Participatory Urban Development in India: A Tale of Two Townships

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-147
Author(s):  
Ansari Salamah
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Public Participation ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Tamil Nadu ◽  
Citizen Engagement ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
Critical Understanding

This paper intends to offer a critical understanding of citizen engagement in the process of city making using two case studies within the Indian context, namely, Magarpatta City in Maharashtra and Auroville in Tamil Nadu. As an initial foray into the issue, it engages with contemporary discourses on the scope and nature of public participation in urban development within the framework of a neoliberal economy. This is followed by a qualitative analysis based on unstructured interviews, which capture the live experiences of the local landowners and residents in each location. The findings indicate that citizen engagement is instrumental in producing socially equitable urbanization. If harnessed well, it offers the possibility for an effective departure from the traditional state-market dynamics, which presently underlie forms of neoliberal urbanism in developing countries. This paper, therefore, makes the case for mainstreaming citizen participation for urban development as an attempt to create a sustainable built environment that caters to the needs of citizens.

scholarly journals Citizen Engagement for Co-Creating Low Carbon Smart Cities: Practical Lessons from Nottingham City Council in the UK

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 6615
Author(s):  
Sam Preston ◽  
Muhammad Usman Mazhar ◽  
Richard Bull
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
City Council ◽  
Citizen Engagement ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
City Development ◽  
The Uk

Cities constitute three quarters of global energy consumption and the built environment is responsible for significant use of final energy (62%) and greenhouse gas emissions (55%). Energy has now become a strategic issue for local authorities (LAs) and can offer savings when budget cuts have threatened the provision of core services. Progressive LAs are exploring energy savings and carbon reduction opportunities as part of the sustainable and smart city agenda. This paper explores the role of citizens in smart city development as “buildings don’t use energy: people do”. Citizens have the potential to shape transitions towards smart and sustainable futures. This paper contributes to the growing evidence base of citizen engagement in low carbon smart cities by presenting novel insights and practical lessons on how citizen engagement can help in smart city development through co-creation with a focus on energy in the built environment. A case study of Nottingham in the UK, a leading smart city, is analysed using Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation. Nottingham City Council (NCC) has pledged to keep “citizens at the heart” of its plans. This paper discusses learnings from two EU funded Horizon 2020 projects, REMOURBAN (REgeneration MOdel for accelerating the smart URBAN transformation) and eTEACHER, both of which aimed to empower citizens to reduce energy consumption and co-create smart solutions. Although these two projects are diverse in approaches and contexts, what unites them is a focus on citizen engagement, both face to face and digital. REMOURBAN has seen a “whole house” approach to retrofit in vulnerable communities to improve liveability through energy efficiency. User interaction and co-creation in eTEACHER has provided specifications for technical design of an energy saving App for buildings. eTEACHER findings reflect users’ energy needs, understanding of control interfaces, motivations for change and own creative ideas. Citizens were made co-creators in eTEACHER from the beginning through regular communication. In REMOURBAN, citizens had a role in the procurement and bidding process to influence retrofit project proposals. Findings can help LAs to engage demographically diverse citizens across a variety of buildings and communities for low carbon smart city development.

Metropolitan Planning Objectives and Implementation Constraints: Planning in a Post-Fordist and Postmodern Age

1996 ◽  
Vol 28 (9) ◽  
pp. 1637-1660 ◽  
Author(s):  
P Filion
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Public Participation ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
The Other ◽  
Metropolitan Planning ◽  
Implementation Context ◽  
The One

Planning faces the predicament that as recommendations become bolder possibilities for implementation deteriorate. This is imputed to society's transition from a Fordist and modern to a post-Fordist and postmodern era. On the one hand, postmodern values account for more public participation and heightened environmental sensitivity, which translate into proposals for alternative forms of urban development. On the other hand, the implementation of these proposals is impaired by reduced public sector resources as a result of the economic instablity associated with post-Fordism. Another impediment is the difficulty to achieve sufficient support for planning objectives in the postmodern context. This context is marked by a fragmentation of values, attachment to the existing built environment, and suspicion between social groups. The empirical focus is on Toronto's bold metropolitan planning proposals. Most recent planning documents call for reurbanization efforts, a compact urban form, and reduced reliance on the car. In this paper I cast doubts, however, on the eventual actualization of these proposals by highlighting weaknesses in the of present and anticipated implementation context. These are tied to factors that are specific to Toronto, but also to a greater extent to the post-Fordist and postmodern environment.

scholarly journals Enhancing Citizen Participation for Development in Tanzania

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Abel Kinyondo ◽  
Riccardo Pelizzo
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Older People ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Participation Rate ◽  
Citizen Engagement ◽  
Rural Tanzania ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
The Government

