The Growth and Development of Cities - Essay Example

Conference Paper for the Growth and Development of Cities The one day 15th Annual California Conference on November 15, 2007 hosted by Edmund G.”Pat” Brown Institute of public affairs had the theme for this year as ‘The Livable City: Shaping California’s future. Named after the living legacy of former California Governor Edmund G. “ Pat “ Brown, the institute is dedicated to holding periodical debates on public policy issues. Originally the institute was an independent organization focusing its attention on California Government affairs from 1979 to 1987. When it got merged with California State University, it emerged as a public policy institute specializing on California’s community public affairs. (Schiesl Martin) Every year the institute holds conference actively attended by Californians coming from different sectors. The delegates to the conference engage themselves in lively deliberations on burning issues of the time. (Annual California Policy Issues Conference) Theme of the conference “Livable City: Shaping California’s Future” was timely indeed. Livable city seems to have become the key word for the city’s planners as there can be no better way to express the need to solve the burgeoning problems of California. I arrived at Downtown, LA in time for the conference so as not to miss the plenary session which set the tone for the rest of the conference. The welcome address went on for 15 fifteen minutes as a warming-up for the conference. The key note presentation by Biltmre Bowl set the tone for the conference. The plenary session started with the theme “Building a Framework for Urban Growth”. The opening speaker was Dr Ali Modarres, Associate Director & Director, Applied Research Programs of the Institute. Having spoken already in his news letter of Fall 2007 about how a livable city should develop without merely trying to catch up with the nostalgic past which served only the riches and witnessed more inequalities than now, and instead endeavoring to make cities livable enough for the less privileged, he deliberated on the growing environmental pollution. He talked about both water and air pollution and spelt out polices for solving the environment problems confronting the city of LA adding that the all the measures suggested should not over look the low income sections of the city. He pointed out that a 1944 report by the three professors of UCLA established that lA’s environment had a lot to do with the low income population. He said that environment, economy and equity should be interconnected. While pollution problem is said to be the direct result of urbanization and urbanites, global warming has become the problem of every one. LA has 20 centers dominated by service economy and hence any green agenda should not bypass social equity.need. As he said earlier, the livable city is not just bricks and mortars but with people of all sections for whom the city should afford equal comforts, safety, income opportunities and living conditions free from water and air pollution. H listed the following problem confronting LA. 1) economic inequality with 45 % city’s population living as tenants, 2) mixed income housing for 30 years has not been economically affordable 3) There are no public investment policies with benefits to people in view 4) LA has no proper planning and that housing has been the last priority without appreciation that housing problem will all affect all sections of the society, The next speaker Mr. David Abel is a leading person in civic and pub affairs and chairing a number of schools and involved in master plan policies of the University of California. He spoke about California’s population growth from 37 million to 44 million through the next decade. California is constantly changing and constant change is the only feature of California. Endless immigration has been one of the reasons for this constantly changing California. Half a million jobs are required for new population and the State is lacking in schools, housing, commercial buildings and transport because of the increasing population. Policy of California’s planners is a total mess which has resulted in dissatisfaction to all the stakeholders. For example, energy deregulation. Besides, political system is also gridlocked. The crisis has been aggravated by population growth and political inaction and indifference. Greg McWilliams who is currently holding several key positions in community programs and companies has been in the forefront of community planning and development for 25 years. He spoke about the Bill AB 32 which is addressing climate change and achieving green house effect for the California and other places. There has to be comprehensive approach before the bill is moved for legislation. Within one minute 40 bills were presented and passed without debate but no action has been in sight. Bill SP 370 seeks to take away control of land use from cities and counties and to set up coastal commissions. For want of communication between agencies, no progress is being made envisaged by the policies and plans. Robert Balgenorth who spoke next is the president of the State Building and Construction Trade Council of California representing more than 200 private sector unions consisting of 350,000 workers of the construction industry. He has served a number of public boards in key positions and is now member of California’s workforce investment board (CWIB). He was concerned about wages not keeping up with increasing living cost. He insisted California must be smarter with resources, green