splendid historic quarter in a desperate condition produced two other attitudes which have stayed with me: if you are going to improve the

127

128 David Walton

physical environment, firstly you have got to change the economic status of the area and its residents; at the same time you need an organisation capable of raising funds and controlling the key land and buildings for there to be hope of real regeneration.

In 1969, I became the ‘planner’ in a UK consultant consortium responsible for producing the South East Johor Regional Master Plan in Malaysia. This involved a study area of several thousand kilometres, largely of rain forest. I was very impressed by the Federal Land Development Agency. The need for an effective, powerful implementation agency, capable of securing the provision of all key inputs to development and keeping the process as simple as possible was highlighted. The UK planning training and systems were largely irrelevant to the job and to some extent counter-productive to the Malaysia planners, some of whom appeared to be waiting around for the Malaysian States to become English counties. Several reflections remain: keep the planning incremental and simple, produce a framework of transport routes, areas of conservation and develop- ment, build the framework stage by stage, and fill in the development blocks as you go according to the parameters at that time. Among members of the planning team. old colonial hands working on forestry, agriculture and engineering appeared closer to the real world and the needs and possibilities of rural Johor than left-wing economists from academia.

The 1970s

After a couple of motorway routing and site-development feasibility studies in the UK, I was off tourism planning in the Caribbean - mainly in Anguilla. In a sense, this was my first ‘small is beautiful’ exercise, trying to produce a package of development and infrastructure measures that were affordable and in scale with a small economy and many complications of social structure. Two abiding lessons were that a package of specific targeted projects, hard and soft inventions and policy measures, is often the best way forward, and can be a device for bringing private and public efforts together; and that it is vital to set the scale right in economic and social impact as well as physical terms.

Another period in the UK and Europe, and then off to the Far East again - firstly planning six new towns in a land development region in Malaysia. We had a marvellous team and technically the job was excellent: however, it was within the context of a regional development plan and programme which was badly flawed conceptually. The experience provokes four re-assessments: ensure there is a market for new settlements, i.e. demand of real strength, before embarking upon building the places; avoid planning based upon political motives which fly against the social, economic and practical dictates of the situation; high-quality work can be produced by joint Western-developing country teams, properly organised and managed, and be to the benefit of both; and an important design lesson is to work with the natural systems of the land and climate, rather than imposing development upon them.

The main external funding agency, the Asian Development Bank, did not really seem to be biting upon the urbanisation issues involved. The World Bank, while in the periphery of this particular scheme, nevertheless were able to offer very constructive and level-headed advice.

Surabaya in Indonesia was a transportation study in a context which, again, illustrated the dangers of UK-style Master Plans (produced in this case by Indonesians) in dealing with the real problems of massive Third World Cities. This was also my first real exposure to slum upgrading: I was very impressed by their locally developed and World Bank-supported programmes. My abiding memory is how different Java is in socio-economic organisational terms to anywhere else I have been. The main professional recollection was that the

Urban Planning: a Review 129

economy of the city was to no little extent reliant upon para-transit of one sort or another; the political desire was to build roads for cars, trucks and buses and get rid of the para-transit. Thankfully, this has proved impractical.

An expressway study in Bangkok followed, only to find the attitudes of the London motorway box proponents of the 1960s alive and well. Again the role of para-transit in the city economy and the use of voluntary labour (boy scouts) in traffic policing was noted. This job reinforced the conclusion that the separation of ‘transportation planning’, in particular highway engineering, from the consideration of many other aspects of urban life and the environment, is potentially very damaging. This finding, although very obvious, recurred frequently at that period, in Hong Kong, Surabaya and Manila.

