Letters To A Young Architect

by Christopher Benninger

  Principle Six:

  Human Scale encourages ground level, pedestrian-oriented urban arrangements based on anthropometric dimensions as opposed to machine-determined scales. It advocates mixed use Urban Villages, with most day-to-day needs accessible at walking distance, as opposed to mono-functional blocks and zones linked by motorways and surrounded by parking lots. The principle prioritizes people over machines and pedestrians over the automobile.

  Principle Seven:

  Opportunity Matrix enriches the city as a vehicle for personal, social, and economic development, through access to a range of organizations, services and facilities, providing a variety of opportunities for education, recreation, employment, business, mobility, shelter, health, safety and other basic needs. The principle views human settlements as the generators of learning experiences promoting enhanced knowledge, skills and sensitivities.

  Principle Eight:

  Regional Integration envisions the city as an organic part of a larger environmental, economic, social and cultural geographic system, which is essential for its future sustainability. The principle sees economies of scale in clustering activities, services and amenities into nodal hierarchies, with basic services being supported by more specialized centers, which are in turn supported by still more focused services and facilities at more central locations.

  Principle Nine:

  Balanced Movement promotes integrated transport systems composed of pedestrian paths, cycle lanes, express bus lanes, light rail corridors and other vehicular channels. The modal split nodes between these systems become the public domains around which are clustered high density, specialized urban hubs and pedestrian enclaves.

  Principle Ten:

  Institutional Integrity recognizes that good practices inherent in considered principles can only be realized through the emplacement of accountable, transparent, competent and participatory local governance. It recognizes that such governance is founded on appropriate data bases, on due entitlements, on civic responsibilities and duties. The PIU further a range of facilitative and promotive urban development management practices and tools to achieve intelligent urban practices, systems and forms.

  (Lecture delivered at the World Society of Ekistics Symposium in Berlin, October 2001)

  Letter

  The Challenge and the Response

  Those from the early batches of the School of Architecture, Ahmedabad, will recall the guiding force of education when the school was set up in 1962. Later, the School of Architecture morphed into the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT), under which the School of Planning was set up in 1971 – a process in which I played a key role. In 1998, while delivering the School of Planning Silver Jubilee Lecture, I revisited those heady days and the values that drove us. To a great extent the School of Planning echoed the spirit of 1960s. Responding to a question about planning education in the twenty-first century, I suggested that we ‘look into the past to find the future’, for the context of 1972 was still valid. I repeat that lecture here to remind us all about the goals of our education and the context of our professional challenges.

  In 1971, when Doshi asked me to give up my teaching job at Harvard and return to India to start the School of Planning, my decision was instantaneous. That was in the early seventies and we (Balkrishna Doshi, Yoginder Alagh and I) were driven by a vision. In our different ways we all saw a new India emerging, and huge possibilities for not only India but for mankind. We were not alone. India was just one of the main laboratories.

  The New Model

  Not only would we address the stresses of poverty, inequality and the deterioration of the environment, but we saw a chance for a different model than China and a different model than what was then the Soviet Union. There were aspects of them we liked, but none of us could buy the entire system. We saw a model which was

  low energy;

  community based;

  founded in democratic, micro-level institutions;

  based on the full economic engagement of local populations using local resources linked to industries which supported an urban-rural continuum; and

  a mix of public sector actions and private sector activities, with the public sector providing social and economic infrastructure (particularly networks) and basic services, while the private sector mobilized production.

  We wanted to avoid a consumer-based economy based on credit and financial investments as opposed to a sustainable and self-sufficient pattern of growth. We were wary of the communalism that had reared its ugly head in Ahmedabad in the 1969 riots, teaching politicians that fear speaks louder than ideas. Most of all we wanted to avoid the institutionalized ‘uniform’ that the West and China were pushing themselves into. We saw India as a model based on a plurality of lifestyles, cultures and values all thriving in a hierarchy of democratic communities. We hoped India would avoid becoming a military-industrial complex, with one ideology pushing people into isolated, mechanical lives, dependent on high incomes and huge emergency expenditures.

  These issues seem even more relevant today than they did forty years ago.

  The Scenario

  Starting a new institute meant being a key player in a change of tide. It meant throwing in one’s lot with success or failure. More importantly, we were all full of hope. We were sure that with directed intelligence and leadership a logical set of events could be put in motion, which would transform India.

