Competitive Factor of City

Dr Anil Menon of CISCO shared his thought with audience of the IFHP London Congress on competitiveness of a city. He reckoned that 5 criteria are essential for a city to attract talents and investment, and hence the preferred choice of corporate. Firstly, the visionary leadership of city. A city without vision is a city without future. Secondly the readiness of global standard in business dealing. In the absence of global standard, rules and guidelines might be changed more often than one's can imagine. This will become a business risk that many corporate might not want to undertake. Thirdly, smart regulations is critically needed as companies would like to have rules with social and scientific backing. No foolish action is welcome. Forthly, is the presence of public and private partnership policy. While public sector like to reduce cost in providing services or infrastructure, the private sector would like to minimise the risk of doing business. Hence, this policy must be a deciding factor for businesses to make choices. Lastly but not least, it is innovation in economic and ecological system that will attract the attention of investors and talents. In the green era and everyone is pursuing sustainability, it is not a choice for corporates of not embracing the green movement. Perhaps, these thoughts should become the underlying principles for city managers to plan their cities.

Tax Value Per Acre

In the City of Raleigh, North Carolina of United States of America, tax value per acre has been applied to calculate the contribution of an area of project towards the coffer of the local council. It is a technique to gauge the bottom line for determining how much spending on infrastructure or extra urban services should be put back to a community. It is a notion of the more you contribute the more you will get. The information is also useful as a tool to communicate with people on contribution of development project. More than often people objected to a development because of the negative impact of development without realising that the project might have tremendous economic contribution. Perhaps it should be used as a tool during discourse with general public on viability of development projects. Having said so, in order to maintain inclusiveness and social justice, spending on infrastructure for poverty eradication or providing affordable housing as well as economic opportunities for vulnerable group should have considerations beyond the tax value per acre only.

Equity Washing

Most of the time we heard about green washing. It means corporates or agencies trying to enhance their image of corporate social reponsibility on good environmental practices, but however with very tokenism real action. Most of the time it is a mere public relation exercise. For the first time in a lecture, I heard about equity washing. According to Mr Mitchell Silver, the Chief Planning and Development Officer of City of Raleigh, North Carolina that equity washing refers to an action of treating the marginalised people with justice and fairness, but in actual it is not but merely an exercise to ambush the public and getting the general public into believing that justice has been done. It is happening daily especially with entities that are financially sound and require a good public image. It is also happening because the vulnerable group, or so called beneficiaries cannot afford to say NO them. It is a struggle that the marginalised people has no bargaining power at all, I think.

Role of Planning

This morning's Openning Ceremony of IFHP Centenary Congress in University College of London saw Mr Mitchell Silver, Past President of American Planning Association delivered an interesting address. He touched on the emerging trend and challenges of planning especially in America and the World in general. He reckoned that "P" is stood for planning and not the process as many planners have forgotten. He highlighted that the role of planning is to pay special concern on the consequences of the present action and of no action. Afterall no action to some issue means yes or consequences to other things. It is not about what actions have been taken but rather the consequences of a particular action that is important and critical. He shared with the audience on different aspiration, demand and need of people in different generation group. The baby boomers group have different idea about themselves and city compared to the X or Y Generation. Thereby, planning without identifying the need and target group is tantamount to failure in planning. He cautioused that the World will see more single unmarriaged family or even family without children. The presence of aging society and other demographic changes will also impact on the model of planning and how the city should response. He ended the talk by urging all audience to to fall back in love with planning again. An appeal that have been loss amongst the planners fraternity, I believe.

Sustainability of City or Local People?

The best indicator of gauging the sustainability of a city is to ask the people whelther they are happy or not? This question was raised by me towards the speaker in the Seminar entitled Developing London: Up or Out last two day. Obviously, Londoners are facing a big dilemma now. While internationalisation has spurred the economic growth in London, the influx of foreigners has affected the affordability of local to own houses, the opportunity for economic activities and jobs. Planning and managing a city is about making people happy with their living environment. If the beneficiaries of the plan are not happy with what in store for them, then the planning is planning to fail. So, when we talk about sustainability, we should qualify by saying whelther we are talking about sustainability of the city or sustainability of the people. Nowasday we always talk about the competitiveness of the city and if a city loss her competitiveness, the sustainability of the city will be gone as well. This, perhaps refer to the economic growth dimension of sustainability. However, is there fair of saying that a sustainable city with high achievement on economic is also a sustainable city for the people. We see many local people who has been displaced by the externality. The high price of houses because of international investment for example made many local people cannot afford to own a house. Many young generation has no choice but move further out from the inner city. The displacement of local people and replaced by the outside has further diluted the spirit of neighbourhood area and also local social amenities and community development were affected. Community spirit cannot be inculcated over night and need a lot of time, mutual understanding, tolerence amongst different segment of people. However, the outsiders who come to a new area will not be able to integrate with the existing community, and at time social tension did arise due to differences in culture, religions and social status. More so, some dwelling units remain unoccupied due to investment purpose will further dilute the liveability of a neighbourhood area. If this is what happened, then sustainability is obviously did not take place and fail even though the economic sustainability is very high and vibrant. For planners, how to narrow this gap is becoming very critical, ensuing the competitiveness of city, liveability of local people and sustainability ecologically.