In Manila, under curfew in 1976, clear and sad illustrations provided that unless the political setting is progressive, the best endeavour of high-quality professional planners, engineers and architects are likely to be in vain. This, in the outcome of our work, expressed itself in various ways. A major low-income family new settlement initiative shown to be totally viable in every other respect, floundered on the rock of lack of political support for the necessary land acquisition. (A fate more than a little likely for certain UDC initiatives in the UK at present and which has bedevilled site and services and slum upgrading projects in many parts of the world.) We proved a ‘heavy’-rail commuter system to be economically unsound, and planned an economically viable light-rail system. A ‘heavy’ system was built at enormous opportunity costs to the country at large and other sectors of the city economy. Continuing repair and maintenance, as much as capital investment, is frequently the cause for the death of promising initiatives. The very successful bus-lane experiment our team introduced to Manila has long since lapsed through lack of commitment to policing and maintenance.

Then the scene switches to Arabia for a few years - Kuwait, Bahrain, Dubai, Sharjah. At the time, and even more so now, I thought the arrogance and waste involved in various development propositions was staggering; new towns where no demand existed, highways of immense standard from nowhere to nowhere, ‘prestige’ projects of no economic or cultural substance. Yet, at the same time, many projects were relevant in demand terms, and as a stimulus to widening and deepening the economies.

On reflection, then as now, the questions to be addressed, which too frequently were not, would include: is there a real demand? Are the funding resources committed and adequate? Is the land available? Is there real political support for the project? Is it affordable to the various users, financially and economically justifiable? Is there an institutional set-up that can ensure the project is properly organised and managed? These are, of course, just the type of questions the World Bank press in assessing urban projects.

The next phase of this personal odyssey was World Bank-funded sites and services and slum upgrading. In Tanzania, I led a government team which prepared a Third Urban Project - never implemented because the World Bank funding could not be arranged around the refusal of the Government to accept a typical IMF austerity package. No doubt the squatting has continued and is economically the best answer to shelter needs in the circumstances. Tanzania has massive and varied resources, but despite this, on almost every front, Nyerere’s Government had failed to productively plan and implement on an effective scale over many years. I particularly noted that the lack of local government and other locally managed bodies had reduced to a minimum the capacity for local initiative and management over urban development and housing. Over- centralisation in the urban sector is just as bad in a socialist state as on the far right. Wasteful expenditure on irrelevant prestige projects appear just as necessary to the one as to the other. Other notable weaknesses included over-

130 David Walton

dependence upon external projects and funding, both to an economically unsustainable level, and with a highly disturbing impact on local urban economies; an ability to accept the World Bank’s principles over urban shelter project planning, coupled unfortunately with a crippling inefficiency in execution on every front; and grave difficulties, for both the Government and the World Bank, in accepting a minimal-input ‘rationalised squatting’ approach to the demand for urban shelter - as against the need for full surveyed plots, land transfers, insurances, mortgages, building material loans, and so on. There were 21 costly, corruptible and delaying steps in a poor household acquiring a plot.

The 1980s

Some 10 years ago, I went to Jordan in a successful attempt sponsored by the World Bank to introduce sites and services and slum upgrading as the major planks of a national housing delivery system to low-income households. Against major difficulties, the approach has worked, with three World Bank loans drawn down. The reasons for success in a situation where many of the normal obstacles over political support, providing land and funds had to be overcome, seemed to be that there was real support from the top; combining a fresh initiative for project planning with a successful financial institution (the Housing Bank) to get the freedom to operate in a new way, supported by an established and substantial backer; the right boss, who has stayed with the project throughout its life; the external stimulus for change in government stances provided by the World Bank and expatriate consultants; a ‘people first’ approach, designed to involve the beneficiaries as early and deeply as possible and use the resources and commitment of a talented and well-educated people.

A further reflection arises over technical assistance and training. After 10 years of effort, assistance from the DPU, many courses for staff in Jordan and overseas, we have established good skills and relevant approaches in community development, financial management, site planning, architecture, civil and municipal engineering, the use of computers and so on. We have failed to produce a strong and sustained local capability to plan complex projects and to manage their implementation as a whole.

