Town planning should be encouraged

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Town Planning in Sri Lanka is a relatively young professional discipline. It is a professional practice the strength of which is usually built upon years of application and experience. Our generation of planners has through their youthful years grappled with mounting problems of urbanization, population explosion, and the effects of unbridled expansion of consumerism on our cities and environments applying text book methods.

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The Annual Session 2009 of the Institute of Town Planners Sri Lanka is being held at a moment when our heroic forces are achieving for all the people of Sri Lanka. Excerpts from the speech by Urban Development and Sacred Area Development Minister Dinesh Gunawardena delivered on March 21.

This victory is not only over terrorism and separatism that has brought hardships to all of us, it is a victory also against powerful interests both here and abroad that have kept our people subjugated for centuries. It is a moment of our true Independence and a victory to democracy.

Marginalised sections

Our people, especially the poorer and marginalised sections have made tremendous sacrifices for centuries against all kinds of odds and alliances, the latest being the menace of terrorism that had been foisted upon us for over the past 30 years.

It is a foregone conclusion that these times will go down in our proud history as a landmark of heroism of our people under the courageous leadership of the President Mahinda Rajapaksa. His pledge is to go ahead with determination that has been shown by our heroic forces in the battlefields in transforming our country to the paradise it has been known to be from almost the dawn of civilization.

Therefore, it is a matter of deep satisfaction that the Institute of Town Planners Sri Lanka has chosen to concentrate at this Annual Sessions on the tasks of contributing to the Government’s priority objective of developing the northern and eastern parts of the country within the determined objective of building a ‘New Sri Lanka’ of the Mahinda Chintanaya.

‘Planning for North and East Development’ is a challenge not only demanding high level skills, but also an understanding of the approaches of the Government in attending to the needs of large section of our population that has directly undergone the worst kind of suffering at the hands of one of the most ruthless terrorist outfits in the world. The stakes are high and equal to the determination of the President to achieve success and alleviate their long years of untold suffering.

The challenges we as a country face at this moment are unprecedented in the annals of our long history. They are manifold in comparison with the short experience in post Tsunami reconstruction and planning.

Therefore it is time also for professional communities such as town planners to engage in some ‘straight talk’. It is important that the town planners critically question the validity of the traditional concepts and practices of town planning in Sri Lanka, not only in applying to specific situations in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, but also at this turning point of our history - in reshaping our country on a new footing to achieve the goals of a ‘New Sri Lanka’.

Young profession

Town Planning in Sri Lanka is a relatively young professional discipline. It is a professional practice the strength of which is usually built upon years of application and experience.

Our generation of planners has through their youthful years grappled with mounting problems of urbanization, population explosion, and the effects of unbridled expansion of consumerism on our cities and environments applying text book methods.

The UDA has within the past four years alone fully completed 18 Town Plans with a further 25 underway to completion by end this year whereas the National Physical Planning Department has been engaged in developing the practices of Regional and Physical Planning significantly.

However, it is also fair that the country would now expect that the profession has come of age and has the capability to measure up to the challenges creatively and with new vigour as arising from the historic opportunity for change in attitudes and approaches.

These are times for us to shed concepts and thinking imposed upon us by our colonial rulers and for us to be inspired by the legacies of centuries of building Cities, Townships and Villages with an awesome list of wondrous achievements. Providing Ministerial rank to Sacred Areas Development by the President has given recognition to the importance of our ancient traditions in molding our cities.

Keep abreast

To be a partner in building a New Sri Lanka, the Town Planners need to keep abreast with new thinking in our society as is expressed in our contemporary literature, and be inspired by feelings that they generate among our people. Anurapure hi neela jala dhara... is almost a pious ode to our ancient city building traditions that comes from the hearts of our people.

It is not too long ago that the ordinary people of our country our people sang with gusto harima lassanai kolom pure sriya and that their adoration of the beauty and tranquility in our traditional villages found poetic expression such as in the description of Katuroda Gammanaya as tharamak pitisaraya, goda-mada dekama sarusarai and a gama medin galena ganga manaharaya , in Keyas’ Sudo Sudu.

Globalization devastation

There is not much use in decrying the devastation of globalization and open economy and fret over the global financial meltdown unless we are firmly resolved to mend our ways in the face of such reality. The lesson to the world community is to carefully select the tools of development to overcome the effects by mending their ways.

We are privileged that we have long and continuous historic traditions that our people in their wisdom have to a great extent preserved, at least in their thinking. It is in this context that I pointed out to the Architects a few days ago how our revered novelist Martin Wickremesinghe had observed that a “lotus leaf absorbs that amount of droplets of water that fall upon it and allows the rest to flow off”.

Such wisdom can be thought rendering in the face of the dilemmas we face in selecting options that suit us and guide local government and every government department in responding to the challenges we face in building our ‘New Sri Lanka’.

The fertile land in Mannar, Vanni and the Jaffna Peninsula and overall in the East, great irrigation reservoir systems, vast maritime potentials and forest cover, the Port of Trincomalee, valuable mineral deposits and most of all industrious people are a repositories of valuable assets awaiting to be harnessed.

The process of resurrecting the regions is a process of empowering the communities in the regions regain their resourcefulness to do so, stressed as an overall strategy in the Mahinda Chintanaya.

With communities and the leaderships that will soon be ushered in - in peaceful and democratic process in the North as is already in the East, the government of His Excellency Mahinda Rajapaksa will rebuild the devastated town and villages, roads and services and empower communities to prosper once again as equal and dignified citizens of Sri Lanka.

Supportive role

The Town Planners will have the opportunity to play a critical and supportive role of far greater magnitude and importance that the felt contributions they have made during the Tsunami and the initiating phase of the Negenahira Udanaya.

Technological options for rainwater harvesting and Solar and Wind Power as yet far from adequate in local application, systematic and large-scale greening, efficient and modern rail and bus transportation systems though also giving due place in city designs to due place for locally entrenched good practices such as cycling as in Jaffna are some aspects that would be expected of planners to take in to account in their engagement with North and East development.