  Let me brief you on the scenario as we saw it. First, the crises:

  1. More than half the nation was under stress in dire poverty. Survival was the key issue. Basic, minimum needs were not being fulfilled. A vulnerable group was emerging within the poor, and it was feared that the poor class itself was growing as a proportion of the total population. Existing everyday services and facilities were getting further stressed as more and more people became dependent on them.

  2. About eighty-five percent of the people lived in rural areas, depending on cultivation for their food and any cashable surplus. The economic infrastructure required to expand and intensify production was limited, putting a stress on the man-land ratio. The population was growing. Every day, each hectare of land had to produce more food for more people.

  3. The environmental resource base of these people was rapidly deteriorating, stressing even the existing, limited support systems. Water, biomass, animal life, soil and human resources were all under stress. All were inefficiently managed.

  4. All of these stresses were compounded by subsets of stresses: high infant mortality rates; low literacy rates; poor health; declining levels of functional education; deteriorating shelter conditions; increased debt; inadequate transport; shortage of potable water; and more.

  5. Cities, which were the centers of production, were under stress. Serviced land, roads, potable water, sewerage, power, communications and other essential economic infrastructure was inadequate and overstressed. Overcrowded, unhygienic slums were growing and becoming the major mode of urban living. If cities were to become the engines of growth, they would also have to receive a proportionate share of investment in their infrastructure.

  6. The professionals required to assess, plan for, and manage the resolution of these crises did not exist.

  7. The necessary financial, facilitating, empowering and planning institutions did not exist.

  Stating the Problems

  Even though our core group at the School of Planning was overwhelmed by these immense stresses, we felt confident that for each stress, a set of well framed problems could be stated. A problem was seen by us as ‘a question to be answered’. For example, we could take the above stresses and turn them into problem statements:

  How to reduce infant mortality rates from one hundred and sixty deaths to one hundred deaths per thousand in five years?

  H
ow to increase rice production yields from ten quintals to fifteen quintals per hectare in five years?

  How to increase irrigation from eleven percent to fifteen percent of cultivated land in five years? … and so on.

  I found it important to distinguish between ‘stresses’ and ‘problems’. People were saying ‘health is a problem’. I said, ‘health is good; the problem is how to reduce malaria’.

  Problem Set

  Objective Set

  A-l

  How to increase rice productivity per hectare?

  A-a

  Irrigate 1000 hectares

  A-2

  How to increase wheat productivity per hectare?

  A-b

  Supply X tons of fertilizers

  A-3

  How to increase cooking oil productivity per hectare?

  A-c

  Supply X bags of hybrid seeds

  A-4

  How to increase access to green leafy vegetables?

  A-d

  Provide E pesticide

  A-5

  How to invest in seeds and fertilizers before harvest?

  A-e

  Supply Y Rupees credit

  A-6

  How to increase functional ability to grow more food?

  A-f

  Teach methods in 250 one-hour sessions

  Integral Chains

  We were youngsters of the modern age. We were sure that if a problem was stated clearly, objectives could be set using available, appropriate technologies to find solutions. In our back pocket we had integral chains. They looked something like this:

  Each objective was matched with a set of desired outputs and required inputs. After laying out these integral chains carefully, we would find intersections between stresses, problems and solutions. We would find that the same inputs and outputs were commonly needed for answering three, seven or even ten questions. We also noted that some outcomes were pre-conditions for many inputs, and that outcomes with the most dependent inputs were the priority, or ‘lead activities’. Thus, integrated planning arose. Some key actions would resolve or temper two to three stresses at once. A kind of Functional Linkage Matrix emerged in which key objectives, with inputs and outputs, became clear. For example, a road could link markets (increasing capital accumulation through the sale of surpluses); could link a health care referral system; could provide access to education facilities; could link milk production to milk storage, processing and markets; could provide access to a range of economic services and so on.

  We were drawing on Central Place Theory from geography; Input-Output concepts from economics; Community Development methods from social work; Village Planning and Low-cost Housing from architecture; Production Concepts from agriculture; Statutory Reforms from law and similar other ideas from across various disciplines.

