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MEDS-041: Introduction to Urban Development

MEDS-041: Introduction to Urban Development

IGNOU Solved Assignment Solution for 2021-22

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Assignment Code: MEDS-041/TMA/2021-22

Course Code: MEDS-041

Assignment Name: Introduction to Urban Development

Year: 2021-2022

Verification Status: Verified by Professor


Marks: 100


Q1) Explain the trends of urbanization in developed and developing countries. Describe four major issues and challenges of urbanization.

Ans) Trends in Developed Countries

Suburbanization, urban revitalization, gentrification, and megalopolitan development are all key tendencies in urbanisation in industrialised countries.


Suburbanization: The rise of suburbs is one of the most major shifts in urban structure in advanced capitalist countries over the twentieth century. It has occurred on the outskirts of major cities and towns. A suburb is a residential area, a neighbourhood of houses, as opposed to the mixed-use neighbourhood found in the city core. Suburbanization is primarily the result of individuals fleeing the disadvantages of city life by moving to the countryside. Typically, suburbanization entails a separation between home and office, with the most important benefit being relatively low transportation costs, while transportation connectivity extends the distance between suburbs and the city centre. The rate of suburban growth in the United States has been phenomenal since 1945.


Urban Renewal: Urban regeneration is the ongoing process of transforming urban areas through repair, conservation, and redevelopment. The focus of urban renewal is on those areas of the city that have fallen below current public acceptance standards. They are typically located in the residential and central portions of the inner city, and they face issues such as inadequate housing, environmental deprivation, social malaise, and the existence of nonconforming uses. Traffic congestion, building obsolescence, and obsolescence of buildings and locations plague the core commercial metropolis.


Gentrification: As a result of professional higher income groups seeking housing in central city locations, the social nature of the neighbourhood is changing. Gentrification plays a social role in luring some middle- and upper-income citizens back to urban areas. Gentrification is selective in nature, not just in terms of the population it seeks to attract, but also in terms of the circumstances in which it occurs. Most major cities in the United States are presently seeing varied degrees of gentrification in their central areas. In the United Kingdom, the procedure has taken place in a few places, including Bristol and London.


Megapolitan Development: One of the most fundamental aspects of urbanisation in affluent countries is the expansion of cities in terms of territory rather than people. The cities physically increase, and the same amount of people live in them, but at low densities. The characteristics of megapolitan type development can be found throughout the Atlantic seaboard of the United States, in Japan, and in the Netherlands, where it has emerged organically and via design and planning. The United States megapolis stretches 600 miles from Boston to Washington, D.C., the Tokaido megapolis from Tokyo to Yakohoma and Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, and the Ransted megapolis from Amsterdam to Rotterdam to The Hague. This process has begun in emerging countries as well.


Trends in the Developing Countries

Some of the trends of urbanization in developing countries are as follows:

  1. In comparison to developing countries, developed countries have a higher rate of urbanisation. According to UN data, industrialised countries' urban populations account for 79.1% of the total population, while less developed countries' urban populations account for 46.8%.

  2. The African region has a slightly higher rate of urbanisation than the Asian region. However, urbanisation in these regions is lower than in Europe and the United States.

  3. Without considerable industrialization and a robust economic base, urbanisation occurs. Lack of industrialization has resulted in the expansion of the unorganised sector, which is characterised by low wages and poor service conditions, lowering the quality of life of urban residents.

  4. Unplanned urbanisation in developing countries has resulted in the creation of urban slums with low-quality housing, poor sanitation, and access to contaminated drinking water, among other things.

  5. It is not a fantasy, but the current pattern of urbanisation in emerging nations, when examined from a historical, spatial, and cross-country perspective, is worrying. The majority of governments in these countries are concerned about uncontrolled urbanisation.


Some of the features of urbanization as mentioned by the WHO are as follows:

  1. Cities now house more than half of the world's population.

  2. By 2030, six out of ten people will live in cities, and by 2050, seven out of ten people will live in cities.

  3. Slums are home to one in every three-city people.

  4. Every year, around 1.2 million people die as a result of urban air pollution, primarily as a result of cardiovascular and respiratory ailments. The prevalence of tuberculosis is substantially higher in large cities.

