From yanivbin at gmail.com Fri Sep 5 11:35:30 2008 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 11:35:30 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Militarisation as global urban policy Message-ID: <86b8a7050809042305k1381ba8fn1d0779b8ffe4060@mail.gmail.com> Militarization as Global Urban Policy http://globalsociology.edublogs.org/2008/08/31/militarization-as-global-urban-policy/ August 31st, 2008 by SocProf and tagged Development, Economy, Globalization, Human Rights, Migration, Militarization, New Wars, Politics, Population, Poverty, Public Policy, Risk Society, Social Exclusion, Social Inequalities, social marginality, Social Stratification, Structural Violence, Surveillance This post at Crooks and Liars, relating the use of Blackwater for security operations in the aftermath the exepcted disaster of hurricane Gustav touches upon what I think is an important topic: the militarization of urban centers and the suppression of dissent and disorder in the name of security (Blackwater had also been used in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, with some disturbing consequences). This trend was also brought forth when Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi decided to deploy 3,000 soldiers in large Italian cities. This constitutes another layer, the hard power layer (as opposed to the soft layer of extensive networks of video surveillance), of the rise of the surveillance society against targeted populations (immigrants, potential political protesters, etc.). This is not something limited to the large cities of the core. Such militarization is also present in the world-cities of the periphery, as noted by Raúl Zibechi from the Americas program at the Center for International Policy. "Urban peripheries in Third World countries have become war zones where states attempt to maintain order based on the establishment of a sort of "sanitary cordon" to keep the poor isolated from "normal" society." This is not limited to the poor, but to any category of people defined as undesirable or potentially disruptive or dangerous. What this points to is the generalized use of the military to manage and police undesirable urban populations. Where urban and community development used to be the name of the game in the 1970s, militarization and surveillance are expanding trends now. This is something already noted by Mike Davis in his latest book Planet of Slums. For Davis, this militarization is the product of urban chaotic development in the periphery, as he describes in this interview: "Stunningly enough, classical social theory, whether Marx, Weber, or even Cold War modernization theory, none of it anticipated what's happened to the city over the last 30 or 40 years. None of it anticipated the emergence of a huge class, mainly of the young, who live in cities, have no formal connection with the world economy, and no chance of ever having such a connection. This informal working class isn't the lumpenproletariat of Karl Marx and it isn't the "slum of hope," as imagined 20 or 30 years ago, filled with people who will eventually climb into the formal economy. Dumped into the peripheries of cities, usually with little access to the traditional culture of those cities, this informal global working class represents an unprecedented development, unforeseen by theory. (…) A billion people currently live in slums and more than a billion people are informal workers, struggling for survival. They range from street vendors to day laborers to nannies to prostitutes to people who sell their organs [for transplant]. These are staggering figures, even more so since our children and grandchildren will witness the final build-out of the human race. Sometime around 2050 or 2060, the human population will achieve its maximum growth, probably at around 10 to 10.5 billion people. Nothing as large as some of the earlier apocalyptic predictions, but fully 95% of this growth will occur in the cities of the south." This has been the pattern of urbanization in the periphery: rural populations, facing impoverishment, move en masse to the cities only to find themselves stuck in slums with no economic prospects to speak of. Many eke out a living within the informal lumpen-economy of the slums, or washing windshields at the intersections of the capitals of the Global South, become small vendors (if they are lucky) or just beg. It is urbanization without development and these are the urban centers where IMF riots have been taking place inthe face of the rise of food prices. No coincidences there. "The mega-slums of today were largely created in the 1970s and 80s. Before 1960, the question was: Why were Third World cities growing so slowly? There were, in fact, huge institutional obstacles to fast urbanization then. Colonial empires still restricted entry to the city, while in China and other Stalinist countries, a domestic passport system controlled social rights and so internal migration. The big urban boom comes in the 1960s with decolonization. But then, at least, revolutionary nationalist states were claiming that the state could play an integral role in the provision of housing and infrastructure. In the 70s, the state begins to drop out, and with the 80s, the age of structural adjustment, you have the decade of going backwards in Latin America, and even more so in Africa. By then, you had sub-Saharan cities growing at faster velocities than Victorian industrial cities in their boom periods — but shedding formal jobs at the same time." This is not limited to the periphery and the world-cities of the Global South. World-cities of the core all have peripheral pockets whose population live in substandard conditions comparable to that of the Global South. And this in turn, is the product of a dual move in the 1970-1980s: the abdication of the role of the government in urban public policy (visible in the Reagan / Thatcher conservative policies and the structural adjustment policies imposed on the Global South). The ideology of letting the poor figure out how to make a life and a living for themselves was promoted by both conservative politicians and NGO activists in the name of empowerment (give them microloans and they'll know what to do). These new urban poor experience the full force of the risk society: "First, the supply of free land for squatting had ended, in some cases a long time ago. The only way you can build a shack on free land now is to choose a place so hazardous that it will have no market value whatsoever. This increasing wager with disaster is what squatting has become. So, for instance, if I were to take you a few miles south and across the border to Tijuana you'd see almost immediately that land which once made up squatters' neighborhoods is now being sold, sometimes even subdivided and developed. Very poor people in Tijuana are squatting in the traditional fashion only at the edges of ravines and in streambeds where their houses will collapse in a couple of years. This is true all over the Third World. Squatting has been privatized. In Latin America, it's called "pirate urbanization." Where, twenty years ago, people would have occupied vacant land, resisted eviction, and eventually been recognized by the state, they now pay high prices for small parcels of land or, if they can't afford it, rent from other poor people. In some slums, the majority of dwellers aren't squatters, they're renters. If you went to Soweto [in Johannesburg, South Africa], you'd see that people fill their backyards with shanties which they rent. The major survival strategy of millions of poor urban dwellers, who have been in the city long enough to have a little property, is to subdivide it and become landlords to yet poorer people, who sometimes subdivide and rent to others. So a fundamental safety valve, this much romanticized frontier of free urban land, has largely ended. The other major conclusion concerns the informal economy — the ability of poor people to improvise livelihoods through unrecorded economic activity like street vending, day labor, domestic service, or even subsistence crime. If anything, economic informality has been romanticized more than squatting, with vast claims about the ability of micro-entrepreneurship to leverage people out of poverty. Yet scores of case studies from around the world show ever more people squeezed into a limited number of survival niches: Too many rickshaw wallahs, too many street vendors, too many African women turning their shanties into shabeens to sell liquor, too many people taking in laundry, too many people queued up at work sites." And once the slums of the Global South fill up, there is really no other choice than migration towards core countries that, in turn, establiish policies to prevent. This is where militarization comes in as well as patterns of urban development where world-cities are cordoned off to prevent any disruption for global business (especially since Seattle, 1999) and where the wealthier population protects itself in gated communities (actually, militarized communities) in the exurbs (and not just the suburbs) where social homogeneity prevails, except for the workforce required (nannies, lanscaping companies, maids, etc.) for these communities to function. "If you look at American cities, the most striking thing is that exurban settlement — people who commute to edge cities from the former countryside are now living in McMansions on ever larger lots with more SUVs parked in front. They're making the traditional 50s Levittown suburb, with its ticky-tacky homes, its little cubicles of consumption, look environmentally efficient. In other words, as middle-class people move farther out, their environmental footprint goes up two or three shoe sizes." Back to Zibechi's article, the military has adapted to these new "war zones" (see the surge in Iraq, and the battles fought largely in urban centers): "In recent years, publications on military thought as well as analyses by financial organisms have dedicated ample space to challenges presented by gangs and to debates on new problems arising from urban war. The concepts of "asymmetrical war" and "fourth generation war" are responses to problems identical to those created by Third World urban peripheries: the birth of a new type of warfare against non-state enemies, in which military superiority does not play a decisive role. (…) A good example of this full-spectrum war is his belief that the dangers for United States hegemony lie in all aspects of daily life, or, if you prefer, in life itself. For example, he believes that "in Fourth Generation War, invasion by immigration can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a state army." New problems rooted in the "universal crisis of the legitimacy of the state" have "non-state enemies" at the center. This leads him to conclude with a double warning to military leaders: no state military has succeeded against a non-state enemy. This problem is at the heart of new military modalities of thinking, which must be completely reformulated to face challenges that used to correspond to "civilian" areas of the state apparatus. Militarization of society in order to regain control of urban peripheries is not enough, as revealed in recent military experience in the Third World. Military commanders deployed in Iraq seem to be clearly aware of the problems they must face. Cavalry Division Commander Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, based on his recent experience on the outskirts of Baghdad in Sadr City, maintains that security is the long-term objective, but it will not be achieved through military action alone. "Executing traditionally focused combat operations … works, but only for the short term. In the long term, doing so hinders true progress and, in reality, promotes the growth of insurgent forces working against campaign objectives" (Chiarelli and Michaelis 2005). This implies that the two traditional armed forces lines of operation—combat and the training of local security forces—are insufficient. Therefore, three "nontraditional" lines of operation should be undertaken; ones that previously corresponded to the government and civil society: essential services provided to the population, building a legitimate government, and empowering "economic pluralism," that is, a market economy." And there you have it. This is what long-term security means: the establishment of a specific political and economic social structure that is bound to fail since we already know that it created the urban problems in the periphery and the core in the first place. And yet, this is the strategy pursued. As Zibechi puts it bluntly, "This combination of mechanisms is what the major global powers' armed forces today consider the means to achieve "true long-term security." In this way, "democracy," expansion of services, and a market economy will cease being citizens' rights or morally desirable objectives and become gears in a strategy of military control over a population or a region of the world and, of course, its resources." And if military strategies don't work? "The logic is simple: "Neighborhoods that have not been crushed militarily are walled, enclosed, and abandoned to their luck. Complete areas of the city have been demarcated and segregated with inhabitants confined inside, subjected to entry and exit controls so ironclad that we can speak without hesitation of a ghetto policy."" This does not just apply to Iraqi neighborhood but to the US-Mexico border, the larger New Orleans area after Katrina (we'll see what happens with Gustav), or the creation of "free speech zones" in large cities to confine protesters. This also points to last remaining role of the government: maintaining order through policing and militarization if that does not work. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080905/b455f296/attachment-0001.html From cheryl.deutsch at gmail.com Fri Sep 5 13:23:05 2008 From: cheryl.deutsch at gmail.com (Cheryl Deutsch) Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 13:23:05 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Urbanstudygroup Digest, Vol 55, Issue 1 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <189301e00809050053m3b596169s4d600e80a1684e81@mail.gmail.com> Thanks for the forwarded blog post, Vinay. This history of urbanization/informalization is right on, I think, and fits with what I've been thinking about lately in my work with hawkers. In this blog, the writer traces the disappearance of free land for squatting, the privatization and sub-letting of squatter settlements, and the glut of people trying to make a living in the informal economy. Eventually, the state's role becomes simply policing, militarily if necessary. This history of disappearing space available for occupation can equally be applied to hawkers in places like Bombay. What I've been thinking about lately is how so many hawkers no longer even have the right to be illegal. Most prime hawking areas are long past "full..." making middle class residents' associations' claims that "they will just keep coming" illogical... in fact, it is very difficult to find lucrative space to start a new hawking business in Bombay. And so a whole economy of illegalities has arisen from this space crunch. There are so many shades of illegality... from ward to ward, from street to street, and even from hawker to hawker sitting on the same street. While 99% of them are illegal and unlicensed, all are not equal in their illegality. I'm continually amazed by the unevenness of police and municipal harassment: even on the same street, some people are paying bribes to the police, while others are paying to the municipality. Still others are paying both, while some are paying none. I won't attempt to trace the patterns here, for lack of solid empirical evidence, but my impression is that it cuts along communal, regional, gender, and other lines of identity. While in most of the city, this harassment and extortion is like a highly orchestrated and rehearsed drama that gets played out again and again, we are witnessing the real transformation of south Bombay, where the stakes have crossed the tipping point and the state is really starting to show what it can do. One union leader from A Ward (which includes VT, Churchgate, Nariman Point, etc.) told me that the number of hawkers in that ward had been reduced from 7,000 to 2,000 in the last 6-8 years. This is not a rehearsed drama. A battle has been raging along DN Road, for example, where the hawkers have been prevented from doing business for the last 3 months... there is perhaps no better symbol of the forces battling in Bombay than DN Road and its hawkers: lined with colonial arcades that nowadays provide the perfect shelter to hundreds of hawkers, one can also find along DN Road every bank doing business in this would-be world class financial centre. Alas, in the eyes of finance capital, all are equal outside the law... On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 11:35 AM, wrote: > Send Urbanstudygroup mailing list submissions to > urbanstudygroup at sarai.net > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/urbanstudygroup > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > urbanstudygroup-request at sarai.net > > You can reach the person managing the list at > urbanstudygroup-owner at sarai.net > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Urbanstudygroup digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Relocation without eviction in Joburg (lalitha kamath) > 2. Understanding the politics of credit rating (lalitha kamath) > 3. Militarisation as global urban policy (Vinay Baindur) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 21:56:59 -0700 (PDT) > From: lalitha kamath > Subject: [Urbanstudy] Relocation without eviction in Joburg > To: urbanstudygroup at sarai.net, NURM list > Cc: reader-list > Message-ID: <886627.66683.qm at web53603.mail.re2.yahoo.