The Hindu Business Line : `Third World cities must position citizen at centre of public policy'

THIRD World cities of the 21st century, increasingly threatened by rapid urbanisation, industrialisation and increasing population, must willy-nilly "position the citizen at the centre of public policy, reinvent the concept of the city and fulfil the many ways of sharing in the urban life.

Talking to Business Line, after the formal release of his book `Are the Third World cities sustainable' by the West Bengal Chief Minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, here, Dr Aariz Aftab, District Magistrate, Darjeeling, and former CEO of Haldia Development Authority, said: "globalisation impinging on urban systems and the strategic role of large cities in world economy are among the factors threatening the quality of urban living".

Planning for sustainable cities within the operational framework of "carrying capacity" especially in the context of the Third World was now foreseen as a critical challenge of the future.

He called for "an ethical approach that takes into account the needs of the individual, based on a better balance between men and women, and cities and nature, in which the quality of the environment comes first which allows for city dwellers to make city life a shared experience".

According to Dr Aftab, in the book, the case study of Haldia as an emerging industrial port-based city served as the springboard to discuss the larger issue of viability of emerging industrial towns in the Third World.

He said a comparison of Haldia planning area with the other major urban areas of West Bengal like Asansol-Durgapur, Kolkata and Siliguri-Jalpaiguri provided valuable insights into several aspects of sustainability of Third World cities.

He defined sustainability as a multi-pronged multi-dimensional term which had diverse overt and covert undercurrents and manifestations, embracing environmental, economic, social and various other aspects.

The newly developed rural-urban development concept, according to Dr Aftab, has promoted a re-assessment of the role of cities. The emphasis, he felt, was now on the development of small medium-sized urban areas leading to the "diversified agri-business-based economy and improvement of the unequal exchange in the Third World".

The book is published by Allied Publishers and is priced Rs 330.

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