Hello
Intoducing myself- I am Jayaraj- subscribed to this list for sometime now. Currently a research student on Cities, Architecture and planning.
Thanks to Vinay for forwarding the BRA story- and for Aruna for the response- I very much appreciate the anxities and concerns. I am trying hard to understand better the nature of discussion and clear lines of arguments presented.
From the critique of BRA- I could see the anxities from people's voice/public criticising the authority- for disempowering the citizens-for not taking their voice into consideration, and how this is affecting their lives. Here the (bureaucratic/technocratic- i dont know if it is- i am not aware of the constitution of BRA) instrument of democratic state is disempowering the citizens through top-down policies, by alligning with developers.
Vinays comment on authorities violating zoning norms : Arent the planning authorities who decided the zoning norms in India in the first place? So who is violating it? They themselves? Are zoning laws and masterplanning then good-and desirable in Indian cities? I remember the other email group I subscribe to -(Urbanstudy)-the discussion and consensus say otherwise. some thinglike - ' How disempowering are zoning and masterplanning for communities and particular social groups etc... and we are better without them, leaving the emergent urbanism to be decided by the people themselves- not to step into their realm with public interest arguments which are elitist. May be some kind of advocacy planning is better in that context'.
While in Aruna' s anxieties on Delhi- it is about populist politics disempowering the citizens- but how can this happen? populist politics can only be beneficial to majority citizens -isnt it? because populist is about acting on the behalf of majority -to get votes. I also see a distinction of thinking public / law abiding public in the writing. So does this actally mean political democracy is disempowering the authority that is entrusted to save public interest that is not really majority public's concern? I think here there is a deeper question on what is the nature of the authority we are discussing about and also on the nature of public interest. Many times the majority public is seen to be more concerend with private interest ! Ofcourse I understand that there are no easy answers to public interest. As a practising planner to me this infact is an aspect of practice than of academic interest alone.
However I was trying to find out the similarity and difference etc in these three discussion. Is Aruna in this case then supporting a public interest that only a minority public is interested in- merited to be adopted as general-based on 'knowledge' about how the city works? Should we be sticking to zoning then?. The write seem to be sugegsting that populist politics is disempowering the authority by colluding with the developers-- supporting commercial interests-and planning authorities are helpless. Or is there a consensus-between them-and the people now want planning authroty to be reinstated for public interest- but isnt the same planning authority aiding the notification of hundreds of SEZ's? So is there another level of anxiety on the nature of planning practices that are acceptable and unacceptable?
I was getting confused about who is against what-and what shall we want.
I think the basic question is what kind of relationship we want between planning authorities, institutions of political democracy, politicians, different people (obviously we dont have one group-so what happens to the idea of one kind of public interest)-and developers and entreprenuers. How do we prioritise when there is rapid change. Whose rights are more suppored than others? How do we think about local, regional, national and global. Whose rights and interest should prevail where? How should authorities work . I remember David Harveys article on 'from managerialism to entreprenuerialism' in IJURR about the nature of urban governance in the world today. -quite an old article though.
Or are we all thinking hard about corruption-within planning authorities, government etc.. or are we all observing our helplesness with the interests of capitalism and developers influence on our cities? But without these capitalists how do we provide the activities that help many people today to eat twice a day in our country, and many to enjoy the privileges that once only the powerful and rich could enjoy? or is the concern about managing that growth-keeping that pace? Are we becoming ideologists or pragmatists?
some thoughts ... any critiques, comments and clarifications would be much useful.
Thanks
Jayaraj
Jayaraj Sundaresan :http://personal.lse.ac.uk/SUNDARES
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PhD Research Room no: S 504 London School of Economics London WC2A 2AE UK Ph: +44 7862219546
________________________________
From: [email protected] on behalf of aruna bhowmick
Sent: Wed 30/07/2008 10:14
To: Master plan issues in media
Subject: Re: [mpisgmedia] The BRA shapes our city without us
Dear Vinay Baindur,
I dont know why this mail, or what good it is to us after virtually all of
Delhi has just got notified as 'Commercial' by the powersthat be, with all
of SC, thinking public, law abiding public, et al totally defeated by the
note and vote bankers. And all of Plannerdom just waxing eloquent about what
is happening in Timbaktooo! With 'RWAs' assigned to take major
decisions!!!!!
We can only rue our fate. So please just spare us the academics.
Sincerely,
Aruna Bhowmick.
