Building versus Planning – A Working Paper1 Case Studies: Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Aceh and Sri Lanka. This working paper developed as a consolidated analysis from Aceh experiences and 3 weeks Visit to Sri Lanka Tsunami Affected Areas on February 20082 Muamar Vebry3
Brief Summary This working paper simply elaborates the approach of planners in dealing with post-disaster rehabilitation and reconstruction both in Aceh and Sri Lanka. The discussion explores the effectiveness of emergency planning process and the ability to cope with the critical needs on a timely fashion and deliver a spatial product as a basis for physical reconstruction. Whilst the next discussion explores the outcome from the emergency planning, identify the results, consequences and ultimately foreseen future challenges and how planners and practitioners practically mitigate these issues.
Planning versus Building In every post-disaster recovery there always a greater challenge which needed to be answered, particularly in the way planners and practitioners may able to undertake a better planning mechanism to allow the early recovery, reconstruction & rehabilitation, and long-term development interlinked and integrated to one another, to ensure that the overall reconstruction cycles is not merely to reconstruct the damages, but also to provide a greater chance to rebuild better. In a real practice, the answer to that question was not always as rosy as the question itself. Many challenges and constraints usually demoralized the practitioners to do so, such as the limited availability of funds, lack of capacity and ultimately a time constraint to produce high-quality multi level spatial plans in short time. As a common practice, the requirements of adequate planning always become a first victim to be neglected. This situation has always been driven by the circumstances whereas planners and practitioners have to accommodate the pressure of needs such as to fulfill the physical security as human basic needs in a short period. Meanwhile in a contrary, if the planners tend strictly stick to the normal planning methodology, which requires much longer time and much more thorough analysis, the chances to cope and to accommodate those urgent needs is very low. For Aceh and Sri Lanka, what commonly invested by the reconstruction actors in planning process was merely framed within limited scope, particularly at villages level, without adequately taking into account other wider and macro variables such as the availability and accessibility to basic services or infrastructures. Whilst, the approach resulted into tons of
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Disclaimer: This working paper only reflects the author personal opinion without any association with the view of the organization which he currently working for. 2
A short presentation related to this paper was presented on 29 February 2008 in general lecture at M.Sc Planning Programme, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. 3
Author is Human Settlement Observer in Indonesia, base in Jakarta.
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generic product of an aesthetic village plans then subsequently used as a basis to commence the rebuilding course. This activity has notoriously known as Planning by Building, which literally means, built without a proper plan. However, now, after almost 4 (four) years of simultaneous building and planning, there is an increasing demand for more committed planning, especially at macro, city-wide and region-wise coordinating level. Where is the land-use plan? Where is city-wide tsunami-preparedness spatial plan? Where is the master drainage plan? In general, it identified that the planning investment in Aceh and Sri Lanka was fragmented and far from it imperative function to achieve a better-integrated area development. This approaches, moreover, has prevented all compulsory infrastructural interconnections between micro (village level) and macro (city-wide or municipalities' level) infrastructure level seem to be impossible to be achieved in a short period of time. Then what is the greater challenge to achieve and integrated micro-macro plans at the initial phase? Probably since macro planning instrumentation that supposedly to act as legal framework was not yet applied during early reconstruction phase to frame and rephrase the sporadic micro villages planning activities. Some say that the “Blue Print” and the “Building Code” was already there as guidance, then the best answer that there is a probability of insufficient enforcement to mainstream the ideal spirit of those documents accordingly. But yet, there is no such an easy answer for such a question with high degrees of complexity. And therefore, as a brainstorming purpose and/or to convolute it more, hereby I would like to raise few more questions to the planners who were involved or still being involved in reconstructions process at both case studies as follow: 1.
How do we planners incorporate a better and responsive planning process in post-disaster areas?
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Should planning facilitate the community recovery process or simply impose a regulation?
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How to move on from “simply” physical planning into more integrated recovery and further long-term development process?
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How do we engage the community and transform the ordinary planning process into community action planning beyond the village level?
I, myself with limited knowledge and experience in planning sector found it hard to be able to answer the abovementioned questions after all. So let us hope that through an extensive discussion, we could come out with acceptable answers, or even consensus as a common understanding and common approach, particularly on how to deal with the planning instrumentation during the recovery and reconstruction process.
Similarities between Aceh and Sri Lanka, Factors, Common Failures What I have learned during my involvement in Aceh rebuilding activities and short visit to Sri Lanka are the common similarities and the simplicity approach in utilizing the planning instrumentation during the initial reconstruction phase. In short, the common approach and errors it can be shortly summarized as below: 1.
Lack of technical and institutional knowledge to develop instrumental planning tools, indicators and technique on post-disaster reconstruction.
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Lack of incorporation on post-disaster planning exercise and strategy on planning & building on planning schools of thought has somehow disoriented the professional planner to select between the ideal and pragmatic planning as a silver bullet solution.
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Traps on the idea of pro-physical planning and built-back better at village level without any urban-settlement anchorage and its micro-macro infrastructural interconnections analysis.
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Unable to move on from the ghetto of “ordinary” planning mechanism into more rapid and responsive planning mechanism.
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Building based approach, not rebuilding based on livelihood opportunities and Infrastructure availability and connectivity.
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For some cases, improve the human & physical security through resettlement program caused more money to be invested for infrastructural support, which sometime was a luxurious stuff to be fulfilled immediately.
