HABITATi,NTL. Vol. 3. No. 3/4.

PP 227-241
Perpamon Pre\*. 197X. Printed in Great Britain.

Human Settlements -
Struggle for Identity
ERNEST WEISSMANN
Economic Institute, Zagreb, Yugoslavia

It has taken nearly three decades to overcome and repair, at least partially, an omission in
the institutional set-up of the United Nations and its associated organisations. I refer to
the omission of the fields of human settlements and the environment from the original UN
structure as worldwide problems deserving a specialised agency status.
At enormous human and material cost, the wartime allied coalition had just defeated
the Axis attempt at world domination within a Fascist order. Reconstruction, the main-
tenance of peace and the future of the colonies had quite understandably the highest
priority in the minds of the founder member nations and the General Assembly during the
formative years of the UN. Accordingly, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC),
the Security Council and the Trusteeship Council were established. At the same time,
however, in 1945, the Iend-lease arrangements were revoked at the end of the War. And
the aid by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) was
terminated by the end of 1947. The “Cold War” -and its counterpart, the armaments
race - followed. Thus the lessons of the first positive experiences in international political
and economic co-operation on a large scale were lost-in particular the lessons of the
unquestionable advantages that comprehensive programmes can secure, and, in the case
of UNRRA, a demonstration of the Iong-term effectiveness of rehabilitation combined
with self-help rather than reliance on once-for-ah external charity. It was a waste of a
unique opportunity to build a world economy founded on equal relations among nations
and on rising levels of the social and environmental qualities of life in all countries.
Against this background of growing dissension, ECOSOC and the Assembly covered,
in one way or another, the issues of post-war development then recognised to be of
common urgent concern. Separate agencies, or associated institutions, commissions and
committees were gradually established to deal with essential economic and social issues
(e.g. agriculture and industry, or population, health and education) or with human
development issues (e.g. welfare, unemployment and the widening of human rights). But
the issues of human settlements and the environment were not among them. At the same
time, economic growth and productivity uncontestedly usurped priority in the allocation
of the reIatively modest international resources for the financing and technical assistance
of development. Social and human development and the improvement of the quality of
life for the broad masses held in the past -and they still hold - only secondary priority in
these programmes. The explosive growth of population and spontaneous urbanisation,
227
228 Ernest Weissmann

the rapid depletion of readily-accessible natural resources and the seemingly irreversible
degradation and decay of the environment and of human settlements -altllough long
recognised to be alarming, had to reach a state of crisis and impending catastrophe before
they could win the world community’s attention.
Special UN conferences have dealt with the different critical aspects of development.
The World Population Conference focused attention on the widening gap between the
rapid rate of population growth and the dangerously slow economic growth in most parts
of the world; and the fact that the levels of living and the quality of life are, as a result,
hopelessly regressing in most developing countries, in spite of their extraordinary efforts.
The UN Conference on the Human Environment stressed the need for international co-
operation in restraining economic growth and the blind pursuit of individual and corporate
gain if the world’s non-renewable resources and the environment are to be preserved. The
UN Conference on Human Settlements has helped to clarify the pivotal role of settlements
in the context of socio-economic development and the environment. Other conferences
have dealt with certain more specific economic and social issues (e.g. water, food, women’s
rights). The question of disarmament is to be considered by a special session of the UN
General Assembly, which is already studying possible ways of building a new economic
world order based on greater equity for the developing countries and freer access to
capital and technological resources in their development.

In this statement I attempt briefly to outline the emergence of international co-operation

in the field of human settlements and how its uphill struggle over three decades led to
increasingly comprehensive approaches in research and in practical assistance to govern-
ments. A better understanding of the complex relationship and interaction of development,
human settlements and the environment has been gained as a result of this experience. A
UN doctrine on human settlements has been evolved and a clearer perception has been
obtained of the potential role of human settlements in protecting the environmental
qualities of life and in humanising development.

