Urban Leadership Foundation
A hub for leadership training in cities and among the world's 1.4 billion slum-dwellers
If urban cultural processes are the spontaneous response of the human spirit to conditions met with in the metropolis, planning is an attempt at a reasoned and deliberated response. In this sense it is also an expression of an important component of urban culture: secularization.
This chapter seeks to take the bearings of the counter processes worked out by urban planning-in the spirit of secularization, to be sure-to regain control over demographic, geographic, economic, political, and cultural processes, with the intention, naturally, of canceling their negative effects.
In the past, missionaries often found themselves in a pioneer situation, and sometimes still do today. In some rural areas of the world, missionaries have to begin from scratch and do everything themselves. There simply is no one else who will take any interest in certain human groups, except perhaps to exploit them. The situation in a city is very different. There it is not necessary to presume that one is alone, or to succumb to the temptation of elaborating "one's own" solution to the problems. True, missionaries in an urban setting do sometimes have the impression that they must start from zero, but this comes from not knowing what others have done in a similar situation, or from a lack of information and awareness of the science of urban planning, which searches for a general and organic solution to problems. The effort to learn about and welcome the findings of urban planning will help all people interested in missions to arrive at a consciousness of solidarity, showing what others are doing and what can be done by those wanting to enter into the positive currents at work in the reconstruction and restoration of the city. In addition, city planning cannot but contain some indications or signs of God's active presence in the city.
In the discussion of political processes, we noted that the harmonious growth of the city is blocked by the knot that represents control over its surface terrain. Urban planning seeks to untie this knot. It does so because of the well-known fact of common experience that individuals, if allowed to.
These decisions will regard such themes as the more equitable distribution of well-being among the various urban groups, the tapping of public and private resources, the use of public power, and especially the designation of the points of intervention most likely to lead to correction of the harmful results of the urban processes in effect.
In doing this, city planners find themselves faced with a choice: either they limit themselves to an objective analysis, accepting the fact that political figures will be the ones to make the final decisions, or they involve themselves in influencing those decisions. As it is, many of them take the second option. A purely theoretical scheme for the city seems to them useless. What value would it have other than academic?
Before taking action, another question must be answered: Whence derives the mandate of city reformers? The question cannot be answered in general terms by saying that it comes from the groupings that compose the city population, for we know that their interests are often in conflict. The answer given more commonly today-with some caution but also with ever increasing insistence-is that the city planner-reformer acts in the name and as an expression of a consensus that emerges from a participatory process. Caution is urged by the danger of setting up a dictatorship of expertise in place of a dictatorship of private interests. The process of participation must be genuine. If the various urban groupings are invited and encouraged to take part in the planning from start to finish, there will be grounds for expectations of convergences among diverse interests, and these convergences can serve as the mandate to city planners pursue their own interests, their own inclinations and preferences, will never act in such a way as to achieve the maximum common good of the city. No one of them, singly, is capable of making the decisions that, all in all, would attain the highest possible degree of collective well-being.
This is obvious. But a consequence derives from it that is accepted favor- ably by practically no one: the necessity of restricting the activity of the individual. This is the central concept in the urban planning process. The problem confronted by urban planners is now more specific: To what extent and by what means can the liberty of the individual be restricted, in the name of the collectivity?
An initial response to this question is this: it is necessary to control, by appropriate legislation (and its timely implementation), the use that private interests can make of urban land. The liberty of the individual can and must be limited. This would allow for the "minimum" necessary to make urban planning possible.
But, at least for the cities of the Third World, it seems that this "minimum" will not suffice. Two schools of thought have emerged among those involved in urban planning. One group-represented by architects, engineers, and other "technicians" of city planning-aims at a rational use of land and the utilization of various techniques for the optimal deployment of physical space. The other group-represented by social researchers, who work with the concepts of "social space" and "social distance"-aims at the improvement of urban interaction. The first group emphasizes the availability of urban land; the second group emphasizes the availability of a long series of public services and utilities.
Aware of how the physical generates in the social, and vice versa (see chaps. 3 and 4), it seems evident that individual human freedom will be restricted in both views. More precisely: freedom is social; it must be exercised within the community and not in conflict with the essential needs of the city.
The two emphases among those involved in urban planning-the one stressing physical space, and the other stressing social space-are therefore complementary and they call for interdisciplinary support among all participants. Here we touch on another focal point of city planning. It does not spring only from disciplines such as geography, economics, demography, sociology, and psychology, but also from those more oriented to human action, such as political science, urban studies, public administration, and the arts of government, public education, and the use of the means of communication. Experts in all these arts and sciences that deal with "the public" must collaborate in a joint process. The action that city planning is aimed at is the best catalyst for arriving at a synthesis among the diverse competencies in their approach to concrete problems and projects. It is not a matter of obtaining isolated though erudite solutions from diverse disciplines, but of obtaining, through a convergent use of their various concepts and techniques, a better understanding of the problems. An operative decision can be taken only on an ample, articulated base.
