C.2.

2:
Regional Planning and Development

Anjali Pancholy
Associate Town & Country Planner, TCPO

For Institute of Town Planners, India

May 2017
 What is Regional Planning

 The meaning is closely linked to National Development Planning.

 In this context, it is sometimes referred to as Regional Development

Planning.
 Regional Development Planning is undertaken to achieve the goals of
national development.
 It is spatial planning unlike National Development Planning, which is
economic planning.
 “Regional Planning should be viewed as a means to strengthen the national
economy. It is a technique to evaluate the potential of sub-national areas
and to develop them to the best advantage of the national as a whole”.
Goals of Development

Redistribution
Economic
Growth Structural
Change

Environmental
Sustainability
Goals of Regional Planning
Improved
internal
organisation
and Economic
administrative Growth
Environmental form
objectives Income
Employment

Improving
Balanced parameters of
Development social
(vis-à-vis other development
regions) (literacy,
Evolution of health, etc.)
Improved
Settlement
Pattern
 What is a Region
An area delineated on the basis of a defined criteria

Definitions of region vary from place to place and author to author and
purpose to purpose – no set definition or typology

Basics:
 It is a spatial unit
 There is some unifying criteria

Conceptual issues
 Region as a mental construct
 Region as a physical entity
 Types of Regions

The criteria used to define or delineate is uniformly

Formal present all over the region
Region ie – HOMOGENOUS REGION
Normally the criteria is STATIC

The criteria used to define the region is in the form of a

Functional flow or relationship, linking all parts of the region to a
centre or core
Region Ie – NODAL REGION
Normally flows are DYNAMIC

Planning Regions
Ad hoc regions
Others
Typology of Regions
Single Feature

Formal Multiple Feature

Compage

Metropolitan
Regions Functional
Axial

Transitional Zones

Ad-hoc Depressed Areas

River Valleys, etc.

 What is involved in Regional Planning

Identifying
Plan
the need
Defining implement
for regional Demarcatio
aim and -ation
planning of n of the Monitoring
objectives Plan within the
a particular region and review
of the formulation framework
sub- (Delineatio
planning of National
national n exercise)
exercise and federal
spatial unit
structure
(region)
 Region Delineation
 Regional delineation is an initial step in the preparation of any regional
planning exercise
 Delineation of a definite physical boundary of the region through
empirical/ theoretical exercises is a complicated exercise

Delineation of formal regions Delineation of Functional

involves the grouping together of
spatial units which have similar
characteristics according to the
selected/ defined criteria, which
differ significantly from the units
outside the region on the basis of
the chosen criteria. This can be
done statistically using:
 Weighted index number
methods
 Factor analysis
Regions
Two basic approaches:
 Flow analysis – based on actual
observations of flows that
actually take place
 Gravitational analysis – based on
theoretical observations of what
flows might happen.
 Theoretical Basis
 Although Regional Planning is a relatively new discipline, its roots go back
to the nineteenth century.
 Multi-disciplinary theoretical basis
 4 distinct sets of theories

• Von Thunen
Location • Christaller, Losch
theories • Growth Pole Theory

• Geographical-cultural regions
Geographic • Cultural ethnocentricism
theories • River basin planning
• Community development ( ref: block planning)

Town Planning • Physical planning extended to the countryside

theories
• Spatial price theory
Economic • Transport cost and location
• Location of firm
theories • Regional business cycles
 Core- Periphery Concept
 The concept draws from several interlinked works
 John Friedmann (1966) developed the core-periphery model studying
differences between regions and the development policy of Venezuela.
 He identified four stages of development in economic space.
 Similar views were expressed by other scholars
 Wallerstein's World Systems Theory, according to which the whole world is one
system in which the (so-called) the developed industrialized nations comprise the
core and the underdeveloped and developing world, consisting
of most nations in Asia, Africa and South
America comprise the periphery and semi-
periphery.
The core focuses on high skilled capital intensive
jobs and industries, while the semi-periphery
and periphery focus on more low skilled labour
intensive industries and jobs, implying an
exploitative relationship between the core and
periphery.