  5. Physical activity is discouraged in cities, while bad food consumption is encouraged.


Issues of Urbanization

Some of the problems due to urbanization are as follows:

Urbanization and Health

Health was acknowledged as an intrinsic component of sustainable development at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which advocated for a more efficient, egalitarian, accessible, and adequate health care system for the people who rely on it. Because of the toxic atmosphere and poor living conditions, urban regions, particularly slums, are vulnerable to a variety of health problems. Slum inhabitants are exposed to high incidence of infectious diseases such as pneumonia, TB, and diarrhoea due to overcrowding and congested dwellings in urban slum areas.


Furthermore, overpopulation, in combination with poor sanitary conditions and insufficient waste disposal, provides an environment conducive to the development of infectious diseases. When people, especially children, are born and raised in an environment marked by congestion, poor hygiene, excessive noise, and a lack of space for enjoyment and education, they are vulnerable to diseases. Women, particularly pregnant women, are also sensitive to environmental pollutants, just like children. The risk of abortion, birth abnormalities, foetal development, and perinatal death increases when pregnant women are exposed to a filthy environment.


Carbon monoxide exposure during pregnancy has been found in numerous studies to harm the foetus' health. HIV/AIDS, TB, yellow fever, and dengue fever are among the diseases seen among the general population in the slums. Psychoses, depression, sociopathy, substance abuse, alcoholism, criminality, delinquency, and other disorders and deviances are all linked to urbanisation, according to Trivedi, Sareen, and Dhyani. Such a negative consequence frequently leads to irrational behaviour, which might lead to communal violence. While "urban living continues to provide many positives, including potential access to better health care," the WHO is correct in stating that "today's metropolitan environments can concentrate health risks and introduce new hazards."


Urbanization and Education

While access to education is not a problem in cities, affordability is, especially for the urban poor. In metropolis and cities, urbanisation has boosted higher education. Schools, colleges, and universities have sprung up in response to the growth of cities. As a result, the literacy rate in urban regions is significantly greater than in rural areas. However, education in urban slum regions continues to be a problem. The migration of rural people to cities and semi-urban areas has put enormous strain on urban educational facilities and staff. A large number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are engaged in the education sector in urban slums. Despite receiving a free education, children from low-income urban homes are shown to be involved in income-generating activities. For the urban poor, education remains a luxury, particularly in terms of quality and higher education.


Urbanization and Sanitation

The poor are both the actors and victims of environmental degradation, according to the World Bank (1992). The provision of sanitary infrastructure is falling short of the expanding population in metropolitan areas, making urban sanitation a major issue. Traditionally, sanitation refers to the safe disposal of garbage. According to estimates, 40 million people live in slums with inadequate sanitation. Many unorganised slums lack drainage systems, or if they have, they are in poor condition and in shambles, resulting in waste water obstruction. The open drainage that runs through the slum colonies has a significant impact on the people's health.


Urban garbage disposal is one of the most important aspects of garbage management, and it has long posed a significant problem to municipal governments and administrations. Because of exposure to unsanitary waste disposal, urban residents in general, and children in particular, suffer from a variety of urban environment-related health problems in megacities. The National Urban Sanitation Policy has set the standard for total sanitation in cities, including: universal access to toilets for all, including the urban poor; eradication of manual scavenging; safe collection, treatment, and disposal of all wastewater, and so on.


Challenges of Urbanisation

The major challenges of Urbanisation are the following:

  1. Increasing the capacity of ULBs and improving their financial management

  2. Increasing the efficiency and productivity of cities, with a focus on decreasing poverty and supporting long-term development

  3. Public-private partnerships are used to provide crucial urban infrastructure, facilities, and services.

  4. Creating a regulatory/institutional structure to regulate the public and private sectors' operations;

  5. At the local, state, and national levels, economic and spatial planning must be integrated in order to achieve a rational spatial-economic development.

  6. Strict enforcement of anti-pollution regulations, as well as efforts to minimise unsafe levels of air pollution, particularly in urban areas

  7. To create a transportation system that is cost-effective, energy-efficient, and socially desirable.


Q2) Describe the concepts new urbanism and just city with suitable examples.

