On the National Urban Policy Framework (NUPF) 2018
A Mobility and Urban Environment Perspective
The National Urban Policy Framework (NUPF) 2018 released by the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) is meant to outline an integrated and coherent approach towards the future of urban planning in India. At its crux are principles or sutras, the application of which will lead the country away from the rigid, codified historical methods of viewing the urban environment for the purposes of planning. In this context, the NUPF recognizes that most urban issues are under the jurisdiction of the States or Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) and that there can or shouldn’t necessarily be a strictly standardized solution for every city; instead, it is the customization to the milieu of a particular city that will yield the best results. In doing so though, there arises a need to unify the approach adopted by fragmented bodies in implementing high-quality urban development — this is the prime purpose of the NUPF.
The NUPF is built upon ten sutras:
· Cities are clusters of human capital;
· Cities require a ‘sense of place’;
· Not static Master Plans but evolving ecosystems;
· Build for density;
· Public spaces that encourage social interactions;
· Multi-modal public transport backbone;
· Environmental sustainability;
· Financially self-reliant;
· Cities require clear unified leadership;
· Cities as engines of regional growth.
These ten principles are then applied by relevance and context to a set of ten functional areas:
· Urban economy
· Physical infrastructure
· Social infrastructure
· Housing & affordability
· Transportation & mobility
· City planning
· Urban finance
· Urban governance
· Urban information systems
· Urban environment
The NUPF concedes that the application of these sutras to the functional areas will lead to somewhat different urban outcomes in different parts of the country. Yet, such plurality is part of what is being attempted by replacing the conventional view of cities, which the NUPF calls “machines for living”, with one that breaches years-old shackles and approaches them as evolving ecosystems.
The current status of urban thinking in India faces a critique, in that a city is not simply a large mechanical system for the production and consumption of built space. There is a strong implication that the primary viewpoint on a city, of it being a collection of buildings and roads and hard infrastructure, is outmoded and less accurate in the present knowledge economy. The NUPF is laid on the foundational premise that the city should be viewed holistically in the context of all human interaction and social behaviour, instead of purely at the hard infrastructure level.
The NUPF has provided excellent suggestions for the functional areas of transportation & mobility and the urban environment. In general, the NUPF has emphasized on Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), discouragement of private transport in certain forms, intermodal operations, gender-friendly design, alleviation of traffic congestion, etc. and outlined several Priorities and Actions regarding the same. Yet, there are several fronts that are not addressed in terms of what the sutras suggest; the guiding principles should, in some cases, also go on to provide some concomitant on-ground operating principles in addition to the conceptual ones.
Paradigm Shift
To begin with, the core principles and the foundational premise of the NUPF make a lot of sense, and it is safe to say that the application of such an approach is long overdue for urban India. If one looks at the application of holistic approaches in other industries operating in the system-of-systems paradigm, especially in the further developed countries, it is obvious that in the near to long term, it should be the right choice despite being a more complicated approach. There are obvious resulting benefits — interoperability, rapid execution, standardized and centralized monitoring, accountability, capacity building, to name a few. There are a handful of downsides as well — higher complexity and uncertainty of the planning process, under-defined procedures, lack of experience or expertise in implementation, and disconnect between Centre, State, and City if a seamless method isn’t present. It is essential to note that the NUPF thinks that the benefits of the approach far outweigh the risks in this case, and there is a believable causality to the statement.
Transportation & Mobility
The NUPF elucidates on all the ailments of the present Indian urban transportation system. It seeks to overcome the current state of urban congestion as well as unequal levels of mobility across social groups by putting people centre-stage of the planning process instead of vehicles. One way that the NUPF finds worthy to achieve a high level of integration of various modes of public transport is to create the Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA). Secondly, it lays emphasis on the implementation of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) along with pedestrian and street infrastructure.
One critical factor that has been appropriately identified as contributing to the detriment of urban transport in today’s day is the low penetration of high density mixed land-use. The NUPF suggests prioritizing it with compulsory land allocation for public transport stops and depots. In a lot of our cities, it is apparent that land allocation is suffering, and rogue encroachment, whether of allocated land, road, or pavement, is rampant. This presents itself as a hurdle when the future of the city is being planned. It is difficult to rework a lot of things that have built up over the years, including citizens’ habits, and therefore planning ultimately suffers from sub-optimality fever.