The literature has repeatedly emphasized that citizen participation is requisite for good governance. Indeed, when citizens participate in various public activities, they can voice their demands, they can invite the government to respond to their demands, and they can keep government accountable. In other words, in the presence of citizen engagement activities, voices can be raised to governments accountable. While the literature has clearly established this link, less is known about the levels of citizen engagement in rural areas in developing countries like Tanzania; precisely areas where good governance is most needed to secure some progress along the developmental path and take the population out of poverty. Using an original dataset comprising of 1,265 respondents, we find that citizen participation in rural Tanzania varies across various types of activities. We also find that that the participation rate for men is higher than that of women and that the participation rate for older people is higher than it is for younger ones. Given the fact that Tanzania’s population is largely youthful, and women are slightly more than men, we recommend for the removal of barriers that women and youths face as far as their civic rights to participate in developmental activities is concerned.

scholarly journals Citizens and Positive Energy Districts: Are Espoo and Leipzig Ready for PEDs?

Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 102
Author(s):  
Zarrin Fatima ◽  
Uta Pollmer ◽  
Saga-Sofia Santala ◽  
Kaisa Kontu ◽  
Marion Ticklen
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Transformation ◽  
Positive Energy ◽  
Citizen Engagement ◽  
The Future ◽  
Citizen Support ◽  
Near Future ◽  
The City

In urban transformation, no solution works without citizen support. With increasing numbers of building technologies and large-scale urban development on its way across cities, it has become vital to keep citizens informed, engaged, and content with the new changes. This paper looks at citizen engagement in Espoo (Finland) and Leipzig (Germany), and it determines whether the cities are ready for developing and implementing positive energy districts (PEDs). The authors studied the cities’ operations and current citizen engagement methods to understand how the efforts could be combined and improved. The analysis indicated that the city of Espoo already has a well-established system that continuously promotes citizen engagement at various levels, and combining the available infrastructure with company experts on citizen participation will allow Espoo to seamlessly transition towards PEDs in the near future. The city of Leipzig has a rich experience due to several national projects and participation in an earlier European project, which enabled the city to set clearer goals for the future and modify existing citizen methods. As lighthouse cities, findings from Espoo and Leipzig are also aimed at cities across Europe and beyond to boost development of PEDs together with citizens.

scholarly journals Impact of Organized Retail on Unorganized Retail Sector

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-34
Author(s):  
R. Sivanesan ◽  
G. Jones Green
Keyword(s):  
Real Estate ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Tamil Nadu ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Retail Stores ◽  
Retail Sector ◽  
Satisfaction Level ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
New Form ◽  
Broad Objective

Retail is currently the flourishing sector of the Indian economy. This trend is expected to continue for at least the next two-three decades, and it is attracting huge attention from all entrepreneurs, business heads, investors as well as real estate owners and builders. Availability of quality, retail space, wider availability of products and brand communication are the some important factors that are driving the retail in India. Retail sector is also supporting to create huge employment while a new form of organized retail sector has emerged within the retail industry and it gave speedy phase to Indian retail sector. The rationale of the study is twofold: First, to examine the nature of changes in the retail sector taking place due to organized form of retailing and implications of shift to this new form of retailing. Secondly, this area has remained largely an unexplored part of research till date especially in the Indian context. The broad objective of the study is to understand consumer behavior towards organized and unorganized retail stores and to find out the consumers satisfaction level from organized retail stores as well as unorganized retail stores. The perception of the traditional retailers about the modern retailing. The study uses primary data collected through in depth qualitative analysis to represent organized and unorganized retail sectors respectively. The present study focuses on Kanyakumari, Tirunelveli, Tuticorin, Madurai and Viruthunagar Districts of Tamil Nadu.

Open Budgetary Meetings Amid a Pandemic: Assessing Connecticut’s Various Pathways to Public Engagement During COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 55-76
Author(s):  
Jodie Gil ◽  
Jonathan L Wharton
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Public Participation ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Public Meetings ◽  
Open Meeting

This qualitative analysis of public participation in Connecticut open meetings highlights how Connecticut communities adjusted when the state’s open meeting law was temporarily revised under emergency order during COVID-19. A survey of officials in 95 municipalities found a majority had the same or more participation in budget deliberations during that time. Only about a quarter saw decreased public participation. A closer look at four communities highlights specific challenges and successes during the sudden shift in public meetings. Connecticut’s varied forms of government give multiple perspectives, which can provide insight for other communities looking to expand virtual access to open meetings.

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