Ans) The New Urbanism

A design-oriented approach to planned urban development is referred to as "The New Urbanism." It was developed mostly by architects and journalists, and it is endorsed by academics as well as planning practitioners. It is maybe more ideology than theory. In the United States, and to a lesser extent in the United Kingdom, new urbanites have gotten a lot of attention. Their goal of exploiting spatial relations to build a close-knit social community that allows varied elements to interact is similar to that of the early planning theorists—Ebenezer Howard, Frederic Law Olmsted, and Patrick Geddes.


An urban design that comprises a diversity of building forms, mixed uses, intermingling of dwellings for different income classes, and a significant privileging of the "public space" characterises the concept. The neighbourhood is the basic unit of planning because it is small in size, has a defined perimeter, and a focused centre: "All of life's necessities are within a five-minute walk". The new urbanism emphasises the content of plans rather than how they are implemented. In practise, it has sparked the development of a number of new towns and neighbourhoods, the most well-known of which is Seaside, Florida. The New Urbanism is vulnerable to the charge that its proponents oversell their product by propagating an unrealistic environmental determinism that has run through the history of urban development.


Certain characteristics of the New Urbanism, such as its emphasis on public space, examination of the link between work and life, and commitment to environmental quality, are praised by David Harvey. The most intriguing part of the new urbanism for planning theory is that its promise of a better quality of life has sparked a social movement. Its utopianism stands in stark contrast to communicative planning, which merely improves the process. The movement, on the other hand, fails to realise that modernism's core flaw was its insistence on prioritising spatial forms over social processes. The movement's approach to social injustice is less persuasive.


Harvey is concerned that the new urbanism would make the same mistakes as modernism in expecting that improving people's physical surroundings will solve the socioeconomic imbalances that have distorted their lives. To be sure, with its emphasis on community, it is unlikely to commit the main sin of modernist redevelopment schemes, which is the destruction of communities in order to place people in orderly environs that were assumed to improve living standards.


The actual issue is similar to the one that stymied Ebenezer Howard's radical beliefs in the creation of garden cities. Howard was compelled to give away his goals of a socialist commonwealth and a metropolis that accommodated all levels of society in order to get investor backing for his initiatives. The new urbanists must likewise rely on private developers to produce and finance their plans; as a result, the suburbs they despise are only somewhat less exclusive. Despite the fact that their creatures will have more physical variation than their predecessors, their social composition will be similar.


The Just City

Engels outlined the importance of intellectual understanding in bringing about a desirable transformation, as well as a vision of the future that only avoided the label of utopianism by claiming historic inevitability, or the claim that once the working class seized power, it would inevitably create a just society.


Drawing an image of a just city places the planner in the role of advocate, not necessarily for a specific group, as Davidoff's idea of advocacy planning suggests, but for a specific programme. There are two types of just city theorists: radical democrats and political economists. The former differ from communicative planning theorists in that they accept a conflictual view of society and have a more radical idea of participation that extends beyond stakeholder involvement to civil society governance. They think that progressive social change can only occur when those who have previously been excluded from power exercise their influence. The vehicle through which that power asserts itself is participation.


Just City theorists do not presume the neutrality or benevolence of government, whereas communicative planning theorists primarily talk to government planners, urging them to mediate between conflicting interests (Marcuse 1986). Their objective is to mobilise a people rather than to prescribe a technique to those in power, according to them. A just city theory emphasises both participation in decision-making by relatively powerless groups and outcome equity. Political economists have always questioned two important issues about any policy: who controls and who benefits. The "who" has traditionally been defined by economic interest, although this kind of analysis does not need economic reductionism; evaluation of results can also be done for groups defined by gender, colour, and sexual orientation. It's also not necessary to reduce the emphasis on material equality to the expectation that redistribution will progress to the point where there will be no reward for effort.


A compelling vision of the Just City must include an entrepreneurial state that not only provides welfare but also increases wealth; additionally, it must depict a future embodying a middle-class society rather than solely uplifting the poor and disenfranchised. Recent research on industrial districts, social markets, local economic development, and national growth rates has pointed in a direction more favourable to middle-class ambitions.  Still, there is a lot more work to be done in figuring out a formula for growth with equity. And such an approach must take into account the world's capitalist economy's persistence, as well as the seeming success, at least for the time being, of a liberalised US economy. Because participation in public decision-making is a good objective in and of itself, and because benevolent dictatorship is implausible, the Just City ideal includes it.


