By Frederick Noronha, IANS
Mumbai : Over-stretched infrastructure, strained civic amenities and a growing conflict between the needs of the influential rich and the majority poor are the harsh challenges of administering a 21st century metropolis.
Mayors from Kolkata and Bogota, Colombia, and the governor of the state of Sao Paulo in Brazil were among the speakers sharing their angst at the Urban Age conference held here earlier this month over what it takes to run a 21st century city with all its associated problems.
Kolkata’s mayor Bikash Bhattacharya said there were 1.5 million slum dwellers in his eastern Indian metropolis. “How do you give them basic services?” he asked, arguing that numbers were overwhelming the city.
Infrastructure was overstretched and on the verge of collapse, and the poor can’t be wished away or “thrown under the carpet”, he said.
On the positive side, he said mortality rates in the city were declining, and for the past two or three years Kolkata, unlike other large cities, didn’t have to struggle with vector-borne diseases like malaria.
Enrique Penalosa, mayor of Bogota during 1998-2001, narrated the dilemma of getting squeezed between the many poor that inhabited cities, and the fewer influential rich.
“There’s a big conflict today between the needs of the poor, for houses, for schools, and between the rich that want more space for their cars and their roads,” said Penalosa.
“We need to build a city where the poor feel respected,” said Penalosa. “Bogota has one of the most advanced bus systems in the world,” he said, explaining that he also faced a lot of resistance and political opposition due to this, especially when it moved to more affluent areas.
“Transport is a political issue, not an engineering one,” said Penalosa. During his tenure as mayor, he developed five mega projects including libraries and the Transmilenio mass transit system.
Some policies were unpopular with certain sectors. For instance, he faced problems when he built bolardos (small concrete pillars by sidewalks) along some highly congested avenues to prevent cars from parking on the sidewalk in front of the buildings and shops.
Penalosa lost popularity points, but improved the city’s mobility. He also brought in restriction on the rush hour circulation of private vehicles. In rush hour, licence plates ending with a given number couldn’t circulate on a specific days of the week.
Bogota, a city of 6.7 million in the northwest South American country of 45 million, is believed to have one of the most extensive and comprehensive network of bike paths, built largely in mayor Penalosa’s regime.
Governor of Sao Paulo Jose Serra said his city was once the most industrialised in the Third World but was caught between “great expectations, active corruption and bad financial management”.
For a population of 11 million, there were 5.5 million cars, he said.
Sao Paulo grew quickly from the 1940s to the 1980s and many roads and buildings were built without planning. Heavy traffic is common on the city’s main avenues.
To avoid heavy vehicle traffic in the city, a ring road that encircles the city has been planned.
Sao Paolo is also grappling with the problem of slums, known locally as favelas, Governor Serra said.
“Our policy is not to remove the favelas but to improve them,” said the governor, suggesting that removing them would add to transport congestion, as people would need to travel further to work.
Upgrading its limited train tracks and buying a hundred new trains were also seen as part of an overall solution.
E-procurement was being used as a solution by the city, and some 174 free-distributed medicines were being channelled through an online system of distribution, said Serra.
“I wonder if it’s possible to have a good city in a poor country, specially when the right to migration (from rural to urban areas) is granted there,” Serra pointed out.