The Conference on Human Settlements has been the culminating point of a growing
international co-operation. But, to do justice to the commitments made at Vancouver and
to translate the Declaration and the Recommendations into national and international
action, the attitudes of Governments of the intergovernmental bodies and of the UN
agencies responsible for development and for the environment will have to profoundly
change. They must adopt the Habitat doctrine and undertake to mobilise sufficient
resources to implement it. When this is achieved, the struggle for identity will have been
won. The forthcoming special sessions of the UN General Assembly on disarmament and
on the new economic order hopefully will initiate this process of necessary fundamental
changes in the motivation and values concerning development and in the long-delayed
readjustments in national and international development priorities from economic growth
and gross national product per se to equal priorities for the enlargement of the human
qualities of life through social and environmental development. The Conceptual Frame-
work for Action at the end of this statement may be of some help in this process,

ORIGINS OF INTERNATIONAL ACTION

The first postwar international programme in the field of human settlements was
formulated by UNRRA in 1944. It consisted of emergency aid in rebuilding shelter and
 Human Settlements- Struggle for Identity 229

community services and facilities. It also provided a limited amount of assistance in

restoring the construction and building materials industries and cadres. We considered, at
the time when large-scale reconstruction of the hundreds of thousands of brutally
demolished homes and settlements and the reorganisation and development of requisite
industrial capacities, were long-term tasks of the governments concerned-assisted, as
necessary, by the nascent UN system of organisations.

Building materials for emergency repairs, hand tools, a modicum of mechanical equipment
and vehicles together with spare parts and some replacements for destroyed machines and
production capacities, comprised the different forms of UNRRA’s aid to shelter and
community rehabilitation programmes. Unfortunately, the second phase of this plan of
shared responsibilities for one of the most urgent, most complex and most expensive
postwar tasks-long-term aid by the UN-was slow in getting started. When it did, its
conception was exceedingly timid, its priority was low and its resources extremely limited.
As part of UN assistance in 1946, the General Assembly placed the responsibility for an
international exchange of information on housing and town and country planning upon
the Secretary General. The Secretariat available to fulfil this very large task was a very
small section of the Department of Social Affairs. The UN intergovernmental body
reviewing the progress of urbanisation and the world housing situation was the Social
Commission. In the meantime, building on activities of an inter-allied committee, a
Housing Panel of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) initiated in 1947 a
programme of research and exchange of information on housing and building. The ECE
Housing Panel started as an expert body of the Committee on Industry and Materials. It
then became, first, a sub-committee and later a fully-fledged committee (Committee on
Housing, Building and Planning), as its obvious usefulness to the European Governments
increased. To this date, its continued effectiveness has been based-and continues to be
based -on the commitment we have been able to obtain from national services and
individual specialists, scholars and non-governmental agencies to be our “rapporteurs”
and research workers on various aspects of housing and town and country planning.
Bernal, Bronowski, Fitzmaurice and the Building Research Station, and Marini and the
Centre Scientific and Technique du BGtiment (CSTB) were among the first to work on
these problems.

The attempts by the UN at unifying and co-ordinating a great variety of unrelated

activities led to a first international programme in housing and town and country planning,
established by the Economic and Social Council in 1949. It was to be carried out jointly by
the UN and its specialised agencies and institutions. The leadership responsibility was
implicitly vested in the UN and its Secretariat. Its main project was, again, a brave attempt
to stimulate an international exchange of information on practical and transferable
experiences. The UN Bulletin: Housing and Town and Country Planning became the
project’s vehicle.

The second phase was marked in 1953 by the establishment of a more specific programme
of action. Most countries have been plagued by constantly-erupting crises in their national
housing programmes, despite the relatively large resources they have been investing.
Consequently, housing and community improvement had to be considered in relation to
general economic activities. On the strength of this new perception of the place of housing
and urban development, the UN recommended that governments -especially those in the
230 Ernest Weksmann

less-developed countries-should establish appropriate ministries or special “housing

agencies” where these did not yet exist, with a sufficiently broad and inclusive set of
objectives for national housing and urban development programmes. A further, more
comprehensive approach became necessary as a consequence of the multiple problems
created by the persistent massive shifts of population since the end of the War. The need
for an effective integration of economic, social and environmental (physical) development
was now more clearly understood. By 1955, an extension of the UN programme was
approved relating environmental planning to the other strategies for urbanisation and
regional development, as well as to general planning for national economic and social
development. In the context of urbanization the social aspects of housing and community
planning and the mobilisation of self-help were given high priority, since it was that these
aspects were particularly important for the developing regions of the world. Conversely,
housing and settlement planning as a cluster of economic and social activities were
recognised to be essential for industrialisation.

EMERGENCE OF A UN DOCTRINE

The experience gained in the first decade of UN activities from studies, seminars and
conferences, and from direct assistance to governments, disclosed a number of significant
developments in the broad area of human settlements. Generally speaking, three essential
realisations came to light which made it unnecessary for the developing countries to repeat
the mistakes made in the course of development of the now highly industrialised countries
-costly mistakes which some nations even today have not yet been able to overcome and
which continue to expose large groups of their populations in the lowest-income brackets
to slum conditions of the worst order. First of all, present-day technology and science
offer a wider range of possibilities for a more equal distribution of production, people
and settlements and for higher levels of living for much larger populations than was
possible in the nineteenth century. Secondly, there is now a definite share of public
responsibility for development in all countries. Thirdly, a wealth of information on
practical experience exists throughout the world on the different aspects of industrialis-
ation, urbanisation and social and cultural change.