Planning at the international level, to stabilize order in Third World cities, will pertain to national governments in concurrence among themselves. One problem here is that each of them is very jealous of its own prerogatives. But governments could compare their experiences of success and failure in order to help in developing new, scientific approaches and formulating international norms, thereby assisting one another in the elaboration of planning programs for their own cities.
In this direction, the United Nations through its Human Settlements Centre and Foundation (also called HABITAT), has already done much. Its purpose is to promote an international, interdisciplinary, humanistic approach to the great problems of cities and smaller human settlements. The central HABITAT team, counting twenty-five members from eighteen nations, is com- posed of urbanist, engineers, journalists, architects, research specialists, a lawyer, a documentalist. Its very composition reflects the spread of the situations, competencies, and problems within its purview.
It is a matter of interest that the HABITAT team asks for help, at the level of the communication of experiences and ideas, from missionaries and church groups. This was done especially in preparation for the United Nations conference on human settlements held in Vancouver in 1976. This conference succeeded in focusing world public attention in general, and that of political authorities in particular, on the problems of the cities. The exchange of ideas, plans, and methods already tested in the various sectors of .the urban problem-housing, transportation, refuse disposal, environmental pollution, administrative models-set in motion a deeper and broader analysis of the problems.
But what is especially sought, and what HABITAT continues to seek, is a transition from the sphere of work reserved to technical experts, government officials, and scholars to the open, public sphere. Efforts are being made to interest the general public in what HABITAT is doing, and thus to educate the public to a more perceptive appreciation of its part in the transformation of the city. Participation is what it wants to promote.
Only on the basis of a great awareness and broad-based participation will the process of urban planning find a place in the political processes treated in chapter 4: only when urban administrators sense that the base of their legitimation is tottering can a diverse use of power for a better-ordered, more human city begin.
At the international level, therefore, the specific contribution that can be made to urban planning will consist in sustaining the values that are at its base. For government officials and technical experts to work on the kind of planning that is needed, they must be convinced of the seriousness, urgency, and complexity of the urban challenge. They must above all be convinced that the momentous internal processes of the city cannot be "played" with, by favoring the interests of a minority (well-oft) to the detriment of the masses (not well-off). This merely adds to the accumulation of explosive tinder already present. Only an educative process of international impact will lead the privileged to abandon their defensive isolation. This is precisely the kind of activity that international organizations such as HABITAT promote.
Although it is indispensable, education to a deeper awareness of urban problems is not enough by itself. Taking action to correct the irrationalities of certain processes is also needed. And here international structures cannot accomplish much. The power of taking action is concentrated in the hands of the government of each nation. Even the United Nations, founded on the principle of the absolute autonomy of each member state, cannot undertake urban planning in the full sense of the term: it cannot oblige any nation to renounce its autonomy, not even in the name of the international common good.
Efforts being made at present are principally in the line of decentralization. The most significant political results are concentrated in this zone of urban planning. The goal of decentralization is that of defusing the demo- graphic explosion that was swelling the cities and thus crippling their ability to provide adequate employment, housing, and public services. Attempts are being made to stop or at least control the process of urban immigration. It is being done in conjunction with the economic strengthening of other geo- graphic points of national territory.
Urban planning thus takes on the form of a geographic process. Development plans for Third World nations head in this direction when they launch and implement highway projects, the development of natural and tourist re- sources, new strategically located housing centers, and the like.2 But once again it is a process that goes up in political smoke because it entails the reinforcement of local authorities. Nevertheless this type of objective is laudable and was in fact singled out for praise in the preliminary working document of the United Nations conference on the human environment (Stockholm 1973). Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos wrote:
One of the most important proposals is that of creating opposite poles of regional development to ease the tension on urban centers and divert part of the migratory flood that has been moving inexorably toward them. Of course the projection of new centers of regional development must take into account-as was done in the planning for Malaysia- existing resources, communication networks, other urban centers, and so forth. But localized plans, which have shown greater variety and have been favored by a higher degree of implementation, can reinforce the potential offered by national economies at the beginning of the 1970s for a more efficient decentralization of industrial development, and consequently for that of urban development as well.
An example can illustrate what is taking place in this sphere. Many Asian governments, following an integrated strategy, are trying to build up their less developed regions because, as has been known for years, it is migration away from them that causes problems for the cities. A planning center was opened in northeast Thailand with the task of assisting and giving advice to the fifteen provinces in its jurisdiction in formulating their own development plans. It contributed also to the formation and utilization of channels of communication among those in charge.
A diverse strategy has been embodied in the Philippines where urban planning begins in rural areas.5 According to information supplied by the United Nations, the Philippine plan for stemming the flood from rural areas- threatening to submerge the cities-is based on the idea of encouraging the rural population to stay where it is. To this end, production of rice and other basic foods would have to be augmented, and the overall level of life would have to be raised: electricity, entertainment, and other "facilities" of city life need to be provided.
