BREAKING NEWS
Take Srinagar’s old city. Anyone who has walked through its mohallas, gone deep into its nooks and corners, lanes and alleys, knows that homes, shops, workshops, common spaces and religious places exist side by side, often in compact juxtaposition and the same neighbourhood. This was not chaos, but a finely balanced urban system that has evolved over centuries.
I have spent much of my professional life around plans studying them, formulating them, defending them, and, at times, questioning their very relevance. Yet, whenever I stepped out of the realms of planning, into the streets of Srinagar or Jammu, for that matter in any other of the town of the J&K, I am reminded of an uncomfortable truth that our cities do not grow the way we plan them. They grow the way life demands, proliferation of activities and political compulsions sweeps away urbanism in complete disconnect and as result fail to adapt to the emerging urban challenges.
Legacy and the Master Plans
I do observe that Srinagar wakes up every morning along the Jhelum, in lanes too narrow for cars, drains openly pumped into waterbodies and vanishing greens suffocating urbanites but still full of activity with a buzz as well as tempest. Jammu stretches outward under pressure of rapid population growth, aspirations, discontent and opportunities. Both cities have been planned again and again since early 1970’s but promises embedded in these city plans have not been realized and burgeoning plans have not been able to transpire into reality. Each plan framed in itself entrenched disconnect reflecting deviances and inconsistencies, unpredictably even in areas where continuity had to be ensured. As Jammu and Kashmir's twin capitals Srinagar and Jammu, for that matter all the urban settlements grapple with rapid urbanization, traffic chaos, environmental degradation, lack of service, utilities, amenities, housing, urban poverty, unintended growth and persistent encroachments, a recurring query often echoes through public discourse. Why have nearly six decades of master plans failed to deliver sustainable and livable cities? Since the 1970s, successive governments have drafted ambitious blueprints to guide the growth of these principal urban centers. Yet, despite multiple iterations, including the current Srinagar Master Plan 2035 and Jammu Master Plan 2032 (with ongoing revisions), the cities remain plagued by haphazard development, loss of green spaces, and infrastructure deficits. And yet, both seem to have escaped their plans with remarkable consistency. This is not because planning does not exist. It exists in abundance, recurrently and is eventually consigned to history. Master Plans, Development Plans, plans for roads, car parking, traffic and transportation, zoning, building bye laws and regulations, notifications, and amendments have been drafted with care time and again. But planning, as it is practiced, has remained largely disconnected from how people actually live, work, and survive in these cities.
Intrinsic Conflict
Take Srinagar’s old city. Anyone who has walked through its mohallas, gone deep into its nooks and corners, lanes and alleys, knows that homes, shops, workshops, common spaces and religious places exist side by side, often in compact juxtaposition and the same neighbourhood. This was not chaos, but a finely balanced urban system that has evolved over centuries. Yet, modern land use plans look at this fabric and see “land use and mixed use violations despite advocating and propagating compact city concept in the same plans reflecting deep rooted conflicts with planning ideologies. They attempt to impose uncanny land use discipline, the separation of traditionally and functionally compatible and congruous activities which co-existed in harmony over centuries with efficacy and sustainably, lending it also rich historicity. The infused segregation is trying to sunder residential from commercial and commercial from social activities without any cognition whether such separation would be realistic and desirable for the area. Unsurprisingly, the plan fails, and everyday life continues to ignore it, because city plans have in a myriad of ways nosedived to come out of the closet and build narratives which are tactile, real and physical.
Jammu’s story is different but no less revealing. Residential colonies quietly become commercial streets. Small businesses appear where people pass, not where zoning permits them. Over time, authorities tolerate these changes, then occasionally clamp down, and then regularize them again. Each cycle weakens the authority of planning a little more. People learn that plans are flexible, negotiable, and, ultimately temporary and non-implementable.
One of the biggest weaknesses of land use planning in both cities is the belief that cities are predictable. They are not. Srinagar’s floods were not a surprise to those who understood its geography. Wetlands, floodplains, and natural drainage channels were always known. They were not marked on maps, even the flood vulnerability atlas of India did not display Srinagar susceptibility to floods before 2014 floods. Master plans of the Srinagar also missed this eminent danger and risks in its policy and proposals depicting the raw deal, city experienced in the master plans too. But development continued, inch by inch, brick by brick, exception by exception, until the city paid the price for the neglect in plans and authorities. The plan did not fail because it lacked information; it failed because it lacked courage and enforcement, it failed because implementation was belated and tardy. Ultimately, it failed the city because it was incomplete and half-hearted.
