DP-Index-habitat-feb08-infocus
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A section of DOCPOST which is an
extract, executive
summary, index
rolled into one.
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HABITAT
PLANNING
Magarpatta's
'Inclusive' Model
.
The
Magarpatta Township Project in Pune is a case study today in
'inclusive' development. 120 farmers came together to be masters of
their own economic destiny. They pooled around 400 acres of their
ancestral land on the fringes of Pune city and proposed the rather
revolutionary idea that they would together develop 'Magarpatta
City', an innovative mixed-use township. The Pune Municipal
Corporation, first shocked out of its wits, ultimately bowed to the
power of the idea and the passion of its proponents. In an epochal
meeting in 1993, all the landowners contributed their land into a
development company and accepted the principle of proportionate
shareholding.
The
Business Standard, 18/02/2008
How
to build 30 new Bangalores?
So
the entire country has to shift to the mayor in council and directly
elected mayor system. But this will not be enough. A former municipal
commissioner who will be a top-class administrator anywhere in the
world says that currently there is no incentive for the bureaucracy
to perform, without which you cannot have a professional
administration. Bureaucrats are currently accountable to politicians
at the local as well as state level. His answer is a directly elected
mayor who runs the town hall like a CEO with the help of a board of
directors. The elected council continues to hold the purse strings
but
the mayor has enough powers to run the administration well and create
visible cash flows which can be used to leverage additional finance
by
Subir Roy, The Business Standard, 20/02/2008
Towards
Corporate City-States?
In
India, as in some other parts of the world, the
other significant development has been the growing economic and
political importance of cities. Special Economic Zones (SEZs), and
the panoply of legislation that has been created to back them, need
to be understood in the wider context of ongoing urbanization and the
establishment of new (private) cities. Legislation (such as the Urban
Land Ceiling Act) is being removed or changed to speed up the
process. Vast stretches of prime land are being acquired across the
country not just for SEZs but for private cities, IT Parks, Biotech
Parks, Special Tourist Zones, Science Cities and the like, the state
and the legal system being the chief catalyst in the process. Much of
this land is agricultural (because it has the most developed rural
infrastructure) and the conversions will have consequences for food
security in the future. Its effects on livelihood are already
beginning to show.
by
Aseem Shrivastava, Counter Current.Org, 12/02/2008
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