EVALUATION OF A MASTER PLAN: CASE STUDY LUCKNOW

Abstract

At the turn of this century, the cities all around the world are facing an unprecedented challenge, put forward by the phenomenon of urbanization, and the scale of the challenge is so big, as never witnesses before by human civilization, in its entire history of 5,000 years. More so, future projections make the picture more grim. Next 5 to 10 years time is very crucial, as far as India is concerned, because it's estimated that the population of India shall abe around one billion in 2001 A. D It is also estimated that in 2001 A.D. almost 30% to 35% of total population of India shall be living in urban areas. Thus, planners of the future have to play a crucial role of planning urban centres, particularly, cities, to cater the needs of such a huge urban population. They will have to device new methods to clearly understand the process of urbanization and accordingly make planning proposals which are adaptive to fast changing needs of the future technological and social realms. India, being one of the fastest growing and developing nations, presents several peculiarities and the cities here are entirely different from the cities of the west. Hence, it requires, on the part of Indian planners, to think of indigenous ways to deal with the problems of urban areas in Indian conditions, Western experiences can be used as a study to learn their experience, but these can not be directly copied down to solve the urbanization problems of Indian cities. The Indian cities are characterised by conflicts and contrasts of cultures, technologies, social attitudes and behaviour pattern. Even, in the decade of nineties, one can witness simultaneous co�â� � existence of bullock carts and highly sophisticated automobile in any typical Indian city. Similarly, problems of mixed economies, mixed landuses and mixed traffic are the inherent features of Indian cities, which make them different from the western cities. A review of urban planning history of contemporary India reveals, that till recently, Indian planners were very much influenced by the western methods and concepts in the field of urban planning, particularly, British town Planning. The use of 'Master Plans' for the future development of cities, is one important example. But, while in the Britain itself, from where this concept of 'Master Plan' was borrowed, this has been discarded as, not at all an effective method of preparation of master plans for cities, is still, a usual practice, British town planners rejected the concept of making rigid master plans in 1968, and adopted a new method to prepare 'structure plans' for new towns. These structures plans were documents, containing broader policy guidelines for the future development of the cities and more detailed zonal plans were left to be made by the local authorities. These were very flexible and adaptive to the future changes in technology or political policies. In India, though some of the good points of this structure plan concept were incorporated in recent master plan of Delhi, but nothing has been dropped from the earlier concept of master plan. This, in a way, has made the problem more complex, rather than simplify it. Further, here in India, the resources are always scarce and various sectors compete for the priority of allocation of these resources. Thus, rigidity of master plans makes them redundant, once priorities are shifted, with in a plan period. Hence, recently, some policy guidelines have been induced in the process of master plan making, to reduce the rigidity of the master plan. But this adds another problem to the planning program. if these policies are riot subjected to evaluation, before implementation, then undesired consequences may result in terms of unforeseen trends of development. This calls for the need of evaluation of the master plan proposals, in the planning process. Natural factors of urban growth are bound to occur and if the plan proposals are not made respecting these factor then master plans will definitely fail. The proposals are respecting these natural factor of growth or not, cah only 3. we judged by evaluation of the plan proposals, in advance. Thus evaluation is necessary for a master plan. The evaluation is also required to choose among various options available to tackle the problems of the urban systems. This choice would depend on the result of evaluation and the priorities of the society.