Against this background, a tentative “doctrine” gradually evolved. It postulated that:

(1) Governments should assume an increasing responsibility for the direction and
finance of housing and urban development as part of their general economic and
social development programme.
(2) Resources in materials, plant, manpower and capital needed for housing and urban
development should be assessed in the light of their contribution to full employment
and social betterment in the industrialised countries, and to economic growth and
rising levels of living in the developing countries.
(3) Special agencies should be created for the financing of housing and community
improvement from public sources, to channel savings into these fields, and to
mobilise other suitable and available resources, including in particular the direct
contribution of future householders through co-operative and self-help methods.
(4) To be able to respond adequately to the emphasis in development planning on a
faster rise in the levels of living, specific fiscal measures should be introduced to
 Human Settlements- Struggle for Identity 231

provide resources for housing and urban development as part of an approach which
considers rent policy and related assistance to low-income groups as an element of
general social policy.
(5) Governments should promote the reorganisation and development of the construction
and building materials industries, including research and the training of necessary
cadres, and stimulate trade in the products, in order to reduce the cost of housing
and urbanisation and of industrial and agricultural development.
(6) Provision of adequate housing and communal services and facilities by building
new towns, or building self-sufficient neighbourhoods in existing cities, should
accompany-if not precede - the development of resources if serious obstacles to
economic activities and high social costs of haphazard urbanisation are to be avoided.

The evolution of this doctrine and the development strategies on which it is founded
were influenced by the experiences in practical action carried out within the UN programme.
At the same time, in formulating national policies and strategies, governments were
beginning to rely increasingly on information about approaches and methods that have
been successful elsewhere and on common experience of countries with similar conditions.
In the meantime, urban crisis and its counterpart - the degradation of rural life-continued
to accelerate throughout the world at varying rates. The situation was worsening,
particularly in the developing countries and among the lower-income classes in the more
affluent nations. At this point, the question arose quite naturally whether the segmented,
sectorialised approach should not now be replaced by more comprehensive programmes
designed to attack simultaneously as many as possible- if not all-the main issues of
human settlements. This more inclusive approach was embodied, in 1959, in the UN
Long-range International Programme of Concerted Action in the Field of Housing and
Related Facilities-a new name for the UN programme.

This new approach was reflected in the programme in two ways. In the first place, for
programmes of assistance to governments, well-tested methods and techniques in special
pilot operations and demonstration projects were applied. After due adaptation, these led
to general use in national housing and urban development programmes. In the second
place, where sufficient knowledge was still lacking, action programmes were supported by
further study and investigation. Within this general conception, priority was accorded to:
(1) mobilisation of the future householders’ savings and own labour;
(2) the development of the building industry;
(3) regional development planning;
(4) improvement of social and human conditions;
(5) special programmes for the lower-income groups;
(6) integration of these programmes.

LESSONS OF THE EARLY PROGRAMMES

Throughout the early stages, many specialists, government officers, private practitioners,
scholars and educators-as well as a number of national and international agencies and
non-governmental organisations -assisted us in realising the programme and formulating
the different elements of a workable doctrine. They participated in our special studies or
232 Ernest Weissmann

wrote for or acted as guest editors for the Bulletin. Many served as advisers to governments
within the fast-growing technical assistance programme which was now becoming both
source and beneficiary of this windfall in expertise and practical experience. The work of
Abrams, Atkinson, Tyrwhitt, Koenigsberger, Doxiadis and Tange are examples of this
type of mutually-beneficial co-operation. Conferences, symposia and seminars, equally
well aided by the same people and institutions, provided an international forum for cross-
national comparison and confrontation of ideas, theories, policies and experiences with
pilot schemes and demonstrations.

Unfortunately, this important advance on the theoretical front could not be paralleled
by national and international action on a scale required to stem the secular trend of
worsening housing conditions in most countries, or the massive rural-urban migration.
Neither did the international programme develop more coherence, as time went by; nor
was it possible to achieve a reasonable degree of co-ordination for “concerted action”.
But, the programme served the two-fold purpose of highlighting the chief areas of need
and of clarifying the respective interests and roles of the different agencies and institutions.
It is impossible to escape the conclusion that, for the most part, the separate programmes
of the various organisations have been marginal rather than central to housing and human
settlements; and that they have remained rather unrelated one to the other. Individual
agencies have become involved in particular activities principally through their interests in
specific matters such as vocational training and environmental sanitation; or the wider use
of forest products; or rural resettlement, school building and financing of the improve-
ment of squatter towns. They have not been able to be so committed to anything like
formulating national policies and strategies leading to a more productive contribution to
development by human settlements.