buildings but must be accessible to people through affordable health care and housing. Project labour agreements should be compatible for the next generation workers. Michael Wood, the next speaker is in the planning commission of LA appointed by its Mayor. He spoke at length on the efforts of LA City Planning Commission in connection with urban design, green building requirements, and citywide standards for urbanization and various measures concerning parking space, public awareness of the programs and incentives for observation of rules. Parking requirements are given special attention while approving projects. Pilot programs such as parking day, car free days so as to show how empty land could better used by enhancing the facilities. He answered questions put forward by the attendees at the conference. The question was mainly related to how rebuilding was going to be achieved without diffusing power controls. As to the question who would pay for the infrastructure, he answered that decision making policies needed to be restructured to augment tax revenues needed for the infrastructure building. Some of the solutions suggested at the conference to make California a livable city are stated as below. LA must have the ‘right to housing’ as in New York. The bridge financing must be made easily available in large proportions from State and other Government Agencies and there should be a conducive environment for public and private sectors to work together in a mutually cooperative manner. Classifying population income wise is good to make planning appropriately and inclusionary zoning for affordable housing Great cities accommodate workers unlike LA which should be taken note of. Affordable housing and mixed income housing need to be streamlined. If the current rate is maintained, it will take 40-50 years for the envisaged development. The lowest income population must be enabled to get more benefits for housing needs through 44 bills pending legislation. In order to get this done, planners should think differently about housing. They should think of abundance. Land is to be speculated and made empty. In Brazil and Columbia special treatments are in place. In Paris, thinking on middle class population has changed. Eviction free zones are created. Over-consumption of housing by a few makes housing turnover not perceptible. There should be development of buildings for new market with high taxes. Entry level products in the market should increase. Some questions evaded clear answers were the following. There is no yardstick for affordable housing except the statement that it depends on the earning capacity. 30 % of income should be apportioned for rent. For the housing budget, 40 % need to be met from city planning and taxes and 50 % from Bank loans. There is affordable housing crisis because of which some 1131000 units being created throughout California. In some places, Government should stop giving permits due to several thousands of people suffering without homes. There should be alignment amongst development agencies. Thousands of units need to be built for low income people for which policies are needed to build more housing besides the requirement for health care and education. Government agencies must be made accountable for making available affordable housing by identifying resources required for the same and for managing the projects for timely completion and to prevent abuse of funds. The immigrants are mainly engaged in construction work with very low wages and they pay extra gas tax, use paid transport and thus contributing to economic development. Hence immigrants are not really problem for the cities’ owes. It is only because of local population not being available for the development of cities, demand for immigrants has been ever increasing and hence they can not be faulted for the cities’ problems. Mayor is responsible for safety housing, education and free flow of traffic. There are 40000 homeless people living in lA alone. Most of the LA had not had gentrification since 1940. This should be attended to. Lead certified building over 7500 sqft will be eligible for incentives. Power tariff needs to be hiked for infrastructure investment in LA. Though costly, it is an investment. The conference presenters also spoke of how to achieve sustainable growth of the cities. Building regulations need to be changed to become proactive instead of present state of being reactive. There were pleas for advocating instead of waiting for some one else to take the lead and shedding individualism and becoming communitarian. Home building activity employs 250,000 people and we need to sustain a vision for able leadership. Sustainability should be achieved with social equity. Poverty must be reduced and economic growth should be achieved. There should be alliance for LA’s growth economy. That one out of three is an immigrant and half of whom is work force though children of immigrants are U.S. born should be kept in view by the planning authorities and decision makers. My reflections The presenters came from diverse groups. One feature noticed throughout the conference is the blaming culture from the private bodies and defensive nature of speakers from the Governmental bodies. To achieve a livable city is not an easy task given the mega size of the problems. After all who are in the Government. It is the people from the local population and not from other planets. Hence there should be no pointless blaming of the Government for all the woes of California. Rather the woes should be treated as pains of growth. And hence Governmental authorities