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Urbanisation, despite its smooth evolution in Sri Lanka, is inevitable. A real change of mind must be initiated to consider the opportunity of positive economic, social and environmental changes it involves and finally move away from its image of monster that should be held in chains.
The urbanisation of the world is a powerful but worrisome phenomenon. 2008 was a turning point in world history: according to the UN survey, one human out of two was living in a city. In Sri Lanka, however, things are quite different.
The latest data shows that only 15% of Sri Lankans live in a city; thus making the island one of the least urbanised countries in the world. Cities are spread out, densities remain low, and when people migrate into towns there is a tendency to accommodate them in new suburban areas rather than dealing with the existing urbanised areas.
You have no doubt already read very critical opinions about urban development in the newspapers. It is now commonplace – even among the most educated people – to associate growth of cities with increasing pollution and negative impact on the environment.
This may be true if the current issues are not dealt with and if cities are left to their own fate; but this vision might also be far too simplistic. I’d like to invite you to get a new look at urban development.
Challenges raised by urbanisation Cities and their current issues
Cities have dual nature: in some areas technical installations and amenities bloom making those affluent settlements, and for certain other areas where ghettos and slums are prevalent, tensions, difficulties and disadvantages accumulate. It is undeniable that issues related to access to water and sanitation, energy and transportation are today an unprecedented challenge.
Sri Lanka is no exception. If Colombo or other secondary cities can be places of fulfilment for Sri Lankans belonging to middle or upper class, it is also a place where the finest hotels coexist with very modest households. Moreover, Sri Lankan cities, when compared to any other Asian neighbours remain clean and tidy, but are far from being environmentally-friendly places too. Simply walking through the streets of the capital, you’ll experience air pollution, congestion, or waste water smells.
If urban regions gather half of the world’s population, they also amount for two-thirds of the energy consumption and three quarters of greenhouse gases emissions. It is somehow understandable: cities consume energy, raw material and reject gases, solid and liquid waste to operate and be lively places.
A street in Fort, Colombo – 2014
However, as contradictory as it may seem, stigmatising urbanisation will not help dealing with the issues we face, and particularly in Asia where most of the urban challenges will take place within the next years.
I’d like to take you through the list of clichés you might have already heard on the subject.
“Cities aren’t environmental friendly, because they pollute and infringe upon nature.” “Cites are unfair, they gather the poorest and the richest in the same area, revealing the inequalities in our society.” If we consider all these ideas, it would drive us to the conclusion that we must stop the urbanisation to protect the environment. Let’s give it a try and think about what would happen then.
The plague of urban sprawl
Imagine we are now living in a country where the government decides to purely and simply curb urban development and to listen to the people’s deepest wish: owning a beautiful house on the countryside. If every Sri Lankan household was willing to have a piece of land – let us say 20 perches each – plus the required space for access by road, we would reach 27 perches per person. With approximately 650,000 Sri Lankans in Colombo and five persons in every household, 3.5 million perches of land would be required to build everyone’s house. This is more than three times its actual surface!
This phenomenon is called urban sprawl and is the plague of developed nations. Urban sprawl can be caused either by an urban planning promoting the pursuit of spacious, single-family home on breathing lands, as it was the case in the USA; or by an absence of planning leading to an excessive demographic pressure on the city centre, resulting in the settlement of families in wider and wider suburbs around the city with no restrictions from the local authorities.
Urban sprawl is not limited to developed countries, and may be more prevalent in developing countries. For instance, a considerable amount of land is consumed by urban sprawl in Mexico City, New Delhi, Beijing, and Johannesburg. The premises of sprawling are visible even in Sri Lanka through ribbon development: people settle on road sides, and little by little buildings appear all along the way from one city to another, infringing on nature.
Urban sprawl is associated with a number of negative environmental and public health outcomes.
Environmental problems mostly come from an increased dependence to automobiles. Services and commercial areas being concentrated in the centres, inhabitants of remote suburbs will need to use their car at each move. This will result in a rise of the emissions of greenhouse gases and micro particles. The list also includes flooding, due to increased impervious surfaces for roads and parking; decreases of natural areas and forests; and increased incidences of water pollution and water-borne disease.
Social inequalities certainly exist in the heart of our towns, but sprawling can bring its own social issues as well. Being forced to build long distances networks in remote places, the authorities will increase taxes on population who had to settle in the furthest areas. The same families will face an important cost of transports as well, due to the distances they will have to travel in their everyday life.
As a country develops its tertiary industry, the movement of population from countryside to cities will occur progressively, and inevitably. People will be attracted to city centres because it is the place where they will have the greater chances to find a job or where they will receive the best medical treatment. Ignoring this reality will give no other choice to new urban population but to settle on suburbs, thus being active contributors to urban sprawling.
On the other hand, answering to the congestion of centres by resettlement plans on natural areas will lead us to the same issues. The strategy to adopt then is not about stopping urbanisation, which will occur anyway in bad conditions, but to prepare the future and give positive possibilities to urban development.
Planning for inclusive urban development Cities in a positive perspective
The main idea is then to picture urbanisation as irreversible but potentially positive.
When a town centre grows, it gathers a great number of citizens in a limited space. This concentration of population on a restricted area allows the authorities to build and operate higher-impact transport, housing, economic, and environmental planning policies. People gathered in a city will enjoy the proximity of quality health services, higher education, and active employment areas among others.