At the same time, democracy raises a number of difficult issues that have never been satisfactorily addressed in theory and can only be addressed in concrete situations. Since the collapse of socialism in the Soviet bloc, much of left philosophy has become almost entirely preoccupied with participation, obviating the issues that have plagued democratic theory throughout its history. Democracy is not just a procedural standard in a formulation of the Just City, but it also has a substantive value. Given the existing structure of social dominance, it is impossible to believe that shareholder engagement would be transformative in a way that would benefit the majority of people. As a result, civil society deliberations are not ipso facto morally superior to state-made conclusions. "It is the state's double-edged nature, its power to affect both regressive and constructive social change that must be underlined," says the author.


Q3) Explain the process of fiscal decentralization in India.

Ans) After the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments, which envisaged the devolution of functions, functionaries, and finances to local self-government organisations, fiscal decentralisation became important in India. Several committees and commissions urged fiscal decentralisation prior to the passage of the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments in 1992.


Committees: Various committees and commissions were established to recommend steps to give Panchayats and municipalities financial autonomy. The states have included suitable provisions in their Panchayat Raj Acts as a result of these recommendations. Let us now have a look at the proposals of several committees that have been appointed from time to time in regard to decentralising money to local self-government institutions.


Finance enquiry committee: In 1951, the Local Finance Enquiry Committee looked into the issue and proposed that 15 percent of land revenue be raised in the panchayat region, as well as the revenues of a surcharge on the transfer of immovable property to the Panchayats, be unconditionally assigned to the Panchayats. Panchayats were also to be given the authority to raise funds for themselves by levying various taxes in their respective areas.


Taxation enquiry committee: The Taxation Enquiry Committee advised in 1954 that some taxes be reserved for Panchayats, including as land and construction taxes, octroi, tax on non-mechanical transport, tax on property, tax on profession, tax on advertisement other than newspapers, theatre tax, and duty on transfer of property.


Santhanan Committee: The Santhanan Committee, which was founded in 1963, strongly urged that large and rising resources, which were totally within their power to utilise and develop, were vital for the stability and expansion of local institutions.


Ashok Mehta committee: The Ashok Mehta Committee suggested in 1978 that, in addition to government support, panchayats should mobilise sufficient resources on their own, as no democratic institution can continue to function effectively if it is reliant on external resources.


Singhvi Committee: The Singhvi Committee, among others, proposed a framework of mandatory and optional levies in 1966. State governments will levy and collect taxes and fees on behalf of PRIs and will allocate funds to them based on the Finance Commission's recommendations in each state. The PRIs should be emancipated from reliance on the "Untied Funds" in order to ensure and safeguard their financial autonomy. Instead, creative resource mobilisation strategies such as generating money from entrepreneurial activity, projected loans, public contribution, tax-sharing, tax-assignments, and matching grant incentives for tax collection are promoted.


Commissions: Devolution of powers and the transfer of functionaries and finances to the three tiers of Panchayati Raj Institutions are part of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment. "Subject to the provisions of the Constitution, the legislature of a state may invest the panchayats with such powers and authority as may be necessary to allow them to function as institutions of self-government," says Article 243G of the Constitution. Such laws may include provisions for the devolution of authorities and responsibilities to panchayats at the appropriate level, according to the conditions set forth therein, in the following areas:


The preparation of economic development and social justice plans; and the implementation of economic development and social justice schemes entrusted to them, including those related to topics enumerated in the Eleventh Schedule.


The spirit of democratic decentralisation is embodied in Article 243A of the Indian Constitution.

While Article 280 (3) (bb) of the Constitution directs the Central Finance Commission to recommend measures to enhance a state's consolidated budget in order to supplement the resources of panchayats and municipalities based on the State Finance Commission's recommendations.


The state legislatures have the authority to enact the following laws under Article 243-H of the Constitution:

  1. To authorise a panchayat to levy, collect, and appropriate such taxes, duties, tolls, and fees;

  2. To assign to a panchayat certain taxes, duties, tolls, and fees levied and collected by the state government;

  3. To provide for grants-in-aid to panchayats from the state's consolidated fund; and

  4. To provide for the establishment of such funds for panchayats, as may be specified by law.


The State Finance Commission (SFC) is established once every five years under Article 243-I of the Constitution to assess the financial status of the panchayats and offer recommendations to the Governor on the following topics:

  1. The net earnings of the state's taxes, duties, tolls, and fees are distributed between the state and the panchayats. It may be shared between them under this section, as well as the allocation of their respective parts of such proceeds to panchayats at all levels.

