A “Process Approach” to Urban Settlement Improvement in South Asia: Lessons from the Orangi Pilot Project in the Context of Planning Theory
2002 Volume 11 Issue 2 Pages 221-238
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2002 Volume 11 Issue 2 Pages 221-238
Attempts have been made particularly in South Asia to delineate new approaches with focus on action-oriented, interactive processes in environmental improvement, in contrast to conventional planning paradigm as represented by a long-term, comprehensive blueprint plan formulation.
The paper first reviews theoretically the evolution and scope of “process approach” to development. The concept of action planning was developed in the 1960s, in place of master planning, for metropolitan management faced with extremely dynamic transformation of urban settings. A pioneering case in point was the Basic Plan for Calcutta. The concept further evolved into planning for activating community members in low-income settlements. An emphasis was placed, however, in some circumstances with Gandhian philosophy, not on mobilizing people to attain predetermined ends, but on supporting organizational growth through working together. Meanwhile, some practitioners became aware that action-oriented planning should be meant to provide an interactive space where both outsiders and local people undergo transformation of respective roles and functions, so that new relationships are borne out. Thus David Korten formulated the concept of learning process approach to development. Indeed, one may observe in metropolitan regions in South Asia that incremental settlement development without any blueprints seems to offer a viable option to encourage people's ownership of and satisfaction with their community building.
The paper then examines, with special reference to urbanizing process of Karachi, such new thinking relative to open-ended, process-focussed development, as evident in the work of the Orangi Pilot Project since 1980. Low-income residents in Orangi, an informal settlement of one million people, have built and maintained a self-financed, self-managed shallow sewer network, without any overall plan. Yet, this has led to more equal partnership between people and local authorities, and to new decision making dynamism at the city-wide level: an essential quality in the learning process approach.