BIRTH OF AN INTERGOVERNMENTAL BODY

Requests for UN assistance continued to multiply with the progress of decolonisation

and the emergence of new member countries. The assistance programme grew apace.
Most of our resources have been engaged in it. It became soon a matter of great urgency
to widen its conceptual and policy base. Consequently, a group of eminent experts
representing the disciplines involved in housing and urban and regional development was
convened by the UN in 1962 -against considerable initial resistance of some more
advanced nations and some agencies.

The experts were asked to advise on:

(1) The place of programmes for the extension of housing and basic community facilities
within national development programmes.
(2) The relationship between these programmes and national programmes and policies
for urban development and regional planning.
(3) Successful techniques for mobilising national resources for the extension of low-cost
housing and urban development.
(4) Appropriate methods for expanding and effectively utilising international resources
which might become available.
 Human Settlements- Struggle for Identity 233

Thus, the foundation was laid for the establishment within the UN structure of a
separate identity and programme for environmental development comprising shelter,
human settlements and regional development. And the group’s report became a landmark
in the long process of identifying the role of these “sectors” in national development, and
in clarifying their relationships to the economic, social and political mainstreams of
development. At the same time, the report cleared the way to perceiving the potential
societal function of human settlements as a major instrument of humanising development.

The experts attempted to show in their report the main social and economic issues
involved in housing and urban and regional development. The group’s recommendations
cleared the way for a further elaboration of the UN “doctrine”:
(1) The planning, organisation and execution of action programmes in housing and
urban development should always be geared to regional conditions and national
priorities, and they should be based on continuing research, appraisal and integra-
tion of the social, economic, environmental and political factors influencing this
broad development area.
(2) Greater efficiency in the use of employed, underemployed and potential resources
should be constantly sought. Countries should use more effectively the often under-
used local capacities by large-scale application of labour-intensive technologies,
self-help methods and mutual aid in housing and urban development.
(3) Governments should ascertain at all stages of development whether external resources
are required and, if they are, how they can assist most in attaining the goals set by
national policy and planning for housing and urbanisation, and for general economic
and social development.
(4) International aid in housing, building and planning should be provided in accord-
ance with sound criteria for social and economic progress, an equitable geographic
distribution, the strict interest of the receiving country and the requirements of its
continuous development.
(5) Since the basic condition for mutually-beneficial exchanges of experience, informa-
tion and personnel exist, the UN should assume the function of an international
“clearing-house” and co-ordinator of international assistance as a matter of urgency
and as an essential support to economic, social and environmental development.
(6) A UN fund or pool of equipment, technical services and financial resources should
be established with contributions from all countries and used particularly to assist
pilot and demonstration projects in low-cost housing urbanisation and building in
the developing countries.

To enable the UN to respond effectively to the new tasks implied in its recommendations
the group suggested that a permanent intergovernmental body be established, such as a
Group of Experts, Standing Committee or a Commission. In addition to high-level
specialists in shelter, urban and regional development and building, the new body would
comprise also high-level experts in economic and social development and management. At
the same time, the Secretariat Unit responsible for housing, building and planning at UN
headquarters- then a branch of the Bureau of Social Affairs-should be strengthened
and endowed with sufficient resources effectively to discharge its much-enlarged tasks.
The UN Committee on Housing, Building and Planning was established the same year.
234 Ernest Weissmann