The overall conclusion of the Jordan Urban Projects is that the World Bank sites and services/slum upgrading approach (1979 model) tailored to local circumstances can work. A second, and contrary, conclusion is that if the approach does not become locally resourced and embedded in institutional terms, probably it will not survive. The Bank does not hang on forever, and progressive policies consistently pursued over a long-term scale are not a recurrent feature of urban administrations.

In 1980, I was again in Thailand working on the West Central Regional Planning Study - an area as large as Scotland. Bangkok is as little representative of Thailand as New York is of middle America. The region had a series of county towns, based on trading and service functions to the rural economy and there was little rural-urban migration growth in the secondary urban centres. This is a country fascinating in the lack of cultural hangover from colonisation, and in the way government seems locked in an amazing entropy of its own: the people and the private sector get on with life rather well. An excellent team of UK multi-professional consultants and their counterparts examined all aspects of the rural and urban economies, and the approach we adopted involved a vast number of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ measures, mainly small and fine-grained, designed to assist in gradual and selective improvements on a whole series of fronts in tune with local needs and possibilities, and no ‘big bang’ externally imposed projects.

Hong Kong, 1981-1983 was next. The North East New Territories Study was

Urban Planning: a Review 131

one of a series designed to produce the basis of a development strategy for the colony. In the same period, we undertook an upgrading study of an early 1960s public housing project in Kowloon, and a feasibility study into a satellite new town for one of the completed new towns in the New Territories. From this experience several conclusions follow. It is very difficult for a major city to upgrade its housing stock internally compared with continuing expansion, although internal regeneration becomes more and more necessary; conversely, new towns are not the only means, and should not be the main focus, of catering for the demands for housing for the masses.

A bottom-up study approach is essential to understanding needs and possibilities, rather than a ‘top-down’ structured methodology designed for inter- study comparative analysis and overall urban policy formation, The latter does not work, neither do complex computer based interactive urban planning models.

A ‘free market’ development system, combined with massive government efforts on land reclamation, public housing and highway construction leads to an appalling environment. The need for strong local planning and urban design is highlighted.

A new town study in Brunei reinforced my doubts about too many new settlement initiatives ahead of proven demand, as well as illustrating a well- rehearsed fact of consultancy - the quality of the job is frequently largely determined by the quality of the client agency or the quality of the team leader’s relationship with the client, rather than professional talent and effort.

Next, on to Manila for the ‘Metro-Manila Capital Investment Folio Study’. This World Bank funded exercise, based upon a locally generated initiative, was an attempt to get an affordable, balanced and integrated public sector investment programme for Metro-Manila, covering transport, infrastructure, housing, education, health, and so on. The idea also involved relating investment planning priorities to an urban planning framework. We worked as a joint team with the Metro-Manila Commission’s planning group and in liaison with all the key budgetary, funding and infrastructure institutions and authorities. It was a fine piece of work, with some interesting technical innovations and it gained a surprising level of support in the various key areas of government. It proved technically possible to plan investment in a capital city in the Third World on a sensible and equitable basis, but, conversely, it will be of no lasting benefit unless the key people in the government are really interested and a good few years of sustained effort are committed. The World Bank support here was slow in coming and uncertain in ongoing commitment. All for quite good reasons no doubt, and the twilight of the Marcos era was not a period when positive planning was likely to be followed through.

A recent involvement has been with long-range institutional handling and training efforts, such as the work I was involved with on the Human Settlements Training Needs Assessments for India. This experience illustrated the daunting scale of needs in the urban sector, and a sad contrast in the poverty of resources being allocated. In addition, while a ‘facilitating’ philosophy of government intervention is being promulgated - the responses on the ground are generally inappropriate in scale and form, despite many very worthwhile community based schemes.