1 The pre-industrial (agricultural) society
with localised economies, in which settlement
structure consisting of small units remains
dispersed and whose economic subjects
(population and merchandise) have low mobility
3 Industrial
Economic growth spreads across the country and
causes other growth centres to appear. The main
reasons for deconcentration are the lack of labour
force and rocketing prices in the core area.
Furthermore, the deconcentration of economic
units and population takes place within the
metropolitan areas: intensity of people’s personal
daily mobility and distances between workplace
and home increase. However, the growth of the
metropolitan region proceeds and the remote
periphery continues to decline
2 Transitional
The concentration of the economy from periphery
to the core begins as a result of capital
accumulation and industrial growth. The
interregional mobility of labour and intensity of
trade rises enormously. However, the labour force
daily space remains local, as the personal mobility
of people remains limited. The periphery is totally
subordinated to the centre
of political and economic dominance. The industri
es producing the highest extra-value are located in
the core.
4 Post- Industrial
The spatial integration of the economy and
achievement of equilibrium. Friedmann believed
that the allocation of economic activities should
attain optimum balance and stability. As far as
different areas specialise in certain functions,
there will be division of labour between regions.
An integrated model foresees a cyclical movement
of the population caused mostly by age: the youth
study in big cities, families settle in suburbs,
elderly people look for cheap and peaceful rural
environment.
Adapted version of Friedmann’s 4 stages
Characteristics of Core & Periphery
Core
 High foreign direct investment (FDI)
 High employment and high wages
 High levels of communications and
technology e.g. internet and mobile
network
 High literacy and skills rates
 Net migration gain
 Larger secondary and tertiary economy
 Good electricity, water and gas
supplies
 Good quality housing
 Wide variety of entertainment e.g.
cinemas, museums, etc.
 Cultural diversity (sport, music,
religion, language, food, dress, etc.)
 Large racial mix
Periphery
 Disinvestment
 Net migration loss
 Unemployment
 Low levels of literacy and small skills
base
 Large primary sector economy - maybe
a large number of subsistence farmers
 Water and electricity shortages -
possible reliance on fuelwood
 Poor levels of communications
 poor housing - often informal
settlements
 Traditional lifestyle/culture (lack of
cultural mix)
 Little international cultural or sporting
facilities
 Related Terms

