31/07/2019 - Urban Development | GS II |

IAS Parliament 5 years

KEY POINTS

· Metropolitan regions are the engines of growth and gateways to the national and global economies.

· The term ‘metropolitan area’ is defined unambiguously in the Constitution as an area having a population of over 1 million, consisting of two or more Municipalities or Panchayats or other contiguous areas that may span over multiple districts.

· The Constitution provides considerable discretion to the state governments in determining the administrative boundaries of metropolitan areas. So, the metropolitan boundaries need to be delineated by state governments on the basis of market and labour force.

· A continuous urban spread constituting a town or multiple contiguous towns and their adjoining outgrowths is defined as urban agglomeration.

· The 74th Amendment Act mandated the setting up of Metropolitan Planning Committees (MPC) in all metropolitan areas, which were to prepare Draft Development Plans with due regard for coordinated spatial planning, sharing of resources, development of infrastructure, and environmental conservation.

· Creation of Metropolitan Planning Committee, Disptrict planning committee has to be made mandatory by state government.

· A range of institutions such as municipalities, and other parastatals such as State Water and Sewerage Boards continue to coexist in metropolitan regions, often with overlapping functional jurisdictions and need more coordination amongst them.

· The Delhi government has identified close to 1,800 colonies that will be regularised by the end of next month. Its implications for governance and financing will be daunting, unless explicit provisions are made through innovative measures of unlocking land value, as has been done by Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

· India has been among the fastest growing economies in the world for more than two decades. This has brought about structural transformation of the economy such that the share of agriculture in GDP has declined to 14% and that of services has increased to 58%.

· Transportation planning plays a major role in ensuring sustainable and balanced regional development through intercity and rural-urban connectivity.

· In India, integrated land use planning and transport planning is emerging in major highway projects in a number of cities.

· Opportunities for urban planning with integrated transport and land use on a much larger scale are emerging in the planned highway expansion in the country with the Golden Quadrilateral, freight corridors and other networks.