On 7/26/08, Vinay Baindur <[email protected]> wrote:
*The development authorities have violated our zoning and public spaces
laws
for long and now with NURM in the picture there is ongoing massive forced
urban renewal for the benefit of the "Global Investor"the city and its citizens are being entered into a Great Competition
and the Competitive city has arrived here ---- conditions apply
The BRA shapes our city without us*
by Shirley Kressel
contributing writer
Thursday Jul 17, 2008
http://www.mysouthend.com/index.php?ch=columns&sc=city_streets&id=77590In my last column, I reviewed some of the ways the *Boston Redevelopment
Authority* takes money from all of us. Now, let's turn to some of the BRA's
impacts on development, planning and public policy.The BRA, created in 1957, used stealth legislation to eliminate our
Planning
Board in 1960, elbowing the City Council, our legislative branch, out of
its
rightful role in planning and land use regulation. It has since taken over
many other Council roles, depriving us of essential checks and balances.The BRA uses its planning/zoning role and its urban renewal powers to make
what is illegal, legal. The BRA confers enormous wealth on favored
developers with its loophole-laden zoning code, shielding them from
lawsuits
for violating laws meant to protect the community. Politicians can make
private deals with developers, drawing campaign contributions that keep
them
in office. The BRA conducts the "public process" of review and approval and
absorbs the helpless wrath of citizens, while the officials remain
insulated
from public retribution.The BRA's "four finagles," as I call them, are:
- Planned Development Areas (PDA), projects of an acre or more;
- Chapter 121A agreements granting tax breaks, zoning relief, and eminent
domain power, for sites the BRA declares "blighted" *(in Boston, City
Council is cut out of 121A review);*- U-Districts, within the BRA's 3,000 acres of original Urban Renewal Plan
areas and constantly added "Demonstration Project" areas, where the BRA
conveys land to a developer; and- *Institutional Master Plans (IMP) of expanding tax-exempt institutions.*
In these self-zoning districts, development rules are simply negotiated
with
the BRA. But such relief is illegal. It violates the Boston Zoning Enabling
Act, which gives the power of zoning relief only to the Zoning Board of
Appeal, whose process provides legal recourse: aggrieved parties can sue.
Thus, the BRA, having disarmed the legislative branch, has also largely
deprived us of the judicial branch, leaving the "three-legged stool" of
democratic government standing on the executive alone.No neighborhood is protected from the BRA's magical self-zoning wand, given
its liberal criteria - *although the BRA routinely violates even these*.
Even a project with only a half-acre of land has been made a PDA, by
counting nearby streets and sidewalks. Abracadabra!Even when the zoning code included provisions that the BRA's own lawyers
warned cannot be changed by a PDA, it used a PDA designation (indeed, the
half-acre one) to remove the code protection of the historic Gaiety Theatre
and destroyed it for an unlawful tower. Hocus pocus!Even where the code prohibits PDAs altogether, the BRA simply gets the
puppet Zoning Commission to delete the prohibition when it approves a PDA.
The tower replacing Filene's in Downtown Crossing was legalized this way.
The Columbus Center project was given a PDA, when, as a Turnpike air rights
area, it is not even subject to city zoning. The BRA's project manager on
the Columbus Center wrote in a memo in 2003 to the several local
neighborhood associations: "PDAs are not permitted in the Bay Village
Neighborhood District, the Open Space Urban Plaza subdistrict of the South
End Neighborhood District, or the portion of the Downtown IPOD that
includes
the Site. Text Amendment No. [blank], submitted by the BRA for approval
immediately prior to approval of the PDA Plan, would make such provisions
inapplicable to the Site." Presto!The BRA granted a 121A to Two Financial Center, a tower proposed in the
booming historic Leather District. Residents sued and lost: the BRA, the
court said, may declare blight at its discretion. That developer's revised
proposal for a still over-sized building stated that if the community
opposed a variance, he would take the 121A and not only over-build but take
the tax exemption as well. Loew's (now W) Hotel near the Theatre District
got a U-District when the BRA seized a few square feet of land near the
site
and conveyed it to the developer. Shazam!Coming up: the redevelopment of the Government Center Garage. It's big
enough for a PDA, but the BRA owns the adjacent parcel. By adding it to the
project, it can make a U-District, become an equity partner, and profit by
approving the biggest possible building. A 121A is also possible, and would
leave more money in the developer's budget for the BRA's lease fee.Institutional Master Plans are by used all colleges and health care
facilities. With their unfettered expansion, residential buildings become
student dorms, neighborhood-serving retail disappears, neighborhoods are
destabilized, voting power diminishes, families move out. And the tax
burden
of their exempted property is shifted to the rest of us.The BRA owns hundreds of acres of land rights, where it simply writes it
own
rules, an egregious conflict of interest the Boston Globe editorialized
about on April 6, 1999, "On top of South Station?": "The BRA ought to be
the
watchdog for the project, but it owns the air rights over the station and
stands to gain a fortune in lease payments..." It is a profit-seeking - and
unfairly advantaged --competitor in the real estate market. It tilts the
playing field with cronyism in developer designations (it is exempt from
competitive bidding laws), encourages (and engages in) speculation, permits
development that hurts our environment and quality of life, causes an
artificial land scarcity, and drives up land costs, driving up housing and
business costs.These few examples barely scratch the surface; the BRA's zoning shenanigans
could (and should) fill a book.Meanwhile, for a half-century, we, in the cradle of democracy, have been
without a planning entity that cares about anything besides the profits of
big developers (including itself). Its social mission remains to remake
Boston for better people. Its political mission as an "ethics laundry"
remains as well: to do the dirty work while keeping politicians' hands
clean.Accountable only to its own board, dissolvable only by its own hand, and
apparently out of reach of the ethics commission or any law enforcement
agency, the BRA is "da bums" we can't "t'row out."
Shirley Kressel is a landscape architect and urban designer, and one of the
founders of the Alliance of Boston Neighborhoods. She can be reached at
[email protected].
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