Migration to Manila (for the advantages that country-dwellers dream they will find there) would also be discouraged by an intelligent program of education via the mass media. Other possibilities, such as the relocation of shanty-towners to smaller cities or even their home villages, are too fraught with problems.
But what still remains at the planning stage, or is being implemented in a very patchy way in the Philippines and other Asian countries, seems already to be reality in mainland China. In a lecture to a conference on the urban explosion, held in Oxford in 1974, N. Maxwell, of the Institute of Common- wealth Studies, claimed that, at least from this point of view, China has solved this problem: Shanghai's population is no longer on the increase; on the contrary, it is "losing" 100,000 residents yearly. The slums, the unemployment, filthiness, vice, crime, inhuman working conditions of twenty-five 'years ago have all given place to public housing, full employment, cleanliness, order, cooperation and participation by all in neighborhood commit- tees. Urban planning, long since in an advanced state of implementation, proceeded on four frontiers.
The first stage called for help and encouragement to be given to rural in- habitants, Maxwell said. Land formerly held by great landowners was divided up for them, and they were shown what could be done with better organization. The poorer were encouraged to join forces together, in small "squadrons" (six to eight families) of mutual assistance, and they began to familiarize themselves with cooperative methods. Not all these "squadrons" succeeded in getting a better hold on life, but the success they experienced was enough to give birth to hope. When initial experiments succeeded, the next step was "elementary cooperatives" (eighteen to twenty families): land was worked in common, under unified direction. These cooperatives were the equivalent of village units.
At a later phase, toward 1955, the land was put to the use of all, and the entire harvest was distributed according to the work done by each person- no longer according to capital investment, as in the past. Advanced cooperatives took shape. Around 1958 these cooperatives began to be federated into much larger organizations called "collectives" ("peoples' communes") and were adopted by the state as basic administrative units. The names were changed: the simple village cooperative became a "production squadron"; the advanced cooperative became a "production brigade"; the federations of cooperatives became "peoples' communes." The communes interconnect and harmonize the various productive forces. At the brigade level a clinic or mechanical workshop would be constructed; the same brigade would manage its own school and the processing of agricultural products. At specified times work would be organized for irrigation projects or road building.
At the commune level, Maxwell continued, instead of a clinic there would be a hospital; instead of a workshop, a factory; instead of a primary school, a secondary school. Within the framework of its own financial autonomy, the commune would be responsible for its own public health services, its own educational programs, even its own self-defense. When agricultural areas were organizationally ready for it, mechanization of agriculture followed, and then the second front was opened: the cities and controlled urbanization. In Chinese urban planning, as described by Maxwell, there was no provision for new cities. Even when it was decided to tap the Tuching oil deposits, officials opted for a series of medium-sized towns, at fixed distances from each other and each of them self-sufficient for food supply, that is, provided for from the countryside surrounding each town.
There remained the problem of the big cities already in existence. After the chaos of the civil war, disorder reigned supreme. Rehabilitation proceeded at a number of levels, from the physical removal of thousands of tons of rubble out of Peking and Shanghai, to the health and social education of the masses. Signs of success could be seen by 1960, even though levels of urban development remained below those in the West. True decentralization could then begin. Major industries located on the coastline were moved to the interior, beyond the rural areas that had fed urban immigration in the past: concentrations on the coast were dissolved and the stage was set for reversing the direction of the flow of future migration.
The guiding principle was centralized planning, localized control. The industrial production unit was not simply the factory; it was the factory and a center of medical, educational, housing, and other services for workers' families. The principles of self-sufficiency and self-responsibility were called into play. Redimensioning of existent cities was also expedited by other factors-for example, the sending of young college graduates to rural areas where they served as "barefoot doctors."
At the basis of all this, Maxwell concluded, there is a political will and a political projection: the Chinese phenomenon is a classic example of the pre- dominance of the political process over economic and social processes.
The Chinese experience allows us to draw some conclusions of general interest for urban planning at the national level: 1. The building up of rural areas, creating new jobs and new public services, means the restoration of the city to its original function: a "mechanism for life together." 2. A logical geographic distribution of poles of development brings with it the creation of new human settlements, which-precisely because they are new-can be planned from beginning to end. 3. It is still possible to reverse the illogic of having ends serve means by reversing the policy of siting a labor force where the interests of an industry dictate, in favor of siting a labor force where the interests of community development dictate. 4. Conservation of resources is not only possible but can be linked with the social goal of providing employment for all.
The Chinese experience, fruits of a convergence of original historical factors-as urbanization in the West has been-and the Maoist revolution, cannot in all likelihood be repeated. But there is no denying that it represented a noteworthy effort in responding to the urban challenge. Third World countries have something to learn here, especially as regards how China seems to have resolved the problem of urban unemployment. Substantive employment programming at the national level-even though it is not the solution to all problems-can make a considerable contribution to ameliorating the condition of the poorest categories of workers. better distribution of national income, and especially favoring the real participation of all in the governance of society. The nonworker has no weight in society. The worker begins to have some weight, and consequently begins to have some minimal influence on social services, public utilities, and consumer goods.