  These actions were always linked to spatial areas. The first integrated spatial plans took form (District, Block and Regional plans integrating a number of previously isolated sectors). A kind of trilogy emerged involving (a) micro-level planning (b) multi-level planning dovetailing local plans into a hierarchy of meso- and macro-level plans; and (c) decentralized, participatory decision making which would link planning, administration and resource mobilization at different levels.

  Ideology

  I say all of this to underscore the fact that we lived in an Age of Reason with a strong ideological foundation. In one way or another we believed the State could be reformed to play a facilitative role. It would provide the incentives, the essential economic infrastructure and the constructive regulations. In fact these three areas constituted our own vision of public policy as the focal concern of development planners.

  By ideology, I do not mean we were Marxists or capitalists, though we were alternatively accused of being both. But we were driven by the beliefs that:

  1. To transform, India must focus limited financial resources on key economic infrastructure, evolving productive systems, a ‘social net’ and human resource mobilization.

  2. Left to themselves, individual entrepreneurs would prioritize their own profit, ignoring the fiscal transfers required to develop economic and social infrastructure or to enhance human resources.

  3. The state, guided by a democratic government and managed by a capable administration could effect a transformation based on macro-, meso- and participatory micro-level plans.

  4. All citizens had a right to fulfill their basic needs, to have equal opportunity, to realize their own potentials, and to develop their unique opportunities.

  5. The prime vehicle to achieve these ends was multi-level and interlocking plans, with the people participating at various community levels through self-governed and self-managed development institutions.

  Professionals

  So we were not only burdened with problems, we were also confident that we knew some of the secrets of success. But most of all we knew that this was not the job of one or two people. We needed a new professional army to tackle this crisis on a war footing. That is where the idea of the School of Planning came in (and later the Centre for Development Studies and Activities).

  Let me be clear what we meant by a ‘professional’. We meant a skilled, knowledgeable and sensitive person who professed values. I can list some of these values:

  1. Intellectual honesty; applying logic (as opposed to personal gain, biases, irrational beliefs and prejudices) to thinking and decision making processes.

  2. A special commitment to the vulnerable within the poor; i.e., a commitment to poverty eradication.

  3. A commitment to environment: strengthening the earth’s carrying capacity.

  4. Creating equality in the way institutions handle a variety of people.

  5. Promoting democratic governance, with transparency, accountability and effectiveness in administration.

  6. Being competent: having skills, knowledge and sensitivity to enact the above.

  7. Putting society before self; understanding that the ‘social contract’ with destiny must overshadow the ‘business contract’ for personal gain.

  8. Always being a student: (a) learning by doing in the contexts for which we plan; (b) working in teams which nurture a variety of views and approaches.

  To all of us, these professional values transcended ideologies. They were valid in capitalism, communism and socialism alike. If I look at the past, at the present and toward the future I still believe these values define our profession.

  These values were espoused by the faculty and debated by the students. In fact it was the second batch of our students who initiated the National Organization of Students of Planning (NOSPLAN) with the first formal meeting in Ahmedabad in 1974. The seed idea of NOSPLAN was to frame a new value system for planners.

  Ground Rules

  The most interesting thing about our team, our school and our effort was our recognition of our limitations. We were basically people from architecture and economics, sociology and social work. We had been broadly based in the social sciences, or were ready to learn. We knew development was neither an exercise in economics nor one in town planning. In fact we were quick to lay down some ground rules, lest we became too romantic about our potential. These were:

  (a) Development is not an economic growth or town planning process. It is primarily a political a
nd social process.

  (b) The political and social changes required for development are likely to be chaotic in nature.

  (c) Development would not be a process that necessarily bred social contentment.

  (d) Our efforts would not necessarily succeed.

  (e) The price of material development could be the loss of freedom and democracy.

  (f) The unexpected and counterintuitive aspects of development are rooted in the development process itself.

  (g) Development, change and growth are an inescapable reality which must be faced and not be sentimentalized.

  (h) Without effective mass education none of this would be possible.

  Looking at the above assumptions we quickly gave up a search for paradise on earth; we threw out comprehensive planning, or perfect ends. We realized that any workable plan would have to be disjointed and incremental. At best a kind of main structure of key economic and social infrastructure could be laid out, around which incremental actions could be taken as and when the funds and the will arose.

  Most of all, ‘development processes’ were fundamental, and the objects or products of development were secondary. I started saying, ‘Development is a verb, not a noun.’