Those are, at least what I can possibly identify as basic responsible ingredients that caused inability to fulfill and accommodate a better spatial plan. It is a simple component, but yet more thorough study needed to solve these matters, just ensure that such solid knowledge developed to deal with another massive post-disaster rehabilitation and reconstruction in the coming years. Nevertheless, this working paper will not specifically discuss past mistakes, and debating on how we could have been done better, what I am going to propose here is a pragmatic solution, a solution which could be taken into account by the stakeholders; collaboratively and practically resolves this notorious issue.
What to Do Next? The question is what does those explanations above telling us? Could the improper planning production can cause more systematical damages and jeopardize the quality of living and reduces the quality of our space? Unfortunately the answer would be yes, I must say. But to what extent it could affect us? Let me explain as below. Based on my estimation, that in a long run, without any further serious adjustment, some parts of reconstructed settlement and resettlement areas in Aceh and Sri Lanka could be degraded into mega-slums, given to the poor planning that allow interconnections at micro and macro infrastructural level, which prevents the optimization and full infrastructure operational provisions. This is an utmost concerned consequence to be faced sooner or later if there are neither commitments nor breakthrough to mitigate the impending issues promptly. Therefore, a critical input and social support to communities and policy makers to be able to cope with the forthcoming physical and social issues should be given through various approaches at large through community empowerment, better planning adjustment, optimization, and provides adequate technical support to increase human settlement and urban management capacity of Local Government. However bear in minds that there is no such thing called as a silver bullet to resolve those impending issues, therefore, I would like to propose the unfinished list of solutions which I could think of now, and subsequently should be topped-up by the crowd in this discussion. I believe that the wisdom of crowd will lead us into a better solution and consensus once and for all.
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So, let me start with few of them then openly to be added, modified and even delete it if it is not considered as an applicable solution for us. Those few steps are as below: 1.
1. Improve the settlement through careful injection of micro infrastructure provision - In the short run; it is urgent for the local government to provide this pragmatic approach to improve the quality of human settlements through adequate micro infrastructure investment. It's a quick fix, but it's an urgent must.
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Adjusting, reconfiguring and optimizing the scattered plans then continue with urban development and vital/macro infrastructure investment - The future challenges to be faced is how to utilize the villages plans - which has been commonly used as a basis for village reconstruction. The first sub-step is to integrate those fragmented micro-scale results into wider-scale city-wide or municipality plans (in sub districts, districts, and municipalities levels), incrementally readjust the plan in line with macro-scale or urbanwide conditions and taken into account all the elemental requirements, such as legal and technical measures. Subsequently, a careful in-depth analysis should be undertake to identify the dead-end and non-operable infrastructure connections between urban and settlements, then seek possible long-term solution though a robust investment of core vital infrastructure needed.
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Intersection between livelihood and physical aspects - there is a great need to provide a synergistic approach between physical and livelihood element for both case studies. This is compulsory effort to synergies physical elements (housing and settlement) and nonphysical elements (income generating sectors) in order to pursue better-integrated settlement development. The objective could be achieved through an investment on productive infrastructure or other form livelihood interventions that could trigger the sustainable livelihood activities at large.
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Improve the monitoring capacity - to establish urban and settlement observatories (collaborative action between local government and the academic institutions) to increase monitoring capability and capacity to oversee of the trends and quality of newly reconstructed settlement and urban areas.
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Integrate a robust infrastructure operation and maintenance in place - O&M is a vital investment to be integrated by the Local Government and the whole citizen to ensure infrastructure investment sustainability. Therefore, financial and technical expertise's need to be improved accordingly to develop an appropriate O&M system that applicable to local conditions.
Future Homework's for Aceh and Sri Lanka Post-Settlement Recovery There is no class without a bunch of homework, at least that what my teacher keep telling me when I was in 5th grades. Therefore, the same condition is applied for Aceh and Sri Lanka cases, but this time the homework lies in our shoulder as practitioners, as government, as CSOs and academicians. In the other words, there are few things that will remain as our backlog, and let us become at our own disposal to resolve this issue by all means. 1.
As it is understood, in the recovery process in Aceh and Sri Lanka the planning process is always against the building and the construction process itself. There is an urgent need to incorporate those scattered village plans into much more representative local area plan and incorporates the information into a larger urban and regional development plan (commonly known as spatial plan)
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To address the gaps between building and planning, it is suggested that the respective Local Government, Local CSOs, Academic and other Stakeholders to form a certain mechanism to facilitate and integrate much better citywide, urban-wide, and regionalwide plans through a participatory process.
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The local CSOs and the University should play a major role in developing technical expertise, analysis capability and techniques in planning, development, management and policy formulation to the housing and settlement sector. These institutions should also be able to provide community-based infrastructure and yet facilitate and advocate for them to be feasible, integrated, and sustainable.
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Local CSOs and the Universities should simultaneously play a role in providing constructed supports and advocacy toward integrated urban and human settlement planning systems, through continuous monitoring and observation for housing and human settlement and infrastructure development.
Once and for all, it is my expectation that once we have done with this discussion we will come out with more solid knowledge, better framework and understanding to be able to resolve all the conveyed issues on this working paper accordingly. A thorough discussion is encouraged and please noted that this paper was prepared in short time, and the existency is far from a perfect assumption and in-depth analysis.
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