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > The successful implementation of a Constitutional Court order on > finding alternative housing for people about to be evicted from two > "bad" inner city buildings shows what is possible when the rights of > the poor are considered by the state, the Centre for Applied Legal > Studies (Cals) said on Wednesday. > > http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?from=rss_South%20Africa&set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=nw20080827174307804C153163 > > > > > > > 'Bad building' relocated in Joburg > > August 27 2008 at 07:19PM > > The successful implementation of a Constitutional Court order on finding > alternative housing for people about to be evicted from two "bad" inner city > buildings shows what is possible when the rights of the poor are considered > by the state, the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (Cals) said on Wednesday. > > This follows the relocation, without eviction, of 450 people in terms of a > court-ordered negotiation from San Jose in Johannesburg's Berea and 197 Main > Street in the city, to new temporary accommodation. > > The City of Johannesburg had tried to evict them from the buildings on the > grounds of health concerns after the owners apparently abandoned the > building, but in March 2006, Johannesburg High Court judge Mahomed Jajbhay > dismissed the city's eviction application because the residents had nowhere > better to live. > > The matter went all the way to the Constitutional Court, which ordered the > city and representatives of the residents to find a solution. > > Lawyers for the city worked with the residents and their legal > representatives and two buildings - the MBV hospital in the central business > district and the Old Perm building in Hillbrow - were identified, explained > Cals' Stuart Wilson. > > The city provided extra fire extinguishers and other measures to address > their health concerns, while preparations were made to adapt the buildings > for their relocation. > > Needs and income assessments were undertaken, lease agreements were > arranged and residents allocated units. The move was finally conducted > between August 23 and 26, Wilson. > > The arrangement was endorsed by the Constitutional Court at the end of > 2007. > > "This is a victory for the Bill of Rights and the rule of law. It is > noteworthy that the residents of San Jose and 197 Main Street relocated > freely and voluntarily," said Wilson. > > "Not one person was forcibly evicted from either of the properties. I hope > that this spells the end of forced evictions in the name of inner city > regeneration." > > Wilson explained that the deal was that they pay a deposit in instalments > of R25, R50 and R75 for the first three months for occupation of the rooms > with shared kitchen and ablution facilities, with rent kicking in in the > fourth month for the residents, who are considered poor. > > Individuals with no familial connections will share rooms that will be > partitioned for privacy. > > He said the contribution of the residents' committees was "invaluable" in > taking into account the residents' needs before their move. > > The building will be managed by the City of Johannesburg, which will also > arrange cleaning services, and a tenants committee will hold the building > manager and residents to account. > > City of Johannesburg spokesperson Gabu Tugwana said the city was pleased > with the end result, but stressed that their new accommodation was temporary > and residents and the city of Johannesburg will negotiate permanent > solutions which may include shelters, flats in other city-owned buildings, > or rentals in the private sector. > > "I think it showed a good working relationship. It shows how conflict can > be avoided and how communities can work together," he said. > > He said the court battles over the last three years often saw strong > disagreements between the City of Johannesburg and the legal representatives > of the property occupants. > > "Last weekend's move is therefore notable for its spirit of co-operation > between the community and local government." > > He said considerable preparation went into it with everyone working closely > throughout. > > "A lot of effort went into negotiating room allocations, lease agreements, > house rules and the process of the move itself," he said. > > "But in the end it was worth it. We had a virtually trouble-free move." > > The city would assess whether the old buildings could be saved, or whether > they should be demolished. - Sapa > > > > Cross posted from: DEBATE mailing list > DEBATE at debate.kabissa.org > http://lists.kabissa.org/mailman/listinfo/debate > > > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080829/510cf25a/attachment-0001.html > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2008 04:13:41 -0700 (PDT) > From: lalitha kamath > Subject: [Urbanstudy] Understanding the politics of credit rating > To: urbanstudygroup at sarai.net, reader-list > Message-ID: <351877.20901.qm at web53612.mail.re2.yahoo.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > Municipal bonds and borrowing on the market depend heavily on good > investment ratings. in turn these seem to depend on ability to raise > revenues > to certain 'target' levels. if 'targets' cannot be achieved, ratings > fall. If this is really such a linear (and simplistic) process then credit > rating companies could strongly influence many future > decisions (capital investment, investment on O&M etc). When a Moody's > downgrades a public utility's rating, for instance, where does the utility > turn, as in the case of Escom in S Africa below? > > I have recently been fascinated by the notion, practice and politics of > credit > rating. All Indian cities, big and small, seem to want a rating these days > in preparation for developing top class infrastructure. > There are some processes in particular I'm not clear about: > 1) How ratings are determined, monitored and revised especially given the > difficulty of getting accounting, > financial and other info from cities on an ongoing and current basis > and then of actually understanding and interpreting how these systems work > in practice. > 2) The kind of influence ratings companies could have on service provision > in cities and towns > 3) To create ratings, what are the rationalizations, simplifications, and > transformations that need to occur to create a language and systems that > serve credit rating analysts? In this process of translation (linguistic and > other), what gets left out? > > I'd appreciate any clarifications, ideas or sources of literature people > can give me on understanding this better. > cheers > lalitha > > > > http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews/idUSLD59815420080813 > > S.Africa's Eskom to seek World Bank funds - paper > Wed Aug 13, 2008 2:43am EDT > > JOHANNESBURG, Aug 13 (Reuters) - South Africa's Eskom [ESCJ.J] could seek > to borrow up to $1 billion a year from the World Bank over five years after > a ratings downgrade made it more difficult to borrow on financial markets, > the Business Day newspaper reported. > > The newspaper said on Wednesday the power utility would turn to the World > Bank due to tough global markets and after a Moody's downgrade, which will > likely raise the cost of borrowing money it needs for a major upgrade. > > It quoted Eskom Finance Director Bongani Nqwababa as saying the state-owned > company was "rechecking" its funding strategy and was likely to focus on > borrowing locally from development agencies such as the World Bank and > African Development Bank and from export credit agencies. > > Eskom officials could not immediately be reached for comment. A World Bank > spokeswoman said the bank was in an "ongoing dialogue" with Eskom but > declined further comment. > > Business Day did not provide a source for the $1 billion a year figure. > > Eskom is to spend billions of dollars to boost power capacity as demand > outstrips supply in Africa's biggest economy. > > A wave of blackouts has cost South Africa billions of rand in lost > productivity and unnerved foreign investors. > > Ratings agency Moody's said on Monday it had cut Eskom's local currency > rating to Baa2 from A1 and cut the foreign currency rating to Baa2 from A2. > The outlook for all ratings was negative. > > The agency blamed the four notch local currency downgrade on a > deterioration of Eskom's stand-alone credit profile due to an aggressive > capital investment programme and the fact Eskom was not able to raise > tariffs as much as it had requested. > > The National Treasury has budgeted 60 billion rand ($7.72 billion) over the > next three years to help Eskom pay for its 343 billion rand, 5-year > expansion programme. (Writing by Rebecca Harrison; Editing by David Cowell) > > (c) Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved > > This article is cross-posted from Debate mailing list > > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080830/ebdaa1ed/attachment-0001.html > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 11:35:30 +0530 > From: "Vinay Baindur" > Subject: [Urbanstudy] Militarisation as global urban policy > To: "Urban Sarai" > Message-ID: > <86b8a7050809042305k1381ba8fn1d0779b8ffe4060 at mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" > > Militarization as Global Urban Policy > > > http://globalsociology.edublogs.org/2008/08/31/militarization-as-global-urban-policy/ > > August 31st, 2008 by SocProf and tagged Development, Economy, > Globalization, > Human Rights, Migration, Militarization, New Wars, Politics, Population, > Poverty, Public Policy, Risk Society, Social Exclusion, Social > Inequalities, > social marginality, Social Stratification, Structural Violence, > Surveillance > > This post at Crooks and Liars, relating the use of Blackwater for security > operations in the aftermath the exepcted disaster of hurricane Gustav > touches upon what I think is an important topic: the militarization of > urban > centers and the suppression of dissent and disorder in the name of security > (Blackwater had also been used in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, > with some disturbing consequences). > > This trend was also brought forth when Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi decided > to deploy 3,000 soldiers in large Italian cities. > > This constitutes another layer, the hard power layer (as opposed to the > soft > layer of extensive networks of video surveillance), of the rise of the > surveillance society against targeted populations (immigrants, potential > political protesters, etc.). > > This is not something limited to the large cities of the core. Such > militarization is also present in the world-cities of the periphery, as > noted by Raúl Zibechi from the Americas program at the Center for > International Policy. > > "Urban peripheries in Third World countries > have become war zones where states attempt to maintain order based on > the establishment of a sort of "sanitary cordon" to keep the poor isolated > from "normal" society." > > This is not limited to the poor, but > to any category of people defined as undesirable or potentially disruptive > or dangerous. What this points to is the generalized use of the military to > manage and police undesirable urban populations. Where urban and community > development used to be the name of the game in the 1970s, militarization > and > surveillance are expanding trends now. > > This is something already noted by Mike Davis in his latest book Planet of > Slums. For Davis, this militarization is the product of urban chaotic > development in the periphery, as he describes in this interview: > > "Stunningly enough, classical social theory, whether Marx, Weber, or even > Cold War modernization theory, none of it anticipated what's happened to > the > city over the last 30 or 40 years. None of it anticipated the emergence of > a > huge class, mainly of the young, who live in cities, have no formal > connection with the world economy, and no chance of ever having such a > connection. This informal working class isn't the lumpenproletariat of Karl > Marx and it isn't the "slum of hope," as imagined 20 or 30 years ago, > filled > with people who will eventually climb into the formal economy. Dumped into > the peripheries of cities, usually with little access to the traditional > culture of those cities, this informal global working class represents an > unprecedented development, unforeseen by theory. (…) > > A billion people currently live in slums and more than a billion people > are informal workers, struggling for survival. They range from street > vendors to day laborers to nannies to prostitutes to people who sell their > organs [for transplant]. These are staggering figures, even more so since > our children and grandchildren will witness the final build-out of the > human > race. Sometime around 2050 or 2060, the human population will achieve its > maximum growth, probably at around 10 to 10.5 billion people. Nothing as > large as some of the earlier apocalyptic predictions, but fully 95% of this > growth will occur in the cities of the south." > > This has been the pattern of urbanization in the periphery: rural > populations, facing impoverishment, move en masse to the cities only to > find > themselves stuck in slums with no economic prospects to speak of. Many eke > out a living within the informal lumpen-economy of the slums, or washing > windshields at the intersections of the capitals of the Global South, > become > small vendors (if they are lucky) or just beg. > > It is urbanization without development and these are the urban centers > where > IMF riots have been taking place inthe face of the rise of food prices. No > coincidences there. > > "The mega-slums of today were largely created in the 1970s and 80s. > Before 1960, the question was: Why were Third World cities growing so > slowly? There were, in fact, huge institutional obstacles to fast > urbanization then. Colonial empires still restricted entry to the city, > while in China and other Stalinist countries, a domestic passport system > controlled social rights and so internal migration. The big urban boom > comes > in the 1960s with decolonization. But then, at least, revolutionary > nationalist states were claiming that the state could play an integral role > in the provision of housing and infrastructure. In the 70s, the state > begins > to drop out, and with the 80s, the age of structural adjustment, you have > the decade of going backwards in Latin America, and even more so in Africa. > By then, you had sub-Saharan cities growing at faster velocities than > Victorian industrial cities in their boom periods — but shedding formal > jobs > at the same time." > > This is not limited to the periphery and the world-cities of the Global > South. World-cities of the core all have peripheral pockets whose > population > live in substandard conditions comparable to that of the Global South. And > this in turn, is the product of a dual move in the 1970-1980s: the > abdication of the role of the government in urban public policy (visible in > the Reagan / Thatcher conservative policies and the structural adjustment > policies imposed on the Global South). The ideology of letting the poor > figure out how to make a life and a living for themselves was promoted by > both conservative politicians and NGO activists in the name of empowerment > (give them microloans and they'll know what to do). > > These new urban poor experience the full force of the risk society: > > "First, the supply of free land for squatting had ended, in some cases a > long time ago. The only way you can build a shack on free land now is to > choose a place so hazardous that it will have no market value whatsoever. > This increasing wager with disaster is what squatting has become. So, for > instance, if I were to take you a few miles south and across the border to > Tijuana you'd see almost immediately that land which once made up > squatters' > neighborhoods is now being sold, sometimes even subdivided and developed. > Very poor people in Tijuana are squatting in the traditional fashion only > at > the edges of ravines and in streambeds where their houses will collapse in > a > couple of years. This is true all over the Third World. > > Squatting has been privatized. In Latin America, it's called "pirate > urbanization." Where, twenty years ago, people would have occupied vacant > land, resisted eviction, and eventually been recognized by the state, they > now pay high prices for small parcels of land or, if they can't afford it, > rent from other poor people. In some slums, the majority of dwellers aren't > squatters, they're renters. If you went to Soweto [in Johannesburg, South > Africa], you'd see that people fill their backyards with shanties which > they > rent. The major survival strategy of millions of poor urban dwellers, who > have been in the city long enough to have a little property, is to > subdivide > it and become landlords to yet poorer people, who sometimes subdivide and > rent to others. So a fundamental safety valve, this much romanticized > frontier of free urban land, has largely ended. > > The other major conclusion concerns the informal economy — the ability of > poor people to improvise livelihoods through unrecorded economic activity > like street vending, day labor, domestic service, or even subsistence > crime. > If anything, economic informality has been romanticized more than > squatting, > with vast claims about the ability of micro-entrepreneurship to leverage > people out of poverty. Yet scores of case studies from around the world > show > ever more people squeezed into a limited number of survival niches: Too > many > rickshaw wallahs, too many street vendors, too many African women turning > their shanties into shabeens to sell liquor, too many people taking in > laundry, too many people queued up at work sites." > > And once the slums of the Global South fill up, there is really no other > choice than migration towards core countries that, in turn, establiish > policies to prevent. This is where militarization comes in as well as > patterns of urban development where world-cities are cordoned off to > prevent > any disruption for global business (especially since Seattle, 1999) and > where the wealthier population protects itself in gated communities > (actually, militarized communities) in the exurbs (and not just the > suburbs) > where social homogeneity prevails, except for the workforce required > (nannies, lanscaping companies, maids, etc.) for these communities to > function. > > "If you look at American cities, the most striking thing is that exurban > settlement — people who commute to edge cities from the former countryside > are now living in McMansions on ever larger lots with more SUVs parked in > front. They're making the traditional 50s Levittown suburb, with its > ticky-tacky homes, its little cubicles of consumption, look environmentally > efficient. In other words, as middle-class people move farther out, their > environmental footprint goes up two or three shoe sizes." > > Back to Zibechi's article, the military has adapted to these new "war > zones" > (see the surge in Iraq, and