 Dependency Theory
 Dominance
 Hinterland
 Spread and backwash
 Vicious cycle
 Christaller’s Central Place Theory
 Walther Christaller in his work “Central Places in Southern Germany” 1933
 It is a normative economic theory, uses concepts of demand and supply to
explain the emergence of a settlement pattern, its numbers, size and spacing
 Assumes rational economic behavior – the supplier is a profit maximiser and
the consumer is a distance minimiser, isotropic surface (an unbounded
uniform plain)
 Threshold of a good is the minimum demand which is required to support the
producer
 Range of a good is the maximum distance that a consumer is willing to travel
to obtain a good or service
 Using these two concepts, it emerges that a good or service will be offered at a
central place where the threshold is offset by the range of the good, which is
surrounded by its circular catchment area or sphere of influence or hinterland
 Christaller hypothesized that goods and services have different thresholds and
ranges, based on which which he categorized them as lower order, middle
order and higher order
 Basic Concepts of CPT
 Given the above, he postulated that a spatial system of central places
emerges. The higher order central places offer all the lower order goods
(and services) also.
 Centrality measures the number and orders of goods and services offered
by a central place.
 Each central place serves a circular hinterland, however, since circles
either overlap or leave out intervening areas, therefore postulated
Christaller hexagonal market areas.
 Marketing Principle
 This particular of centres is the minimum number of service points that
can be packed onto the isotropic plain
 Yet it ensures that the marketing/ supply of all orders of goods and
services is as near as possible to the dependant demand
 Hence Christaller claimed that this system was organised by the marketing
principle
 The marketing principle K = 3
 The market of a higher-order
place (node) serves 1/3 of the
market area of each of the
consecutive lower order centre
 The lower order centres (6 in
numbers) are located at the
corners of hexagon around the
high-order centres.
 Traffic Principle
 Christaller argued that factors other than the marketing principle may also
be important in determining the distribution of the service centres
 Two of these are the traffic principle and the administrative principle
 The traffic principle creates a landscape which contains the maximum
number of central places on linear traffic routes between two major towns
 According to the traffic principle, the maximum number of central places
would be lined up on straight traffic routes which fan out from the central
point.
 When Central places are arranged according to the traffic principle, the
lower order centres are located at the midpoint of each side of the hexagon
rather than at the corner.
 The traffic principle produces a hierarchy organized in a k=4 arrangement in
which central places are nested according to the rule of four.
Administrative Principle
 The administrative principle creates a
landscape in which each higher order
centre dominates six lower order centres
 If we include the higher order centre
itself, each centre can be said to
dominate 7 centres of the next lower
order.
 Thus the transport principle produces a
hierarchy organized in a k=7
arrangement in which central places are
nested according to the rule of seven.
 Review of Central Place Theory
MODELS ARE NOT REAL, BUT THEY HELP US UNDERSTAND REALITY…
 The pattern of cities predicted by Central Place Theory may not hold
 Isotropic surfaces do not exist in reality and failure to meet initial assumptions
 Large areas of flat land rarely exist
 Production costs may vary not only because of economies of scale but also by natural
resource endowments.
 Transportation costs are not equal in all directions
 Rural markets (initially households) are not evenly distributed
 Non economic factors (culture, politics, leadership) may be important but not evenly
distributed
 Competitive practices may lead to distortion of the perfectly shaped market areas
 There are many forms of transportation- cost cannot be proportional to distance
 People and wealth are not evenly distributed
 People do not always to the nearest place and purchasing power differs
 Perfect competition is unreal-some make more money than others
 Shopping habits have changed
 The Theory gives a static picture of central place, orders of goods and market areas
 The theory does a reasonably good job of describing the spatial pattern of urbanization
 It explains why there is a hierarchy of urban centres
 Central place theory does a good job of describing principles affecting the location of
trade and service activity, consumer market oriented manufacturing
 73rd/ 74th CAA
 73rd Amendment – Panchayati Raj Act
 74th Amendment – Nagarpalika Act
 Enacted in 1992, a third tier was added to the country’s federal polity thus
bringing democratic decentralisation (devolution)
 The provisions contained in Article 243 and its sections and two new
schedules – 11 and 12 Schedules inserted into the Constitution.
 Statutory (constitutional) status to urban and rural local level elected bodies
 Transfer of functions to local level – urban planning including town planning
and economic and social planning is amongst the list of functions to be
discharged at local level by elected representatives
 For urban areas – urban local bodies
 For rural areas – gram panchayats
 Introduced provision for financial devolution – a State Finance Commission
for sharing funds between State level and local self-governments to bring in
financial autonomy
74th CAA – Institutional Framework
 The Constitutional 74th Amendment Act, envisaged a systematic change in
the pattern of municipal government in the country with a view to
enabling cities and towns to play a critical role in economic and social
development and signified the beginning of a historic reform to
decentralize power to the people.
 The Act prescribes a common legal institutional framework for local self-
government comprising of the following mandatory institutions:
 State Election Commission (Article 243k)
 Elected Municipalities: Municipal Corporations (for larger urban areas),
Municipal Councils (smaller urban areas); and Nagar Panchayats (for
transitional areas) (Article 243Q).
 Ward committees and other committees (Article 243R)
 State Finance Commission (Article 243I),
 District Planning Committee (Article 243ZE)
 Metropolitan Planning Committee (Article 243ZE)
 DPC & MPC
 A District Planning Committee (DPC) at District level to prepare the Draft
Development Plan, integrating matters of common interest between
the Panchayats and the Municipalities including spatial planning, sharing
of water and other physical and natural resources, the
integrated development of infrastructure and environmental
conservation and the extent and type of available resources, both financial
or otherwise.

