Global & Local Responses to Development & Implementation of Sustainable Urban Transport

Systems in Developing Cities: An International Perspective*

Professor Harry T. DimitriouBartlett Professor of Planning Studies, Director of the OMEGA Centre

Bartlett School of Planning, University College London

*This presentation draws extensively from the Introduction and Conclusions of Urban Transport in the Developing World: A Handbook of Policy and Practice edited by Harry T. Dimitriou and Ralph

Gakenheimer, Edward Elgar, 2011

Executive Leadership Programme in Public Transport for Spatial Transformation Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice of the University of Cape Town

in association with South Africa’s National Treasury 4th-8th November 2013Cape Town, South Africa

Setting the scene

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• Many aspects of the developing city’s’ identity are currently in flux.

• City officials, policy makers and professionals have been attracted to many international currents for understanding the urban quandary they pose and potential solutions to the mobility challenges they confront.

• Perspective on what is ‘developing’ about developing cities, however, depends in part on what urban sub-systems and geographical areas are in focus.

• Cities of widely different income profiles, diverse structures and plight are all part of the developing world.

• Yet, drawing up a typology of ‘developing’ cities has never been comfortable. While many efforts have been made to categorize them – not many have been widely accepted

Core features of a developing city• Among the core features of a ‘developing city’ are the:

– rapid change in travel demand and its structure; – presence of a dysfunctional misfit among the many urban sub-

systems that comprise the setting of urban transportation and the behaviour of trip-makers; and

– existence of substantial populations in poverty.

• The mobility sub-systems of such cities are further often characterised by conditions of growth (sometimes substantial) in some parts of the system, and a decline in others parts - which together are significantly out of synchronization with one another on account of: – rapidly increasing motorised vehicle ownership with rapidly

increasing personal trip rates; – dramatic changes in spatial, temporal and modal choice characteristics

of personal trip patterns.– evolving land use patterns of dramatically declining density

(especially on the periphery and quite the contrary in the centre and selected sub-centres);

Core features …. Contd.

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- Concurrent use of many vehicle technologies which provide complementary mobility options but also obstruct each others’ performance and make system integration very difficult;

- Inadequate infrastructure extensions often caused by the authorities’: failure to adequately appraise projects, weak planning overviews, and the sheer impossibility of meeting burgeoning demand on account of resource constraints;

- Changing systems of production through new processes of industrialization and new forces of globalization producing a very different demand profile for the movement of goods movement;

- Inadequate efforts to deal with rapidly increasing environmental problems, especially those associated with local pollution and global warming effluents; and

- Inadequate efforts to deal with other adversaries associated with the rapid growth of movement and urban areas in the fields of road safety and social justice.

Core features ….. Contd.

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• The problem of this disjoint is typically very apparent:

- Motorization is increasing at more than 10 per cent a year -doubling every 7 years in some cases. There is no way infrastructure can be supplied, travel behaviour can be stabilized or land use be continued at existing densities with this level of growth.

- Land use explodes into surrounding regions at low densities, producing a very different kind of city with different structural and social characteristics. This once happened in many parts of the developed world. New York and Glasgow had residential densities of over 600 people per acre a hundred years ago but are now settled stably into average densities a small faction of these and growing slowly.

- The world economic roles of developing cities have rapidly changed with new opportunities presented by globalization - in some cases focusing on totally new freight movement logistics relying on new technologies that generate very different patterns of employment location, public transport demand and freight movement.

Core features …… Contd.

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- Through rapid economic change and diverse personal economic conditions transpiring there are numerous transport modes in simultaneous use in public ways—from bicycles and animal traction to high-speed cars—each accusing the others of impedance.

- Levels of environmental pollution are growing rapidly, projecting the concern for sustainability now as a priority to many cities where the matter was until recently virtually unaddressed.

- Poverty is a great and defeating spectre of transport because whatever might partly overcome the halting effect of these dysfunctional systems it is unlikely to be inexpensive - and yet the mobilization of a large desperately poor population needs to be met at very low cost.

- The inability of many authorities to meet this challenge puts a cloud over efforts at enhancing the mobility and sustainability of the developing city. This is so as the reluctance to subsequently permit higher transit fares damages the potential that this mode can offer by stemming the funding of the extension of this mobility to significant ‘other’ parts of the urban population.

Core features …. Contd.

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- Further confounding the effort to solve these problems is the frequent general lack of agreement on projects and policies aggravated by a lack of consistent professionalism in addressing the investment challenges.

- Cities of the developing world are trafficked by many consultants, NGOs and the well-meaning actions of international agencies, all from different professional orientations, producing crosscurrents of belief and initiatives on the problems with frequent inadequate public consultation and participation .

- The incidence of politics in which competing objectives take a toll on addressing concerns of mobility with vested interests making matters worse.

- It is imperative that politicians and policy-makers gain strategic perspectives on these developments. Here the project and policy agendas for achieving sustainable urban development and movement, in spite of all the variations , are not as different among cities as one might fear.