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE UN CENTRE FOR HOUSING,

BUILDING AND PLANNING

From 1963 to 1966, the Committee met annually; from then on, it met every second year.
In its first years, the Committee’s undivided attention was centred on the urgent need to
ensure that “a proper share” of international as well as national resources was channelled
into housing and urban development, and that suitable organisational arrangements were
made for an unhampered extension of international action in these essential areas. These
areas of environmental development had already been declared as priority or “impact”
areas among the objectives of the (first) UN Development Decade of the 1960s. But there
has been little consistency between these professions by governments in the UN bodies and
the reality of actual budgetary provisions in funds and personnel made available. This
discrepancy is most probably due to a tradition of giving highest priority to economic
growth at all costs-very often regardless of its social, environmental and human
consequences.
From time to time, various suggestions have been advanced as to the auspices under
which the work in housing, building and planning should be continued. A special report
on co-ordination and organisation, prepared in 1963 by G.F. Davidson, stated that the
p~j~~~~~~~ case for a separate specialised agency was, in theory at least, a good one if the
professions of the Development Decade are to be taken at their full face-value and if it was
seriously intended to develop a major intergovernmental programme in the housing and
urban development field as part of the “economic forward thrust”. However, previous
experience with other attempts to establish new specialised agencies-e.g. a specialised
agency in the social welfare field-gave little encouragement. The report recommended,
therefore:
(1) Re-establishment of the Housing, Building and Planning Branch outside the Bureau
of Social Affairs but within the UN Secretariat as a separate and more self-contained
Housing, Building and Planning Centre.
(2) Closer linkage of the new Centre with the UN programme for industrial and
economic development, in addition to the existing close link to the social develop-
ment programme.
The establishment of the UN Centre for Housing, Building and Planning was approved
in 1964. It took more than a year before it was actually set up-and then on a modest
scale. It remained part of the Bureau of Social Affairs, and the Committee on Housing,
Building and Planning continued to report to the Economic and Social Council through
the Social Committee. Nevertheless, this development constituted the beginning of a long
process of institutional re-arrangements which led, step by step, through the structural
maze of interagency interests and relations to the convening in 1976 of Habitat: United
Nations Conference on Human Settlements at Vancouver.

GROWTH OF COMPREHENSIVE ASSISTANCE

With the trend towards more inclusive conceptions in the activities of both the Committee
and the Centre, technical assistance also took on a new orientation. The first and only UN
assistance project in housing, in 1951, dealt with certain social aspects of shelter in a
 Human Settlements- Stru&efor Identity 235

Latin-American rural community. In sharp contrast, some fifteen years later, more than
70 countries received aid for a total of 170 projects. The number of projects subsequently
declined to 85 in 1975, but the budgetary and extrabudgetary commitments for these
projects rose from US$2.3 million to US$25.1 million. Considering the scarcity of funds
for UN aid, this is a remarkable progress in financial terms. It should be noted, however,
that the decline in the number of projects does not mean that the need for technical aid
had decreased, nor that more abundant assistance had been obtained from other sources.
It simply means that-faced with a dwindling total of available UN aid-the governments
of developing countries are often compelled to choose projects directly promoting
economic growth at the expense of social and environmental development.

In keeping with these trends, a new type of project grew out of our collaboration with
several countries in transition from traditional rural-agricultural to more complex urban-
industrial societal forms. These projects were built on the conception of an inextricable
relationship among and between urbanisation, environmental development and overall
national development. Consequently, such projects focused in the main on those aspects
that are common to several functional sectors involved in the process of urbanisation,
industrial development and rural improvement, namely their physical-environmental and
locational requirements. The principal components of these projects are:
(1) Formulation of policy for environmental (physical) development planning, fully
integrated with national and regional development efforts.
(2) Establishment of the institutional and administrative framework needed for this
type of unified development planning.
(3) Realisation of comprehensive pilot operations to demonstrate the feasibility and
advantages of unified and integrated development planning.
(4) Organisation of research and training programmes to support these planning and
development activities.

The inclusive nature of these projects(‘) required large resources and the concerted efforts
by several UN agencies, by governmental services and by non-governmental institutions. An
early project of this kind was the UN co-operation with the Government of Japan on urban-

(‘)A good detailed example of the new orientation was the reconstruction of Skopje, a Yugoslav city of 200,000
inhabitants almost completely destroyed by an earthquake on 26 July 1963. In October 1965, the plans for a new
Skopje were exhibited. This marked the beginning of a process of their formal adoption by the citizens of Skopje and
the legislative and funding bodies concerned. This was accomplished in November of the same year, in the presence of
an International Board of Consultants, jointly established by the UN and the Government of Yugoslavia to review all
reconstruction planning and to advise on its implementation. A combination of techniques was used in Skopje,
ranging from computer programming for emergency shelter to social surveys and employment and income projection
for housing, to feasibility studies for transport and infrastructure. These activities were carried out simultaneously and
on a scale sufficient to permit elaboration of the comprehensive new urban and regional plans in a very short time. The
rebuilding of Skopje is unique in several other respects. Aid has been provided by the UN Educational Scientific and
Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in the area of earth sciences, by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), in
large-scale training of building skills, by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the field of health and sanitation,
and by the Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in women’s and children’s welfare. Experiences of many lands were utilised.
UN aid contributed to a more efficient use of materials and to technical and financial assistance from national and
external sources. And the World Food Programme (WFP) furnished the essential extra rations for the planners and
builders during the first emergency. In many ways, this whole undertaking has become a symbol of international
co-operation and solidarity.
236 Human Settlements- Slruggle for Idenlity