In Latin America, for instance, the failure of economic development has often been the result of the centralization or-but it comes down to the same thing-the J;I1aldistribution of economic processes, of power, of technological and social modernization among the various parts of the nation. Every- thing is concentrated in the capital. Both the public sector and private enterprise prefer to invest in the great metropolises. Industries are sited near exchange centers-that is, where the have-not groups are already concentrated-as also the universities, the major hospitals, the nerve centers of the mass media, and so forth. As a consequence, more employment opportunities emerge here, which become a further stimulant to immigration from rural areas and all other parts of the nation.
A seemingly irreversible vicious circle is in motion. Evidence on all sides points to the need to stop that motion. The difference here between China and Latin America is that in China theory was quickly implemented by political involvement, but in Latin America everything seems to stop at the level of education to values. True political initiative is rarely even mentioned.
Urban planning at the national level exerts its influence through geo- graphic and demographic processes, but at the local level, that is, within the cities themselves, it operates through economic and political processes. The task of urban planners is to distribute the scarce resources among the various segments of the population, assigning benefits and costs equitably. But this "assigning" inevitably involves conflict with specific interests and privileges. The question of "power" arises. For whom is the planning being done? In whose name? What right does it have to impose specific objectives, control mechanisms, and sanctions?
The theme of power is generally overlooked by the social sciences, with the exception of sociology and management science. But it is a theme that cannot be sidestepped if realistic planning is to be undertaken: incompatible objectives generate clashes. In due course a choice must be made. It is naive to think that effective planning could be purely administrative. Even if it were to begin only with the adoption of systematic methods and more productive techniques, sooner or later there would be conflict with specific interests, and therefore with power groups. Urban planning is unavoidably in the political sphere, and it involves political decisions. These decisions, for their part, will be based on the priority given to one or another set of values.
The question of the values that motivate urban planning is a fundamental question and must be treated explicitly. It is widely accepted today that urban planning must be done with an eye on its "consumers" who will incorporate their needs in it by their participation in the planning. Planners, therefore, will have to let themselves be guided (and they are doing so) by the wishes of a people "on the way to being planned.'"
Unfortunately, awareness of this necessity is being translated into reality at a very slow rate, at least as regards the cities of the Third World. For example, many Asian cities* have a regulatory plan, but often it has to do only with scenic projects to beautify the capital, regulating its physical appearance. This is a positive and even necessary concern, but it certainly is not the highest need or the deepest aspiration of the people. The people, the great urban masses, are not at the center of the interests of such plans. The most ambitious of such plans, that of New Delhi, which has been worked on for more than thirty years, does not do justice to the surging impulses of the social and economic processes springing from the rapid and unforeseen expansion of the city.
Then too, city plans are generally of an indicative rather than an imperative nature. Legislation that would make them obligatory has not been enacted. Even when a city government enters into urban planning with good intentions, its implementation becomes problematic because of the great number of incompetent local agencies and authorities interfering with one another and often contradicting one another. In the city of Calcutta in 1959 there were no less than seventy official agencies charged with the regulatory plan and its various segments. One can easily imagine the bureaucratic conflict and confusion!
Another obstacle is that of the weakness of local governments. Often they do not have even a minimal strategy for the assignment of space and even less legislative clout to make a strategy respected.
If regulatory plans have remained on paper in Third World cities, it is because planners have not taken account of the political processes that still dominate their economic order. Or when they have done so, they have adopted the model of Western cities, thus allowing urbanization to take its own course instead of controlling it and directing it to the needs of the people. The question remains: Do planners succeed in identifying the real objectives of their work and mobilizing the available resources to achieve them? In fact, the very essence of urban planning can be expressed in the formulation of objectives, the choice of priorities among them, and the successive mobilization of human, institutional, and material resources to achieve them.
For the cities of the Third World there should be no problem about formulating objectives: there are many obvious lacunae to fill. The needs of the majority are cries that reach the ears of even those who are most unwilling to hear them. And still practically nothing has been done: only in recent years has there been movements toward a correct formulation of urban objectives. The myth of Western development and its urban models has blinkered Third World urban planners. Many of them have studied in the West and they still think that what they should be aiming for are the levels and standards of employment, housing, and public services in effect in the West. But these levels and standards are beyond the resources of Third World cities and do not even correspond to the expectations and lifestyle of their own people.
There are some, however, who are beginning to perceive the "secret" message of the millions of urban immigrants, and they are making others think about development of Third World cities in terms of models proper to them, related to cultural, economic, and political patterns of their own social reality. As regards housing, C. Correa, an urban planner in Bombay, has said that to satisfy the enormous demand for housing in India, it would be necessary to begin with 12 million housing units, at a cost of $6,000 billion-without thinking about streets, sewage, neighborhood stores, schools and other necessities. Rents would be double what would-be renters could pay. Correa suggests another approach: the abandonment of the Western housing standards implicit in his calculations, with concentration instead on the use of clay as a building material: houses made of clay bricks, with a wooden roof. The people would be happy to live in such houses. They would cost from one-third to one-thirtieth less. True, they would last only fifteen years or so, but even that could have some advantages.
As soon as objectives are defined in local, non-Western terms, the discrepancy between goals and resources is reduced as if by magic. To reformulate goals in a perspective adjusted to the real expectations of those concerned means to makes programming more realistic.
It seems that this approach is gaining ground in the Third World, especially in the critical matter of the "natural areas" of shantytowners and slum- dwellers. We shall look quickly at how this approach has been, or could be, worked out in terms of the four major aspects of urbanization detailed inchapter 1.
Employment: To multiply jobs greater weight has to be given to the informal tertiary sector, to the home-construction industry, and to labor-intensive industries of low technological content.
Industrialization geared to automobile production could be deemphasized. The home-construction industry should be intensified, progressing from private to public housing as the return on investment increases, in an equitable proportion between private housing (for the better-off), municipal housing (for qualified workers), and "do-it-yourself" housing for the poor. This would be an economically valid and socially appropriate decision. It was put into effect in Singapore, with the interesting consequence that it was possible to plan not only housing but the whole ensemble of an urban community, with its public services, factories, commercial buildings, schools, and clinics, assuring relatively easy accessibility and respect for the environment. It might seem uneconomical to invest in the sector of private housing. But it is not. Those who build or improve their 'own homes make a contribution to the whole city, and do so at minimal cost by not importing materials from abroad and by using the services of acquaintances and local workers. Often some of them go on to start their own small home-construction business. The investment is returned-very soon-when a room is rented to a friend to set up a tailoring or plumbing business. And all this takes place without having to worry about the standards of efficiency obtaining in Western countries.
Housing: To see more houses built, public officials must provide "communal facilities" that families cannot provide for themselves, and then let them do what they have shown they know how to do, that is, build their own homes. From public sources should come general plans, streets, water, a sewer system, schools, clinics, provision for neighborhood stores, public transportation, and especially legal and secure ownership of a home once it is constructed. Of course not everything can revolve around housing. Generally speaking, all projects have to be aligned with the productive economic progress in the true sense: agriculture, mining, industry, handcrafts. But facilitating ownership of private homes, which helps to break the stranglehold of speculation on land and serialized construction, is advantageous for all the economic and social processes. A homeowner is more respected by those in charge of public services and their maintenance, seeks a deeper self- integration into the life of the city, upholds public order more, and works better. And for all this, high-cost housing, reflecting Western models and methods, is not necessary. Modest do-it-yourself homes work out very well, even better from a psychological point of view, provided they are enhanced by security of possession and a certain stability of value. Public Services: The Chinese example mentioned above contains suggestions for putting in place the services needed in Third World cities, where much can be done by personnel with less training than would be needed in the West.
Some services merit special attention. Schools are an example; basic changes in the educational system are needed. Secondary schools, where intermediate-level strata are trained-the future "squadron leaders" of society and commerce-cost ten times less than a university, and they yield more. But governments do not invest in them even a tenth part of what they put into the facilities and functioning of a university system. It is a miscalculation. Intermediate schools should be emphasized by having more money invested in them and by giving them more prestige and public recognition (for example, by empowering them to grant titles that would be recognized). Graduation from an intermediate school should be thought of as an "achievement in its own right," a "point of arrival," not merely as something required for admission to a university. And their educational programs should be more functional with respect to the real needs of urban communities.
Here too prospective changes must be aligned with economic indicators: fewer capital-intensive enterprises which require a higher technological con- tent and more sophisticated specializations, and more labor-intensive enterprises. And they should be aligned with another problem area: the need to lighten overweight bureaucratic apparatuses, generally created in cities in an inept if not positively dangerous response to the need to create more jobs; fewer doctorates and more diplomas in technical fields; fewer bureaucrats and more really effective social workers. This should be the goal of educational planning.
Community: Employment, housing, public services-all unified in settlements permeated by the spirit of community. This objective, which would be unrealistic in practically all Western cities, is possible in the Third World. Barbara Ward writes:
The various opportunities to group urban activities in districts with their own jobs and services, to exclude all but the occasional car, to develop bus lanes or interurban rapid transit railways, to install basic services-power, water, sewage collection, with a keen eye for conservation and new techniques-become all the more practicable when one remembers that half the new communities will be on new land, not cramped and confined within the existing metropolis. Provided land speculation is strictly stamped out, tenure made secure, and people assisted with the materials for building, the "young cities" can become exciting places of work and promise when the pioneers invent their own communities, build and extend their own homes, plant the trees, build the primary schools, send their children to the government-supported technical schools and training centers, and move easily on foot within their own streets or provide "critical mass" for the bus services to other centers. This is the dream, at least, for the new cities planned for New Bombay and New Bogota would be appropriate for them. Shantytown areas would little by little be transformed into a camp of "workyards" for the construction of a community that the "consumer-inhabitants" would feel belonged to them, tailored to their measure.
