Page 46 - Shelter - April 2023

POLICY REVIEW
citizens. Unless appropriate
guidelines for formulating
urban development policy
are advocated, the desirable
future of cities in terms of
good infrastructure and
living environment will not
be achieved in the cities of
developing countries.
Achieving the desirable
future of cities is increasingly
becoming a major challenge
as cities are growing from
large cities to metropolitan
cities to mega cities, and the
provision of urban services
by the concerned authorities
is becoming further complex.
An important aspect of the
rising pressure on civic
service delivery is the lack of
institutional response to cope- does not attach any judgment
up with growth pressures
through efficient and effective
spatial organisation of human
settlements that provide room
for additional capacity of
cities.
FRAMEWORK FOR
MOVING TOWARDS
SUSTAINABLE URBAN
DEVELOPMENT
Compact city development
and smart growth
Urban spatial form or built
form and its growth are two
important components of the
identity of cities which can
be potentially used to the
advantage of creating such
additional capacities within
the cities to cope-up with the
development pressures. This
form of spatial organisation
44 HUDCO-HSMI Publication
of human settlements is
what sometimes referred to
as “compact cities”, which
refers to compact nature
of city development both
horizontally, vertically, of a greater metropolitan
functionally and even in terms
of resource consumption,
and the organisation of
urban spatial growth as
“smart growth” so as to
maximise the benefits like
housing, transport, economic
growth and environment.
These two approaches to
urban development require
attention.
This view of development of
cities is somewhat opposite
of the traditional view of
development of cities, which
to the outcomes of growth
and development pattern of
cities. It accepts expanding
suburban areas and constant
building of urban sprawl as
inevitable and not treated as
problem as such. Although
true to some extent, planning
and design interventions, as
in the compact urban form,
and development strategies
that lever existing urban land
and infrastructure to achieve
a better growth, as in the case
of smart growth, hold a lot
of promise in the ushering
sustainable development
of cities, particularly in the
developing countries.
Both the concepts of compact
cities and smart growth have
an important objective of
curbing urban/sub-urban
sprawl that is inefficient in
several aspects. Urban sprawl
is a term generally used for
the expansive, rapid, and
sometimes reckless, growth
area, traditionally suburbs
(or exurbs) over a large area.
Figure 1 shows how a compact
development in the form of
good density gradient will
contain much smaller area
than the sprawling city due to
subscription to artificially low
development density.
Suburban sprawl has been
an important phenomenon
leading land use/ cover
changes that lead to increased
emission on one hand
and on the other hand it
would require expanding
infrastructure to farther
areas. While sprawl cannot
be completely avoided, as
urban population growth
necessitates urban expansion
to some extent, but the
inefficiencies associated with
it call for utilizing existing
urban land and infrastructure
to the optimum, before looking
for expansion in peripheral
areas and beyond. Moreover,
suburban sprawl is known
for promoting disjointed
communities, as opposed to
well-knit neighbourhoods in
the case of compact mixed –
use development (Duany and
Plater-Zyberk 2001)
“Compact city” broadly refers
to development planning of
urban land with a focus on
higher density and better