the battles fought largely in urban centers): > > "In recent years, publications on military thought as well as analyses by > financial organisms have dedicated ample space to challenges presented by > gangs and to debates on new problems arising from urban war. The concepts > of > "asymmetrical war" and "fourth generation war" are responses to problems > identical to those created by Third World urban peripheries: the birth of a > new type of warfare against non-state enemies, in which military > superiority > does not play a decisive role. (…) > > A good example of this full-spectrum war is his belief that the dangers > for United States hegemony lie in all aspects of daily life, or, if you > prefer, in life itself. For example, he believes that "in Fourth Generation > War, invasion by immigration can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a > state army." New problems rooted in the "universal crisis of the legitimacy > of the state" have "non-state enemies" at the center. This leads him to > conclude with a double warning to military leaders: no state military has > succeeded against a non-state enemy. > > This problem is at the heart of new military modalities of thinking, > which must be completely reformulated to face challenges that used to > correspond to "civilian" areas of the state apparatus. Militarization of > society in order to regain control of urban peripheries is not enough, as > revealed in recent military experience in the Third World. > > Military commanders deployed in Iraq seem to be clearly aware of the > problems they must face. Cavalry Division Commander Gen. Peter W. > Chiarelli, > based on his recent experience on the outskirts of Baghdad in Sadr City, > maintains that security is the long-term objective, but it will not be > achieved through military action alone. "Executing traditionally focused > combat operations … works, but only for the short term. In the long term, > doing so hinders true progress and, in reality, promotes the growth of > insurgent forces working against campaign objectives" (Chiarelli and > Michaelis 2005). > > This implies that the two traditional armed forces lines of > operation—combat and the training of local security forces—are > insufficient. > Therefore, three "nontraditional" lines of operation should be undertaken; > ones that previously corresponded to the government and civil society: > essential services provided to the population, building a legitimate > government, and empowering "economic pluralism," that is, a market > economy." > > And there you have it. This is what long-term security means: the > establishment of a specific political and economic social structure that is > bound to fail since we already know that it created the urban problems in > the periphery and the core in the first place. And yet, this is the > strategy > pursued. As Zibechi puts it bluntly, > > "This combination of mechanisms is what the major global powers' armed > forces today consider the means to achieve "true long-term security." In > this way, "democracy," expansion of services, and a market economy will > cease being citizens' rights or morally desirable objectives and become > gears in a strategy of military control over a population or a region of > the > world and, of course, its resources." > > And if military strategies don't work? > > "The logic is simple: "Neighborhoods that have not been crushed > militarily are walled, enclosed, and abandoned to their luck. Complete > areas > of the city have been demarcated and segregated with inhabitants confined > inside, subjected to entry and exit controls so ironclad that we can speak > without hesitation of a ghetto policy."" > > This does not just apply to Iraqi neighborhood but to the US-Mexico border, > the larger New Orleans area after Katrina (we'll see what happens with > Gustav), or the creation of "free speech zones" in large cities to confine > protesters. > > This also points to last remaining role of the government: maintaining > order > through policing and militarization if that does not work. > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080905/b455f296/attachment.html > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Urbanstudygroup mailing list > Urbanstudygroup at sarai.net > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/urbanstudygroup > > > End of Urbanstudygroup Digest, Vol 55, Issue 1 > ********************************************** > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080905/94a42e2f/attachment-0001.html From cugambetta at yahoo.com Mon Sep 8 04:55:27 2008 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2008 16:25:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] =?utf-8?q?Fw=3A_=5BHasiruUsiru=5D_Will_US_team_solve?= =?utf-8?q?_city=E2=80=99s_traffic_woes=3F?= Message-ID: <739593.17445.qm@web56801.mail.re3.yahoo.com> is anyone in bangalore going to this? if so, report back! would be interesting to know how the issue of transport is framed as a technical, social or political problem. curt From: Vinay Baindur To: CAF2 Sent: Sunday, September 7, 2008 6:23:16 AM Subject: [HasiruUsiru] Will US team solve city’s traffic woes? Will US team solve city's traffic woes? TIMES NEWS NETWORK Bangalore: Tested transportation solutions from the US, custom-made for Bangalore. That's the offer a group of experts is making to a city caught up in ambitious projects such as long-term traffic plans, when basics like sidewalks are still missing. The Bangalore transportation summit — on September 10 and 11 — brings civic stakeholders, planners, business leaders and NGOs together to chart a way out of the logjam. The focus will be localization of measures that have worked elsewhere, says David Faria, CEO, Technology Solution Providers (TSP), a summit partner. "Prior to the summit, the experts from the US will tour the city over two days to understand the ground situation. They will interact with the residents and analyze local conditions before initiating the dialogue,'' says Faria. The BBMP's magic box underpasses, bus depots, grade separators, rail systems, development in areas like Whitefield will be covered in the tour. The Bangalore Metropolitan Land Transport Authority, Transinnova and Alesig are other summit partners. The event propose to look beyond short-term, bandaid solutions like one-ways. Faria says the city has been witnessing piecemeal implementation of plans that don't have a state-prescribed policy to back them. "The importance of evolving a comprehensive transportation policy, integrated transit planning and operations and traffic and transportation issues will be discussed. Stakeholders, including the police and transport corporations, will be represented, '' says Faria. Civic groups are expected to add value by exploring possibilities to further promote public transport and improve civic sense of traffic discipline. Two-day dialogue Among the delegates will be Connie Sorrell, chief of transportation system operations in Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT); Bev Mitchell, vice-president, Transcore; Marthand Nookala, assistant county administrator for public works, Hennepin county (Minneapolis) ; Harshadrai Desai, federal highway administration, US department of transportation, and Gummada Murthy, director of operations, VDOT. Participants will prepare a white paper detailing strategies and commitments, that could be followed up periodically. While the focus is on a multimodal approach to transportation solutions, the summit will also discuss possibilities of an integrated approach in implementation of these solutions. "We could look at options like a commitment from all civic agencies when a new road is laid. For instance, there could be a consensus among agencies that the new road won't be dug up for utility-shifting or other work for, say, five years,'' says Faria. EASY RIDE US experts to offer localized transportation solutions Team to cover various parts of city to understand ground situation Summit to focus on the policy-planning- implementation cycle Civic sense of traffic discipline among focus areas White paper on strategies and commitments in the agenda Hi-tech roads the future? Bangalore: A lot has been said about the state of roads in Bangalore. Potholes, cracked surfaces and the need for constant maintenance are just a few unresolved issues. But when age-old, time-tested methods of laying roads are not working much, can the use of polymer technology prove effective? This was the focus of an interactive seminar on 'Technology Innovation for Roads — Series 1', jointly organized by the Romix group and Karnataka State Highway Improvement Project, on Saturday. The session was attended by BDA, BBMP, NHAI and KRDC engineers and officials. The South African company is associated with a few turnkey road development projects in and around Bangalore. It has developed a stretch in Manyata Tech Park, Hebbal using 'soilfix' technology. According to company representatives, the advantage of polymer technology is that more durable roads can be built faster. Also, these roads require minimal maintenance.__._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Files | Photos | Links | Database | Polls | Members | Calendar Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity * 1 New Members * 1 New FilesVisit Your Group Yahoo! Groups Balance your life by learning how to make smart choices. Curves on Yahoo! A group for women to share & discuss food & weight loss. Dog Groups on Yahoo! Groups Share pictures & stories about dogs. . __,_._,___ DEFANGED.3> ----- Forwarded Message ---- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080907/a743966b/attachment.html From udriresearchfellowship at gmail.com Mon Sep 8 10:51:32 2008 From: udriresearchfellowship at gmail.com (udri researchfellowship) Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2008 10:51:32 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] ANNOUNCEMENT - UDRI research fellowship Message-ID: <801103b50809072221t11bba605x88159828b19686f2@mail.gmail.com> The Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI), announces a new Research Fellowship Programme to provide young scholars, researchers and independent practitioners the opportunity to do research on contemporary urban issues and concerns of Mumbai. This programme is supported by the Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT) grant. Research Fellows shall be given a monthly stipend and professional allowance of Rs. 20000. They shall also be provided with working space and requisite infrastructure at the UDRI studio. In addition UDRI will facilitate discussions with relevant resource persons in the field and assist in the publication of research findings. Support will also be available to the fellows for post-research advocacy. The research period can vary between 6 to18 months depending on the project scope and deliverables. Applicants shall demonstrate the relevance of the proposed research to the city of Mumbai/Mumbai Metropolitan Region and the feasibility of accompanying the research goal within the stipulated period. *Suggested Areas of research:* *Alternative Histories and Conceptualizations:* Research on Alternative histories that encompass the Economy of the City, Governance and Administration, Housing in the City, Actors, organizations and Development Practice, Architecture of the City and New City Concepts conceptualizing Urban infrastructure, the Urban Informal Sector, Urban Peripheries, the Global City Landscapes, etc. *Urban Projects:* Research related to review of one or more important urban project / project type with various details of its development. Suggested themes could include Mill Land Redevelopments, New Townships, Waterfronts Redevelopment, Heritage Conservation, Urban Conservation, Public Space Conservation, Environmental Conservation, Urban Infrastructure, Slum Resettlement and Redevelopment, Special Economic Zones, Multiplexes, Shopping Malls, Call Centres, etc. *Urban Practices:* Research related to elaborations on one or more actor / agency, their contexts, their strategies/tactics, their actions, their impacts etc on the development processes of the city. Suggested topics include practices of Local Government, State, Politicians, Media, Community Based Organizations, NGOs dealing with the Environment, with Poverty and other NGOs, Academia, Financial Institutions, Judiciary, Private Architectural and Planning Practices, Multinational Agencies, etc. *Policy Review:* Research related to elaborations on one or more policy that has significantly shaped the city. Possible topics may include the Regional Plan, Development Plan, Development Control Regulations, Housing Policy, Rent Control Act, Heritage Conservation Guidelines, Urban Land Ceiling Act, Floor Space Index, Slum Resettlement and Redevelopment, Slum Rehabilitation Act, Transferable Development Rights mechanism, CESS, etc. *City Geographies:* Research related to documentation of one or more geographical or institutional area within the city, which among others, could cover areas of City Administration, Public Spaces, Open spaces and Environmentally Sensitive Areas, Industrial City and Old Suburbs, Fort and Native City, Railway Stations and Markets, BEST, WR & CR, Slums, City Peripheries, the New Suburbs, etc. *Dates* Last date for receipt of application | 15.10.08 Tentative date of interview | 15.12.08 *Eligibility Requirements* · Applicants should have a bachelors/masters degree in architecture or planning, and equivalent published work (or) Masters degree in geography or social sciences and equivalent published work · High proficiency in English language and preferably Hindi and Marathi - Should be eligible for leave of absence, if employed. Applications shall be addressed to the Executive Director, UDRI submitted by email at researchfellowship at udri.org with a covering letter, a full CV, two letters of reference and a research proposal of approximately ten pages in A4 size (double spaced). For further details contact: Urban Design Research Institute 43 Dr V.B. Gandhi Marg, Kala Ghoda, Fort, Mumbai 400 023 Tel. +91-22-6573-5773, +91-22-22822924 Fax +91-22-2288-5972 Email: udriresearchfellowship at gmail.com, researchfellowship at udri.org -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/defanged-13 Size: 9767 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080908/566dd5d4/attachment-0001.bin From cheryl.deutsch at gmail.com Mon Sep 8 11:28:28 2008 From: cheryl.deutsch at gmail.com (Cheryl Deutsch) Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2008 11:28:28 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] imported traffic solutions Message-ID: <189301e00809072258p1b24b9f4u6469f6d9f908fc78@mail.gmail.com> Reading the article that Vinay forwarded about a team of transportation experts from the US coming to Bangalore gave me a bit of a chuckle... two of the experts are from my home state of Virginia, including one (Connie Sorrell) who was a transportation administrator in my home town (Richmond) for some time. As someone who spent several years involved in environmental activism and electoral politics specifically fighting for more sensible urban planning in Richmond and the state, I can easily say that there's nothing innovative about Virginia's transportation system. Furthermore, Sorrell is currently responsible for maintenance of the state's *highway*system, and, while I don't know what her role was, per se, the time she was an administrator in Richmond saw the building of yet more ring road/highways to divert traffic away from the city and fuel more big box/McMansion sprawl on historic farmland. It never ceases to amuse me how 'experts' whose transportation systems are highly criticized in the US can come to a place like Bangalore offering "tried and true solutions." Anyway, if anyone does attend, please do report back to the group. Best, Cheryl -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/defanged-303868 Size: 1289 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080908/54f76354/attachment.bin From sks211 at gmail.com Tue Sep 9 12:56:47 2008 From: sks211 at gmail.com (sweety sharma) Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2008 12:56:47 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] International Course on Transportation PLanning and Safety 6th - 13th Dec 2008 Message-ID: Hi, Transportation Research & Injury Prevention Programme (TRIPP), at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India is going to organise its regular International Course on Transportation Planning and Safety from 6-13 December 2008. Detail of the course are available at the following link. http://web.iitd.ac.in/~tripp/course/2008/course08Rframe.htm regards, Sks -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080909/7debb233/attachment.html From anokhip at gmail.com Tue Sep 9 18:01:08 2008 From: anokhip at gmail.com (Anokhi Parikh) Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2008 14:31:08 +0200 Subject: [Urbanstudy] relocation in inner city joburg Message-ID: more on the successful relocation in inner city Johannesburg: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A839316 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080909/e90caae5/attachment.html From outtes at uol.com.br Fri Sep 12 02:09:43 2008 From: outtes at uol.com.br (Joel Outtes) Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:39:43 -0300 Subject: [Urbanstudy] CFP: Non-Northern, Urban, OR Latin American and/or International Institutions, April 2009, Las Vegas Message-ID: <9358C656DD23407AAEDB841A88932F24@JoelOuttes> Dear Colleagues, I would like to put together one or more panel/s for the annual meeting of the www.aag.org to take place in Las Vegas in April 2009 related to one or more of the following subjects: 1. Latin American Cities (I could present on urban gangs in Porto Alegre, Brazil). 2. International Institutions (my work is about the so-called Urban International concentrating on the IFHP- International Federation for Housing and Planning and UCLG- United Cities and Local Governments, ex-IULA- International Union of Local Authorities). 