The Centre, State, and City all have historically had a generic focus on public transport, and this document seems to continue in a somewhat similar vein. While public transport is necessary, what ultimately matters is a city-wide transportation system which is efficient overall instead of being efficient in one vertical, e.g. a city with particular urban characteristics can end up with a highly efficient ITS-based high-volume Metro rail system but very poor static intra-urban short distance and last-mile connectivity, etc. This will ultimately lead to the erosion of the equitable social welfare and economic opportunity generation that is intended as a result of having a good transportation system.
Among the various system aspects — such as transport network characteristics, private and public stakeholders, decision processes, policy, financing, welfare, related industries (e.g. civil infrastructure, architecture) — the most crucial one in designing an optimal transport system or network is the technical characterization of the city itself from a transport perspective using city transportation system parameters. There are several approaches to characterizing a city in this manner, and a commonly prescribed and adopted method is that of the Service Level Benchmark (SLB), as offered by the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD). The SLB is mutually and bilaterally informed by the National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP), Comprehensive Mobility Plans of individual cities, 5-year plans and 10-year plans, etc.
Therefore, the agenda along with pushing for public transport should also be on a systemic solution (which the NUPF does hint at, but not explicitly in the context of public transport). The idea is that public transport accessible to all at a fulfilling Level of Service (LoS) is the utopia point for this objective. In reality, this is difficult to achieve in most cities. The method to enable affordable commuting for all sections of society is to provide a better integrated overall transport network with both public and private offerings. Market clearing will take place automatically when private players are incentivized to choose business models that allow them to offer affordable prices (as opposed to purely profit-maximizing prices) for their target demographic. This is important because it is a basic economic principle that everyone is privy to. The choice architecture underlying a particular transport system will ultimately be expected to segregate commuters to an appropriate mode at the appropriate price level and LoS.
To a government entity, the idea of a portion of urban commute being torn away from public transport may seem like a counterintuitive suggestion, because public transit is mass transit and there are efficiencies of operation in mass transit, which in turn is a sustainable way to build a city. But when we try and look at the activity-based transit model of a city in conjunction with the origin-destination-based transit model, we might find that a transport system that caters in a better way to the real need of a commuter (conducting a particular activity) may not turn out to be heavily dependent on public transport.
Thus, the job of the city should be to use information tools and a model-based approach (wherever possible) to build a public-private mixed transport system for the city’s unique needs, one which attains sustainability criteria despite focusing on real customer satisfaction. The city might in turn find that it inadvertently (or advertently) ends up maximizing net social welfare as well. (An economic survey of such an approach should help fortify this idea.)
A Model-based Approach
One specific example in the NUPF is the suggestion to double the country’s urban bus fleet in the next five years. Now it is understandable that there is a paucity of buses as compared to the demand level in several cities, which leads to unsafe operations as well. Yet, given Indian road conditions and road specifications (e.g. width and laning), buses in good supply it is not clear whether buses will be the best long-term solution. To note, only a handful of cities have a BRT system which is much better than the city’s conventional bus service. Many cities are either about to or are planning to be equipped with a high-density Metro rail system. The arrival of the Metro in a city significantly changes the game: it impacts mode shares and travel patterns at the lowest level of fidelity.
The larger objective to design a city in an evolving manner, as also suggested by the NUPF itself, is to keep an eye out on overall transportation viability per city. The best modus operandi in this condition is to take a model-based approach. A city transportation model can be used by each city to customize it for the city’s particular disposition and intent. The architectural elements of this model would be global, i.e. standardized and meant for every Indian city or others. Such a model if accessible at the Centre and State level would mean that the NUPF principles are being thoroughly cascaded into the real ground work happening at the city level. It would enable cities to take decisions faster, and to take the decisions apropos the necessary customization of their transportation network to the needs of the city. The issue here is to improve capacity and capability in this regard at the city level. If such an intensive model-based approach is administered, it would also mean that a central body could direct cities with keen focus, and cities could exchange learning rapidly. Within an environment of collaborative improvement, perhaps between Indian cities and foreign ones, city transportation networks can thrive.