Urban land is political land. Every zoning and use change benefits someone and engenders inconvenience to someone. Over time, planning decisions become entangled with electoral promises, lobbying, and bureaucratic compromise. When exceptions become routine, rules lose meaning. Ordinary citizens then stop believing in the fairness of the system, and once trust is lost, enforcement becomes almost dreadful, losing its sanctity and purpose.
Planning Fiascoes
There is also a quieter failure that does not make headlines i.e. infrastructure rarely follows land use planning, the conceptualization is never realized and assumptions never prove realistic. In both Srinagar and Jammu, housing comes up long before drainage, transport, or public services are ready. Roads remain depressingly narrow, sewerage incomplete, public transport inadequate. People adapt individually by buying cars, digging bore-wells, installing septic tanks and are often left at the mercy unorganized developers who rule the roast while the city pays collectively through congestion, pollution, sprawl, extension of services and environmental stress.
Public participation, though officially encouraged and legally mandated, often remains symbolic. Consultations are held when plans are drafted and nearly final deludes the spirits of participation. The language is technical, the maps intimidating, and the process inaccessible. Those who understand planning speak; those who live its consequences mostly listen. Over time, citizens disengage, leaving planning to officials and interest groups.
Then there is the informal city ,the part of Srinagar and Jammu that planning prefers not to see. Informal settlements, unauthorized colonies, incremental housing, informal shopping, vending, often through encroachments at the cost of functioning of the city these are not accidents but well maneuvered and manipulated interjections. They are responses to poor planning, housing shortages, high land prices, unemployment and limited choices. Most of the Plans, urban development agencies and bureaucratic decision label these realities as “illegal” are generally unaware about the underlying reasons for such endeavors without offering alternatives only postpone the problem. Regularization eventually happens, quietly, sometimes politically and predominantly in clandestine manner and overall reinforcing the belief that planning rules are temporary obstacles.
What we rarely admit is that many plans are financially unrealistic. They promise parks, transport corridors, town planning schemes, buffers, amenities and public facilities without explaining how municipalities will pay for them. Without linking land use decisions to revenue, land value capture, or investment strategies, plans remain aspirational documents rather than executable roadmaps. Proposal in these plans are like the Christmas wish is never fulfilled.
But perhaps the deepest reason land use plans fail is that they rarely speak in a human language. People do not experience cities through land use/zoning maps. They experience them through flooded streets, long commutes, rising rents, traffic jams, water shortages, erratic power supplies, and shrinking public spaces. When plans do not clearly explain how they will improve everyday life, they fail to inspire trust or ownership.
And yet, I do not believe planning is futile. I believe it has been misunderstood. Cities are not shaped by plans alone. They are shaped by daily decisions, compromises, investments, and survival strategies. Planning can influence these forces ,only if it engages honestly with them and if the process is grounded to be people’s plan.
Srinagar and Jammu and other cities and towns do not need more plans. They need planning that listens, adapts, accommodates and acts. Planning that respects lived realities, integrates infrastructure and land use, acknowledges informality, and speaks plainly to citizens. Planning that is firm where it must be and flexible where it should be.
Until then, our cities will continue to grow spontaneously and discordantly not according to plan, but according to necessity. And perhaps that is the most important lesson planners must finally learn, note and work out with caution. Otherwise the wrecks would continue to emerge as has been despite almost six decades of successive master plans.
The Way Forward: From Paper to Practice
Two major cities at present despite reeling through the process urban metro metamorphosis despite almost fourth generation plans in operation, are still at a crossroads. Master plans have provided frameworks, but without robust enforcement, implementation, san inclusivity, incomplete process of planning due non-formulation of zonal plans, inadequate funding, poor public buy-in, and delayed adaptive revisions, all of these risked of remaining aspirational and symbolic documents only. Since, the future of any city hinges on translating visions into actions, plans framed have to be implemented to ensure they meet the emergent and ever changing future requirements. Failure to do so could mean more unplanned hangover, poor livability, worsening urban mess, weakening resilience—a colossal future cost.