Plans for the extension of public utilities in Jakarta have been in existence for years but, as the pressure of immigration" increases, funding remains in- adequate. A sewer system capable of handling the frequent inundations of migrants is nonexistent. Public service projects, despite the enormous effort that they represent, aimed at providing for 16 percent of the city's surface area, which houses 24 percent of the city's population. But now there is agreement that the best way to solve the problem of public services would be to strengthen the shantytown zones. The Jakarta plan envisions a program of community development and self-help that would mobilize shantytowners, in conjunction with a network of training centers, to make improvements in their parts of the city.
The National Household Bank in Brazil found a way to invest in essential urban services. It founded CODESCO, which makes loans to shantytowners for materials for the construction of homes designed by and for them. Loans are repayable over a period of twenty to twenty- five years.
Urban planners also provide communities with what they need for improving the environment around them. An example cited by Lord Holborn is that of a simple system, invented by a team of biologists, chemists, and engineers, for purifying contaminated water. The British relief agency Oxfam has distributed a great number of them, at a cost of about $800 each. Each unit can serve a community of 3,000 persons. The task of an urban planner, in a case such as this, would be to provide instructions for how to use such equipment: shantytowners know well why they must use it.
The task of urban planners, however, is not only that of improving living conditions and public services. By itself that would not be very much, nor would it be much different from simply moving persons to another location. The real objective is that of convincing them that there is a work place for them in a vital and functional city, and hence there is a possibility for upward social mobility. Planners should try to channel the extraordinary creativity that sociologists have noted in "depressed" shantytown areas. Relocation of their occupants in new apartment buildings would entail the tearing down of the structuring that supports this creativity, that is, their strong interaction within the "natural area" that they want to make more habitable.
The overall aim, in short, is their willing insertion into the life of the city, which carries with it rejection of the idea that they are parasites to be repelled. The aim is that there be diffused among them a feeling of integration, that they feel invited to solidarity with the other city residents, in a joint effort to build and enhance a city for all.
Urban planners, if they take seriously the studies surveyed in chapter 5, do not begin with the whole city; they begin with the "natural areas." Here they find the potential for building up communities on a human scale.
Yes, maybe it is a dream, but the only alternative to this environment of commitment, work, and hope is the violence that erupts from the frustrations of the marginated.
In not a few Third World nations, urban planners and those responsible for urban development have taken this road. Dr. O. Fatchurrahman, director of the municipal administration in Jakarta, Indonesia, has voiced the opinion that shantytowns should not simply be done away with as something shameful to house their occupants in new buildings in other parts of the city. It would be better, in his opinion, to mobilize the resources and vitality of shantytowners to make improvements in their part of the city with the means that find here in the close and strong networks of support, of creative solidarity and efficacious participation, developed by the collective response of shanty- towners to their immediate needs-a solid base for meeting the exigencies of life together in a city. At bottom, planners strengthen the sense of community already there instead of trying to substitute it in new residential complexes where everything would have to begin from scratch.
The sense of community has to be supported by adequate structures that gradually integrate the life of the community and eventually realize such community "victories" as a school, a church, neighborhood stores, meeting halls, and many other facilities that are tangible expressions of participation in a more open, more rational society. Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos have written:
The largest of all modern city builders-the Russians, who constructed the phenomenal total of nine hundred new cities between the wars- embody this principle in their physical plans. In creating their smallest unit, the micro-district of 8,000 to 12,000 people, Soviet planners try to project the needed number of schools-primary and secondary-the clinics, food stores, repair and dry-cleaning centers, public places, and small gardens appropriate to a community of this size. A cluster of such units making up perhaps a block of 25,000 to 50,000 people would have, in addition, public offices, bigger parks and shopping centers, theaters, restaurants, and other buildings not in continuous use. As size goes up, so, in theory, does the development of services, department stores, hospitals, centers of education and entertainment.
Countries could put into effect a certain number of provisions already shown to be effective in developed countries.
Urban planners are therefore trying to withdraw from the open market the mechanisms for allocating urban land and other urban resources. The very nature of a great number of public goods and services such as civil defense, measures taken for the prevention of fires and other hazards, education and health services, imposes some degree of public intervention. And public intervention is on the increase in the more developed countries. It would be foolish to continue to put any hope in the effectiveness of the mechanisms of business transactions. Businesses operate today with the imposition of distorted and artificial prices, with the monopolistic supply of some goods, with a vacuum of information to the consumer, a holding back of the benefits of technological innovation, and no regulatory plans for investments or wages.