  2. Taxes, duties, tolls, and fees that may be assigned to or appropriated by panchayats are determined.

  3. Grants-in-aid from the state's consolidated fund to the panchayats


The actions required to improve the panchayats' financial condition; and any other matter presented to the finance commission by the Governor in the interest of the panchayats' sound financial status. The State Finance Commission is also required under the 74th Constitutional Amendment to assess the financial status of urban local governments, as well as their revenue and capital account needs. Taxes, levies, fees, tolls, tariffs, shared income, inter-government transfers, and grants from the state to municipalities were all recommended. It proposed strategies for mobilising municipal resources.


The Central Finance Commission

After the introduction of section 280(c) in the Constitution, direct devolution by CFCs to ULBs commenced with the Xth CFC, which entailed an allocation of Rs.1,000 crore for the period 1995-2000. It was calculated using the following criteria:

  1. Slum population;

  2. Matching contribution by municipalities;

  3. Funds to be used for the non-establishment segment of O&M.


After the first year (2010-11) of the five-year period of 2010-15, the CFC has proposed a reform agenda at the state and municipal levels to enable full devolution (2.5 percent of divisible funds).

This contains a 1% divisible pool share dedicated to the XIIIth CFC's reform programme, which includes:

  1. Introduction of a double-entry municipal accounting system based on the National Municipal Accounting Manual of the Government of India. Accounts will be more transparent, and asset mobilisation will be more efficient.

  2. Improved auditing through the provision of technical advice and supervision (T&GS) to the Government of India's CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General), which will encourage fiscal discipline.

  3. Appointment of an independent local government ombudsman to combat corruption and fraud.

  4. To ensure transparency and prompt payout, grants will be transferred electronically.

  5. Defining qualifications for members of the state finance commission in order to promote the SFC's equity and competency.

  6. Property taxes should be imposed on all properties, including those owned by the federal and state governments.

  7. States should establish a Property Tax Board to set standards for the PT system in order to assure total coverage and increased revenue.

  8. States/ULBs should establish service standards (as of 31 March) for the coming fiscal year, notably for key municipal services including water supply, sewerage, storm water drainage, and solid waste management.


All towns with a population above one million should have their own firefighting service.


The State Finance Commissions

The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts, respectively, made it essential for state governments to form state finance commissions (SFCs) every five years to assess the financial situation of panchayats and urban local governments and provide recommendations for the next five years on:

  1. the principles that govern the distribution and allocation of the state's taxes, charges, tolls, and fees, as well as the distribution of such earnings among panchayats/local governments;

  2. the assignment or appropriatement of taxes, charges, tolls, and fees to panchayats /local administrations;

  3. grants-in-aid from the state's Consolidated Fund to panchayats/local governments;

  4. the steps that need to be taken to enhance the panchayats'/municipalities' financial situation; and

  5. any other problem brought to the SFC by the governor in the interest of the panchayats'/local governments' good financial management.


Q4) What is a city region? Briefly explain various types of city regions.

Ans) The existence of a hierarchy of cities and urban places, which gives rise to sets of areas of influence and supremacy, one within the other, further complicates the territories of city influence and domination. The city region is the dominant area of a city that corresponds to its hierarchical level. The same city, on the other hand, fulfils functions of a lower hierarchical rank. As a result, one city may have multiple spheres of influence. In reality, a concentric pattern of dominance exists inside the city region. Similarly, we have a set of regions of influence for each hierarchical level that represent each service or function.


According to Scott et al., city-regions are becoming increasingly important in modern life, and this is due to the fact that globalisation has reawakened their relevance as the foundations of all types of productive activity, whether in manufacturing or services, high-tech or low-tech industries. According to them, there are now more than 300 city districts with populations of more than one million people around the world.


Types of City Region

The metropolitan region's wide variety of structural components has resulted in the acknowledgment of a few key empirical and normative conceptual conceptions.