Need Limit

Need should be quantified and within a set limit. Need cannot be provided unlimited. For example, when we talk about basic need such as water consumption of 165 liter/person/day, we are talking about the habit of average person in the World to fulfill their daily routine include some luxury habits or items. However, if we go about fulfilling biological need for water, it might be able to reduce and below that figure. In Singapore, for instance the average consumption is 156 liter/person/day and nobody claims that their quality of living has been affected. Thereby, need should be quantified and limited under local circumstances. A city pursuing for sustainability should set the need limit in parallel with the sustainability principles and bottom lines. No point of talking about sustainability on social dimension such as political, economy and cultural as highlighted in the Circles of Sustainability under the Global Compact Cities Programmes but sidelined the ecological aspect. As Gandhi once said, the World can fulfill the need of everyone but the not greed of people. A balancing act must be done, and it is long way to go, I believe.

Market for Planning

Planners always believe that planning is important to make sure that the human settlement is well planned and conducive for staying. In other words, without proper planning, the city development might not be systematic and in good order. However, in reality the city is planned and developed by the market. It is market demand and need that spur the direction and magnitude of development, in which planning is mere a tool to steer and guide this demand. For example, the demand for living in city centre and close to the work place has requested the development of apartment in the inner city centre area. The planning, has subsequently come out with the guidelines on service apartment development. We can plan, but if the market is not response well to the planning, then it will end up of failure of planning. Cases like industrial and commercial zones reserved in the new township development without takers are classic example. Although the authorities can plan and to push up the implementation of plan by providing incentives, the success of the plan is still very much depended on the market, I believe.

Circles of Sustainability

Circles of sustainability taking into account the dimensions of ecology, economy, political and cultural. It is arguing that all except ecology, should be place under the dimension of social since these are about human being. Sustainability is not about well being of the people only, it is also about carrying capacity of the ecological system in harmony with fulfilling the need of the people. However, when it comes to making a choice between liveability and sustainability, people tend to place importance onto the well being instead of the environment. Hence, it is not surprisingly to note that some most liveable cities in the World today, are not ecologically sustainable. For example, the consumption of electricity and water is higher in these cities because people would like to have high end of life style. Thereby, it is arguable to examine exactly how sustainable a city is even though it is liveable. Most of the time since the inception of sustainable development concept and principles, we spoke about integrating and balancing the dimensions of social, environment and economy. However, the paradox is always how to make sure economical growth can be ensured and it possible to grow within the limit of the ecological system, and if not in which it happen most of the time, is to remedy it. That's why Kyoto Protocol was reached to reduce the carbon emission and was in relation to the GDP intensity. In this respect, we are merely talking about solutions of making our unsustainable urban development more sustainable.

Public Reserved Land for Private Use

Is privately owned social facilities considered as part of the public facilities that are required to be provided for in any property development projects? For example, is the privately managed but Government accredited primary school be counted? While the need for education demand is fulfilled, the school is not opened and accessible to general public, especially if you cannot afford to pay the fees. Similarly, how about the postal service? Since postal service has been privatised and the post offices are establishing in the commercial premises, thus the question is wheather the reserve land for postal service is still required or the agency can have their own property portfolio. It is difficult now to demarcate clearly on the status of facilities or utilities. The reserve of land has to be done based on usage of facilities and not the ownership. If a piece of land has been demarcated for public use, then rightly so the land should be returned to public domain if the land is no more needed for public use. The question of utilities agencies, for example converting their land for other profitable use after discovering that the reserve land is not required any more. For example, the availability of extra land because of building a mechanical sewerage treatment plant in place of oxsidation pond which occupy bigger piece of land.