A correct use of land and an equitable distribution of public services will not by themselves give to the city a human countenance. More advanced urban planners are now inclined to interpret the "form" of a city not only in terms of efficiency but also in terms of the small pleasures, which, taken together, constitute "experiences" that go well beyond the fact or concept of "physical comfort." The form of a city, besides its physical contours, is understood to include the "sensations" or "feelings" that it generates, and urban planners are called on to interpret this phenomenon. By way of example, a city or a given part of it might generate a "sensation of excitement," a "feeling of security," or an "experience of fear."
With all their confusion and squalor, shantytown zones-"villages" that are forever being built up and torn down-are easier to understand than is the over-schematized plan of Brasilia, says J. Rykert. It is said that the sensation of freedom emerges from the overall configuration of all the elements that go into the composition of a city. But Brasilia is so "efficient" that it precludes the sensation of freedom.
The Russian planners had the advantage of not having to cope with the problems posed by private ownership. But for the cities of the Third World these problems remain a serious obstacle, even if it is only a question of granting shantytowners ownership of their minuscule plot of land. The decision of the Colombian government, mentioned in chapter 5, to legalize their ownership opened the door to a type of solution that augurs well for the future.
And solutions need not be long in coming. Extending this theme to the full range of urban landownership, it can be said with Ward and Dubos that the fate of these cities will certainly be infinitely worse than that of the ugliest, meanest, and most criminal of Western cities if the price of urban building lots would be allowed to increase by letting them be put on the open market. In India, for example, the cost of a building lot in the bigger cities is already three times more than what it is in smaller cities, with the result that the nadir of degradation is found in the buildings in the larger cities.
The most urgently needed initiative is that of providing regulations for the use of land, controlling the acquisiti0n of urban land, disallowing or turning to public use-the speculative profits on increases in the value of land.
Urban planners encourage the participation by all citizens in the life of the city. To live is to participate. Planners encourage participation in the process of city planning. For them it is the best way to attain two objectives at the same time: the formulation of a realistic plan and the mobilization of the real human resources.
Sometimes the attempt to encourage the people to participate is done only to reinforce the values and preferences of the planners. But even when this is not the case, the public may not be prepared to express its true needs and its deepest hopes. Participation must then become education of the public to the projects being drafted by urban planners,18 and not the acceptance of the choices and preferences of a given urban group.
Viewed in a somewhat different light, participation, instead of stressing the existence of diverse expectations and priorities (a true pluralism, but one that could accentuate the conflicts within the city), can be a means of calming spirits and slowing down the political mobilization of the masses. When this temptation is resisted, participation, for the urban planner, becomes inspiration and support, the raw material of the reconstruction of the city as a community. In practice, the process of participation, community development, and conscientization is channeled.
Their intention is to "move the waters" with strikes, demonstrations, takeovers, and other forms of public pressure, to modify or make more incisive the actions of those who hold power vis-a-vis the real problems of the city. When this does not work, the "popular organization" moves on to true political struggle with the authorities, to get them replaced. This represents an extreme outreach pf urban planning. But such associations must be considered a form of it-an extreme form, indeed, but justified in some cases.
The process of "community development," as understood here, encourages a small-scale "natural age;" to express the needs that it perceives. From this a number of proposals are formulated in terms that would elicit collaboration by a number of families on each of the needs. The role of the urban planner, at this stage, is to know how to integrate the various proposals in the overall urban plan in such a way as to be able to obtain the instrumentation and resources (subsidies, funding, loans) with which those concerned would be able to put their own proposals into effect. It will be at the local level and through the catalytic influence of the urban planner that improvements in shantytown zones and other city zones will take concrete form.
The base of this mobilization remains always that "do it yourself" spirit mentioned in chapter 5. Starting with a minimum of community "energy," the urban planner will support and reinforce it, providing the help and advice that seem conducive to the goals. When even this minimum is lacking, planners will try to provoke it directly, basing themselves on analogous situations and their experience with other groups
Participation can also be promoted with individuals. The small local community performs an essential function in support of individual citizens, offering them a "symbolic universe" and ushering them into a complex of roles. Often, however, it does not suffice of itself to integrate the individual into urban life in a concrete manner. For this eventuality urban planners have developed the services of social assistance. Included under this term are all the activities undertaken for the individual in a systematic and personal way. In practice they are the activities performed by "welfare" assistance, which in general operates at the level of the individual person.
We are accustomed to think of social assistance as what is done for persons in extreme need: prisoners, drug addicts, alcoholics, the sick, the delinquent. But here we are speaking of social assistance in terms of the needs of "average" urban immigrants, whose "extreme need" is precisely that of finding their way into the urban framework.
As noted in chapter 5, the city presents the newly arrived immigrants with a serious problem, setting them brusquely before diverse frameworks of reference. The values of their framework-never questioned before, because shared with all their peers-no longer have a social base and they tend to come unhinged. In this situation individuals need all the personal attention possible. The task of introducing them to a climate of pluralism cannot be absolved by impersonal institutions. Each person, at bottom, has his or her own particular framework of reference, to be discovered in patience.