isation, industrialisation and regional planning in the context of the national development
effort of the 1960s.
Other pilot and demonstration projects of similar significance were carried out jointly in
the six Central American countries and separately in several African countries. In each case,
new shelter designs were tested and advanced building techniques and standards evaluated
as to their ability to reduce costs for future housing and community improvement programmes.
Demonstrations and assessment of rural settlement approaches and techniques were the
objectives of comprehensive projects in several African, Asian and Latin-American
countries individually and jointly. In all these projects, the socio-economic aspects of
environment and culture were closely integrated with those of technology, administration
and management. They were tested under real-life conditions of planned development of
human settlements. Considerable experience thus has been acquired since the establishment
of the Committee and the Centre. Good working relations between the Centre and the
UNDP, UNICEF, the World Bank, IAB, WFP and the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP), have been instrumental in a number of cases in mobilising
considerable resources for relatively large pilot projects and practical demonstrations, for
an imposing number of pre-investment studies and a large number of planning exercises.
In many of these projects, the services of private consulting organisations or institutions
of national, regional or local governments have been engaged. Over the years, consider-
able capacities and skills have been acquired within the UN in formulating, organising and
supervising such projects as well as in co-ordinating the contributions of many individuals
and institutions for coherent action. These capacities and skills are now ready to be used
in larger programmes.

HABITAT - A NEW DEPARTURE

The limitation of resources and the apparent inability of the UN Committee on

Housing, Building and Planning to obtain for the urban and environmental fields the
resources and authority equal to its tasks in the long run could not but cause frustration
and apathy in the Committee, the Centre and in the developing countries. This demon-
strated once more that many governments and most development planners have yet to
realise the importance of shelter and settlements for national development. It also demon-
strated once again the need for attacking simultaneously the entire complex of issues
created by economic growth and its effects on the natural and built environment. The oil
crisis of the early 1970s and the persistent economic recession and inflation ever since,
have brought home the realisation that the traditional development approaches are proving
more and more often to be inadequate. The earnest, rapidly-growing, public concern
about resources, the environment and the human qualities of life expresses itself more and
more frequently in the momentous slogan of “zero growth”. However, after the first
shock wore off, this basically defeatist idea was replaced by the demand for societal
control and limitation of economic growth in order to protect the quality of life by
conserving non-renewable resources, by acknowledging the environment that sustains us
and by ensuring social justice for all.

The Governments, the UN General Assembly and the world opinion weie now ready
for the proposal to convene the UN Conference on the Human Environment at Stockholm,
in 1972, which in turn recommended that the Conference on Human Settlements be called
 Erne.yt Wcissmann 237

at Vancouver in 1976. The establishment of the UNDP was the result of the Stockholm
Conference. The outcome of the Vancouver Conference was the creation of the UN
Commission on Human Settlements and the decision of the General Assembly to set up
Habitat, Centre for Human Settlements at Nairobi. While not yet a specialised agency,
this is indeed a refreshing departure from a long-standing neglect of this essential field.
Both conferences have contributed truly and pointedly to a better insight into the social,
environmental and human aspects of the basic economic and political policy issues of the
still dead-locked North-South dialogue.

The Habitat Conference produced three remarkable documents which were adopted with
overwhelming majorities. The first document, the Vancouver Declaration of Principles,
reviewed the setting in which human settlements interact with the environmental and the
socio-economic and political processes of development. It points out why this interaction
should be and how it can be rendered more productive. In the second document,
Recommendations for National Action, the Conference suggested to governments both
general and specific ways in which they might be able to overcome the urban-environmental
crisis and its underlying causes. In the third document, Recommendationsforlnternational
Action, the Conference proposed essential re-arrangements within the UN intergovern-
mental and inter-agency structure. These should enable the new “mini’‘-agency at Nairobi
(together with the regional economic commissions of the UN and the specialised agencies
and institutions) to organise concerted action without much more delay and to mobilise
sufficient national and external resources to realise the objectives and recommendations
of the Vancouver documents.