At the time of writing, I am involved in a United Nations Relief and Welfare Agency (UNWRA) study concerned with shelter, basic infrastructure and social services improvements in the West Bank and Gaza. The situation is of course terribly depressing, but nevertheless, the virtual war taking place focuses thoughts very strongly on contrasting conditions: that a bottom-up ‘people-led’ approach is essential to bring about real improvement; that this needs to take place within a ‘top-down’ context of development policy, infrastructure and

132 David Walton

resource provision, and ‘facilitating’ assistance sympathetic to a people-led approach; and that the political setting for this to occur is unlikely. In a (not too) simplistic way, after scribbling this epistle, these last three points seem to say it all (almost) for almost everywhere.

REVIEW AND REFLECTIONS - ADVANCES AND RESTRAINTS

It has been interesting, if often depressing, recording my professional reflections over so many years and places. But what can I make of such findings - none of which are much of a surprise to other people active in urban planning in the developing world - in a positive and helpful way? The first thought is that working ‘at home’ in the UK is not that different to working in developing countries: planning and urban research and investment being used as a political tool by central government, local authorities reduced in power and under- resourced, the poor not really existing as far as the powerful are concerned, and the planning system being tired, middle-aged and frequently abused. I generally think my experience abroad brings more to my work at home rather than the opposite. Nevertheless, I consider there have been significant steps over the last twenty-odd years, and a few stand out as of major importance. These would include, inter alia: l the abandonment of Western-style urban master plans as a means of

catering for urban needs in developing countries; l the introduction of economic analysis techniques to physical development

planning; l the urban poverty-orientated approach - symbolised by the World Bank’s

stimulus of sites and services, slum and squatter area upgrading - of the 197Os, and in parallel;

l the move to an urban project and programme approach for urban shelter and infrastructure provision;

l the use of intermediate and affordable technology, and the change in acceptable ‘standards’ of construction and infrastructure;

l the urban poor and squatters given the dignity of recognition and priority; l the push towards effective institutional and financial measures for urban

management; l the recognition of the possible involvement of the private sector, either in

family or corporate terms, as a major possible role player rather than over- reliance upon governmental initiatives;

l the recent stress on the government role as facilitator; l the shift of concern recently from ‘product’ to ‘process’; l the emergence of a people-led approach to the provision of shelter. However, progress on all of these fronts has, overall, been very disappointing.

The issues for the future are not largely, I think, concerned with ‘technical’ developments in planning, shelter, and so on (although better practice will evolve), but more a matter of getting more people to behave in a progressive manner and on an appropriate scale. Why this has not happened sufficiently to date is due to a lack of political priority, understanding and will. As a friend once remarked: “Too many people have a vested interest in the continuance of chaos”. This means that the area is under-resourced and that key changes (e.g. the provision of urban land or the introduction of new procedures) are difficult to achieve and slow to happen. The technical staff involved rarely have the wealth or clout to force real change, however talented and devoted they are. Even real advances, with successful projects to demonstrate, can fail to become ‘embedded’ in the local way of doing things and fail to attract political support and continuing funding.

Urban Planning: a Review 133

I also think that effort on more progressive fronts is frequently not sustained for long enough. For example, I consider that the World Bank should have hung in much longer in many places over sites and services and slum/squatter upgrading. Sometimes, of course, projects or studies of importance are badly conceived or designed. But I doubt if this counts for much of the failure. International agencies and bilateral approaches have frequently been designed, or developed, from the dynamics of the particular agency, and not necessarily well related to the needs and practicalities of the host society. This needs real re- thinking in many institutions. Similarly, I believe “the build-up of local capability” argument has been overplayed in many situations and at great cost to effective project execution. This is not to deny that over-centralisation and the weakness of local government or local planning and project implementation agencies in staffing, powers, and funds is a frequent feature of the urban scene in developing countries (as it has been recently in the UK).

Recent UK initiatives - unitary plans, enterprise zones, urban development corporations, the housing corporation and housing associations all have parallels and antecedents overseas. Current UK government policy seems designed to destroy the capacity of local authorities to perform in the provision of services in the expectation that private enterprise and charity will fill the resulting gaps. This, at least in one respect, puts Britain firmly into the rank of a developing country.

