In India, urban areas contribute significantly to the national economy (about 50 to 60 percent of gross domestic product), while facing critical challenges in ensuring access to basic services and necessary infrastructure, both social and economic. The overall rise in population of urban poor or increase in travel times owing to congestion in road networks are indicators of the performance of planning and governance in assessing and catering to the demand. Agencies of governance at all levels: local bodies, State and Central governments are facing the brunt of this rapid urban growth. It is imperative for planning and governance to systematically facilitate, augment and service the requisite infrastructure over time. Provision of infrastructure and ensuring delivery of basic services cannot happen overnight and hence planning has to facilitate in forecasting and provisioning these services with appropriate mechanisms.

1.    Governance Structures

The urban governance is characterised by an urban local body and numerous parastatal agencies responsible for delivery of services and ensuring access to basic amenities and infrastructure. On the supply side, the urban local body along with the parastatal agencies is responsible for allocating resources to the residents and create a favourable ecosystem for conducting the businesses. In a typical case, the urban local body being the elected body has the greater onus and powers to administer, plan and regulate the delivery of services and allocation of resources.

However, a strange paradigm that exists in the country is the presence of a large number of Parastatal organisations. Although the Parastatal are primarily responsible for the delivery of services and ensuring access to resources, they are not directly answerable to the citizens, but only to the State government. Since, they are managed by the State government the urban local bodies have little say in the function of these bodies while the actions of the Parastatal directly affect other stakeholders of the city.

Constitutionally, the urban local bodies are supposed to be vested with adequate powers and mechanisms to carry out all the functions and activities the parastatal organisations are currently undertaking. In most large urban local bodies, the State has not devolved adequate powers to these bodies and thus manages the activities through creation of parastatal organisations. In certain cities, with the dissolution of the body of elected representatives, the State government is wresting control over the same. Eventually, the State government assumes the role of planning and governing the city. Although the governance by the locally elected body is absent, nevertheless, the urban local body has the primary responsibility to deliver basic amenities and ensure access to resources and infrastructure.

The level of service assesses the access to essential services and amenities. This also comprises provision of certain infrastructure like outer ring roads, residential development, etc. The level of service, access to infrastructure and other amenities are measured based on a household survey across the region discussed in the subsequent sections.

2.    Planning Matters

Planning refers to the process of formulating the roadmap towards achieving the objectives for promoting development. The specifics of planning vary with the desired goals of separate nation states. Normally planning refers to the prevalent land-use planning or spatial planning as practiced by the State. However, planning also concerns the formulation of policies and programs towards economic development, apart from land-use planning for promoting sustainable urban development. In the context of sprawl, land-use planning plays a very important role in limiting the extent of outgrowth by zoning and notifying areas for future growth. The forecast and allocation of land-uses to the expected demand for housing, industrial, commercial, and retaining open spaces are considered in land-use zoning. Thus, planning here restricts to land-use planning only. However, the effectiveness of land-use planning in its effort to manage urban sprawl rests on the goals of planning and policies therein. Noting the importance of land-use planning, the State or city governments either own planning functions or facilitate appropriate organisation structure to oversee that. The performance of planning can be measured by the presence of formal structures (with or without State capture), publication of master plans (process of preparation, periodicity of publication and its enforcement) and community participation in planning.

With the presence of parastatal planning agencies formally called as Development Authorities, planning function too is in a situation of State-capture. However, in certain cities, the functions of water supply and sanitation rests with the urban local body, but for the rest, they are with parastatal agencies.

3.    Extent of Outgrowth (Sprawl)

The extent of outgrowth or the sprawl is measured primarily through the amount of paved surface extending beyond the municipal boundaries. In the recent times, the extent of outgrowth has been also fuelled by speculative land market dynamics in the periphery of the city. The outgrowth beyond the municipal limits are also aided by minimal or no restrictions on building guidelines. Thus, the outgrowths are marked by the process of land-use changes. However, it is important to characterise these outgrowth and forecast such outgrowth by the local governments to systematically ensure the delivery of services and attempt planned development in these regions.

4.    Theoretical Framework

Development of suburbs because of increased population growth and infrastructure facilities around the cities is a well-established reasoning for urban sprawl. The key aspect surrounding urban sprawl is the extent of outgrowth around the periphery of the city or along the highways, which is factored by land-use change, the level of services and access to basic services and amenities in these areas. These three important variables: planning, governance (level of service) and extent of outgrowth; are analysed based on this framework.

To emphasise the role of planning and governance in addressing urban sprawl (Figure 1), the abovementioned aspects are categorised. In this diagram, two are outcomes (level of service and extent of outgrowth) while the key input is planning, depicted along the diagonal. With this diagram, distinguishable states on the effectiveness of planning and governance are defined. Accordingly, planning and governance either attempt to contain the outgrowth or deliver the requisite level of services to the citizens through provision for basic amenities and infrastructure.

Figure 1: Extent of outgrowth and level of service as outcome of Planning and Governance

4.1   Trajectories of Possible Urban Evolution

In the framework presented in Figure 1, there can be four possible states for cities:

1. Compact city with good level of services
2. Compact city with poor level of services
3. Sprawl city with poor level of services
4. Sprawl city with good level of services

It is obvious to note that most cities would fall in any one of the four states. Accordingly, during the evolution of cities, cities may target reaching the states I or IV. There can also be three possible trajectories of urban evolution: A, B and C, as depicted in Figure 1. In trajectory A, a city would evolve with dispersed growth, which can lead to poor level of services with limited planning and governance. The city would have managed to grow with limited planning capabilities resulting in the delivery of services lesser than the desirable levels. A city can evolve with compact growth while ensuring desired level of services aided by sound planning and governance as seen in trajectory B. A city can also evolve according to trajectory C, allowing for outgrowth with delivery of desirable services augmented by planning for the new developed regions. Balachandran and Haran (2008) have pointed the distinction of planning following development for cities of Bangalore and Hyderabad, while development followed by planning is evinced in Ahmedabad.