Among these, the following deserve special attention because of their significance to the city region's and beyond planned development:


Peri Urban Areas

The administrative and physical boundaries of urban built-up regions frequently do not correspond. The areas around metropolitan centres play an essential role in supplying food to city dwellers, as proximity reduces transportation and storage expenses. Generalizations about the nature of peri urban areas are difficult to make because they are dependent on a number of factors such as an urban center's economic and infrastructural base, the region’s, and nation's historical, social, and cultural characteristics, as well as the area's ecological and geographical features. Peri-urban areas around a single centre are not always homogeneous: high- and middle-income residential buildings may dominate one sector, while industrial estates may occupy others, and low-income migrants in informal settlements may be housed in others.


A peri urban area is a particular and non-neutral space where urban and rural activities are juxtaposed, and landscape features are prone to rapid changes produced by human activity. Peri–urban areas, which may contain key protected areas, wooded hills, preserved woods, great agricultural fields, and significant wetlands, can provide vital life support services to city dwellers. A peri-urban area is not only a zone of direct impact, feeling the immediate effects of land demands from urban growth and pollution, but it is also a broader market-related zone of influence, recognisable in terms of agricultural and natural resource product management. Periurbanization is a term used to describe the process of an urban region becoming disorderly and spilling over into periurban areas.


Peri-urbanization can be seen of as both a cause and a result of global environmental changes. We can see the influence and impact of urbanisation on peri-urban areas by looking at how land use and land cover change over time. To understand the dynamic connections and functions and services of peri–urban ecosystems, the complex linkages between urban land use, environmental change, and socioeconomic systems on peri–urban areas must be treated from a systems viewpoint. Around larger or more rich urban centres, the peri urban interface is also where urbanisation processes are at their most intense, as well as where some of the most visible environmental consequences of urbanisation are found.


Rural Urban Fringe

Urbanization and climate change's effects on the world's environment and people are perhaps two of the world's most urgent challenges today. Traditional challenges, such as governance, funding, rapid growth (geographic and population), increasing need for support infrastructure (transportation, water, sanitation), expanding social services, pollution, slums, and so on, are exacerbated by the need to accommodate the direct and indirect effects of climate change more fully in rapidly urbanising Asia. Despite the fact that they are not disregarded in national, regional, or urban planning activities, there are two challenges that are currently being given the attention they deserve, particularly in regional and urban planning:

  1. The rapid expansion of urban centres into their “fringe zones” (peri urban, peri-agricultural, agricultural, and undeveloped land)

  2. The impact of urbanization on ecosystem sustainability.


Both concerns are vital and growing in importance for sustainable urban development, yet they are largely misunderstood and growing in importance, especially in urban planning and development.

Changes in the social features of life in the outskirt villages are inextricably linked to the city's physical expansion. For the rural people, the rise of industry, commerce, government, and institutions of study, arts, and health creates jobs. Jobs, even if they are low-paying and unskilled, are always welcomed by the rural community, which has hitherto had to rely on an uncertain and unstable livelihood from farming. Those who wish to continue farming will find a rising market for vegetables, fruits, milk, and other products in the quickly increasing city. These market forces result in considerable changes in rural land use, as well as traditional rural people's attitudes and beliefs. In effect, over time, rural people adopt a quasi-urban lifestyle that is imperceptible at first but important over time. As a result, a semi-urban society has emerged as a transitional phase between rural and urban societies.


Urban Corridors

The rural-urban edge can stretch in a straight line along arterial highways and railways, sometimes for more than 30 kilometres from the city centre. The corridor is part of the rural-urban edge around the city, although it becomes quite disjointed beyond a certain distance, with extensive lengths of rural land use separating sections of urban land use. Outside of the rural-urban periphery zone, several disjointed sections of the corridor exist. The majority of corridor developments near major cities are immediately identifiable. Around Delhi, for example, there are seven corridors. The Delhi-Ghaziabad-Modinagar corridor, the Delhi-Ghaziabad-Hapur corridor, the Delhi-Ghaziabad-Bulandshahr corridor, the Delhi-Sonepat-Panipat corridor, the Delhi-Najafgarh-Bahadurgarh corridor, the Delhi-Ghaziabad-Rewari corridor, and the Delhi-Faridabad-Ballabgarh corridor are among them. The majority, if not all, of the above are industrial corridors with a slew of large-scale enterprises on either side of the Delhi-bound route. Urban corridors are divided into two sorts in theory: urban industrial corridors and urban residential corridors.


