New Delhi, Oct 1 (IANS) Urban planning based on the “anachronistic concept of static master plans” need to be overhauled as they are based on requirements of the middle class and have largely ignored the poor, union Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Minister Kumari Selja said Monday.
In an address on World Habitat Day, Selja said the housing concept based on master plans had “proved to be exclusionary”.
“The current paradigm of urban planning is based on the anachronistic concept of static master planning. This planning process has proved to be exclusionary,” she said.
“Even though more than 80 percent of the population in our cities belong to poor and low-income groups yet these master plans are based on the space requirement norms of the average middle class residents. The master plans have failed to provide space for shelter and livelihoods to these poorer urban communities. There is a need for complete overhaul in the system,” a statement quoted the minister as saying.
Selja said: “In the last decade, more population has been added to urban areas than rural areas and the need of the hour is to take proactive policy action to manage these changes such that they do not become roadblocks to our economic growth.”
She highlighted how the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) and the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) scheme run by her ministry were “working aggressively to tackle such residential vulnerability through a rights-based approach to the assignment of property rights to slum dwellers”.
She said that through the two programmes her ministry is “motivating and prodding the states to modify this planning paradigm to that of transportation-led inclusionary planning”.
The minister also said that the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Bill 2012 had been introduced in parliament to help street vendors “pursue their livelihoods in a hassle-free environment”.
Selja highlighted her ministry’s plans to launch the National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM) to “empower the poorer urban population through skill training and credit support for securing livelihoods in the changing market environment”.