Beyond their poor reputation, well-planned and managed urban centres can be of incredible help in the first steps towards a better protection of our environment: green gases emission are lowered by the limited use of car, often replaced by public transports; the proximity of services and shops can convince people to walk or cycle; renewable energies sources can be used as a solution to answer the energy needs of several buildings at the same time; and a denser urbanised area avoids the consumption of important land surfaces, which can be preserved as forests or natural reserves for instance.
We could say that cities used to be dependent on their environment, now it is the environment that depends on cities. No one denies that cities are the epicentre of problems and solutions at the same time. It is therefore crucial to focus on the evolutions of urbanisation if we want to deal with the environmental issues, precisely because human lifestyles will become more and more urban.
Indeed, if policies, infrastructures and technology can be catalysts to the sustainable transformation of towns, urbanites themselves will also be key players in this change. After years of civil war and a tsunami, number of Sri Lankans may think there are bigger concerns to deal with, or that they are oppressed by the efforts environmentally-friendly policies ask in their everyday life: it is not about imposing impossible rules but getting into simple habits that will make everyone’s living conditions more pleasant.
To allow this positive opinion on urbanisation, it is necessary to find the appropriate tools that will allow local authorities and inhabitants to control the growth of towns and preserve their quality of life as well as their environment. This concept is called inclusive urban development. It is even more crucial in Sri Lanka, where regulations and planning documents have always been relatively inaccurate, becoming a quarry for a disorganised urbanisation. It is also crucial because the natural heritage of this country is exceptional and meaningful for a lot of Sri Lankans, who are willing to protect it.
Tools for an inclusive urban development
We could think of thousands of ways to make urban development beneficial for Sri Lanka. But here are four ideas that, from what I’ve experienced in Sri Lanka, appear to be the most important ones.
Reasonable planning
It is crucial to back urban development by master plans of different scales. A global national master plan, such as the one that was developed by the NPPD is a great tool to anticipate the future changes of the country, but this global master plan can only be monitored at the smallest levels if it is completed by local plans.
These plans already exist in the biggest cities such as Kandy, Galle or Anuradhapura; however these documents would need to be renewed more frequently and rely on a deepened diagnosis of the current issues to highlight reasonable and achievable goals.
To do so, it would be interesting to lead a broad “refreshment” campaign on strategic documents at national scale on one side; and giving the keys to municipalities and urban councils (which means the legal, human and financial ability) to update their plans in the upcoming years on the other side.
Simplify land management
Land is the essence of all urban development projects: often forgotten in the first place, land availability is one of the most determining parameters. In Sri Lanka, private land plots are often shared between tens of owners, and public land can be occupied through various status of right of use, which in the end makes it really difficult to control and mobilise land for development projects. The legal simplification of such a situation is an essential but titanic undertaking.
From an operational point of view, today land management responsibility is shared between various stakeholders: Ministry of Land, Urban Development Authority and local authorities all have a part of liability in land management. As a result the process of land acquisition turns out incredibly time-consuming and potentially controversial.
Setting up a unique and dedicated land management public entity could be a way to address efficiently these challenges to boost integrated urban development. This entity could be empowered to lead “land watch”, to buy and to store land in partnership with the municipalities and the government to prepare future projects, thus anticipating development process and smoothing project implementation.
Develop public transportation in the densest cities
Transportation and town development have always been strongly interrelated. Number of cities such as Copenhagen, Curitiba, and Berlin among others, grew along public transportation axes; taking advantages of the high quality of service and accessibility offered by mass transportation. Sri Lankan cities on the contrary, are shaped to encourage car and buses travels.
Though a great part of users take the bus rather often, it remains an unsafe, non-reliable and polluting mode of transport. As the population of major cities increase, the number of buses, cars and motorcycle follows the same trend, causing more and more frequent congestions: almost all the commuters in Colombo will tell you the difficulties they face on daily basis to commute. As a consequence developing an efficient, convenient, economical and comprehensive mass transport system is more than urgent in Colombo.
This system could be introduced in the secondary cities around the country in future as well. Such a system could carry up thousands of passengers quickly, thus making the most remote areas of Colombo accessible in a few minutes. The indirect consequences would be significant in terms of economy, employment, environment protection and structuring of urban development or renovation.
Work towards public consultation
If experts and political leaders might probably have great ideas for cities development, there is one other prominent player whose added value has great potential: inhabitants. Too often forgotten in the project’s conception, they are the first recipients of cities transformations.
Better than anyone else, they know their streets, shops, homes, and could be real support to the emergence of initiatives if we were offering them a chance. First steps could consist of public meetings, suggestion boxes, simple communication; and later on debates or workshops that could enrich the town planning process.
Urbanisation, despite its smooth evolution in Sri Lanka, is inevitable. A real change of mind must be initiated to consider the opportunity of positive economic, social and environmental changes it involves and finally move away from its image of monster that should be held in chains.
It is high time for Sri Lanka to mobilise efficient tools to become master of its own urbanisation. The country, still rural today, is probably on the verge of great transformations in which cities will play an important role. It is crucial to lay reliable foundations for an inclusive and sustainable development of urban areas, beneficial for the inhabitants and the environment.
In this regard, powerful leverage effect could be triggered through a strong involvement on strengthening strategic documents and local urban regulations, streamlining land management, setting up a clear transportation strategy and opening perspectives of dialogue with the inhabitants.
(Lucie Bronnec is an Urban Development Specialist who worked for the French Development Agency for over eight months in its development projects.)