Systemic Integration and Multimodality
A recent example here is the rise of ride-hailing companies like Ola and Uber. Similarly, there is a need for either public or private participation in the form of future-ready service models in other layers of the transportation onion, i.e. modes of transport such as cycling, auto rickshaws, two-wheelers, etc. Applying ITS principles to any modes that can safely grow on its foundation should be focused on. Exempli gratia, auto rickshaws and other intermediate paratransit (IPT) operations are critical to the transportation system of several Indian cities, such as Surat, New Delhi, Nagpur, and Agra; yet the state of operation is dismal to say the least. Customer satisfaction, market optimality, price balancing, transport efficiency, regulatory enforcement, etc. are all well below what can actually be achieved even with mild technology intervention. If integration efforts are made from a systemic perspective, it might turn out that cycling, scooters, two-wheelers, and IPT are all indispensable modes of transit. There is a need for flexibility and innovation in these modes, and the regulatory eye should encourage change to the extent of entire market restructuring if need be, besides opening up a regulatory breathing space for private intervention.
Electrification and Environmental Sustainability
The Central government has for the past five years been vocal about its plans for electric vehicles (EVs) in India. The National Electric Mobility Mission Plan (NEMMP) 2020 and the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric vehicles (FAME) scheme have been active for the past several years, providing incentives, subsidies, viability gap funding, research funding, and operational assistance, among other things. Almost every major vehicle manufacturer is making inroads into EV manufacturing, be it two-wheelers, four-wheelers, or buses. Yet, it still remains to be seen what the most sustainable method to achieve sustainable urban transport in the next 20 years will be. Is it the sudden exodus of conventional vehicles to be immediately replaced with electric vehicles, public or private? Seems unlikely, what with the not-so-favourable economics of owning electric vehicles in the very immediate future. It appears that things will take a specific curve of change from conventional to electric, slowly and steadily with the government leading the charge of the paradigm shift (government vehicles, public transport fleet, etc.).
Electric vehicles are effective in fleets. The NUPF is cognizant of this and suggests to provide greater financial incentives to public transport operators that embrace electric vehicle or other green technologies. In light of the earlier observation about there being a curve of change towards an environmentally sustainable national parc figure, it seems that a better proposal would be to install a time-based mandate to have, say, x% of electric vehicles in a city’s total vehicle fleet, or to have x% electric vehicles in a public transport fleet (buses).
Other Functional Areas
The NUPF recognizes the fact that cities are highly complex systems of systems. In response to this, the NUPF also delivers strong suggestions on urban information systems and the integration thereof. Several world-class cities and urban habitats recognize this fact and proceed to design for it in accordance. A benchmarking effort of the best in the world should yield insights into their process and approach. The idea of an Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) for a city could potentially be game-changing in amalgamating real-time city management with monitoring and citizen interfacing.
On the environmental front, India needs to really tackle the dust-and-dirt problem in its urban ambience. Pavement and road-laying are not the only solutions — it is high time for non-negotiable green cover mandates. Dust control and prevention methods, technologies, and research should be incentivized and prioritized. Municipal corporations should begin to make serious adjustments in annual budgets for control of dust in the city, if applicable.
It is long known that cities should be designed for density, because there are operational efficiencies in doing so. We need to remember to build for density, but not at the expense of the human experience. The natural world is crucial for the ever-evolving human experience.
Urban Aesthetic and Public Art
Walking around in an Indian city is sometimes not the most welcome experience. Such an irony, considering that India opens with welcome arms any and everyone who stands at its doorstep. One severe shortcoming of the Indian urban environment is the lack of positive aesthetic and (sometimes) hygiene. This is the one important area where it seems that the NUPF doesn’t touch base. India is still in the sleepy stage of waking up to public art. A detailed deliberation on the subject is a matter for another time, but the gist is that Indian cities can be much more vibrant and visually appealing than they already are.
The most beautiful cities in the world — Sydney, Toronto, London, San Francisco — all have one thing in common (except maybe the European fare with their inherited medieval, gothic, and nouveau architecture). The Public Art Master Plan. Every city that wants to bring the flair of life into the city infrastructure itself has thought about and implemented a public art master plan. Delhi has (or had?) one too. But that’s about the extent of it. If the rich cultural traditions and unimaginable diversity that India possesses can be encapsulated in the city infrastructure, then India will be animated. Being in a comfortable, aesthetically pleasing, and intellectually curious environment shall improve the well-being of citizens, improve net social welfare, and improve economic output.
