Resilience, Sustainability and Development: Some as Yet Undefined Issues

The New Urban Development Paradigm:

Structural adjustment, the WTO regime and the culture of globalisation has created a new urban development paradigm. International capital is also desperately looking for a home. Cities of South and South-East Asia are attractive destinations since they have a weak regulatory framework and have undergone structural adjustment. Here this investment is increasingly determining not only the shape of the city but also social and economic relations ¹. The effect of this agenda on poor communities is not considered in the planning process in the Asian cities I know. However, the ecological and environmental damage it causes is increasingly being challenged by the new “civil society” which does not include the poor. As a result, the space for voicing dissent for the urban poor has shrunk considerably. Without voicing the dissent of the new poor effectively this space will soon be lost to middle class interests.

I have raised the above issues because I feel that whereas society has changed our approach to development projects and programmes and our concept of what constitutes a community or should remains wedded in the past. In my part of the world, social movements of the eighties have become well funded projects (some very impressive ones) and outside of them is a whole new world of unaddressed marginalisation and deprivation. We seem to be seeing the world through the eyes of these projects. I do not know where resilience fits into all this – but I do know that there is a conflict in fighting to preserve your identity and in negotiating a new life for yourself. There is also a conflict between the new social realities and the development projects, programmes and paradigms that are seeking to shape our lives.