Governance by double-take

Cities are growing, quickly. Whether for employment, education and economic opportunities, forms of social organisation, or as a means of escape from dysfunctional places, people are moving beyond the periphery in an inexorable drift toward the city.

But how can these newly arriving needs, expectations and potential be managed? Last week in Delhi a range of urbanists, academics, economists, development practitioners and politicians got together for the 13th annual Urban Age conference organised by LSE Cities and the Alfred Herrhausen Society of Deutsche Bank. Bringing stories from a multitude of cities, data, and curiosity, different experiences, best and worst practices were represented and compared. Participants did not always agree, but seemed to be united by a few very important themes: the uncertainty of governance in the face of climate change, the need for short term preparedness for shocks, the development of risk mitigation strategies, a heightened sensitivity to the crucial politics of land use, and knowledge that no matter how perfect is governance at a local level it will be influenced by global currents.

Cities have been the incubators of some of the greatest innovations, while for many migrants they are considered sites of boundless opportunity. As Sanjeev Sanya says, migration to cities has become a means of opportunity and social mobility. The city provides an opportunity to escape the rigidity of caste and other bases for discrimination or abuse. 'For millions of the wretched have-nots of our society,” says Charles Correa, “they are places of hope – perhaps the only rode to a better future”. But as Harsh Mandar made clear in his presentation, in cities such as Delhi the hopes of the urban poor are not always matched by decent choice. In some cases, he said, they even choose to sleep adjacent to the highway in order to escape the aggravation of the mosquitos deterred by the heavy traffic, risking accident and ill health.  As Jagan Shah asks, should we really be optimistic about the city? How can we manage the hopes, expectations and needs of their current and future residents?

Asking questions, making decisions Essentially the question of urban governance comes will always be answered by multiple, and even completely dissentious combination of forces and stakeholders. The residents of cities do have some agency in shaping the urban experience, even if it is simply the power to burn off rubbish, take the bus, pick up or drop litter, drive a tuktuk or in whatever other way contribute to their environment. Other stakeholders involve the national and state governments and the various agencies they command. Local governments that usually maintain the most immediate and accessible connection to their constituents. As Joan Clos, head of UN Habitat said, “local governments have the proximity to translate the principles of good urban governance into effectively managing governing and developing a city, and ensuring equitable access to citizenship”. Other influential groups involve investors, developers buying the land, corporations building and developing it, NGOS protecting particular causes and non-tradable assets – a motely of clamorous voices asking different questions of the environment they all inevitably share. The real politics of urbanisation is therefore of the difficulty finding agreement between various stakeholders, and the need for compromise. But governance is not just about voices and their demands, but decision-making. Good urban governance requires participation, leadership, and foresight at the service of decision-making.

Design opportunities Given there are a variety of actors, influencers and leaders involved in shaping the urban environment, is it the responsibility of designers, planners or policymakers to build futures and respond to social needs? There is a role for spatial planning in the social sciences but also a clear role for politics in design. For Karen C. Seto the unprecedented upward and outward expansion of cities has created a window of opportunity for new design solutions. New policies often liberate opportunities and enable new design solutions that were not anticipated by bureaucrats or policymakers. According to Governor of Lagos Babatunde Fashola the introduction of street lighting in some communities at night was intended to help small business reduce spending on self-generated electricity. Yet the consequence was that the businesses were also enabled to stay open longer, from 6pm until 11pm, with incomes rising from 38% - 52%.

Disruption Disruption can come from technology, from the radical insertion of capital, or else from environmental disaster, with more complicated cities progressively more volatile and open to disruption. It was thus widely agreed that risk mitigation was a necessary aspect of urban governance. Siedermann discussed the urban uncertainty project, as a crucial way of dealing with the unpredictable aspects of urban existence, that is that uncertainty cannot be eradicated by deferred, that it generates opportunities, and it cannot be solved as a technical problem in perpetuity. For Richard Sennett since transformation does not unfold in a linear fashion, but is episodic. Uncertainty thus creates a planning problem which democratic politics has to deal with. A more reactionary form of both governance and design come into play in the aftermath of a disaster. For Sue Parnell the possibility of environmental disaster has lead to a revitalised role for governments following decades of structural adjustment, to manage risk mitigate the effects of shock.

Agency and the Urban Age Award Episodic and incalculable nature of change also provokes individuals and groups to act as agents, taking the initiative in managing crises. One of the highlight events of the conference period, the Deutsche Bank Urban Age Awards, acknowledged the tremendous agency and initiatives of some of these groups working currently in Delhi. The National Institute of Urban Affairs Delhi, Deutsche Bank Alfred Herrhausen Society and LSE Cities, awarded a prize of 100,000 USD to two pre-existing community initiatives attempting to improve urban space and local residents lives, the Chintan Material Recovery Facility, which manages tones of unsorted garbage form the trains that arrive every day and Goonj, an organisation which sorts waste materials from middle class households to create second hand products. These prize-winners are best-case examples of autonomous responsiveness, a coalition of interests and skills, which provide an elastic and contextual response to an urgent urban problem.

The value of conflict Some of the debates around the roundtable and in the audience bought the crucial and catalysing role of conflict to the fore. Conflict is not something that we should shy away from but rather an inevitable result of passing around the microphone. For Charles Correa, in fact, confrontation and result through negotiation is what democracy is all about. Enrique Penalosa, who implemented a series of urban reforms in his three years as mayor of Bogota, such as 300 kilometres of bicycle highways, said that he spent a lot of his time in various forms of confrontation with interests groups and higher income citizens, as even those who would benefit form the reforms but were not aware of it.

Shock, horror, climate change Of course the question of how much agency each individual has is seemingly overwhelmed by issues such as climate change, which appear to be beyond the control of local and even national governments. For Philipp Rode and Priya Shankar climate change constitutes an “existential threat” to all cities. Urban governments cannot influence the international agenda in the same way as national governments, but will be forced to respond on the front line of changes, from challenges to agriculture bought about by droughts and flooding, to storms and other weather events. Cities are no longer self-sufficient rivals, the perils of climate change bind us to our neighbours even against our own will. For Richard Sennett, “we must acknowledge the disorder to come and learn to cope with it”. Yet for Sassen this openness does not result in absolute freedom, we are not moving toward a borderless world, ordered only by the transnational flow of goods, services, and labour, she says, but rather we are creating new kinds of borders, “that are transversal and impenetrable”.

The political problem is thus how to practice governance in these conditions. In the end the primary issue in city governance will depend upon participatory management of the commons, that is to say the management, design, and legislation regarding of all forms of public space and resources. While many urban government institutions will increasingly need to deploy resources in response to shocks, responsiveness should be integrated into long term strategic thinking, through inspiring leadership and public persuasion, argues Edgar Pieterse. As Pravin Gordhan surmised, highlighting the long-term role of political institutions will perhaps bring focus on the important role of the bureaucracy in creating continuity. The question of what it takes to have a democratic and transformational bureaucracy is therefore an important one – perhaps a relevant theme for a future conference. Not to lose sight of the ultimate goal, which is to improve the lives of city residents. As Jagan Shah said, “we must imagine a future when the smart Indian city has so little environmental impact that when a story-telling mother points to the night sky, her children can actually see the twinkling stars”.

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