Respect for Nature, Tradition and Democracy in Urban Planning and Re-settlement

 by Shanie

"None of the attributes of an advanced civilisation can be maintained in a permanently cowed and servile population: the delicate initiatives, the fine co-operations, the deeper loyalties towards truth and rational judgement upon which our civilisation depends cannot be preserved in governments that know no law, even in the spiritual life, except the whim of the dictator or the command of the party.......The real alternative to the empty political patters of the nineteenth century lies, not in totalitarianism, but in just the opposite: the restoration of the human scale in government, the multiplication of the units of autonomous service, the widening of the co-operative processes of government, the general reduction of the area of arbitrary compulsion, the restoration of the processes of persuasion andf rational governemnt."

(August 09, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Twelfth Neelan Tiruchelvam Memorial Lecture was delivered last Sunday by Professor Ramachandra Huha, the Indian environmentalist. The theme of his lecture was on ‘Making South Asian Cities Habitable’ was so relevant to us in Sri Lanka where extensive changes are being made to the demography of Colombo City in particular. In his lecture, Guha quoted from the writings of Patrick Geddes and Lewis Mumfortd, two scholars who have made a wide study of urban planning and re-settlement. In the above quotation from Lewis Mumford’s The Culture of Cities, Mumford is referring to the totalitarian and fascist states that had made their presence felt in Europe in the nineteen thirties when he wrote his book. He defined a fascist state as a war dictatorship of the power state frozen into a permanent form. Opinion was governed by war censorship, action governed by military coercion, al law converted, openly or implicitly into martial law. In a sense, Mumford said, any fool can govern such a community; but only a fool would mistake such a process for government.

In Professor Ramachandra Guha’s lecture, he referred to Patrick Geddes’ massive work as that of an academic and town planner in India. Over a ten-year period, Geddes produced nearly fifty town plans. Running through those plans, were three central themes - respect for nature, respect for tradition and respect for democracy. By nature was meant the harmonising of city and country life. A town plan should incorporate a return to the health of village life - pure air and water with clean beautiful surroundings - with the benefits of town-life. Thus, towns were sited around waterways, with spaces planted with trees, its natural resources conserved and its waste re-cycled. By respect for tradition, Geddes refers to the preservation of our heritage. The town planner must have an appreciation of all that is best in the old domestic architecture of the ancients and renew them where they have fallen away. It was absurd to destroy, as being out of date, of fine old carven housefronts.

Displacement of the Urban Poor in Colombo

It is about respect for democracy that Geddes and Mumford wax eloquent and which has the greater relevance to us in Sri Lanka, in the ongoing displacement of the urban poor from Colombo. In any scheme of urban planning, it is essential that there is popular participation. The town planner must not only consult but must pay special attention to the needs of the less privileged groups. Geddes showed his opposition also to the mindless destruction of buildings to ‘improve’ the appearance of the town or to build highways in desecration of the countryside. In one town, he had found that ‘sweeping clearances and vigorous demolitions seem to be coming fully in fashion.’ In a section of Lahore, he says he was appalled by a scheme to destroy all old buildings. It spared only one building - the Police Station. He condemned the scheme as an ‘indiscriminate destruction of the whole past labour and industry of men, of all buildings, good, bad and indifferent, and with these, of all their human values and associations, profane and sacred, the Police Office only excepted!’ His ground rules for clearance and eviction were something our own urban developers would do well to follow: ‘these must in any and every case be deprecated until and unless new and adequate location is provided.’

The lower middle and working classes in Colombo have built their dwellings in clusters in the northern southern and central parts of the city. By doing so and living there for several decades have formed a socially cohesive community. They belonged to different ethnic groups, followed different religious persuasions but lived an integrated life. The children go to the same schools and play together in the streets and in open spaces where available. The parents go to work usually not too far away from their homes and participate together in each other’s social and religious events. There was far more social cohesion in these communities than among many middle or upper class communities.

It is these low-income socially cohesive communities who are being uprooterd from their homes and business places and asked to move by insensitive urban planners to unknown destinations tens of miles away from their present places of residence. There has been no participation by these communities in any discussion on the need to vacate their present site and in the decision to evacuate them. Worse still, there has been a strong element of intimidation in using the military to serve notices of demolition of their dwellings and work places. There have fortunately been some religious leaders representing all faith groups who have been taking up the cause of these unfortunate people. But it was interesting to see a photograph this week in the newspapers of the Archbishop of Colombo meeting some of his faithful whose homes have been demolished and the newspaper story quoted the Archbishop as telling his faithful that such action would be for their good and of the church. No doubt, it is important for the faithful to believe that a joyous after-life awaits them - and the church!

These hapless people have been living in their present community for several years - some for several generations. Their children go to good state schools in the area, again some even to good private schools. Re-location would mean finding new schools and indeed re-building their lives, this is why Professor Guha urged that town planners needed to pay special attention to less privileged groups. Many of the adults, men and women, have found satisfactory employment in respectable homes, schools and other workplaces in the area and some are self-employed either running their own businesses within the locality or working as skilled or semi-skilled professionals. All that livelihood support for families will be lost if they are evacuated to distant places. It is not easy to re-build lives.

There is also a political factor that is being mentioned. It is debatable if there is any truth in this. It has been alleged that the bureaucratic decision to evacuate these Colombo residents was to dilute the vote bank of the political opposition. This may or may not have been a factor that influenced the decision of the Ministry of Defence. But it is probably correct that most of the low-income group of residents who are being moved have traditionally voted with the present political opposition.

A Silver Lining

The only silver-lining in this senseless re-location of low income groups out of Colombo is that the upper-income residential areas seem to be getting a face-lift. Some parapet walls have come down and trees are being planted by the roadside. Some of the best and most pleasant roads to travel in Colombo are the tree-lined streets of Colombo built during the colonial era - like the old Thurstan Road and Buller’s Road. The re-lining of the roads with trees is therefore to be welcomed. Professor Guha also referred to this aspect in his lecture. Referring to Geddes’ town plans he says that Geddes was always alert to spaces, however small, that could be claimed by trees. As a skilled botanist, he had a keen eye as to which species went with which aspect. His plans are filled with meticulously specific recommendations, for a line of cypresses to be planted here, a grove of mangoes there, pipal planted in one place, banyan in another.’ So also to be welcomed is the carpeting of sections of the main roads and building of pavements on Marine Drive. But the state of the smaller lanes and streets remains pathetic.

The Ministry of Defence has just released a report on what it calls the humanistic operations during the war against the LTTE. Let us hope that humanistic considerations will prevail in their attempts to re-design Colombo city and re-locate the less privileged groups of Colombo. These deserve to be treated with greater dignity and their right to shelter and livelihood respected.