Integrated Development and Sustainable Cities: Need for an Alternative Development Paradigm

Abstract

The paper begins by analysing the large city centric perspective of urbanisation at the global and national level and presents its inadequacies to handle the emergent problems. It looks at the recent trend of urbanisation in India and the major departure it makes from the scenario projected at global and national level. It shows how the dynamics of development has shifted away from large cities to their suburban and rural peripheries as also to distant areas, leading to emergence of a large number of small towns. It then goes on to analyse the policies and programmes in the country for urban development, with an emphasis on the current missions, identifying the areas of concern in the context of meeting the SDG 11. The next section overviews restructuring of urban governance and financial institutions, empowerment of local bodies, changed perspective for preparing and implementing city-level plans, emergence of new mechanisms of resource mobilization etc. in the context of large city centric urbanisation. Attempt is made to assess if these are in conformity with the requirements of SDG 11. The UN institutional architecture for target setting, specification of indicators and monitoring the progress with regard to SDG 11 is discussed briefly. The same has been attempted at national level, highlighting the deficiencies in the existing system, assessing the progress made and identifying the areas of concern. Finally, the problems and possibilities of launching a proactive strategy of integrated and sustainable urban developement have been presented.