Everywhere we see technological domination. Look at this picture. I got this through internet, so use the available technology is good idea.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Participatory Urban Management: A Present Need in Nepal
..Talk to Walk .
Over the years, Nepal’s urbanization trend is fast growing, rapid and haphazard bringing enormous challenges and opportunities. The main manifestations of rapid urbanization are unprecedented growth of slums and squatter settlements, congestion, environmental degradation, crimes, violence, pressure on civic amenities and basic services that has affected the urban lives badly. The urban growth is slightly over 6 percent against the national growth rate of 2.3 percent per annum and the average urban density is 962 per km². One of the alarming indicators of extending urban settlements is the numbers of municipalities increased from 23 in 1981 to 58 in 2001, including a metropolitan and four sub-metropolitan cities. With extension of urban settlements, the demands of basic services are rising, but the government hasn’t been able to provide those services adequately. Upon implementation of urban development interventions, the government and non-government sector and the development activists gradually understanding the crux of the learning is that urban affairs are more dynamic and complex and the effective approach is participatory urban management. During the Panchayat era, the wave of modernization has resulted expensive urban infrastructures, usually carried out by the central government with the help of external aids. As such, development projects emphasized on the involvement of communities, but the outcome was the mismanagement of infrastructures in the urban centers and under-development of infrastructures in sub-urban areas. This uneven pattern of development has stimulated to develop and adopt a better participatory development approach. Therefore, acts like Local Self Governance Act 1999 was formulated to devolve central power to local bodies and to involve the local communities in formulation, implementation and monitoring of local development initiatives.
Participatory Urban Development
The participatory development approach lies in the principles of participation, empowerment and collective actions through a strong community organization that is capable of assessing their needs and take actions. It provides a platform to the communities for organizing themselves, assessing the needs and formulation of strategies to achieve the goal. The practices of getting communities involved in their own affairs helps in fulfilling needs and also strengthening the capabilities of the communities to get involved in variety of development activities. Therefore, participatory urban development approach is keys to success of variety of urban planning and development. The participation of local communities in monitoring and evaluation may result the quality work and ensures a sustainable urban infrastructures. Establishment of the user’s committee itself provides platform to put and making heard the voices of people in an organized way. Regular communications and information sharing lead to form trust and unity among residents that contributes to improve socio-economic as well as physical urban assets. Similarly, participatory urban development approach also improves organizational and financial capacity of the community by mobilizing internal and external funds, i.e. membership fees, donations and development grants. Through participatory discussions and interactions, communities also become able to assess their own strengths and shortcomings that help for problem analysis, finding the solutions and self-reliance.
Likewise, this approach emphasized on coordination that helps to empower the committees themselves to become able to influence other institutions and bridging the gap between community and local government and creates pressure to concern agencies to take actions as per the will of the communities. The local communities once involved in formulation, implementation and evaluation of development works and familiarized with organizational management, they become more empowered. Additionally, awareness activities in the local communities also help to develop collective actions. Practices of choosing of members through electoral process, public monitoring and evaluation of programs and conflict resolution through talks, provision of auditing of income and expenditure demonstrate the transparency and democratic practices within the committee and communities.
Challenges
In spite of some achievements, the community may not be able to get cent percent success and free from the obstacles. There are various challenges coming up with the circumstantial changes and growing complexities. Construction of few meters of roads or renovations of few heritages won’t fulfill the increasing demands of modern urbanized cities like Kathmandu. Hence, the local committees of the communities should enhance their capacities to demand and initiate higher level actions; have sound knowledge and technical knowhow for the planning and execution of development interventions with an enlarged coordination to macro level for formulation of holistic plan for local development. Therefore, communities should now focus on the development of knowledge and skills in the fields of planning, monitoring, coordination and maintenance. So that the communities can adopt ‘Social Urban Planning Model’ and address the present need ensuring a participatory urban development approach for the sustainable urban development.
Way Forward
Participatory development approach has been successful in many parts of the world, so is the case in Nepal. In urban areas, participatory approaches contribute in infrastructure development and improve other various socio-economic assets. Growing awareness influence community based programs that have great value in success or failure of development, implement and sustain the impact of the activities. After the massive failure of top-to-bottom approach in development activities, bottom-to-top approach or participatory development approach has been gaining popularity all over the developing world including Nepal. This approach facilitates to achieve basic requirements of the communities and provides equal opportunities to all to participate, influence and shares the benefits and paves a way for communities to be more assertive and self-reliant.
Participatory and organized efforts of the community on Urban Management may bring changes in the improvement of infrastructures and services, improvement in socio-economic assets, confidence to assess own strengths and shortcomings, power to influence other institutions and communities and ability to planning, execution, monitoring and evaluation, which are main pillar of a better democratic in local urban environment. The several years have gone, and the time now is talk to walk. In the country like Nepal, where governance is weak and majority of people still live in the deep rooted poverty, the supply based development paradigm must now be replaced with the demand based participatory development approach that can be a milestone to fit it into the participatory urban management, which is present need for achieving a livable and sustainable urban system in Nepal.
â Mr. Sharma is a Faculty of Society, Urban Planning and Development at Center for Development Studies, Kathmandu. He can be reached at : rps.sharma@gmail.com
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