3. Non-Western and/or Non-North Hemispheric contributions to Geographical or Social Theory (in this case I could present on some aspect of the work of the Brazilian Geographer Milton Santos). If you would like to take place in any of these panels, please do let me know by sending an abstract asap and registering to the conference in the website of the www.aag.org sending me your pin number so that I put you in the panel (otherwise the conference organizers will put you elsewhere). With many thanks and all my best wishes, Joel Outtes, DPhil Email: Outtes at uol.com.br -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080911/f772d933/attachment.html From esg at esgindia.org Sat Sep 13 12:01:13 2008 From: esg at esgindia.org (ESGINDIA S2L) Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2008 12:01:13 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Cautionary Signals: R. Rajamani (The Book Review: Green Tapism) Message-ID: <48CB5E31.3030008@esgindia.org> *The Book Review, Volume XXXII Number 8 August 2008 (p. 14-15)* *Cautionary Signals* *R.Rajamani* *GREEN TAPISM: ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT NOTIFICATION, 2006* *By Leo F.Saldanha, Abhayraj Naik, Arpita Joshi, Subramanya Sastry* *Environment Support Group, Bangalore, 2006(70), pp. 184, Rs 250.00* It is unusual for a book which is itself a ‘Review’ to be reviewed by a person with an evident bias in the subject, it is better therefore that the bias is brought up front before readers draw their own conclusions. The reviewer was connected with the formulation of the first notification in 1994 under the Environment Protection Act 1986 dealing with Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) which has been superseded (or at least apparently so) by the EIA notification of 2006. The reviewer is also mentioned in page 103 of the book as one who left the task force set up by the Planning Commission in March 2006 to review the EIA laws, politics, procedures etc as wide consultations were not encouraged. It is a piece of irony or more that the EIA Notification itself was issued in September 2006 before the reconstitution task force had even submitted its report in December 2006! The reviewer has also joined about 159 others to suggest amendments to the notification of September 2006 on which the jury appears to be still out. But there should be no hesitation with even parties with some bias entering a debate concerning the natural resources of this country, the social order and the impact that follows the failure to look at alternatives that cause less or no damage to the environment or that results from the pursuit of wrong developmental projects and processes. The authors of the book argue at length that the notification of 2006 is flawed, not well understood and does not ‘provide a framework for appreciating and minimizing their adverse impacts on environment and society’. If so, there is nothing wrong in the reviewer trying to look at what the book says and its implications. The book begins with an introduction that mention the international treaties and Indian environmental legislation. This list is not exhaustive and would have done well to include other revenue laws for protection of water bodies, the Indian panel code provisions, Factories Act etc. It is not as though the country did not have any laws or self regulation before the British as there were several rulers who were concerned with protecting the natural wealth of the country. Even the village governing institutions like Panchayats ensured the sanctity of pasture lands, cleanliness of the local wells, ponds etc. Environmental jurisprudence does not only rely on the written codes relating to the subject of environment alone but also on cultural practices having social sanctions etc., which are also ingrained in the Supreme Court directions based on the doctrine of ‘Public Trust’. Yes indeed, safeguarding our environment for the present and future generations is not simply a constitutional imperative but an obligation of the state and citizenry of this country. The authors have based their finding on testing the provisions of the EIA notification of 2006 in this perspective. They have expressed concerns about two other measures that are said to be on the anvil for the self certification of environmental clearances and exploitation of natural resources on the recommendations of a national commission. They have also dealt at length with the process leading to this notification that was based on the premise that ‘environmental conservation priorities were to be tolerated only so long as they did not affect the promotion of investment’. They have pointed out the notification was issued without full transparency as well as the participation of groups likely to be affected. Somewhat sarcastically at times they have mentioned the full participation of industrial interests in this exercise. They have quoted from the Govindarajan Committee report on reforming investment approvals and implementation procedures in support, also pointing out that the ministry of environment and forests did mention to the confederation of Indian industry that the reforms of the EIA process had to be consistent with the Govindarajan committee recommendations. One of the recommendations of that committee quoted by the authors shows that in the speeding up of the process of approvals by expert committee on environment, such approvals should be presumed if not given with in specified time periods. It is interesting to note that neither the Committee nor the authors of this book highlighted the need for those who wish to take up such project to spare a thought for environmental issues even as initial technical and financial issues were being sorted out. Invariably, the projects come up for environmental scrutiny after the project formalities have been sewn up, as it were, and then the gun is held at the heads of those who have to gauge the impact. The 1994 notification that provided for prior clearance for site-specific projects has also been diluted in the current notification. The authors have refuted the claim that the notification is based on principles of decentralization and devolution. Thus while categorizing projects in two categories A and B, for clearance by the centre and the states respectively, the MoEF retains powers to clear inter-states and most high impact projects on the other hand the powers of the states to accord clearances is excessive and the local body institutions have been ignored in spite of the devolution of powers under constitutional Amendment Acts 73 and 74. The provision for decisions by the environmental authorities to be unanimous has been challenged by the authors as this may result in silencing healthy debate. The constitution of the Expert Committees in the notification has also come under the scanner for leaving out the NGO sector and social scientists. The authors could have dramatised this by pointing out that to day a Salim Ali or M. Krishnan could not serve on such committees! The worry is also expressed that replacing Several committees with different expertise by one expert committee would result in cursory environmental clearances. Making site visits optional dilutes the provision in the 1994 notification that mandated it. There are no safeguards in the screening process to ensure projects getting categorized as B2 projects requiring no EIA report. No guidelines for the preparation of the ‘pre-feasibility reports’ or conceptual plans have been laid down even though it is known that in the past several reports were found to be fraudulent or comprising irrelevant information. The notification has diluted the principle of ‘scoping’ whereby relevant EIAs come about, as it has made it an exercise to develop mere ‘terms of reference’ based primarily on inputs from the investor. The MoEF has completely copied the checklist prepared for project characteristics from the European Union formats ignoring the diversity of natural resources and people of tropical India! One of the most serious objections of the authors to this notification is its jettisoning the provision in the 1994 notification that sought to make public hearing mandatory before securing environmental clearances and instead making the proviso that the regulatory authority can do without public hearing if ‘it is not possible to conduct the public hearing in a manner which will enable the views of the concerned local persons to be freely expressed’. Another issue considered vexatious is that any person or group who is not a ‘local affected person’ cannot raise concern about a proposed investment in a public hearing. Use of the phrase ‘persons with a plausible stake’ could also give rise to misuse to exclude wider participation. Exclusion of several important projects like expansion of highways and building activities from the public consultation process has also come in for severe criticism. The reduction of the time given for public hearing process, engaging of another public agency to conduct hearing when the State Pollution Control Board does not undertake or completes the hearing without clarity on the selection or guiding principles for such body, lack of clarity of the venues for public hearing –all these issues dilute the process according to the authors. They are also critical of the lack of guarantee in public access to the EIA report. Many instances of unwarranted exemptions, such as railways, manufacture of automobiles, urban projects, metro projects and manufacture of lead acid batteries, etc, from the EIA process have been pointed out as being deleterious. The provision to exclude individual units in an industrial state itself is cleared and those to exclude SEZs and biotech parks by implication have been challenged. It would be difficult, in the limited scope of this review to point out all the flaws and deficiencies so well brought out in the book. It is repetitive at times and a bit prolix too but when the audience is not tuned to the concept of ‘sustainable development ‘it becomes necessary perhaps to be both repetitive and prolix! This book is a ‘must read’ for policy makers engineers, scientists, contractors, independent thinkers and even investors who should be sensitive to India’s environment. The passionate plea at the end of the book for scrapping this notification and reinstating the 1994 notification minus its deficiencies does not seem to have been heard so far amidst the din and noise of the need for growth and investment, but a heavy price will be paid by future generations of Indians if such cautionary signals emanating from publications such as this are ignored. /(R.Rajamani was formerly Secretary, Environment &Forests, Government of India, NewDelhi.)/ [Copies of Green Tapism may be ordered at a special discounted price of Rs. 200/- (for Indian orders only) from Environment Support Group, 105, East End B Main Road, Jayanagar 9^th Block East, Bangalore 560069. Tel: 91-80-22441977/26531339 Voice/Fax: 91-80-26534364. Please make Cheque/DD in favour of Environment Support Group (payable at Bangalore). The Introduction chapter of the book may be browsed at _www.esgindia.org] _ __._,_.___ ._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080913/911248e6/attachment-0001.html From yanivbin at gmail.com Sun Sep 14 20:18:18 2008 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:18:18 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] WB, ADB and GATES Foundation to Launch Land Banks in India.... In-Reply-To: <86b8a7050809140734r1ff80d2dob18ecbfe9ed6bd2a@mail.gmail.com> References: <86b8a7050809140734r1ff80d2dob18ecbfe9ed6bd2a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <86b8a7050809140748u744ffcffhc08dcc0b6b865608@mail.gmail.com> Publication:Economic Times Kolkata; Date:Sep 9, 2008; Section:Front Page; Page Number:1 *Land banks may be the lifeline Gates Foundation, World Bank & ADB To Collaborate On Project Rajat Guha & Gunjan Pradhan Sinha NEW DELHI * THE government is planning to create a database of 22 lakh sq km of land spread across various states which can be used for industrial development in a bid to avoid a Singur-like situation. The land bank has already been identified and the survey work on the project has been initiated. Work on this project is expected to be done in collaboration with the Bill Gates Foundation, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The process of registering land titles would also be speeded up so that transfer of titles can be done fast, as the government plans to do away with the system of stamp paper. The government will also provide conclusive land titles to more than 1,000 million rural people. And, these titles will be guaranteed by the state government to avoid any ownership dispute in future. At present, there is no clarity on land titles in rural areas which leads to disputes and litigations over ownership. "We are working on a very important project for integrating around 4,000 land registrar offices across the country. This will eliminate problems arising due of lack of coordination among area tehsildars while allotting land. Fertile land will not be given for development if there is a semi arid or a single crop land or infertile land available in the vicinity. FIELD DAY 22lakh sq km DEVELOPABLE LAND SPREAD ACROSS STATES Rs5,656cr IS WHAT GOVT WILL SPEND ON THE PROJECT 741million PEOPLE TO GET LAND TITLES Govt to make changes in Land Registration Act "WHEN a land is purchased, a built-in compensation will be charged from the purchaser, which will eliminate the need of stamp paper and save time," Department of Land Resources secretary (ministry of rural development) Rita Sinha told ET. To effect such changes the government will make significant amendments in the Land Registration Act and the Transfer of Property Act. The Registration Act of 1908 makes registration of land deeds compulsory but not mutation of titles. Therefore, lack of state guarantee of title leads to unclear tiles inviting land disputes. A large chunk of developable land is locked up in litigation across the country. Government officials claim that a large part of the controversy around Tata's Nano project could be averted if alternative barren stretches of land around Singur could be given for industrial development. According to the plan, the Centre, states and private players would take up land survey, which itself is a very time consuming and long-drawn process. Eventually, maps will be developed for each state, stating soil codes, which will be updated regularly. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080914/f96f03d1/attachment.html From philippa_abbott at hotmail.com Tue Sep 16 11:48:40 2008 From: philippa_abbott at hotmail.com (Philippa Abbott) Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:18:40 +0000 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Redesign of Cycle Rickshaw Message-ID: Hello, Kate, Jess and I are in the process of redesigning the Indian delivery cycle rickshaws as our NID systems design project in Ahmedabad. The objective is lowering human exertion by at least 30% and lower maintenance whilst keeping prototyping cost under re.5000; the outcome retail price is also to be under re.5000(around $125). Simultaneously providing a micro-credit loan scheme so the riders can own their own rickshaw rather than renting from a middle man. At the moment the riders pay 165% of the cost to buy annually. This would mean they could pay the same amount to pay back the loan as they were paying in rent and own the bike in 9 months. This would create a saving of over Re.100 000 for a standard life of work (18years). This is a massive difference in quality of life and self empowerment. We have created a blog named Re-cycle wallah to document the design process and our reflection upon it. Attached is the blog which shall map the process. http://recyclewallah.edublogs.org/ Have a look and please add any comments, questions, criticisms or pertinent information. We would be grateful to hear it, the blog will be updated daily over the next three weeks....so keep an eye on it. any thoughts would be great. Thanks! _________________________________________________________________ Win a Hotmail Go-Kart to race at Bathurst. Enter today! http://www.livelife.ninemsn.com.au/compIntro.aspx?compId=4602 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080916/83bea0b2/attachment.html From philippa_abbott at hotmail.com Tue Sep 16 11:48:40 2008 From: philippa_abbott at hotmail.com (Philippa Abbott) Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:18:40 +0000 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Redesign of Cycle Rickshaw Message-ID: Hello, Kate, Jess and I are in the process of redesigning the Indian delivery cycle rickshaws as our NID systems design project in Ahmedabad. The objective is lowering human exertion by at least 30% and lower maintenance whilst keeping prototyping cost under re.5000; the outcome retail price is also to be under re.5000(around $125). Simultaneously providing a micro-credit loan scheme so the riders can own their own rickshaw rather than renting from a middle man. At the moment the riders pay 165% of the cost to buy annually. This would mean they could pay the same amount to pay back the loan as they were paying in rent and own the bike in 9 months. This would create a saving of over Re.100 000 for a standard life of work (18years). This is a massive difference in quality of life and self empowerment. We have created a blog named Re-cycle wallah to document the design process and our reflection upon it. Attached is the blog which shall map the process. http://recyclewallah.edublogs.org/ Have a look and please add any comments, questions, criticisms or pertinent information. We would be grateful to hear it, the blog will be updated daily over the next three weeks....so keep an eye on it. any thoughts would be great. Thanks! _________________________________________________________________ Win a Hotmail Go-Kart to race at Bathurst. Enter today! http://www.livelife.ninemsn.com.au/compIntro.aspx?compId=4602 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080916/7cfa05f8/attachment.html From yanivbin at gmail.com Tue Sep 16 20:27:00 2008 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:27:00 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] According to Penalosa, democracy is not a political process. It embodies itself in the urban development agenda. In-Reply-To: <-2248849994759299404@unknownmsgid> References: <-2248849994759299404@unknownmsgid> Message-ID: <86b8a7050809160757r18c0629cra7d3bbf8fc38d6a7@mail.gmail.com> Enrique Penalosa to speak at seminar on urban development http://www.thenews.com.pk/images/shim.gif http://www.thenews.com.pk/images/shim.gif http://www.thenews.com.pk/images/shim.gif By our correspondent 9/16/2008 Karachi With a fast-growing population and increasing pace of urbanisation, cities in Pakistan are facing mounting problems related to mobility and public transport. Confronted with similar challenges, many cities around the world are re-thinking 'traditional' approaches to urban