 A Metropolitan Planning Committee (MPC) for urban areas with a

population of 10 lakhs and above, spread over one or more districts,
comprising one or more contiguous municipal areas, gram panchayats,
etc. to prepare a Draft Development Plan have regard to matters of
common interest between the Municipalities and the
Panchayats, including co-ordinated spatial planning of the area,
sharing of water and other physical and natural resources, the
integrated development of infrastructure and environmental conservation
 Status of DPCs/ MPCs
 The story so far is that of a slow paced, hesitant kind of devolution of
powers to the urban local bodies.
 Incomplete implementation of provisions of 74th CAA
 Several States like Bihar does not have DPC or an MPC. Gujarat, Himachal
Pradesh and Haryana follow the suit. Bihar and Pondicherry had not even
called for municipal elections until 2001.
 Only West Bengal constituted MPC. Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and West
Bengal have constituted DPC. In all other states, metropolitan planning
committees are non-existent.
 Although, the provisions have been made by the states, they have not
actualized into functioning bodies as developers or planners.
 Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Rajasthan, have provided for the
constitution of MPC in their respective acts, but not constituted it, even
though it is a constitutional requirement. Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat,
Haryana have not provided for any provisions for the constitution of MPCs
in their respective acts.
 Status of DPCs/ MPCs
 The reasons are mainly the lack of adequate finances, states not devolving
powers fully to the urban local bodies and the free hand that most of the
states have been given in deciding the fate of these bodies.

 The crux of the matter is that most of the states have created institutions
that have been made mandatory in the 74th CAA. However, the ambiguity
in the Act pertaining to the creation of these ULBs has been made use
fully.

 The act for example does not make it mandatory for the state
governments to devolve all the functions to the local bodies, does not
define the sources of finance for them. Consequently, these institutions
have just remained superficial in most of the states

 Under JNNURM, one of the prescribed State-level reforms was

implementation of the provisions of 74th CAA

 Whatever District Plans that have been prepared are simply compilations
of Central and State funded schemes and programmes, they are not really
spatial plans
 Regional Inequalities in India
 The major causes of regional economic underdevelopment in classical theory
were:
– Lack of natural resources (cultivable land being the main resource)
– Lack of capital (without which no programme of modernisation/ technology is feasible)
– Socio-economic factors - cultural resistance to change
– Vicious circle generated by circular and cumulative causation (Myrdal and Nurkse)
 In India, following factors come into play:
– Vast area with significant variations
– Climatic and soil differences
– From economic view-point, factors of production like labour, capital and enterprise are not
equally distributed
– Glaring differences in social welfare (education, health, etc) due to unevenness of economic
development
– It is the explicit recognition of above factors that led Planning Commission to aim for balanced
regional development

 Inter-State and Intra-State disparities, rural-urban disparities

 Regional Income
 Inequality across the States, measured through variation in the per capita
SDP, has gone up in the country over the period since 1993-94 to 2003-04
 There is no evidence to suggest that measures of globalization have
brought down regional imbalance.
 The trend of growing regional inequity has continued, possibly at a slightly
higher pace after 2003-04 when the overall growth in GDP for the country
shot up to 8 per cent per annum and many of the backward states,
including those in North East, exhibited even higher growth rates.
 During 2007-09 the interstate disparity in the growth rate of SDP records a
stability or decline.
 Unfortunately, this growth process has not been sustained in many of the
backward states which has led to income inequality increasing again in
recent years.
 Low Income Regions

 Studies show that the low income states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh,
Jharkhand, Orissa, and Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand and Madhya
Pradesh had reported low economic growth during eighties and nineties
 The less developed states have the disadvantage not only of a low growth
rate but also high fluctuation in the rate from year to year
 What compounds their problems is that there is only a marginal decline in
their population growth that have stayed much above the national
average.
 Variations in per capita consumption expenditure and poverty data
obtained from the National Sample Surveys also shows a clear increasing
trend as in case of income.
 Inter-Urban Inequality
 The inter-state inequality in case of metro cities initially works out to be
low but exhibits a sharp rise. It goes up from 12.2 per cent in 1993-94 to
21.9 per cent in 2009-10.
 One would infer that the cities were similar in terms of their average
expenditure levels in early nineties but have become more disparate over
time.
 This is because many of them subsequently have got linked to global
market and experienced high income growth.
 The non-metropolitan urban centres, on the other hand, exhibited
interstate inequality similar to that of rural areas and this has not gone up
over the two decades.
 This is largely because of stagnation of their economies and absence of
sectoral diversification.
 Rural-Urban Inequality

 There has been a much steeper rise in per capita consumption

expenditure in urban than rural areas in real terms in the nineties and
subsequent years compared to the preceding years
 Poverty has shown a declining trend in rural and urban areas
 Other parameters of Inequality
 The high inequality in IMR across the states and its increasing trend
over time should be a matter of serious policy concern.
 The inequalities in the provision of water and toilets across the
states too have gone up in recent years.
 Unless there are specific policies and interventions to address the
issue of delivery of basic amenities and tackling the problem of
health in backward regions and for the poor and vulnerable social
groups, it would be impossible to achieve the concerned MDG
targets even at the national levels.
 Gender based inequalities have been noted to be very high
although there has been decline in recent years due to increase in
literacy and employment rate among women, exposure to global
media, modernization and resultant changes in social norms.
 Regional Planning in India
 Regional Planning in India was taken up after Independence, as a part of the
policy of planned national development, which is aggregative and sectoral in
nature
 Necessitated by striking regional contrasts in distribution and levels of
economic development
 Main thrust for regional planning in India came as part of the Third Five Year
Plan (1961-66) , which talked about “Balanced Regional Development”. It
provided for preparation of regional development plans for five resource
regions – Damodar Valley, Dandakaranya, Rihand, Bhakra Nangal and
Rajasthan Canal.
 Fourth Five Year Plan (1969-74) referred at length to the need for addressing
inter-state and intra-state imbalances in development including the rural
problem; highlighted the necessity of the regional approach to the problems
of unrestricted and chaotic metropolitan growth.
 The Fifth Plan (1974-79) introduced the notion of urban development for
small and medium towns for regulating growth of the metro cities. The idea
of multi-level planning was used for the first time in the Fifth Plan.
 Regional Planning in India
 The Sixth FYP (1980-85) strove to achieve balanced national growth through
development of backward regions, progressive reduction in regional
inequalities and diffusion of technological benefits. Emphasis was laid on
district and block level planning. The mechanism of area-planning was
adopted to deal with regional inequalities – the Special Component Plan for
tribal areas, Hill Area Plans and specific programmes for the North East
Regional were evolved from these approaches. IDSMT Scheme introduced.
National Commission on Urbanisation appointed.

 The Seventh Plan (1985-90) stressed the need for industrial location policy
and suggested that private industrial investment should be channelised in the
vicinity of small and medium towns to check migration to metropolitan cities.
Agro-Climatic Regional Planning initiated.

 The Eighth Plan (1992-97) emphasised on more effective implementation of

strategies adopted during Seventh Plan.

 Ninth Plan (1997-2002) – no reference to regional planning

 Tenth Plan (2002-07) includes a scheme on Research in Urban and Regional

Planning. JNNURM – flagship scheme launched.
 Eleventh & Twelfth Plans
 Objective “Faster Sustainable and More Inclusive Growth”
 The Eleventh Plan gave a special impetus to several programmes aimed at building
rural and urban infrastructure and providing basic services with the objective of
increasing inclusiveness and reducing poverty.
 Issues mentioned for focused attention during the Twelfth Plan are:
– Securing ecology of watershed and catchments,
– Cumulative Environmental Impact Assessments (CEIAs) for vulnerable regions
– Carrying capacity studies in selected river-basins
 Twelfth Plan to give adequate emphasis to long term strategic urban planning to
ensure that India’s urban management agenda is not limited to ‘renewal’ of cities.
It must also anticipate and plan for emergence and growth of new cities along with
expansion of economic activities. The urban planning exercise, therefore, has to be
situated not only in the specific context of municipal limits but also encompass the
overall regional planning perspective.
 To deal with the legitimate aspirations of the people of these neglected regions
the overall growth strategy must have a component of regional development. This
will require inter-state cooperation and strengthening the pace of development of
inter-state and intra-state connectivity of tribal and other isolated communities
through forests and difficult terrain. It will need better governance and deeper
involvement of local people in the development processes.
 Thank you

 Questions? Comments?