Urban residential corridors are totally contained inside the rural-urban fringe, whereas industrial corridors may spread in a disjointed way beyond the margin. Near urban cities, examples of both types of corridors can be found. In general, corridor growth is confined to the urban perimeter and is mostly absent in the area surrounding one-thousand cities. Almost all of the metropolitan cities, in particular, have well-developed and visible corridors. The rise of corridors around Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata has been considerably aided by the suburban electric train network. A series of residential suburbs along the main railway lines in Mumbai and Chennai have helped to the decentralisation and decongestion of the cities' inner sections to some extent.


Suburbs and Satellites

The term "suburb," as it is currently used in India, simply refers to a region on the outskirts of a metropolis. Suburban railway lines service India's major metropolitan cities, passing through a number of stations. These are among India's most well-known suburbs. Not all suburbs are incorporated cities. In reality, the Census of India does not classify some of them as urban areas. A place does not have to be a legal town or a recognised administrative area to be classified as a suburb. Suburbs frequently form as residential colonies within villages on the outskirts of cities. These colonies are frequently given names that have a modern sound to them. In reality, these locations are part of a traditionally titled revenue village and do not have their own administrative identity. People who live in the residential suburbs, on the other hand, identify with the metropolitan city and even claim to live there.


Furthermore, the postal and telephone departments treat the suburbs as if they were part of the metropolitan city and handle them similarly to the city's centre sections. These suburbs, on the other hand, do not benefit from any of the city's services and do not pay taxes to the city. The phrase "satellite town" is sometimes used to describe a location that is located outside of a metropolis but is connected to it by daily commuting. The distinction between suburbs and satellites in this scenario is simply one of distance from the city centre. Satellites are placed further away from the metropolis, whereas suburbs are closer to it. In this respect, satellites and suburbs may have both a residential and an employment component. Satellites, on the other hand, are outside the rural urban edge in this situation, whereas suburbs are an important part of the rural-urban fringe.


New Towns and Counter Magnets

New towns and counter magnets are also normative concepts that complement the core goal of the green belt concept, which is to safeguard the major metropolis from new immigrants and rapid physical growth. New towns, as the name suggests, have nothing in common with existing towns in terms of location, layout plans, and infrastructure. They are designed as self-contained townships containing residential zones, job areas, shopping centres, educational and health facilities, as well as all of the necessary urban amenities including water and sewerage. The new town's everyday engagement with the city should be minimal, while economic activities in the new towns will benefit from the economies of scale enabled by proximity to the main city. The concept of a new town has been widely adopted in England, where a huge number of them have sprouted up around London, Birmingham, and other major cities.


Q5) Explain the objectives and importance of public private partnership. What are its advantages and disadvantages?

Ans) Objectives

Some of the objectives of PPPs are as follows:

  1. Improving access to essential services

  2. Improving quality of services available

  3. Exchange of expertise

  4. Mobilize additional resources for activities

  5. Improve efficiency

  6. Better management of services

  7. Increasing scope and scale of services

  8. Increasing community ownership of programmes

  9. Ensuring optimal utilization of government investment and infrastructure

  10. Cost-effectiveness and division of assignments

  11. Promote co-ordination, collaboration, and cooperative development


Importance

More than half of the world's population now lives in cities, towns, and other metropolitan areas, according to estimates. According to current patterns, this number will continue to rise as the urban population grows. According to the World Bank, developing countries account for over 90% of recent urbanisation, with urban areas gaining an estimated 70 million new residents each year. This tendency is particularly pronounced in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, the world's two poorest areas, where urban populations are predicted to quadruple by 2030. Cities must be adequately managed in order for an economy to thrive in a healthy manner. As a result, when the process of urbanisation accelerates, the burden on the government to fulfil fundamental human necessities such as health care, clean water, and sanitation increases.


The qualities and issues of urban regions varies from country to country. However, one thing that all metropolitan regions around the world have in common is that the funds required for various urban development projects are far too large to be given alone by the public sector. Taking this into account, many countries are looking into the idea of public-private partnerships (PPPs) for large-scale investments in basic infrastructure for the urban masses. Traditionally, the private sector's role was confined to providing specialised labour on short-term contracts, while the public sector was solely responsible for service delivery. A PPP, on the other hand, allows a private consortium to take on risk.