transport by emphasising different priorities and approaches. The City District Government Karachi (CDGK) in collaboration with the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI), a programme of the Clinton Foundation, and SHEHRI-Citizens for a Better Environment (Shehri-CBE), has organised a seminar on "Sustainable Urban Development & Mobility". The objective of this seminar is to provide key stakeholders an opportunity to hear about a different and more socially inclusive and efficient urban vision, which would improve the quality of life and make our cities more competitive. The main speaker will be Enrique Penalosa, a world renowned urban strategist and former mayor of Bogota, Colombia. During his tenure as Mayor, the city of 7 million underwent tremendous change and led to development of the (now) world famous TransMillenio Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS). Penalosa has been featured in The New York Times, Herald Tribune, PBS Television, BBC and many others and has advised cities throughout the world such as Cape Town, Denver, Berkeley, Seattle, Melbourne, Sao Paulo amongst others. Penalosa will speak on "Sustainable Urban Development and Transportation". Penalosa argues that cities in developing countries - if they continue on their current trajectory of development - will take another century-and-a-half to reach the sophistication of cities in the West. When elected mayor, Pensalosa took action against car owners who parked their vehicles on green belts. He reduced the width of roads in the city centre and, in turn, increased the width of sidewalks. He rejected a project proposal from JICA to build a multibillion-dollar rapid mass-transit system and instead spent a fraction of the amount in providing dedicated bus lanes. He introduced TransMillenio, a bus rapid transit system based on the one developed by Jamie Lerner in the Brazilian city of Curitiba. He stopped all money being spent on roads for cars, and instead spent it on schools, museums, developing public parks and nearly 300 km of pedestrian and cycle promenades. Penalosa is of the view that money spent on automobile infrastructure is money wasted. Chief Minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, has allocated nearly a quarter of a billion rupees for the feasibility study of an overhead expressway along Lahore's Ferozepur Road. The CDA in Islamabad just launched the Rs2.3 billion Zero Point Interchange Project and the CDGK is also looking at at least two overhead automobile expressways. This is in the face of the fact that a disproportionately small number of people actually own and drive cars. The automobile elite have a throttle grip on our urban development agenda. According to Penalosa, democracy is not a political process. It embodies itself in the urban development agenda. If you see billions of rupees being spent on a road that doesn't have proper sidewalks, you don't have democracy: you have an urban automobile elite telling you a man in a car is more important than a man on a bicycle. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080916/169d0546/attachment-0001.html From yanivbin at gmail.com Tue Sep 16 22:30:46 2008 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:30:46 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] New political parties look to tap hip, urban, middle-class voters Message-ID: <86b8a7050809161000xe10b7f2t86bf40eecf1b3a07@mail.gmail.com> *New political parties look to tap hip, urban, middle-class voters* They are portraying themselves as a political detergent needed to cleanse India of corruption, red tape Krishnamurthy Ramasubbu http://www.livemint.com/2008/09/15215524/New-political-parties-look-to.html New Delhi: The stereotypical middle-class urban voter is part cynic, part dreamer. She or He despises politicians and caste-based politics, and wishes Mumbai could be a Shanghai. Now, some newly formed political groups are hoping to appeal to this city stereotype by portraying themselves as a sort of political detergent needed to cleanse India of corruption and bureaucratic red tape that is at the top of most middle class grouse lists, and promote meritocracy.[image: New role: Management guru and author Shiv Khera is president of the Bharatiya Rashtravadi Samanata Party. He had fought and lost the election to Parliament in 2004 as an independent candidate. Raj K Raj / HT]New role: Management guru and author Shiv Khera is president of the Bharatiya Rashtravadi Samanata Party. He had fought and lost the election to Parliament in 2004 as an independent candidate. Raj K Raj / HT With names such as Professionals Party of India and Jago (Wake Up) Party, they may not be serious contenders for political power, at least as yet, but their emergence before a string of state polls and next year's general election suggests that middle-class concerns and aspirations will have a vent. India has more than 900 registered political parties that cut across the ideological spectrum from the left to right. These urban-centric parties, however, refuse to identify themselves in the ideological spectrum; they would rather call themselves nationalist. Take the Bharatiya Rashtravadi Samanata Party, or BRSP, whose name translates as Indian Nationalist Equality Party. The party's president is motivational speaker, management guru and author Shiv Khera, who has written books such as *You Can Win*. "All labels are misnomers. You could probably call us nationalist," says Khera, who fought and lost the election to parliament from the South Delhi constituency in 2004 as an independent candidate. His party plans to contest state assembly elections in Delhi and Rajasthan this year. State elections will also be held in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram as well as Jammu and Kashmir before the year's end, leading up to parliamentary elections that are due to take place by May. Estimates of India's middle class vary. Households with disposable incomes between Rs2 lakh and Rs10 lakh a year comprise about 50 million people, roughly 5% of the population, consultant *McKinsey and Co.* said in a report last year. By 2025 a continuing rise in personal incomes will enlarge the middle class to about 583 million people, or 41% of the population, it said. "The growth that has pulled millions of people out of poverty is also building a huge middle class that will be concentrated in India's urban areas," McKinsey said. Getting middle-class voters to the polling booths is one of the prime concerns of the urban-centric parties. "It is widely believed that a large segment of the middle class does not, or is not, able to vote," says R.V. Krishnan, Pune-based entrepreneur and founder of Professionals Party of India (PPI), whose members include engineers and finance and software professionals. "This is due to a variety of causes, including (the perception that) 'no one is worth voting for'." "If the middle class can be persuaded to vote, and you give them candidates worth voting for, there are enough numbers in the middle class to get a majority in Parliament. PPI has done the math," Krishnan said. Both Jago Party and the BRSP are in search of "good" and "clean" candidates to field in the elections, said Jago secretary Denson Joseph. And to get the voters to the polling booths, Jago promises Rs600 per month as a financial incentive to all those who cast their ballots. PPI's manifesto promises a more powerful attraction—the abolishment of personal income tax. "We are targeting youngsters and educated people... They are the ones who understand our ideology immediately," said Jago Party president Deepak Mittal. "We are nationalist and very modern, we are against moral policing, people can do whatever they want including gambling." But his partyalso calls for strict law enforcement and advocates capital punishment. Lok Satta, or People's Power, is a party formed in 2006 by Jayaprakash Narayan, a physician by training who went into the Indian Administrative Service, in which he spent 16 years.It is widely believed that a large segment of the middle class does not, or is not,able to vote. R.V. Krishnan Professionals Party of India His party's website says it wants to establish a "new political culture which will place the citizen at the centre ofgovernance". It promises to eliminate "all forms of discrimination by birth" and ensure "equal opportunities for vertical mobility to all sections of society, irrespective of caste, ethnicity, religion or gender". Opposition to caste-based politics that promotes government job quotas and seat reservations in educational institutions is a factor that unites the urban-centric political parties. For some who claim to have lost out because of reservations, it can be a significant appeal. "I am attracted to Jago Party because they have an anti-reservation stance," says Aditya Bhardwaj, a student of a correspondence course and an active member of the party. "I scored 77% (in school) but have not been able to gain admission into any regular college because of reservations." Whatever the appeal, some analysts say it will be difficult for these parties to make a political impact. "The middle class is extremely difficult to penetrate since it is very much aware. To them, branding and brand equity are important. They will not waste their votes by voting for parties that do not have a chance of winning," says Delhi-based political analyst and *Mint *columnist G.V.L. Narasimha Rao. "Lok Satta, for example, has been around for about two years now. Jago Party is talking a lot of sense but there are no takers," he said, noting that Telugu movie star Chiranjeevi's party, Praja Rajyam, had taken off in a big way without spelling out a detailed agenda. "Getting middle-class votes on agenda is building castles in the air." Still, even mainstream political parties, traditionally focused on rural India that is home to two-thirds of the country's population, have begun to court the urban voter. *Mint had reported in June that the process of delimiting parliamentary seats—which means redrawing constituencies on the basis of population—has increased the importance of urban areas by increasing their share of seats.* *A senior member of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, said on condition of anonymity that the party's success in the Karnataka assembly elections in May was possible because of its focus on urbanareas.* *"We designed a campaign specific to cities and had a vision document for each city," he said. "We anyway have a strong worker base in urban areas. All this helped us in winning theelections."* *The lead urban specialist of the World Bank in India, Richard Clifford, says city-specific issues are receiving better attention from the government.* *"Attitudes are changing because urban areas are critical for the government's growth targets. Nearly 65% of India's gross domestic product comes from urban areas," he says.* *"Focus on urban areas will enable governments to reap the benefits of the agglomeration economy. Urban poverty, too, is drawing attention as it creates issues related to skills development," Clifford added.* *With increased investment in urban amenities by the government, the size of this electorate—the urban middle class—is only expected to grow. * *"The per capita plan investment in the urban sector is only 0.6% to 0.7%," Union urban development secretary M. Ramachandran says. "There should be more investment, especially in drinking water, solid waste management and sewerage facilities. About Rs8 trillion is required to provide these facilities in 5,161 cities and towns across the country."* *Chennai-based political analyst Krishna Ananth says the phenomenon of fledgeling city-based political parties appealing for votes from a high moral ground amounts to "teflon patriotism".* *He links the trend to the higher profile acquired by the middle class in recent years as the pursuit of economic reforms launched in 1991 boosted urban incomes.* *"Liberalization has created some space for them and today there is definitely a visible middle-class culture," Ananth adds* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080916/fc16c82f/attachment.html From cugambetta at yahoo.com Wed Sep 17 06:43:15 2008 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:13:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] 'infrastructure' etymology Message-ID: <996340.87874.qm@web56807.mail.re3.yahoo.com> thought people on the list might appreciate this. an american engineer's consideration of the etymology of infrastructure in 1984. interesting to see that its origins were in military and economic arenas, and that its association with physical, hard matter is more recent (it was recent in 1984) curt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: batt_infrastructure.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 703271 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080916/4fe65339/attachment-0001.pdf From nithyas at gmail.com Wed Sep 17 09:01:54 2008 From: nithyas at gmail.com (Nithya Sambasivan) Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:01:54 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] 'infrastructure' etymology In-Reply-To: <996340.87874.qm@web56807.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <996340.87874.qm@web56807.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Along the same lines, Susan LEigh Star's Ethnography of Infrastructure offers an anthropological perspective on infrastructure, with multiple dimensions http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/classes/readings/Star-EthnographyInfrastructure-ABS.pdf --nithya On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 6:43 AM, Curt Gambetta wrote: > thought people on the list might appreciate this. an american engineer's > consideration of the etymology of infrastructure in 1984. interesting to see > that its origins were in military and economic arenas, and that its > association with physical, hard matter is more recent (it was recent in > 1984) > > curt > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Urbanstudygroup mailing list > Urban Study Group: Reading the South Asian City > > To subscribe or browse the Urban Study Group archives, please visit > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/urbanstudygroup > > -- PhD student Human Computer Interaction | Information and Computer Sciences University of California, Irvine http://www.ics.uci.edu/~nsambasi -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080917/4ee7be43/attachment.html From carol.upadhya at gmail.com Wed Sep 17 12:12:49 2008 From: carol.upadhya at gmail.com (Carol Upadhya) Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:12:49 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] 'infrastructure' etymology In-Reply-To: References: <996340.87874.qm@web56807.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4b84e4260809162342w4980b8f2n51f7fbb18b511fa2@mail.gmail.com> Thanks Curt and Nithya for these, v interesting esp since I have been trying to track the 'infrastructure' debate in Bangalore. Like other non-words such as 'development', it has become a mantra that justifies so many things without ever needing to explain itself to the public, which is supposed to automatically understand what it means. Carol On 9/17/08, Nithya Sambasivan wrote: > > Along the same lines, Susan LEigh Star's Ethnography of Infrastructure > offers an anthropological perspective on infrastructure, with multiple > dimensions > http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/classes/readings/Star-EthnographyInfrastructure-ABS.pdf > > --nithya > > On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 6:43 AM, Curt Gambetta > wrote: > >> thought people on the list might appreciate this. an american engineer's >> consideration of the etymology of infrastructure in 1984. interesting to see >> that its origins were in military and economic arenas, and that its >> association with physical, hard matter is more recent (it was recent in >> 1984) >> >> curt >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Urbanstudygroup mailing list >> Urban Study Group: Reading the South Asian City >> >> To subscribe or browse the Urban Study Group archives, please visit >> https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/urbanstudygroup >> >> > > > -- > PhD student > Human Computer Interaction | Information and Computer Sciences > University of California, Irvine > http://www.ics.uci.edu/~nsambasi > > > _______________________________________________ > Urbanstudygroup mailing list > Urban Study Group: Reading the South Asian City > > To subscribe or browse the Urban Study Group archives, please visit > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/urbanstudygroup > > -- Dr. Carol Upadhya Fellow, School of Social Sciences National Institute of Advanced Studies Indian Institute of Science Campus Bangalore 560012 India office: +91 80 2218 5000/ 5141 (ext) cell: +91(0) 97408 50141 carol at nias.iisc.ernet.in carol.upadhya at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080917/7540f285/attachment.html From yanivbin at gmail.com Wed Sep 17 19:17:13 2008 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:17:13 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] CoI on definition of Infrastructure Message-ID: <86b8a7050809170647o2bb53889i932e7403d74f198b@mail.gmail.com> Interesting Infrastructure defintions The Committee on Infrastructure of the Planning commission prepared a five page note in April 08. There is a table at the end -- Annex I with a decision by the Empowered Sub-Committee of Committee on Infrastructure infrastructure.gov.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080917/79588c68/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: definition of infra draft concept note.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 234280 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080917/79588c68/attachment-0001.pdf From elkamath at yahoo.com Thu Sep 18 20:01:58 2008 From: elkamath at yahoo.com (lalitha kamath) Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:31:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Urbanstudy] the rating kinds take a battering Message-ID: <193190.39263.qm@web53606.mail.re2.yahoo.com> How the financial crisis has affected rural New South Wales shire councils and the role of the credit rating agencies. This compels a harder look at the doings of the ratings kings in Indian cities... The rating kings take a battering Ruth Williams September 6, 2008 http://business.theage.com.au/business/the-rating-kings-take-a-battering-20080905-4asw.