The basic conditions for an effective international programme in human settlements

finally exist. An intergovernmental body has been set up. The governments have hammered
out the principles and recommendations for action. A secretariat has been set up. It is now
up to the 58 member nations of the Commission on Human Settlements to obtain within
the UN intergovernmental and inter-agency structure the necessary authority, resources
and priorities for an effective action programme. Clearly, the Commission and the Centre
cannot realise the mandate they were given by the General Assembly, or attain the
objectives embodied in the Vancouver documents unless they are endowed with the
necessary powers and means to accomplish the tasks thrust upon them. More effective
inter-agency arrangements will also be needed to realise the spirit of the General Assembly
decisions entrusting to the Commission and the Centre the co-ordination of the programme.
The power to “harmonise” and “co-ordinate” must be explicit.
Environmental development and its principal manifestation - human settlements -
represent a mainstream of development both on the national and the regional scale, They
are, consequently, as crucial for the success of national development as are economic
growth, socio-economic development, or the legislative, administrative and financial
measures of plan implementation. One of the first tasks of the Commission consequently,
should be to demonstrate this simple truth, to obtain its acceptance within the UN system,
and to secure for itself and for the Centre, the requisite authority and resources for effective
action.
238 Ernest Weissmann

A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION

This is an attempt to construct a broad conceptual framework for international and

national action in the field of human settlements. Its reasoning and logic are based on the
Vancouver documents and on the lessons learned in more than three decades of UN
activity. The motivation for presenting it now is my deep conviction that the time has
come-and my earnest hope that the time is also ripe-for a radical change in attitudes
and values concerning development, human settlements and the environment.

(1) To be productive, growth as a factor in increasing the gross product of an area

requires economic and technical efficiency and a certain degree of concentration of
activities and people in a network of settlements. Our settlements are increasingly becom-
ing the crucial link among the many-often conflicting-processes and problems of our
contemporary societies and cultures.

(2) Historically, settlement networks grew into hierarchically-ordered patterns designed

to maximise the economic potential of the regions they served. To realise more equitable
distribution of wealth created by economic growth, the existing settlement networks must
be now adjusted to these newer functions.

Reorganisation for social reasons can now be justified in the long-run economically,
since additional locations for productive investment are thus being created. And the
appropriate planning, development and management of existing and newly-built
settlement networks are, in fact, ready instruments for:
(a) locating development activities where they will be “most productive”;
(b) distributing the amenities and benefits of development more equally;
(c) maintaining a viable balance between the negative effects of development and the
capacities of both the natural and the built environments to “re-cycle” them.

(3) In the process of industrialisation, rapidly-urbanising territorial entities of a new

kind are being created throughout the world as a result of economic, social and administra-
tive integration. These new entities are “urban” in the socio-economic, environmental
and cultural sense; they are “regional” in the geographic and political senses. Conse-
quently a redefinition of the concepts “city” and “settlement” is needed. This approach
leads to the concept of “city-region”: an open-ended polycentric system of agglomerations
ranging from metropolis to hamlet.

(4) The city-region approach does not necessarily mean that an image of a desirable
future-which may or may not be attained - is being projected. Instead, it establishes the
“ground rules” for a continuing process of productive interplay of development inter-
ventions, both sectoral and territorial, private and public, and individual and collective,
as means to obtaining a desired human condition which can then be progressively
improved. It is, first of all, a model of a continuous process of planned development of a
region, a process in which the technical - socio-economic, environmental and cultural -
stream of development interacts with the societal-political process of decision-making.
However, to be effective, city-region planning must base itself on-and be integrated with
-a coherent national plan and with national and now increasingly often, international,
 Human Settlements- Struggle,for Identity 239
policies and strategies. A most essential element of this comprehensive approach is the
public control of planning. Its long-term goals are:
(a) elimination of existing inequalities in income and the amenities of life;
(b) equal access for all citizens to social and other public services and facilities;
(c) highest attainable levels of human and environmental qualities of life compatible
with a society’s resources;
(d) public participation in all phases of the development process to ensure that planning,
development and management of human settlements always remain sensitive to
these goals.
(5) Planning for the megasystem city-region must comprise development projections
and corresponding action programmes for:
(a) A social system: to further the development of the individual who is becoming
increasingly productive, disposing of vastly more resources for his own development,
more thoroughly informed and, therefore, better prepared to participate meaning-
fully in making decisions concerning his own and his community’s welfare.
(b) An economic system: to further the application of science and technology for higher
productivity of humans and machines and enable an equitable distribution of the
well-being made possible by their society’s economic growth and their own human
and cultural development.
(c) A political system: to further the identification of goals and strategies and the means
and methods of developing through a continuing dialogue of citizens, planners and
the authorities and a true participation of citizens at all levels of decision-making.
(d) An environmental system: to further the development of human settlement net-
works within larger ecological regions, (ecosystems) in which human societies
intervene as creative builders and not as despoilers of nature.