Initiatives taken/prospects ahead

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• Many cities throughout have vehicle inspection programs and campaigns to put transit vehicles on less polluting fuels in order to improve environmental conditions.

• Many large cities have some form of travel demand management, such as no drive days. Yet more cities have experience with more modest actions such as pedestrianization, parking controls, special vehicle restrictions, etc.

• Privatization of major transportation infrastructures and services seem to be moving in from exclusively intercity applications and increasingly considered for urban contexts be they in the form of toll-road franchises or the deregulation of public transport services.

• Many cities are simultaneously considering the merits of different rail transit technologies, and a very remarkable number are undertaking currently popular bus rapid transit systems (BRTs).

Initiatives taken …. Contd.

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• While communication and learning jointly from international experience has a long way to go, there are definite indications that productive intercommunication is now growing rapidly among cities of the developing world. There are impressive examples of thriving dialogue at several levels. One such example is the effort to grasp this multifaceted problem through understandings of ‘sustainability.’

- Sustainability is a concept that has evolved from a natural resource management base that emerged more than 20 years ago. The current challenge in the context of urban development and the transport challenges posed is to find meaningful application of the principle of sustainability as it diffuses through the whole span of environmental, institutional, economic and social concerns in which transportation has an important part to play.

- Progress is being made/has been made – in so far as sustainability is increasingly becoming a recognised platform world-wide for unifying the diverse components of transport and city development and enhancing the quality of life for its inhabitants, with the force of averting environmental calamity very much behind this drive.

Initiatives taken …… Contd.

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• Beyond traditional concepts of sustainability, a second set of themes concern:

- the question of making cities more competitive, enabling them to absorb larger labour markets, leading to efforts to understand the urban impacts of globalization,

- the need to enable cities to emerge as platforms for advanced technologies of production (especially concerning the freight transport logistics and supply chain management requirements, and

- the attraction to generating specialized settings for logistical centres in metropolitan regions.

Investment strategy considerations

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• The following are crucial themes and considerations that emerge from a recent review of mobility challenges in developing cities when deciding on an investment strategy for enhancing urban mobility fortunes. They display important differences from earlier investment considerations in that some are matters of adjusted focus and priority, while others reflect an exhausted patience with earlier (failed) expectations suggesting we are simplynot gaining on these problems and need an assertion of stronger, more direct and sustained effort:

- The dramatically changing contexts for urban transport. Globalism has increased the visibility and felt significance of distant problems with important new parties joining international efforts, especially China, Brazil and India – and South Africa.

- The very significant challenges of global warming and the environment. Significantly increased commitments to environmental action has proliferated proposed solutions and impacted related strategies of action, though the level of effort remains inadequate.

Investment strategy …… Contd.

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- The call for more holistic thinking. Based on intensified environmental concerns and facilitated by the advancing use of information technologies, limited but significant strides toward comprehensiveness are appearing.

- The need to re-appraise the role of the motor vehicle. Generating actions to out-rightly confine and redefine their use and complement them with alternative accessibility is gaining ground in some quarters.

- The need to improve and expand on the role of formal public transport. Generating the installation of new public transport modes and new management forms and investment appraisal models is increasingly recognised as an important foundation of sustainable urban development.

- The need to improve and expand on the role of informal public transport and non-motorised movement. The on-going debate here includes how best to expand commitments to rationalize these services in a manner that complements other modes and services short distance movement needs.

- The need to contribute to sustained economic growth. The challenge here is how to address the mounting impatience with transport developments in cities of the developing world in a manner they can continue to stimulate significant increases in economic wealth on a sustained basis.

Investment strategy ….. Contd.

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- The call to focus on the alleviation of urban poverty and social equity. Increased information through surveys, research and on-going challenges are bringing this problem (especially that of the destitute poor), much closer to focussed concern and attention than before.

- The call to improve planning and project development management. An increased commitment to make multiple stakeholder management more effective sustainably, rather than focusing alone on getting the economics and the prices ‘right’ analytically.

- The call for greater political commitment and consensus for new solutions. Even though these new solutions often require controversial political commitment, the increasing sense of urgency requires much more assertive decision making that depends less on indeterminate conclusions of excessive structured evaluations. This is happening in certain seminal cases with prospects improving of further successes ahead avoiding the failure of continuity after changes in public leadership.

Investment strategy ….. Contd.

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- The need to build a sustained institutional capacity. The realization that the creation of adequate planning and managerial strength in multi-stakeholder decision making is a pre-requisite of sustained project planning, appraisal and delivery is more commonly appreciated and has moved beyond the rhetoric.

• The preceding observations and conclusions suggest that there is hope that 21st Century has brought us finally to a significantly heightened level of concern about the fierce problems and implications of urban transport in the developing world. These problems have in the past sapped the vigour and equity of participation in our urban society and economy world-wide for hundreds of years. Concerns for stagnated economic development, injustice toward those disadvantaged by economic change, and above all the climate change that threatens a potentially disastrous impact on all of us are producing, we hope, a level of commitment that may yet yield a promising era of action in the field of sustainable urban transport.