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2 Business Day The Age Australia THEY are staid, respected, low-profile institutions. At least they were until very recently. Their services are both expensive and indispensable. They have a profound influence on investment markets around the world, and therefore, a profound influence on the wealth or otherwise of investors big and small. And many people believe they were a key contributor to what we now know as the subprime crisis. They are credit rating agencies. Globally, there are three of note: Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investors Service, and Fitch Ratings. And over the past eight weeks, their reputation has taken a battering. They have been accused of conflicts of interest and even incompetence. They are being sued in the US and slapped with extra layers of regulation in the European Union. They are being blamed, in part, for events that have bankrupted companies, pushed mortgage holders out of their homes, and that have rocked financial markets worldwide. And here in Australia they are implicated in losses suffered by some of the smallest and least financially sophisticated institutional investors in the country, including rural shire councils. It is all a giant mess that has "significantly undermined" the credibility of the rating agencies, according to Melbourne University corporate law expert Ian Ramsay. And, some believe, it may lead to unprecedented legal action in Australia. The Age has revealed the extent of losses councils have suffered around Australia, which invested millions in complex financial instruments known as "collateralised debt obligations" (CDOs) that were sold to them by Grange Securities, since bought by Lehman Brothers. What is happening in rural NSW, and in other states, is a microcosm of events taking place around the world. Understand what happened there and you understand the root of the subprime crisis, and how the credit rating agencies were the conduit for the whole thing — how they facilitated it; how they let it happen. It all begins with a set of guidelines. Councils in NSW, as with many institutions, are restricted in how they can invest surplus money. Property is OK. Deposits with banks, credit unions or building societies are OK. And, crucially, any securities rated at least "A" by S&P, Fitch or Moody's are rolled-gold, guideline-approved OK. So when broker Grange Securities came courting in late 2006 with Federation, a form of CDO, many rural councils saw no reason not to invest. It was, according to Grange, "linked to the performance" of a portfolio of 40 bonds backed by "diversified US residential mortgage pools" — bonds that were rated AA- or A by S&P. What does this mean? Basic, "vanilla" CDOs consist of a pool of debt securities, or bonds, that are split up into securities. The bonds, and therefore ultimately the CDOs, can be backed by income flowing from corporate loans, or small business loans, or mortgages. They are then divided into different classes, or "tranches", based on how well protected the yield is. If the loans default, it is the lowest, least-protected tranche — the tranche with the highest yield — that is impacted first. The damage then moves up the ladder of tranches. Then things get more complicated. Somewhere along the way, someone created a "synthetic" CDO, which was cheaper and easier to put together and sell. In effect, synthetic CDOs involve transferring the risk of defaults from one CDO to another party. They are complex derivative instruments that, fuelled by plentiful mortgages in the booming US property market, became wildly popular in the mid-noughties. The problem was that much of it was based on puffery and misinformation — on loans given to people who simply could not afford to buy a house. "Subprime" once referred to a class of dodgy mortgages. Now it refers to the financial pain that has flowed from the inability of those mortgage holders to pay back their loans. It has spread well beyond "subprime" mortgages to the complex financial instruments created on the back of those mortgages. It has spread to rural Australia, where councils sank money into products they did not understand. So, where do the credit rating agencies come into it? Strictly speaking, the role of these agencies is to judge the risk that an entity — such as a security or bond — will default on its debt obligations. The agencies facilitate the pricing of risk. "AAA" means the entity has a negligible chance of defaulting. "BB" or "C" means it has a greater chance. They are priced accordingly — the greater the risk, the greater the return. This is an imperfect measurement of an entity's value, a fact the agencies have not tried to hide. "The rating agencies have always sought to clarify their role by stating their ratings only measure credit quality," the Bank for International Settlements notes. "They state that a credit rating is not intended to capture the risk of a decline in market value or liquidity of the rated instrument, nor should it be considered an investment recommendation. However, some investors do not seem to understand this point or simply ignore it." The rise of CDOs and other structured finance products was a boon to the agencies. They started rating CDOs in the late 1990s and synthetic CDOs in the early 2000s. These products were complex, even baffling, to unsophisticated investors. The agencies made these incomprehensible products sellable, and made themselves indispensable, by assigning them ratings. A "credit default swap" is hard to understand. Triple-A? Everyone understands what that means. Or at least they thought they did. "The (instruments) were so lacking in transparency, you needed thousands of pages of documentation to explain them," says Rob Ferguson, executive chairman of litigation funders IMF. "They needed a simple thing to whack on the front cover." But the central question is whether the ratings assigned to the CDOs properly reflected the risk involved; did they do what they were supposed to do? Alan Laubsch, from risk management group RiskMetrics Labs Asia, says they didn't for a relatively simple reason — the risk of defaults was calculated on "recently observed" historical data, in which this year's drop in US housing prices, and the corresponding drop in value of securities and derivatives linked to the US housing market, was unimaginable. "When CDOs became popular, every rating agency came up with some very simplistic models to figure out what the chance of default on these was," Laubsch says. "The US housing market didn't drop since the Great Depression. So, looking at historical data, it was inconceivable what happened. The problem with any analysis which looks at things on a historical data basis, is that history doesn't always repeat itself." But the methodology wasn't the only problem — it was the entire business model. An entity is only rated if it pays the credit rating agencies to rate it, building into the model what the European Union has described as an "inherent" conflict of interest. As regulators in the US have uncovered, it was common for the agencies to modify their calculations without explanation, the result of which may have been to grant clients better ratings on certain securities. And analysts, the supposedly independent calculators of the ratings, were involved in client discussions on fees and market share. A report on the three major rating agencies, handed down by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in July, highlights all these issues and more (while never naming which agency it is referring to). It highlights staff shortages, painting a picture of institutions struggling to cope with the boom in CDO-related work. And it quotes from internal emails — "it could be structured by cows and we would rate it" — that reveal the goings-on inside these supposed bastions of corporate impartiality. In one email, written in mid-December 2006, an agency analyst refers to the CDO market as "an even bigger monster". "Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters. ;o)." Sadly for the analyst in question, this was not to be. When Grange was selling Federation in late 2006, around the time that analyst wrote that email, an "A" rating granted by the respected S&P counted for a lot. So much, in fact, that even six months later, when things had turned nasty in the US home market, Grange's new parent Lehman Brothers could always point to the fact that the now-tarnished CDOs were high-rated assets. "Some commentaries have sought to lump all grades of CDOs … in a single basket," Lehman told clients in a briefing note in July 2007, according to documents lodged with the NSW Federal Court this week. "This approach is the same as taking a triple-C rated corporate bond and triple-A rated (government) bond and saying the risk and characteristics of both bonds are the same … it is not valid to take the vast majority of CDOs that (Lehman) has issued at AA- rating or better … and say they are subject to similar risks to the very low-grade CDOs that invested primarily in subprime mortgages." A bit over a year later, that advice has wound up in a revised statement of claim lodged this week by Wingecarribee Shire Council, which says it lost millions on the CDOs in question. The council is suing Lehman Brothers, the first council to make such a move. Others are considering similar action. And of course, NSW shire councils weren't the only ones to glean confidence from the bestowal of shiny ratings on rickety securities. "This is something that has happened not just in Australia, but throughout Asia and the world," Laubsch says. A month ago, the European Union admitted its own legislation led to "excessive reliance" by banks and financial institutions on credit ratings. And in a high-profile Australian example, National Australia Bank said it was likely to write off 90% of the value of its US mortgage-backed investments — worth more than $1 billion — all of which had AAA ratings. In unveiling the loss, NAB chief John Stewart was candid about the bank's internal failings, saying the securities had passed internal risk checks. But again and again, he pointed out the fact that the now near-worthless securities had been given AAA ratings. "AAA means they have a one in 10,000 chance of default," he told reporters. It was clear, he added, that the rating agencies that had assigned the CDOs AAA status had "let the whole industry down". "(They) didn't do a thorough job." By the time NAB and Stewart 'fessed up, the house of cards had faltered and then some. Worldwide, the agencies are under attack for their role in the subprime mess. The International Organisation of Securities Commissions, which describes itself as "the leading international policy forum for securities regulators", is scrutinising the rating agencies' performance against their own codes of conduct, and will report its findings later this month. The Financial Stability Forum, a group comprised of representatives from reserve banks, treasury departments and regulators from 11 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, is also looking at the sector. The EU, in effect, blames the agencies for subprime, acknowledging that it was "generally accepted" that the agencies underestimated the credit risk of structured credit products (like CDOs), and that their ratings "failed to reflect early enough" the worsening market conditions. It concluded that the rating agencies shared "a large responsibility for the current market turmoil". They aren't the only ones, of course. A slew of lawsuits have begun in the US against investment banks like Citi and Merrill Lynch, against hedge fund operators, home loan lenders, and others. The rating agencies are being sued by pension funds and, in a move announced a few weeks ago, by the State of Connecticut. This lawsuit, while not directly connected to the subprime fallout, has only added to their recent reputational damage. "We are holding the credit rating agencies accountable for a secret Wall Street tax on Main Street — millions of dollars illegally exacted from Connecticut taxpayers," said headline-friendly Connecticut Attorney-General Richard Blumenthal. The agencies have pledged to fight the claims, which they say are without merit. As Wingecarribee prepares its case against Lehman, talk is building of possible legal action in Australia against the credit rating agencies. Such a move is fraught with problems. IMF is not looking at it and, Ferguson says, "they seem a very difficult group to challenge". Why? After Enron collapsed, US investors tried suing the agencies for taking too long to downgrade Enron corporate debt. In a landmark decision, the judge ruled the agencies were expressing opinions, and so were protected under freedom of speech laws. Nonetheless, several bodies in the US are pressing on. And law company Slater & Gordon, which says it has been approached by a "large number" of investors burned by CDOs, is looking at whether there is a case for an Australian lawsuit against the agencies. Senior associate Ben Phi believes some of the councils may have "valuable claims" against rating agencies, "depending on their particular circumstances". "In order to bring a claim against a credit rating agency, it would be necessary to show that the credit report was misleading, and that the investor reasonably relied on that report when deciding to invest," Phi says. "We are aware that a number of local councils are required to invest in products that carry a minimum credit rating, and they in particular may have a valuable claim against a ratings agency." NAB has not ruled out legal action. When asked about the prospect, it said it was looking at a "range of options" on its battered CDO portfolio. "(We) will continue to monitor the market and regulatory responses to recent financial market conditions," the bank said. In Australia, that "regulatory response" includes a joint review of the agencies by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and Treasury. A crucial aspect of the review will be the question of licensing — whether the financial services licence exemption granted to rating agencies is, in the words of Corporate Law Minister Nick Sherry, "still current or justified". Last month, at an Investment and Financial Services Association conference on the Gold Coast, ASIC commissioner Belinda Gibson acknowledged the "questions raised" about the quality of the ratings processes, identifying the agencies as one of ASIC's current priorities. "There is a wider market issue about the extent to which investors rely on the ratings agencies for their investment decisions, and whether the level of diligence and discussion undertaken by the agencies warrants this reliance," Ms Gibson said. The Age believes that ASIC and Treasury will release a consultation paper within weeks, and the final report is due by the end of the year. The agencies have pledged to co-operate. "We want to provide as much transparency as possible with regard to Moody's policies and practices," Moody's said in response to the ASIC/Treasury review. "Moody's will co-operate fully with any review initiated by the Government." The services of S&P, Moody's, and Fitch are believed to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars — up to $1 million, in fact, to rate a complex, high-profile issue. S&P, which has the biggest presence in Australia, is owned by the McGraw-Hill group of companies, which made $US1 billion ($A1.2 billion) in net income in 2007. S&P has about 130 employees in Australia, or did at the end of last year. According to its latest financial statements, lodged with ASIC, S&P Australia made $5.4 million in profit in the year to December 2007 — a huge fall from the $13.1 million recorded in 2006. This drop in profit and revenue it attributed to "the turmoil in global financial markets", despite the fact that its parent company, the global S&P group, managed to raise operating income by 13% over the same period, with operating profit of $US1.3 billion. Fitch Group, which is owned by French company Fimalac, recorded an 18% drop in profit in the six months to March 31, to €79.2 million ($A137 million). Fitch Australia, according to financial statements lodged with ASIC, had just 23 staff at September 30, 2006, and lost $2.23 million in the nine months to September 30, 2006 (the latest information available). Moody's Investment Services is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and generated $US1.1 billion in operating income last year. It generates 60% of its business in the US, and classifies Asia Pacific as an "emerging market". It has about 60 "ratings professionals" in Australia. Two years ago, few questioned the accuracy of the ratings processes the agencies used. Professor Ramsay recalls attending an International Organisation of Securities Commissions conference in 2005 where the issue of conflicts of interest within credit rating agencies was raised. "It wasn't such a big issue," Prof Ramsay says. "It seems like a generation ago now." Now, everything is being questioned. Among the other faults uncovered in the SEC report, one crucial failing was the area of "surveillance" — the tracking of a security after it is granted that initial rating. Surveillance was poorly documented and two of the agencies had no formal procedures in place. Securities given high ratings were allowed to disintegrate before being downgraded — the NSW Cole Commission noted that some Grange Securities CDOs were still rated "A" by S&P, even when they were worth just 15% of their original value. Laubsch says the agencies were slow to respond to what was "clear deterioration" in the subprime market. They did not start the bulk of their subprime ratings downgrade until mid-July 2007, despite clear warning signs (not least the implosion of the two Bear Stearns subprime hedge funds in May). The agencies have since moved to shore up their processes and rehabilitate the thing on which their whole business model depends: their reputations. "We haven't waited for the (ASIC/Treasury) review to take steps that we believe will help improve our credit ratings process," says John Bailey, managing director of S&P in Australia and New Zealand. Bailey says that in February, S&P announced action to "further strengthen" its credit ratings process, enhance its analytics and provide more transparency to the market. Moody's released an update last month on measures that it says settle the concerns expressed by "both the private and public sectors", including improving surveillance, separating non-rating and rating activities to prevent conflicts of interest, and improving transparency. Fitch did not respond to questions. Perhaps the agencies' best defence, in the end, is the argument that investors only have themselves to blame if they rely too much on ratings. They are, after all, just that: credit ratings. They are not recommendations to buy or sell. They are not audited opinions of a company's financial soundness. "I don't think it's as simple as blaming the credit rating agencies," Laubsch says. "We have to learn to ask, 'if there's extra return, where is the risk?' And don't rely on any single information source; get as many perspectives as possible." Westpac chief executive Gail Kelly has not commented on the woes afflicting Westpac's Melbourne-based competitor, NAB. But late last month, she made a not so subtle reference to the situation. Kelly produced a note from November 2006 recording a discussion among Westpac executives about CDOs, and whether the bank should invest in them. Among the factors considered was Westpac's lack of knowledge about CDOs, and the reliance on rating agencies that would result. Part of the discussion went: "Product knowledge is important. Some of the asset classes mentioned are not ones where we have a natural competitive advantage. Relying on the rating agencies is one of the mistakes we've made in the past, where the minimum rating of A- was not the protection we thought it was." As Kelly observed, the investments were not made. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080918/0f1d3a1b/attachment-0001.html From esg at esgindia.org Fri Sep 19 22:27:46 2008 From: esg at esgindia.org (ESGINDIA S2L) Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 22:27:46 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Hopes Dashed as High Court Appointed Committee to review Road Widening turns people-unfriendly Message-ID: <48D3DA0A.9050909@esgindia.org> *PRESS RELEASE**: Bangalore: 19 September 2008* *Hopes Dashed as **High Court Appointed Committee to review Road Widening turns people-unfriendly* *Path breaking judgment to resolve complex issues of road widening:* Two months ago, we applauded a path breaking judgment by Justice Mr. Gopalagowda and Justice Mr. Ravi Malimath constituting the Division Bench of the Hon'ble High Court of Karnataka in a PIL filed by Environment Support Group and ors. (WP No. 7107/2008) questioning the legality of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike's (BBMP) mega project to widen 91 roads and a similar effort by Bangalore Metro project in the city. The Hon'ble Court favourably considered our arguments that BBMP and other agencies were carrying out such schemes in total disregard of public opinion, legal procedures, and public rationale. Emphasizing that such projects can only be undertaken after addressing the concerns of the larger public and in full conformance with the law, the Court in its interim direction of 28 June 2008 held that "suggestions made and its acceptance by all the parties before the court and the learned Advocate General and other counsel is a welcome sign with a view to find out workable solution to redress the public interest. ..... An ideal and balanced view is therefore necessary in a matter of this nature." To ensure that the process of addressing all concerns transparently and with full public accountability was realised, the Hon'ble Court constituted a committee of six experts to assist by Mr. Yellappa Reddy, former Environment Secretary, in reviewing the entire programme of road widening. Reflecting a spirit of collaboration and openness in dealing with these matters, the members were drawn in equal numbers on the basis of suggestions made by the Petitioners and Respondents. The Court defined the terms of reference for this Committee as being "*duty bound to take into consideration the views of the public before any developmental works is to be undertaken keeping in view the public interest." *The mandate of the Committee was to ensure that "suggestions, if any, by the public would necessarily have to be considered, *provided they are in true public interest, within the realm of law and in furtherance of sustainable developmental works to be carried on by the Statutory Authorities." *To ensure that there would not be any prevarication or bias, the Court ordered that the "Committee... would pass such orders as are necessary by taking into consideration all the suggestions that may be offered by the above newly added Members.... *keeping in mind the various legal grounds urged in the Petition and also to see that the sustainable developmental works are carried out to widen the roads in the City in the larger interest of the public*." (emphasis supplied) The High Court issued the following directions as an interim measure: * "We refer this matter to the Karnataka High court Legal Aid Committee headed by its President, Justice K. L. Manjunath for resolving the issues that are raised by hearing all the parties from time to time and monitor the sustainable developmental works to be executed by the 6^th respondent" (BBMP). * "/The Committee would hear the parties......to determine the issues regarding the widening of roads, the felling of trees and also trees replanting in the City as required under Section 8 (5) of the Karnataka Preservation of Tree Act, 1976/." (emphasis supplied) * "The persons who are included in the Committee headed by Mr. Yellappa Reddy shall offer suggestions to assist it in the decision making process to maintain ecology and environment in the urban area where the widening of road work will be executed." * "*The parties are at liberty to request the Committee for an interim arrangement with regard to widening of the roads and the felling and replanting of trees in urban area where the widening of the roads work is launched and executed*." (emphasis supplied) * "_The Committee shall also take into consideration not only the felling of trees and the widening of roads to reach the international airport but also such other incidental and related matters which result in the traffic hazards and also in relation to public/private transport, senior citizens, physically handicapped persons, children, ecology, environment and health_." (emphasis supplied) We consider this interim direction of the Hon'ble High Court as an emphatic statement in support of the need for executing urban infrastructure development works in consultation with the public and to maintain high levels of transparency in their review. We are also pleased that the Hon'ble Court emphasized the importance of considering multiple interests of various types of road users in executing such schemes and that all legal procedures are complied with. *Petitioners sincere efforts to advance public interest disregarded: * In conformance with the Hon'ble Court's directions, the Petitioners respectfully approached the Committee Chairman Mr. Reddy soon after the Court's directions and assured him of all cooperation. The Petitioners were very well received initially. In conformance with the direction of the Hon'ble Court the Petitioners submitted various representations and Interim Applications requesting "interim arrangements" to advance various issues and concerns. To help the Committee in meaningfully and sensitively addressing complex issues relating to law and project impacts, Petitioners also requested permission to be allowed to participate as observers in the Committee's proceedings. Summarily the following concerns were arrayed in these submissions: 1. That BBMP and other respondents were carrying on with road widening and related developmental works in blatant violation of the directions of the Hon'ble Court. In particular it was highlighted that massive tree felling was undertaken on Kanakapura Road, Bellary Road, Race Course Road, Palace Road, Sarjapur Road, amongst others, without in any manner securing the assent of the Committee or conforming to the law as required. 2. That Petitioners be allowed to observe the proceedings of the Committee constituted by the Hon'ble Court and also to be provided a copy of the minutes of the proceedings of the Committee meetings. 3. That the Convenor of the Committee (not a member) was rejecting submissions made by the Petitioners on behalf of Project Affected Communities without having authority to do so. 4. That Petitioners be provided an opportunity of participation in meetings of Committee on par with those already extended to the Respondents. This in light of the fact that every meeting ensured the participation of at least 10 -- 15 officers from various government agencies. Such opportunity was also questionably extended to private infrastructure agencies, in one case M/s Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise, which has absolutely nothing to do with the affairs of the Committee constituted per directions in the aforesaid PIL. 5. Urging that the proceedings of the Committee be held in a manner that could ensure transparency, public accountability and procedural conformity with a process equivalent to that of an open court as is required per law and norms applicable to /quasi-judicial /forum. When these submissions were not in any manner responded to, the Petitioners attended a meeting of the Committee held on 25 July 2008 at BBMP and were allowed in by officials. The hope was that Mr. Reddy would consider these submissions favourably if they were presented to him directly. But such hopes were quickly dashed when Mr. Reddy expelled the Petitioners disregarding fervent and respectful appeals that the forum ought to be open to Petitioners, in the very least, as much it was to the Respondents. Disturbingly, when the proceedings of this Committee meeting were recorded, it was unfairly, unjustly and untruthfully recorded that the Petitioners and their Advocate aggressively entered the Committee's meeting. A member of the Committee contested this dishonest recording and a decision was taken to strike down that recording by the Chair. However, the Chair reversed this decision in a recent letter to that Member and retained the earlier false recording. *Committee proceedings out of bounds to Petitioners, and thus the wide public:* Recently, on the instructions of Mr. Reddy, the Committee's Convenor has addressed a letter to the Petitioners on the instructions of the Chair stating that Petitioners do not a right of participation in the Committee. It is also claimed that all the concerns of the Petitioners have been considered in five meetings held by the Committee. A careful review of the Committee's proceedings unofficially obtained by the Petitioners reveals that not a single written submission made by the Petitioners has at all been considered by the Committee's Chair, nor have these been brought to the attention of the Members in a formal way. Several Members of the Committee have expressed their dismay and disappointment over such arbitrary conduct of the Committee's proceedings. Some have written very detailed letters to the Chair requesting that a proper procedure be instituted to conduct meetings in a transparent and publicly accountable manner. Some members have also stated that there is the possibility of bias when the Committee listens to issues only from the perspective of the Respondents. Several members have repeatedly insisted, and in writing, that no project should be considered for approval unless they were in full compliance with law and involved the public in forming the decision. In some instances it has also been highlighted that the minutes have not been an accurate reflection of the proceedings of the meeting. *Committee addresses NICE's concerns, not of lakhs affected by road widening:* While such critical concerns need immediate attention, Mr. Reddy has now "decided to take up an inspection with all Honorable Members of the Committee on 20-09-2008 at 9.30 am Venue: Hosur Road NICE Bridge (Electronic city turning), to discuss about the Environmental issues of the NICE Road" according to a communication issued to Members. This is a shocking development as the Bangalore Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Project has nothing to do with any fact or grounds and prayers raised in the PIL. It is a matter of record that Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (NICE) which is implementing this project has been repeatedly accused by various Governments, including the present one, of disregarding law and directions of the Courts in the implementation of the project. In an affidavit presented to the Hon'ble Supreme Court on 17^th September 2008, the Principal Secretary of Karnataka Public Works Department has stated that the company has been repeatedly instructed by the Government "to implement the project as per court directions". Yet, "they are trying to change the alignment of the road and seek more lands than what is specifically set out in the said judgments. The present application" of NICE "is one such attempt to pressurise the officials to submit to this illegal demands." In such a situation it is a troubling and a highly questionable initiative of Mr. Reddy to take up the review of a project that has nothing to do with the mandate of the Hon'ble High Court in WP 7107/2008. Such action could well be /sub judice/ in light of the fact that tens of petitions are under the consideration of the High Court of Karnataka and Supreme Court of India over contentions between project affected communities, the State and NICE. *Our deep disappointment:* All this presents a very sorry picture of a Committee on which we have placed a lot of reliance in resolving very complex issues involving the livelihoods of thousands of traders and street vendors who are directly affected by road widening. Of equal concern are the rights of the differently abled, senior citizens and children, whose needs are quite simply disregarded by BBMP in any of their road widening programmes. It is a matter of record that the widening of Bellary Road alone has killed over 20 people in accidents so far, and maimed many times more -- all because of the absolute disregard for wider public interest in the rush to serve the needs of high income lobbies. The insensitive design of the road leading to fatalities and injuries has become a matter of grave concern to the High Court, which has repeatedly directed the Government to rectify the situation immediately. In all this, the silent sentinels of Bangalore's heritage and environmental futures, our avenue trees, are being ruthlessly and unnecessarily felled by the dozens, an unforgivable destruction officiated ironically by Forest officials. Even as trees are axed, transformers, telephone boxes, and religious sites that have encroached into the roads, remain, making the very purpose of tree felling senseless. *Our renewed Hope:* As Petitioners and concerned residents of Bangalore, we believe it is our obligation to bring such unfortunate turn of events to the attention of all. We are hopeful that with widespread public pressure Mr. Reddy would consider conducting the proceedings of the Committee in a manner befitting a /quasi judicial /forum and in conformance with the interim directions of the Hon'ble High Court in our PIL. Sunil Dutt Yadav Petitioners Advocate Leo F. Saldanha & Divya Ravindranath Environment Support Group Kathyayini Chamaraj Exec. Trustee CIVIC Bangalore Prashant and Anuja Alternative Law Forum Address: Environment Support Group, 105, East End B Main Road, Jayanagar 9th Block East, Bangalore 560069. Tel: 91-80-22441977/26531339 Voice/Fax: 91-80-26534364 Email: _esg at esgindia.org _ / _esgindia at gmail.com _ Web: _www.esgindia.org _ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080919/0fd1c517/attachment-0001.html From karenc at mids.ac.in Sat Sep 20 08:38:11 2008 From: karenc at mids.ac.in (karenc at mids.ac.in) Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2008 08:38:11 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Urbanstudy] Chennai pedestrian walkathon Message-ID: <1318.59.92.52.238.1221880091.squirrel@mail.mids.ac.in> Join the Walkathon, Walk For Walkers’ Rights Date: Sunday, 21st September 2008 Time: 4:30pm flag off Starting from Labour Statue, Marina Beach. Ending at Foreshore Estate. Closing event at Foreshore Estate Open Grounds at 7.00 pm. Assembly point: Labour Statue, Marina Beach, 4:00 pm Organized by: Walking Classes Unite Marathons, walkathons and rallies are undertaken to raise public awareness on a wide range of issues. But the everyday walker, who walks to work, to school, or to the market is often forgotten. Walking is becoming one of the most hazardous and difficult activities in the city today. • Pedestrians, bicyclists and public transport users account for 75% of daily trips in Chennai. • Yet foot paths and cycle tracks are vanishing to accommodate more private vehicles. • There are 16 lakh cars and two wheelers in Chennai but only 3084 MTC buses. • While each car or two-wheeler carries 2 to 4 persons at most, each bus on average carries 1460 people, putting the lives of bus-travellers at great risk. • Nearly 50% of deaths due to road accidents are of pedestrians and cyclists. • Children, senior citizens and disabled persons face severe risk and hardships as they navigate roads without footpaths, pedestrian crossings or other pedestrian facilities • Crores of rupees are spent on flyovers and road widening but footpaths remain unusable and ill maintained. • Livelihoods of street vendors are destroyed to accommodate more vehicles on wider roads. Is this Our City ??? Let us break our silence Let us demand our rights • Wide and well-maintained accessible foot paths • On-road pedestrian crossings • Spaces that are sensitive to the needs of the senior citizens and differently abled people • Dedicated cycle lanes on all roads • Increased number of buses with dedicated bus lanes • Implementation of Justice Kanagaraj committee report on street vending • Integration of hawking and walking spaces For registration and information contact: Walking Classes Unite: 9884706531, 9884163604 Mail to: ped.access at gmail.com Walking Classes Unite: 42A, First floor, Fifth Avenue, Besant Nagar, Chennai 600090 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Join the Walkathon-1.doc Type: application/msword Size: 40448 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080920/cde58dea/attachment-0001.doc From aashu.gupta20 at gmail.com Mon Sep 22 12:24:34 2008 From: aashu.gupta20 at gmail.com (Aashish Gupta) Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:24:34 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fwd: WATER colloquium at IITM In-Reply-To: References: <19DD74B7EDBCD9498F8A894597B8E2E53599E1@EXCH01.IITM.AC.IN> Message-ID: The *Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras* is glad to extend this invitation to a Pan Asian colloquium-cum-workshop on WATER that the Department is hosting next week (25 to 27 September) in collaboration with the Centre for Law, Policy and Human Rights Studies, Chennai; the Change Management Group of Water Engineers of the Agricultural Engineering Department and the IAMWARM Project of the Government of Tamil Nadu. The background is the deepening water crisis across the Asian region and the World Water Forum scheduled in March, 2009 in Istanbul, Turkey. We hope that a cross-fertilisation of ideas, experiences and insights will help to assess the status of Water and to reflect upon Water as a part of the global commons, which, as a resource, stays in public hands. The colloquium is to be inaugurated in IC&SR Hall 2, at 10 am on Thursday, 25 September by Ms. Santha Sheela Nair, IAS, Secretary, Union Drinking Water Dept., Government of India. One highlight is *THE WATER DIALOGUE* - a public dialogue on all issues that the theme of the colloquium touches. Policy makers, Water Operators, Engineers Associations and Trade Unions, Corporate Bodies and Citizens Groups shall put forth their views during the panel discussion and open interaction. *The Water Dialogue will be held in the Main Audi of IC&SR on Friday, 26 September between 5:30 and 8 pm.