(6) To facilitate meaningful participation in the dialogue and interaction within and
among these sub-systems of the city-region, a highly sensitive and responsive monitoring
process is needed.
(7) How well are our different societies meeting these requirements? In most cases
development planning continues to be oriented towards economic and technical efficiency
goals, very often without sufficient regard to these conventional approaches, and thus
has become a critically urgent concern of all societies. The traditional models grew out of
the relatively recent experience of that small part of humanity which now lives in the
industrialised, more affluent areas of the world. This experience was heavily-influenced
by the initial scarcity of capital resources and a relatively narrow range of applied sciences
and technology. Development was also stimulated by easy access to cheap energy, labour
and industrial materials from overseas and by a belief that economic growth was unlimited
and should consequently remain unrestrained. These conditions have now changed and
the traditional model is becoming more and more counter-productive. The blind pursuit
of economic growth in many places has already destroyed the social institutions and the
society’s culture and structure, while degrading the environment and using up the resources
at a frightening pace. The traditional models are failing more and more often to achieve
their professed goal of full employment through unrestrained growth.
240 Ernest Weissmann

(8) A profound change in attitudes and values and very large capital resources and
human and scientific capacities will be needed to foster human development, to improve
the environmental qualities of life and to redevelop, for that purpose, most of the world’s
settlement networks. Where could these enormous resources be found? Preciously scarce
resources and human capacities are being recklessly poured into increasingly deadly
weapons systems at a time when the “overkill factor” of the nuclear arsenal of the “super-
powers” can already destroy every and all cities in the world, not once but many times
over. This capacity to destroy human life and the environment that sustains it is often
carried to distant places and tested in “local wars”. In addition, the arms race among the
large and rich nations compels most other nations -including most developing countries -
to spend major portions of their resources for their own military establishments at the
expense of development. The world’s annual outlay for these costly and highly obsolescent
arsenals has now reached more than $350 billion. Every single dollar has come from
public sources-from taxes. With such considerable resources spent for ultimate
destruction, there cannot be really a question of scarcity, but rather one of a misallocation
of public funds on the world scale.

(9) The usual argument for armaments in the more highly-developed countries is that
they sustain the economy and promote employment. A 1960 survey of a group of arma-
ments industries in the USA, concluded that reallocation of resources to other lines of
production would cause a 20% loss of employment. This may be so, if the production
processes in these other lines of production were to be further mechanised and automated.
However, if these resources were to be channelled into the fields of large-scale redevelop-
ment of human settlements-into social services and amenities, infrastructural works, and
the protection of the environment -an actual increase in employment would be obtained.
The resources the developing countries might be able to divert from armaments to develop-
ment could indeed be the needed boost to their economies, since they import most of their
arms.

What then, should we expect from the newly-established Commission on Human

Settlements and the Habitat Centre at Nairobi?

The Vancouver Conference on Human Settlements has reasserted, in its Declaration,

the right of every person to creative development, supported by adequate shelter in decent
settlements and a healthy environment, in peace, security, individual freedom and dignity.
The Commission could now obtain specific commitments from the governments to grant
to the attainment of this inherent human right a resource allocation priority at least as
high, if not higher, than that now accorded to their military establishments. Furthermore,
the Commission could formulate realistic objectives, strategies and viable instruments for
implementing these national commitments and provide guidance to governments in
formulating national policies and programmes of concerted action, joining them in
partnership with their people. Finally, the Commission could negotiate a commitment by
all countries-but more particularly by the affluent-to divert a significant share of the
resources now being spent on the military: first to the improvement of the quality of life
of their own people; and then to an international fund for human settlements. The fund
could assist the developing countries in building up essential infrastructural systems and
improving, reorganising and developing their settlements. To be truly effective, the fund
should operate in accordance with criteria set by the developing countries themselves.
 Human Seltlemenls- Srruggiefor IdentiW 241

To achieve these objectives of international co-operation, innovative approaches to

development, environment and human settlements will need to be discovered and tested,
and their feasibility will need to be demonstrated. International co-operation in fully-
committed national efforts could then contribute substantially, first to environmental
improvement and then to alleviating the spreading economic depression, to humanising
development generally, and thus perhaps also to resolving some of the dilemmas of
human and political relations facing the world community today.

The task of the Commission and the Centre for Human Settlements is indeed an
important one and one requiring more than the usual measure of imagination, initiative,
persistence and energy.