Overall, I feel I have not been part of an evolving progressive movement of weight and influence, but rather one of a small band of professionals who have done their best to address the problems place by place within the limits of their temporary involvement. Curiously, there is, I think, a rather special cadre of those active in developing countries, whose skills and approaches are of a very high standard, but who are outside the UK planning mainstream and are not really appreciated by it. In some places it is like a time-warp, you start off at a discussion level in about 1965, while in others, the most progressive ideas are ready currency. Overall, however, almost everywhere there is an inadequate cadre of well-trained, experienced and committed staff, and planning edu- cational systems and Western role models seem inappropriate.

The prospects are not good. It is not infrequently argued that big cities, particularly in developing countries, are ungovernable, and it is a simple extension of this to say ‘unplannable’. This I do not accept. I believe that the outline of relevant approaches and techniques are available, that they can be adapted to many different geographies and cultures, and refined and developed to meet the prevailing circumstances. However, the almost ‘impossible’ issue is one of will - internationally, nationally and locally. How can substantial change be brought about?

WHERE NEXT?

One would think that rapid urbanisation in developing countries would create major opportunities, for investment designed to increase the economic growth and performance of cities, in improving housing, water and sanitation facilities, in access to employment opportunities, and in overcoming environmental problems, especially in relation to the needs of the increasing masses of poor.

However (and I may well be mistaken), the opposite appears to be happening. I have the impression that, relative to demand and in real terms, it is likely that international funding, grant-aid, technical assistance, and so on, are falling - agencies such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, ODA, USAID, and so on, are not comprehensively forcing the pace, as at least the World Bank attempted to in the decade from 1972. The levels of external and internal

MB 16:2-J

incentive and support of one sort or another appears to be declining in inverse proportion to the growth of the problems. At least in my own field, there has, for example, been a noticeable decline in the use of international planning consultants on urban studies in recent years.

I believe that what we need is in the order of a ‘ten point plan’, five ‘key objectives’, or something of the sort, that can be used as a vehicle for promoting renewed interest in the sector. Some possible contributions to the debate (including some deliberately exaggerated) would incorporate the following agenda:

(1) International funding and national aid agencies should undertake a comprehensive review of their approaches and programmes with a view to a renewed and enlarged investment stimulus in the sector.

(2) A new ‘orthodoxy’, a clear planning philosophy, needs to be strongly articulated, directly related to developing countries, based upon the progressive lessons from the last 20 years which are not yet operating on a wide enough scale. It must not be derivative of Western practice, but based upon the needs of developing countries.

(3) The agencies should use the above to get ‘leverage’ with governments and return to the ‘conditionality’ approaches which forced much progress in the 1970s.

(4) The build-up of local capacity in planning and project management, although a meritorious aim, is frequently at a considerable cost in effective performance. Ensuring the job gets done, on time and well, is more important to the urban poor than jobs for local professionals. Recognise this and plan accordingly. (This ‘consultancy’ commercial masks a serious issue!)

(5) There should be a return to a revamped ‘project approach’ and strong external influence of agencies and consultants, in parallel both with better training and conditions for local professionals, and support for the urban management and programme approaches.

(6) The whole area of urban land issues should be squarely addressed by funding agencies, who must use leverage on ‘governments’ to force real change.

(7) An underlying demand-led people-related approach. Solutions must be appropriate and affordable to the urban poor in their terms.

(8) Current Western planning practice and training fails to relate to needs and considerations of staff overseas and cannot, in its present form, legitimately claim this role. There needs to be an emphasis on a more practical/implementation approach and training must relate to this.

(9) Training also needs to be concerned with giving multi-disciplinary skills (so that, in a context of limited staff and resources, they have familiarity with/can cover a broad range of issues). Similarly, there is a gap in low- income housing responses at the level of management. Finally the development of management cadres to provide direction and innovative responses is critically important.