Advantages:

Cost Savings

Cost reductions come in a variety of forms (described below), but they are mostly due to the private sector's participation as a project partner. In general, the private partner's intrinsic desire for financial gain motivates it to consistently improve its performance, lowering overall project costs.

Whole of Life-Cycle

Public-private partnerships combine two or more project phases into a single package for delivery by a private consortium over time. This encourages the private sector to structure its activities in a way that maximises efficiencies and returns on investment, resulting in economies of scale.


Output-Based Contracts

In most public-private partnership initiatives, an output-focused contract is used, with payments tied to results. This identifies project outcomes in terms of delivered quality rather than how assets or services are supplied. By driving the commercial partner to develop innovative methods and approaches for project delivery that match criteria at lower costs, the emphasis on results also stimulates innovation.


Risk sharing

Risk is transferred between the public and private sectors through public-private partnerships, which assign project risk to the party best able to manage it cost-effectively.


PPPs Deliver On-Time

Because the private consortium takes on the financial risk, any delays in reaching the agreed-upon timetables can result in increased costs for the private partner, who will be responsible for the debt for a longer length of time. As a result, the private sector has a clear financial stake in seeing that projects and services are completed on time, if not ahead of schedule.


Enhancing Public Management

The public authority can shift risks and duties for the day-to-day operations of two or more phases of the urban infrastructure project to the private consortia by inviting the private partner in. This allows the government to concentrate on other critical policy issues including regulation, performance monitoring, and urban service planning.


Improved Levels of Service

PPPs have the unique capacity to share a varied variety of resources, technologies, ideas, and skills in a cooperative manner that can work to improve how urban infrastructure assets and services are delivered to the people by bringing together the strengths of the public and private sectors.


Increased Availability of Infrastructure Funds

Public-private partnerships free up funds for other urban infrastructure projects in two ways: first, through the potential cost savings inherent in the PPP approach, and second, through access to private financing, which binds the government to spread payments for services rendered over a longer time period. Because the private partner normally bears the financing risk, the public body is not required to record the investment as part of its fiscal year's bottom-line surplus or deficit. This keeps the transaction 'off balance sheet,' allowing the government to borrow money for other vital initiatives without hurting the government's indebtedness measurement.


Disadvantages:

Additional Costs

Partnerships between the public and private sectors can help to reduce total project costs. When compared to traditional procurement, however, the entire PPP process incurs additional costs that, if not adequately managed, can negate some of the model's potential economic benefits. One of these possible cost drivers is discovered during the tendering process, which is a competitive method of selecting a project partner that is specific to the PPP procurement model. Prior to implementation, parties competing for a project invest significant time and resources in developing and analysing the project. Costs might mount up depending on the number of project bidders, as all participating bids are often incorporated into the ultimate project cost.


Second, a PPP contract's long-term and inclusive structure necessitates each partner investing significant time and resources in outside experts to assist predict and manage all potential future scenarios. This can be quite costly, especially for a government body that is unfamiliar with the private sector and needs further assistance to defend the public interest. Finally, while the partnership's private financing component is one of the most important incentive drivers for the private partner, the cost of financing might result in increased capital expenses ranging from 1% to 3%. A PPP project may not save money until the cost reductions realised by the private consortium outweigh the additional cost of private loan funding.


Reduced Control of Public Assets

Because the private sector takes on a large chunk of the project risk, crucial decisions about outcomes are accidentally shared with that partner. As a result, the public may lose power over crucial decisions about a variety of public concerns, ranging from how essential public commodities like housing and clean water should be delivered and priced to on-site labour issues like compensation and security.


Loss of Accountability

Partnerships are often controlled by a complicated network of contracts that delegate responsibility for housing and other urban services to a diverse group of partners. Contracts can overlap functions and obligations and muddy lines of accountability for the public taxpayer if they are not properly stated.


Mitigating Risk

The higher and more diversified the risk, the more complex the urban project and the more people involved. Despite the fact that a well-structured PPP handles risk through a well-defined contractual agreement, certain risk is unforeseeable and thus difficult to avoid. In the event of an unanticipated risk (or project failure), it is frequently the public authority that is left to pay not just for the risk's failure, but also for the resulting expenditures.

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