Email:-------------------------------hamwani24@gmail.com
Take Srinagar’s old city. Anyone who has walked through its mohallas, gone deep into its nooks and corners, lanes and alleys, knows that homes, shops, workshops, common spaces and religious places exist side by side, often in compact juxtaposition and the same neighbourhood. This was not chaos, but a finely balanced urban system that has evolved over centuries.
I have spent much of my professional life around plans studying them, formulating them, defending them, and, at times, questioning their very relevance. Yet, whenever I stepped out of the realms of planning, into the streets of Srinagar or Jammu, for that matter in any other of the town of the J&K, I am reminded of an uncomfortable truth that our cities do not grow the way we plan them. They grow the way life demands, proliferation of activities and political compulsions sweeps away urbanism in complete disconnect and as result fail to adapt to the emerging urban challenges.
Legacy and the Master Plans
I do observe that Srinagar wakes up every morning along the Jhelum, in lanes too narrow for cars, drains openly pumped into waterbodies and vanishing greens suffocating urbanites but still full of activity with a buzz as well as tempest. Jammu stretches outward under pressure of rapid population growth, aspirations, discontent and opportunities. Both cities have been planned again and again since early 1970’s but promises embedded in these city plans have not been realized and burgeoning plans have not been able to transpire into reality. Each plan framed in itself entrenched disconnect reflecting deviances and inconsistencies, unpredictably even in areas where continuity had to be ensured. As Jammu and Kashmir's twin capitals Srinagar and Jammu, for that matter all the urban settlements grapple with rapid urbanization, traffic chaos, environmental degradation, lack of service, utilities, amenities, housing, urban poverty, unintended growth and persistent encroachments, a recurring query often echoes through public discourse. Why have nearly six decades of master plans failed to deliver sustainable and livable cities? Since the 1970s, successive governments have drafted ambitious blueprints to guide the growth of these principal urban centers. Yet, despite multiple iterations, including the current Srinagar Master Plan 2035 and Jammu Master Plan 2032 (with ongoing revisions), the cities remain plagued by haphazard development, loss of green spaces, and infrastructure deficits. And yet, both seem to have escaped their plans with remarkable consistency. This is not because planning does not exist. It exists in abundance, recurrently and is eventually consigned to history. Master Plans, Development Plans, plans for roads, car parking, traffic and transportation, zoning, building bye laws and regulations, notifications, and amendments have been drafted with care time and again. But planning, as it is practiced, has remained largely disconnected from how people actually live, work, and survive in these cities.
Intrinsic Conflict
Take Srinagar’s old city. Anyone who has walked through its mohallas, gone deep into its nooks and corners, lanes and alleys, knows that homes, shops, workshops, common spaces and religious places exist side by side, often in compact juxtaposition and the same neighbourhood. This was not chaos, but a finely balanced urban system that has evolved over centuries. Yet, modern land use plans look at this fabric and see “land use and mixed use violations despite advocating and propagating compact city concept in the same plans reflecting deep rooted conflicts with planning ideologies. They attempt to impose uncanny land use discipline, the separation of traditionally and functionally compatible and congruous activities which co-existed in harmony over centuries with efficacy and sustainably, lending it also rich historicity. The infused segregation is trying to sunder residential from commercial and commercial from social activities without any cognition whether such separation would be realistic and desirable for the area. Unsurprisingly, the plan fails, and everyday life continues to ignore it, because city plans have in a myriad of ways nosedived to come out of the closet and build narratives which are tactile, real and physical.
Jammu’s story is different but no less revealing. Residential colonies quietly become commercial streets. Small businesses appear where people pass, not where zoning permits them. Over time, authorities tolerate these changes, then occasionally clamp down, and then regularize them again. Each cycle weakens the authority of planning a little more. People learn that plans are flexible, negotiable, and, ultimately temporary and non-implementable.
One of the biggest weaknesses of land use planning in both cities is the belief that cities are predictable. They are not. Srinagar’s floods were not a surprise to those who understood its geography. Wetlands, floodplains, and natural drainage channels were always known. They were not marked on maps, even the flood vulnerability atlas of India did not display Srinagar susceptibility to floods before 2014 floods. Master plans of the Srinagar also missed this eminent danger and risks in its policy and proposals depicting the raw deal, city experienced in the master plans too. But development continued, inch by inch, brick by brick, exception by exception, until the city paid the price for the neglect in plans and authorities. The plan did not fail because it lacked information; it failed because it lacked courage and enforcement, it failed because implementation was belated and tardy. Ultimately, it failed the city because it was incomplete and half-hearted.