* There is a *curtain raiser event today* (Monday, 22 September) at the MRC in the Library building between 5:30 and 6:30 pm. A documentary film *"Hunting down Water"* (25 mins) will be screened, followed by an interactive session on the theme and concept of the colloquium. With best regards, Milind Brahme Assistant Professor Department of Humanities and Social Sciences IIT Madras Chennai 600 036, India Tel: 91-44-22574508 (O) 22576508 (R) Fax: 91-44-22574502 (O) brahme at iitm.ac.in milind at daad-alumni.de -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080922/c9cce53d/attachment.html From outtes at uol.com.br Sun Sep 21 09:44:33 2008 From: outtes at uol.com.br (Joel Outtes) Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2008 01:14:33 -0300 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Cities in Latin America and International Institutions Message-ID: Call for Papers Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, www.aag.org, Las Vegas, NV, USA, March 22-27, 2009 Sessions: 1) Cities and Urban Regions in Latin America; 2) International Institutions and/or Urban and Planning Issues. Organizers: Joel Outtes, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, email Outtes at uol.com.br and Betty Smith, Eastern Illinois University, email: besmith at eiu.edu Deadline: October 03, 2007 We invite paper proposals for a session on urban topics in developing areas and internationally to take place at the annual meeting of the AAG (www.aag.org) in Las Vegas, March 22-27, 2009. Papers might explore, but not be limited to Economic restructuring and its spatial impacts Changing urban morphology Transnational linkages Urban hierarchies Historic city centers Urban historical geography Ethnic neighborhoods City planning in Latin America Criminality The informal sector Intra-metropolitan mobility The politics of urban environmental problems Informal transportation and social conflicts Participatory budget and urban social movements Urban social geography The International Planning Movement The Urban International: the spatiality of international institutions such as the IFHP-International Federation for Housing and Planning, UCLG-United Cities and Local Governments, IULA-International Union of Local Authorities and IHA-International Housing Association alone or in Comparative Perspective After registering for the conference at http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/ and submitting your abstract for a paper session, forward a copy of the abstract and your PIN to: Joel Outtes, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, email Outtes at uol.com.br and Betty Smith, Eastern Illinois University, email: besmith at eiu.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080921/603e2c78/attachment.html From prem.cnt at gmail.com Thu Sep 25 09:35:12 2008 From: prem.cnt at gmail.com (Prem Chandavarkar) Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:35:12 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Fw: Asian Design Culture Conference Message-ID: <7e230b560809242105j22749ee4qe5367b6f726d7e6c@mail.gmail.com> ----- Original Message ----- *From:* William S W Lim *To:* ernesto bedmar ; Kerry Hill; Kok Siew Hoong ; Lim Cheng Kooi ; sonny Chan ; franklin po ; Hossein Rezai-Jorabi ; Mok Wei Wei ; Ng Weng Pan ; ko hui huy; Richard Hassell ; Reiko Kasai ; chan soo kian ; wong mun summ; Clement Kee How Teh ; Tan Kay Sing ; Timothy Seow ; look boon gee; tang guan bee ; Winston Hauw ; Tan Kok Hiang ; Teh Joo Heng ; Andrew Lee ; Vivien Ho ; Dan Feng (FTR/Interlexis) ; Tan Chee Kiang; Ho Weng Hin ; atelier at singnet.com.sg *Cc:* Kim *Sent:* Wednesday, September 24, 2008 2:53 PM *Subject:* Asian Design Culture Conference Dear all, As some of you might have known, AA Asia with the support of DesignSingapore Council is organizing a Asian Design Culture Conference (27-28 November) in Singapore. Featuring renowned theorists, critics and practitioners from around the world, Asian Design Culture Conference is an international and interdisciplinary conference that aims to foster the development and debate of Design Culture, Creativity and Criticality. Enclosed is the e-flyer. As AA Asia is the organizer of this conference, the conference fees for AA Asia members, spouses and colleagues is $50. An additional $100 per person will be charged, should you wish to attend the dinner on 27 November. Please submit your and interested parties name for registration to wswlim at pacific.net.sg by 30 October. Best regards, William Lim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080925/36508e2c/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: AA Asia Conference.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 706598 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080925/36508e2c/attachment-0001.pdf From yanivbin at gmail.com Sat Sep 27 20:16:04 2008 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:16:04 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] Design and the city Message-ID: <86b8a7050809270746l46ec5e33p5fb012a590d3b286@mail.gmail.com> *Design and the city* Weekend Team / New Delhi September 27, 2008, 0:33 IST *http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?autono=335596* *In his book, released recently, Darlie Koshy, director of the National Institute of Design, argues that the glass ceiling of perceptions and mindsets need to change if Indian design has to evolve along its natural trajectory. In this extract, Koshy looks at how cities tackle design and creative issues while managing basic infrastructure.* Twentieth century was the age of nations and twenty-first century is seen as the age of cities. Competition has intensified between specific cities of different countries. Richard Florida, in Rise of Creative Class has attributed the emergence of creative cities to a combination of talent, tolerance and technology. Many a city in India can lay claim to being a creative city but surprisingly even Bengaluru despite its best chance has not done much to position itself in this respect. India is slated to have 55 per cent of its population living in urban centres by 2050 against 30 per cent as of now. The Mega Cities Association in collaboration with Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission, Government of India has published a very important document Mega Cities: Poised for Change which summarizes the leading practices of 2007 indicating that several Indian cities are aspiring to change for the better. *However, the projects listed are infrastructure or process oriented rather than of a leapfrogging vision to integrate design and innovation to emerge as a global city.* The leading practices from mega cities in India for instance, lists projects such as development of Sabarmati river front in Ahmedabad, automated parking system in Bengaluru, and solid waste management in Delhi.The Indian cities, even at the current pace of urbanization, are becoming unliveable because of spread of urban slums, traffic jams, serious water/power shortages, pollution, increasing crime, crumbling urban infrastructure et al. Protection of rivers, lakes and water bodies in cities, sanitation and availability of water have become pressing issues in many Indian cities. Several cities have no convention centres, sports, culture or arts hubs which enable 'good' sensitive life in the long run. Our cities are struggling with basic survival issues and developing a larger vision like positioning as a creative or design city has received scant attention. Design is about 'creating a difference that creates a difference' and cities need to do that to achieve a distinct mind space! Time has come for urban planners, architects, artists, designers and conscious [sic] citizens to take up leadership role to positively influence an exciting vision for the future. Let us look at some of the internationally inspiring stories how cities are shaping up in the Innovation Economy of the twenty-first century. The city of Montreal in Canada had put up a tough fight to win the bid for the headquarters of world bodies of industrial and communication design, five years ago, so that design can influence the positioning of the city in the world arena. Today the headquarters of the three world design organizations, ICSID, Icograda and IFI are in Montreal being supported by the city for ten years. Singapore won the bid for holding Design Congress in 2009 and is in the midst of a major makeover with over a dozen iconic architectural projects. Taiwan's bid to hold the Industrial Design Alliance (IDA) Congress in 2010 has succeeded against neck to neck competition with Melbourne. Seoul won the battle for 2010 World Design Capital title against twenty other competing cities. Many Western and even Southeast Asian countries have understood the role of design for shaping and positioning their cities. Torino, the ICSID designated World Design Capital in Italy for 2008-10 is launching its rollout through a series of events from November 2008. The World Design Capital (WDC) team in Torino has raised over 13 million euros in a short span of time and has planned a series of high profile events and activities. A city like Torino, which was dying after the industrial era signalled its end, has embraced design to turn around its fortunes. The World Body of Design, ICSID, has selected Seoul as the next design capital after Torino for 2010-12. Recently, in Seoul, the ground-breaking ceremony for the Dongdaemoon World Design Plaza being designed by Zaha Hadid took place.... Under the leadership of the current president who was then the mayor of Seoul took a major step in 2003 to rejuvenate a natural stream which was dead and covered up to be used as a housing site, rail and highways during the early 1910s and 20s. The rivulet called, Cheong-gye-cheon, in the heart of Seoul stretching over four kilometers, was opened after restoration to public in 2005.Today it has become the heart and soul of Seoul, being projected as the soul of Asia! In several other countries many urban development or city projects are changing the faces of cities through major design interventions. Berlin for the last few years, has been rejigging its position by creating new city squares, setting up museums like Judisches Museum (designed by Daniel Libeskind), and has succeeded in attracting artists, designers and other creative people in droves. The striking example of how Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank 0. Gehry has changed Bilbao, a decadent industrial city in Spain, indicate how cities can be transformed by major design-driven projects. The DOT (Design of the Times).77 project in north-east England now in progress, overseen by the UK Design Council, is yet another futuristic example of participatory design. St Etienne, a city in France, has an interesting 'Quality of Life' project as envisioned by Le Corbusier in Firminy thirty years ago brought to life again in recent times by a determined city government. A massive plan is underway for setting up a design centre designed by architect Finn Giepel.The industrial sheds of the erstwhile steel city are being transformed as major galleries.... In India, Ahmedabad the host city of NID, IIM, and CEPT which has been mentioned by Charles Landry as a Creative City; Pune and Bengaluru which are emerging as R&D capitals along with Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai have the potential in different ways of leveraging design to improve the quality of life of its people.The way the Rajiv Chowk gardens have been restored by Delhi Metro and the manner in which the whole project is being implemented is definitely a good example in India. After being inspired by a visit sometime around 2005 to Beijing and the way the students of Beijing Institute of Technology and several design firms have been involved in preparing for the 2008 Olympics, NID had made presentations to the powers that be in Delhi offering people-friendly design interventions for Commonwealth Games 2010. Because of the multitude of agencies involved in decision making, the proposal fell on deaf years. Bengaluru is yet another example of a city which can truly be transformed to become a Creative or Design city but has chosen to remain static without any long term vision and purposive collective action. Development of cities are most often left to multitudes of committees and commissions and it is well said 'a donkey is a horse designed by a committee'. Several projects around us which have become eyesores or visual clutter are speaking examples. Our cities have to wake up to seize the opportunity of using design and innovation to improve quality of life of its people. Unified action is the need of the hour. The earlier; the better. The Indian cities need to 'take people seriously' and stand out as memorable and aesthetically satisfying experiences to find a place in the hall of fame of vibrant cities of the emerging creative economy. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080927/541c645d/attachment.html From yanivbin at gmail.com Sat Sep 27 20:19:43 2008 From: yanivbin at gmail.com (Vinay Baindur) Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:19:43 +0530 Subject: [Urbanstudy] New MPCs to screen urban planning in 4 cities - Gujarat Message-ID: <86b8a7050809270749p6df134d7gdf4df2788f33fba4@mail.gmail.com> New panel to screen urban planning in cities 27 Sep 2008, 0616 hrs IST,TNN http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Ahmedabad/New_panel_to_screen_urban_planning_in_cities_/articleshow/3533117.cms Gandhinagar: Gujarat government has decided to place four metropolitan areas of Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat and Rajkot under new metropolitan planning committees. The state assembly, in session in Gandhinagar, on Friday passed a new law, Gujarat Metropolitan Committees Bill, 2008, in order to "regularise " the development process in each of these cities by placing planning and development in and around the metropolitan areas under the new committees. Well-informed sources in the state urban development department said, with the passing of the Bill, all urban planning activities of Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (AUDA) and the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) will be "screened" by Ahmedabad's proposed metropolitan planning committee. The same will happen with Vadodara, Surat and Rajkot. "AMC and AUDA will not be able to directly send urban projects for approval to the Gujarat government ," a senior official said. The Bill complies with Article 243ZE of 74th amendment of the Constitution of India, carried out in 1992. "After the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) came into force, one of its mandatory provisions was to come up with this reform, without which state governments would not get full instalments of JNNURM funds," the official said. "Pending since 2005, the state government was forced to move the Bill in 2008 to get funds," he added. The Bill will come into force after the state government forms rules on how to implement it. Passed unanimously, each committee will have a minister as its chairman. Others in the committee are district panchayat president, urban development authority chairman, municipal corporation payor, municipal commissioner , district collector, district development authority, urban development authority CEO, experts in urban development and members of municipal corporations, municipalities and panchayats falling in the metropolitan area. MLAs and MPs of the region will be invitee members of the committee "The purpose is to provide a coordinated effort to develop an urban area by involving government officials and elected representatives together at various levels," an official said. State urban development minister Nitin Patel , who introduced the Bill in the House, told TOI, "The committee has powers to recommend . It will prepare urban development drafts to be submitted to the state government for approval . The drafts can be prepared only for areas which are approved by the state government . It will help planned development of metropolitan areas of 10 lakh plus population." Notably, as many as eight states - Karnataka , Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan , Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal - have already enacted laws forming such committees. ALL ABOUT THE COMMITTEES Members Each committee will have a minister as its chairman Other members are district panchayat president, urban development authority chairman, mayor, municipal commissioner, district collector, district development authority, urban development authority CEO, experts in urban development MLAs and MPs of the region are invitee members Objective To provide co-ordinated effort to develop an urban area by involving government officials and elected representatives together at various levels Function It will prepare urban development drafts to be approved by state government It will help planned development of metropolitan areas of 10 lakh plus population -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/urbanstudygroup/attachments/20080927/961dc144/attachment-0001.html