Team Blog 4: Planning Theory and Practice
DHARAVI
For those unaware, the Dharavi Slums is a settlement in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, and is considered to be the world’s largest slums. Slums are home to some of the worst living conditions on earth from unsanitary to structionaly unsafe. According to Building a Slum-Free Mumbai, “Nearly one million people live in Dharavi.” Dharavi is a huge housing and planning problem that is affecting a large part of Mumbai’s population. The people living inside of Dharavi have created their own community. The people living in Dharavi are not necessarily poor, actually even most of them are well-educated. Dharavi is the outcome of an even bigger planning/housing shortage problem affecting Mumbai. With not enough housing for the middle/lower class, the people of mumbai are forced to live in the Dharavi slums. Overall Dharavi is a major planning/housing problem affecting a large population of Mumbai’s health and safety.
Due to the social and economic division amongst people living inside and outside the slums, one style of planning that could be effective is a Neutral Public Servant. In this case, a Neutral Public Servant would want to seek the best interests of, not just the Dharavi slums, but also the city of Mumbai. They would use their expertise and knowledge of the area they’re in to guide the people of Dharavi and Mumbai in achieving their goal of having better access to clean, healthy resources for all parts of the community. This includes people from both the slums and the middle/high class part of the city. One disadvantage that could root from this, is that Neutral Public Servants don’t actually tell the community what they should do to resolve the resource problems. The relationship between the people of the slums and the middle/high class citizens is practically segregated. Based off of interviews and research, many citizens outside of the slums reject any sort of interaction with the people living in them. This segregation’s revolved around stereotypes perceived of slum people, such as having a lack of education, being poorly groomed, and likely to steal things. With that in mind, it leaves concern for how well Daharavi will succeed in meeting its goal with such segregated communities. One activity that we’d recommend to settle this tension is to hold meetings where the people of the slums and middle/high class citizens can give their own perspectives on the issue and come to a common ground. This would hopefully help to achieve both sides concerns and set aside their differences in order to help resolve the problem(s) in their community.
Another style of planning that could help come into play for the Dharavi slums is an Advocate. The Dharavi slums, being a settlement in Mumbai with little resources, puts the people living there in a very vulnerable position. An Advocate would represent the group with less resources to try and have their concerns heard. They could also go and advocate for developers and developers to support their side, to give the people in the slums a better platform and to get their voice heard. Even with the advantages of using this planning style, other cons could surface. Advocate’s could lack the critical aspects of planning for the community itself; in other words, they could preach for the minorities voice to be heard but also miss the bigger social and economic forces between Dharavi and Mumbai. Therefore, while an Advocate planner does look to have the people of a community involved and have their opinions heard, they must also appeal to their committee a plan that would help with the actual problem.
NEW YORK CITY: BIKE LANE PROBLEM PLANNING APPROACHES
If you’ve ever been to New YorK City or seen a movie based in New York City, the sidewalks are filled with pedestrians walking in every direction and the streets packed jammed with cars. So, where does that leave the cyclist trying to find a quick, efficient, and safe way of travel through the city. The cyclist are left with the only option of riding in the crowded streets alongside motor vehicles where it can be very dangerous and sometimes fatal. According to The New York Times, “In 2009, 12 cyclist died in crashes. In the years since, the figure has been as high as 24 in 2017 and as low as 10 last year.” There’s an obvious problem as we can see that many people are dying from this every year and not to mention the amount of people that have been severely injured cycling. Planners are working hard to find the best solution to keep cyclists safe on their journeys through the crowded city. In the next several years the streets of New York City will have a safe and efficient way of travel for cyclists.
New York City has become an increasingly pedestrian friendly city with many people choosing to bike to their destination. To keep up with the amount of residents choosing to bike, New York City has started initiatives to fund dedicated bike lanes and paths to make biking safer. One of the planning approaches discussed in class that would work well for creating bike lanes and paths in New York City would be a neutral public servant approach. A neutral public servant approach would be beneficial because a large bike path system would require public input so that it is able to best serve the diverse community that is impacted by the network of paths and lanes. By guiding the community towards a practical solution, rather than telling the community what they should do, a neutral public servant approach could be useful in guiding the community to come up with a solution that serves the most people, most effectively. The complexity of New York City makes a community driven solution difficult because there are many factors that would affect the efficiency of the paths and lanes. Without expert input, it could be difficult for residents to come up with a plan that would be realistic and work efficiently in the densely populated city. A good activity to encourage community involvement would be to have a series of meetings, where residents can propose what they would like to see included in the bike system plan, and a solution could be met by compromising on a plan that would best impact everyone in the community.
Another approach discussed in class that could be beneficial for designing a network of bike paths and lanes for residents is the consensus builder approach. The consensus builder approach could work well because a series of bike paths and lanes would affect thousands of people in a place like New York City and it would be necessary to take into account many different views and opinions on how best to implement the plan. Using the consensus builder approach would also allow the planner more freedom in creating a plan that is efficient, and would be more effective at reaching a compromise among the various views of the residents. The drawback of the consensus builder approach is that with so many different views and opinions expressed, it could be a challenge to take into account all views, resulting in some residents feeling that their voices are not heard. An activity that would be useful for a consensus builder approach would be to send out a poll asking potentially affected residents what they would like to see included in the proposed bike lanes and paths, and include a section for comments and concerns, and create an updated plan based off of the input of the community.
SOURCES
DHARAVI
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/feb/18/best-ideas-redevelop-dharavi-slum-developers-india
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/building-slum-free-mumbai
NEW YORK
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/nyregion/newyorktoday/nyc-news-bicycle-safety.html
https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bike-safety-study-fullreport2017.pdf
https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bike-safety-plan.pdf