Urban land is political land. Every zoning and use change benefits someone and engenders inconvenience to someone. Over time, planning decisions become entangled with electoral promises, lobbying, and bureaucratic compromise. When exceptions become routine, rules lose meaning. Ordinary citizens then stop believing in the fairness of the system, and once trust is lost, enforcement becomes almost dreadful, losing its sanctity and purpose.
Planning Fiascoes
There is also a quieter failure that does not make headlines i.e. infrastructure rarely follows land use planning, the conceptualization is never realized and assumptions never prove realistic. In both Srinagar and Jammu, housing comes up long before drainage, transport, or public services are ready. Roads remain depressingly narrow, sewerage incomplete, public transport inadequate. People adapt individually by buying cars, digging bore-wells, installing septic tanks and are often left at the mercy unorganized developers who rule the roast while the city pays collectively through congestion, pollution, sprawl, extension of services and environmental stress.
Public participation, though officially encouraged and legally mandated, often remains symbolic. Consultations are held when plans are drafted and nearly final deludes the spirits of participation. The language is technical, the maps intimidating, and the process inaccessible. Those who understand planning speak; those who live its consequences mostly listen. Over time, citizens disengage, leaving planning to officials and interest groups.
Then there is the informal city ,the part of Srinagar and Jammu that planning prefers not to see. Informal settlements, unauthorized colonies, incremental housing, informal shopping, vending, often through encroachments at the cost of functioning of the city these are not accidents but well maneuvered and manipulated interjections. They are responses to poor planning, housing shortages, high land prices, unemployment and limited choices. Most of the Plans, urban development agencies and bureaucratic decision label these realities as “illegal” are generally unaware about the underlying reasons for such endeavors without offering alternatives only postpone the problem. Regularization eventually happens, quietly, sometimes politically and predominantly in clandestine manner and overall reinforcing the belief that planning rules are temporary obstacles.
What we rarely admit is that many plans are financially unrealistic. They promise parks, transport corridors, town planning schemes, buffers, amenities and public facilities without explaining how municipalities will pay for them. Without linking land use decisions to revenue, land value capture, or investment strategies, plans remain aspirational documents rather than executable roadmaps. Proposal in these plans are like the Christmas wish is never fulfilled.
But perhaps the deepest reason land use plans fail is that they rarely speak in a human language. People do not experience cities through land use/zoning maps. They experience them through flooded streets, long commutes, rising rents, traffic jams, water shortages, erratic power supplies, and shrinking public spaces. When plans do not clearly explain how they will improve everyday life, they fail to inspire trust or ownership.
And yet, I do not believe planning is futile. I believe it has been misunderstood. Cities are not shaped by plans alone. They are shaped by daily decisions, compromises, investments, and survival strategies. Planning can influence these forces ,only if it engages honestly with them and if the process is grounded to be people’s plan.
Srinagar and Jammu and other cities and towns do not need more plans. They need planning that listens, adapts, accommodates and acts. Planning that respects lived realities, integrates infrastructure and land use, acknowledges informality, and speaks plainly to citizens. Planning that is firm where it must be and flexible where it should be.
Until then, our cities will continue to grow spontaneously and discordantly not according to plan, but according to necessity. And perhaps that is the most important lesson planners must finally learn, note and work out with caution. Otherwise the wrecks would continue to emerge as has been despite almost six decades of successive master plans.
The Way Forward: From Paper to Practice
Two major cities at present despite reeling through the process urban metro metamorphosis despite almost fourth generation plans in operation, are still at a crossroads. Master plans have provided frameworks, but without robust enforcement, implementation, san inclusivity, incomplete process of planning due non-formulation of zonal plans, inadequate funding, poor public buy-in, and delayed adaptive revisions, all of these risked of remaining aspirational and symbolic documents only. Since, the future of any city hinges on translating visions into actions, plans framed have to be implemented to ensure they meet the emergent and ever changing future requirements. Failure to do so could mean more unplanned hangover, poor livability, worsening urban mess, weakening resilience—a colossal future cost.
Email:-------------------------------hamwani24@gmail.com
© Copyright 2023 brighterkashmir.com All Rights Reserved. Quantum Technologies