Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

…………This post focuses on a remarkable source for illustrating popular urbanism and urban imaginaries: European and American photomontage postcards from around 1900 to 1920 that visualize future cities. Cobbling together an online archive of over 400 future cities photomontages, I discovered an under-utilized body of evidence about popular urbanism. Visual and textual traces of the urban imaginaries of card makers and senders demands further study because they reveal a specific practice of placemaking through print culture. This archive suggests how urban historians can engage with media history, visual studies, and ephemeral sources……..

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According to some thinkers a city is a growth machine rather than the outcomes of a natural process, unlike what urban ecologists argue. For them, urban growth is not just organized by spatial geography, and cities will not just reorganize itself after periods of disorganization. The growth machine theory points out that urban growth is driven by a coalition of interest groups who all benefit from a city’s continuous growth and expansion. For them, the growth of cities is social, political, and largely planned and intended. For example, real estate interests may be involved—when urban growth happens, some groups benefit because properties increase in value. How groups lobby or manipulate the government or other groups, determine how cities grow and take shape. How people within the city are distributed is not so much related to geography, transportation, or space, but rather to the social actions of interest groups. Social Exclusion is a reality of today’s city.

One can take this as a perspective on economic theory, but as much as anything, this is really about the connections between the urban economy and urban politics. 

This interpretation, originally proposed by Harvey Molotch two decades ago, focuses attention on the role of elites and entrepreneurs in creating the growth of a city.  Growth and development are seen as necessary for the economic health of the city.  Creating the conditions for growth is a matter of politics. The success of a city is a product of its competition with other cities, not just in the marketplace, but in the corridors of power.  The local elite has to be able to attract national government investments and to persuade the national government to adopt policy which favours the city.  Maybe it can get a major airport or defence contracting.  Within the city, the leadership must be effective in creating the political conditions necessary for the success of the city’s economy.  Maybe the city council can be persuaded to relax restrictions on building heights downtown, or perhaps it could release its land holdings for industrial development, or change the property tax structure to favour business.  Perhaps it is just a case of making sure that a pro-business mayor gets elected at city hall.  Success for the elites, of course, is not necessarily success for the ordinary citizen.

Source(s):

Khan Academy

York University

Urbanization is on a rise like never before. Indian cities are increasingly witnessing the impact of climate change .it is apparent that extreme events such as droughts and cyclones will become more frequent thereby causing massive destruction and
disruption to services and leading to economic losses. This will have an adverse impact on the marginalized sections of the society living in the urban areas is there an alternative path for cities.

Now, focus of planners is now on Urban Resilience. A Resilient City is the solution to overcome such disasters a resilient city is one that has developed capacities to absorb future shocks and stresses such cities have advanced drainage systems that help in alleviating floods warning systems and transportation infrastructure that allows citizens to evacuate renewable energy systems that provide backup power during outages building design solutions that reduce the damage caused by extreme climate events the healthcare services in these cities are equipped to respond to public health emergencies there is availability of clean drinking water in the aftermath of floods .

A resilient City has an efficient sewerage system that averts the outbreak of waterborne diseases and effective disposal and treatment techniques that prevent choking of drains it is also where the communities have better coping capacities .

Benefits of Building Resilient Cities

·      Reduced Recovery Time

·      Lesser Monetary Losses

·      Reduced Risk and Vulnerability

·      Improved and Reliable Infrastructure

There are several initiatives that are supporting resilience building activities several Indian cities have also initiated resilience planning through these programs but how do we ensure continuous action.

Crux of the matter is: We will have to make our cities Resilient and Sustainable and Adaptive.