There is an initial social assistance service that normally takes place among groupings of immigrants, and generally is performed by persons who share with the immigrant the same culture of origin. And again we can note the importance of "cushion organizations." Be they ethnic or linguistic, they perform indispensable functions of welcome and incorporation for immigrants. In the atmosphere they cultivate, other forms of social assistance prosper.
Another type of assistance is that of guiding the individual through the labyrinth of the services that the collectivity offers. Perhaps the most valuable help will always be that given to fathers of families during a time of unemployment in order to secure a job.
But help cannot stop there. Once employed, individuals risk finding them.
In the effort to encourage the requisite "minimum of community energy," conscientization techniques are resorted to. In general, immigrants, the jobless, and residents of depressed zones have no "consciousness" of the mechanisms or processes that govern the life of the city. They have even less consciousness of their own capacities and rights. Conscientization, generally conducted in small groups, using nondirective, inductive methods, with explanations and great patience, tries to go beyond the diagnosis of symptoms, where the technique of "community development" often bogs down.
In recent years more advanced urban planners have used conscientization programs in their strategy to prevent the exclusion of the masses from the urban decision-making process, and to promote a deep, if slow, process of participation by the urban base. In some cases-not all too rare-committed urban planners resort to direct politicization of the masses. Ordinarily they will be planners who are not part of the city administration, because their aim is precisely to change the political orientations of the municipality.
In Asia the result of such politicization often takes the form of "popular.
If urban planning attains a certain insight into the evils of the city, but must then resign itself to expectations of its own failure to furnish a remedy, whose fault is it? The answer comes from the tension between the interests of particular groups and the interests of the whole urban group, and from the predominance of the first-named.
Urban planning is grounded on the principle that some have to give up some things in order to assure the well-being of all. But there are always those who do not want to renounce-and they are in a position to refuse to renounce-what they consider to be their own. The city becomes the arena for a moral struggle between egotism and solidarity.
It is of particular interest to urban mission to know how urban planners try to defuse this tension and win the struggle. With their ideas on "participation,' they intend to open the egotism of individuals to the fuller spirit of communitarian identification. One school of urban planning tries also to reach, on the basis of participatory roles, other values: service, respect for human dignity, justice and equity, pluralism, interdependence, control, reasonableness, solidarity with the masses.
There will doubtless be other groups of urban planners less interested in the masses and more oriented toward preserving the status quo or even to the instrumentalization of the needs of the citizenry. Their roles signal the values of tradition, competition, private property, and power. Even these groups, however, put solidarity at the pinnacle of their scale of values-with the obvious difference that they have in mind the solidarity of one privileged category, whereas the groups mentioned above have in mind the enlargement of solidarity to embrace the entire populace.
Solidarity, translated into participation, remains the base of all urban planning and the firm orientation of the city-sign. And this orientation will converge with that other orientation expressed in God's plan by the incarnation of the Word.
Workers find themselves in a situation of slavery, without social benefits, and at the mercy of their employer. This is especially true in cities under a capitalist regime. Person-to-person contacts will help the individual to be convinced of the necessity of joining a labor union and find in it a support group and participation.
In addition to favoring a good introduction to the production process, social assistance can help the individual to train for the role of consumer. On this, in fact, will depend in large measure the degree of upward social progress of the individual and the family. If they do not know how to evaluate the potentialities and the dangers of urban consumerism, they will always be poor and famished, despite being employed and earning an income. In the city everything is "moneyed." With money all desirable .goods and services can be obtained. But not all of them are really useful or suited to all, even if advertising, constantly says the opposite. Individuals must form for them- selves the criteria of choice and suitability.
A final point: urban mission dare not fail to take urban planning into account, at every level and in all its options. Whatever tends to improve the city must be of interest to urban mission because, when all is said and done, it will affect persons. What missionary has never tried to help persons-for example, by trying to find work for someone? And in doing so, what missionary has not stumbled over the iron laws of some urban planners? Missionaries should not be content with tangential and occasional aspects of the planning of "their" city. They must know how to evaluate and absorb it as a whole, as a point of reference, and in their own specific work.
The scope of urban planning can be summed up by saying that at the level furthest removed from the individual person-at the international level-it operates above all on values, trying to educate leaders and followers to what modern urban life requires. At the other extreme-at the level of social assistance-it operates on roles, helping and encouraging individuals to accept and fill well the urban roles that are theirs. At intermediate levels- national, urban, zonal-it operates through the formation of the groups that integrate the individual into a totality of interactions satisfactory to the individual and to society. Urban mission can link its message and its course of activity to each of these levels.
Above all, urban mission will discover the huge discrepancies between the objectives of urban planning and the de facto realizations. Objectives- precisely because they are objectives-are signs of the gulf between the city as it is and the city as it ought to be. They point an accusing finger at the failure of the social construction of the city. The fact that the objectives remain unreachable demonstrates the extent of the failure: not only is the city not what it should be, it is also incapable of healing itself.