should be taken into confidence and people represented by community leaders should offer active assistance to them to alleviate the common problems. No doubt the conference has been the eye opener for me to become aware of the real problems facing California for which no body could be blamed entirely except the problems themselves. So the problems should be taken in the proper perspectives and addressed to solve them instead of blaming. As the. hosts of the conference point out in their news letters, the livable city should be broadly viewed to give the residents affordable housing, safety in all respects including crimes, environmental pollution, affordable education instead of roads, houses, commercial buildings and schools and colleges inaccessible to people. My attendance to the conference was an enriching experience especially from the initiative of the hosts of the conference. I could learn that promoting inclusive development could be achieved through streamlining the development approval process, increasing capital and financing, preserving the existing affordable housing, negotiating and enforcing requirements, providing incentives to developers and promoting community ownership and self determination. From the brochure supplied at the conference, I came to understand that there is a Policy Link institute that acts as a national research and action institute working collaboratively with leaders of the local community and policy makers for formulating policies at all levels of local, State and Federal agencies and implement them with the ultimate objective of achieving social and economic equity. The policy Link Institute is committed to create increased awareness and leadership to accomplish regional equity so that it becomes a strategy to abolish poverty and realize increased share of prosperity. I could discern that there is relationship between infrastructure investments and regional equity by which all particularly people of color and low income would get new schools, better transportation systems, to maintain parks and open spaces and get new opportunities for work that new investments in infrastructure create. It has been informed that California voters approved issue of $ 43 billion worth of infrastructure bonds as early as in 2006. to be apportioned as follows. $ 20 billion for transportation. $ 10.4 billion for education $ 4 billion for development of alternative energy $ 5.4 billion for safe drinking water which includes quality of water and supply, flood control and River and Coastal protection. Balance for Parks I have also learnt that infrastructure creation is the key to development of cities and that only if infrastructure creation policies are dictated by equity principles, will the lowest strata of the society get the maximum possible benefit thorough infrastructure creation. Hence the key element is equitable infrastructure in all endeavors There should be transparency in decision making and there should opportunity available for every one to the contribution of planning and policy making exercise. One instance of the lopsided development can be the 90 % California’s schools for students of color and Latino being overcrowded as per the report of Policy Link 2005. The temporary measures the schools to remedy the situation deprived them of $ 4.1 billion earmarked for funding to reduce overcrowding. Before attending the conference I had a glance at the state of affairs of the California Infrastructure from the website of Institute of Governmental Studies University of California, in order to actively attend the conference with some ideas. The introduction in the website reads as follows. California is a rapidly growing state, with projections by the California Department of Finance showing the population will exceed 45 million by 2020. Much of the infrastructure needed to support this rise in population is inadequate. Significant infrastructure investment throughout the 1950s and 60s led to improvements in water resources, transportation and state education resources. While the state has spent increasing amounts since the 1980s, many believe that California still needs substantial investment in many different areas. In early December 2005, California legislators began talking openly about asking voters to approve bonds to restore California's transportation network, levees and other infrastructure. Senator Don Perata introduced a $10.2 billion bond proposal to be voted on in the Senate and Assembly. During his January 2006 state of the state address, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger outlined a $222-billion 10-year plan to tackle the state's infrastructure problems. With both Perata and Schwarzenegger aiming to put their proposals before the voters, infrastructure investment and finance will likely be one of the most discussed issues in California politics this year. (California Infrastructure) I found that all the presenters and speakers and delegates whom I moved with echoed the problems of infrastructure of California as said above and it was a rewarding experience for me attending the conference and I came out of it after its conclusion better informed. References California Infrastructure accessed Institute of Governmental Studies University of California< http://igs.berkeley.edu/library/htInfrastructureProposal.html> Schiesl Martin “Mission Statement” accessed December 4, 2007< http://www.patbrowninstitute.org/about/index.html> Annual California Policy Issues Conference accessed December 4, 2007 < http://www.patbrowninstitute.org/educationprograms/calpolicy.html> Read More