Planning for the Urban Future is the theme for this year's World Habitat Day and Sustainable Development - People First is the national theme for this year's World Town Planning Day celebration in Malaysia. The themes were unveiled yesterday at the PWTC. I was impressed with the focus on people centric development in which participatory and consultative planning as well as partnership is the call of the day. Many are agreeable with the need to consult stakeholders and to convince people, the majority of them on the benefits of developmental planning. Many, have however cannot differentiate between the right and rights. While many acknowledge the rights of stakeholders to be consulted, many have not done the right things to justify their commitment. For example, consultation session might have done exclusively or during inappropriate time.
Many have not done so sufficiently due to capacity and competency problems. There are people who might have afraid fronting with their opponents because lacking of communication and negotiation skills. We saw instances of people confronting each others not because of different in ideology and views, but rather personality.
People centric development for sustainability does not mean providing the fishes for the people, but rather facilitating them with the fishing rob and skill of fishing. We cannot assume that providing physical infrastructure equivalent to the urban standard without giving them the soft skills and continue support is people centric. It is pointless to build community centre with the IT equipment but without the resource person to teach them the techniques of mastering the computer. Similarly, ultimately for PJ people it is not a matter of many policemen on the street, but rather the crime rate has dropped. It is not a matter of how bright the city with all the decorative lamp posts, but rather it is bright enough preventing crime from happening.
Toward this end, perhaps we should first create consensus on what do we mean people centric and people first.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment