IIM-B holds international workshop on "Inclusive Sustainable Cities"

A workshop on "Inclusive Sustainable Cities" aimed at providing a platform for the bureaucrats, academicians and industry chiefs from India and Germany to advise city planners to steer clear of romantic hype and focus on ground reality and governance was held Indian Institute of Management (IIM) here.

The experts held discussions on various topics during the one-day IIMB-GIZ International Workshop including the concept of sustainable and inclusive cities, analyzing strategies for sustainability, sharing global experiences and listing local challenges with perspectives from municipalities and city corporations.

Principal Secretary of Telangana S K Joshi said that while cities in India had a plethora of plans, they singularly lacked vision and had failed to take into account ground realities such as slums and poverty.

"Many of our Acts and regulations are antiquated; we should rewrite them. What we need are modern laws and collaborative individuals who can work with the system. Only then can we build sustainable cities," Joshi said.

The workshop chair and MHRD chair professor of IP Management at IIMB, A. Damodaran, questioned the peripheral villages, towns or the outskirts being treated as dumps of main cities.

"Why can't the main city handle its own dirt? That's because planning agencies seldom take real-life challenges into account," he said.

Union Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Prakash Javadekar, who joined the conference on video from New Delhi, said that he hoped to see more people and businesses adopt green technology.

"This is not about making our cities smarter in terms of posh buildings and malls but about sustainable living," the Minister said.

He further lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi for acting on the mission of creating sustainable cities and said that institutions like IIM Bengaluru and GIZ should take the lead in providing research insights into the challenges of creating inclusive cities.

The head of Federal Environment Agency in Germany, Harry Lehmann, gave examples of initiatives such as solar architecture towards creating low carbon cities.

"The stakeholders in building low carbon cities in Germany are regional administrators of 16 German cities, federal authorities and municipalities. The real work happens in the municipalities but the trickle-down effect of good laws and codes is invaluable," he said.

Meanwhile, the head of energy operations at GIZ, Dr. Dieter Mutz, touched upon factors like security safety, healthcare, education and employment opportunities, and technology and added that the idea of a smart city continued to be tinged with romanticism.

"We should steer clear of romanticism and stick with hard facts when we talk of inclusive cities," he advised.

The workshop surveyed ongoing research on sustainability and inclusivity in the context of the cities in developed and emerging countries. The workshop also sought to provide cross-continental perspectives in managing natural resources.

While recognizing the limitations of a standard model of sustainable development for cities in different parts of the world, the workshop, that had four main sessions including one on governing and financing low-carbon cities, looked at broad policy interventions that could render cities in developed and emerging economies inclusive and low carbon based.