Build living spaces, not cities
The Hindu Business Line, March 2, 2009, Page 8
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The larger the city, the longer are commuting times, the greater the pollution and the lesser the social life of the people. Neighbours do not know one another. People cease to live in houses; they live in dormitories, says P. V. INDIRESAN.
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Thomas Friedman wrote The World Is Flat, a best seller. As a famous Indian politician said about the same time, there is a reaction to every action and within a year, an exactly opposite view was expressed by Professor Richard Florida in an article ‘The World Is Spiky’ in the Atlantic Monthly. In that article, Florida pointed out that in several respects, the world is spiky. At the most basic level, more and more people are living in cities, some with populations higher than 20 million. Apart from the population, the economy too is spiky — large cities have far higher economies than the rest of the population. The same holds true of energy consumption too — the brightest nights are in the cities, not in villages. Finally, he clinches the argument by pointing out that this spikiness is likely to get more and more pronounced because patents — an excellent measure of progress — are even more spiky than either population or the economy or energy consumption.
Then, whom do we believe? Do we accept Friedman’s argument or, do we follow the opposite argument that progress requires cities, the larger the better? Do we conclude that rural populations have no future, at any rate, rural populations are Children of the Lesser God?
Friedman was talking of countries as a whole, not of its constituents; Florida wrote about the rural-urban divide and not countries as a whole. Both are correct. Hence, the question remains whether, for greater progress, cities should be allowed to grow without limit and villages be allowed to decay steadily?
Go for smaller cities
We, in India, have the JNNURM — the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission — as also the Bharat Nirman of rural development. The two schemes have different emphasis: the rural scheme aims at a much lower level of achievement than the urban one. Further, the urban one aims to help only the top 60 cities in the country. The result: India will indeed be spikier in the times to come.
At the time of Independence, Bangalore had a population of three hundred thousand. It was the capital of the State; it had excellent medical facilities, schools and colleges including the Indian Institute of Science plus a fair amount of industry too. It was a nice, gracious city to live in.
Now it is 20 times bigger, but it is certainly no longer as gracious as it used to be. Increase in size does not necessarily make a place better. Likewise, JNNURM will definitely make cities larger, not necessarily better. Bharat Nirman will make villages a little better but not good enough to compete with cities.
We do need large cities. Only large cities can support stock exchanges, governments, business centres or airports. However, large towns, rather than cities, are enough to sustain large hospitals, universities, factories and the like.
The Medical College in Manipal, the Birla Institute of Science and Technology in Pilani as well as innumerable sugar or paper factories have emerged and flourish in relatively small towns. Even some of the finest cities of the world — Edinburgh, Frankfurt, San Francisco — have all populations barely larger than half a million.
Bane of cities
India has seven large cities with populations in excess of five millions and growing faster than other cities and, of course, villages too.
Life in them, the traffic and the pollution are all getting worse. Should Delhi add ten million more people; should Bangalore double itself? Or, can we have a larger number of relatively smaller cities?
Why not plan for a couple of cities of around three to five hundred thousand in every district to absorb the increasing urban pressure instead of expanding our largest cities? Should we have a different form of JNNURM which builds more nice cities of the type Bangalore used to be?
Traffic and its associated pollution is the main bane of all cities. Ideally, we should be able to walk to the place of work. The larger the city, the longer are commuting times, the greater the pollution and the lesser the social life of the people. Neighbours do not know one another. People cease to live in houses; they live in dormitories.
If we accept the arguments in the Jane Jacobs classic, The Death and Rise of Great American Cities, a city (but not a smaller establishment) should have high population densities, around thirty to fifty thousand per sq.km.
On that basis, a city with a population of three to five hundred thousand can be built within a space of ten square kilometres. That would be much, much cheaper than adding the same size population to an already large city. It will also be viable. Unfortunately, unless checked, it is also liable to grow to become unlivable.
As Jane Jacobs book title indicates, cities also die. In our own country, Vijayanagar, considered to be much larger than London in its heyday, died. So did Pataliputra. Delhi died several times but was reborn again.
However, villages, as a class do not seem to die. Hence, why should we not develop villages and make them support modern industry and services the way our cities do?
Build string of villages
Villages are places where one walks to work, where you know your neighbours. However, they are not well connected. Fortunately, that need not be a problem any more. We can string together a number of villages, may be towns, to support modern industry and services. That will be cheaper than building very large cities. Hence, we have three options. One, expand existing large cities the way the JNNURM plans to do. Two, build anew a couple of thousand fairly large cities with populations of three to five hundred thousand. Three, refurbish villages by distributing most of our industries and services, just one per village and invest in connecting them well.
The problem with JNNURM and with Bharat Nirman is that neither is thinking of the two later options. I remember an IAS officer in Chennai telling me that when he first built his house in Shenoy Nagar, he could get to his office in about fifteen minutes but now it takes three times longer. Waste of time is the bane of large cities. People forget that time is irreplaceable; once lost, it is lost forever.
Would Bangalore have been better if all its new services had come up in the villages some distance away? Would Chennai have been better if it had expanded the towns and villages in its vicinity rather than expanding on its own periphery? The same can be said of all our cities — Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, let alone Meerut or Nagpur.
Do we need more of JNNURM or a different mission that builds new cities on green field sites or towns? Can we think of self-sufficient neighbourhoods where people walk to work, live in houses where children share playtime and schools rather than cities where people commute hours everyday from dormitories to places of work and children too do the same?
Can we have a rule that no district will have an urbanisation level less than the nation’s average? Also a rule, that the bottom 80 per cent of the houses will occupy at least half the residential space?
Can politicians and the bureaucrats change; can they at least consider alternatives?
(The author is a former Director, IIT Madras. blfeedback@thehindu.co.in)
The Hindu Business Line, March 2, 2009, Page 8
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The larger the city, the longer are commuting times, the greater the pollution and the lesser the social life of the people. Neighbours do not know one another. People cease to live in houses; they live in dormitories, says P. V. INDIRESAN.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Friedman wrote The World Is Flat, a best seller. As a famous Indian politician said about the same time, there is a reaction to every action and within a year, an exactly opposite view was expressed by Professor Richard Florida in an article ‘The World Is Spiky’ in the Atlantic Monthly. In that article, Florida pointed out that in several respects, the world is spiky. At the most basic level, more and more people are living in cities, some with populations higher than 20 million. Apart from the population, the economy too is spiky — large cities have far higher economies than the rest of the population. The same holds true of energy consumption too — the brightest nights are in the cities, not in villages. Finally, he clinches the argument by pointing out that this spikiness is likely to get more and more pronounced because patents — an excellent measure of progress — are even more spiky than either population or the economy or energy consumption.
Then, whom do we believe? Do we accept Friedman’s argument or, do we follow the opposite argument that progress requires cities, the larger the better? Do we conclude that rural populations have no future, at any rate, rural populations are Children of the Lesser God?
Friedman was talking of countries as a whole, not of its constituents; Florida wrote about the rural-urban divide and not countries as a whole. Both are correct. Hence, the question remains whether, for greater progress, cities should be allowed to grow without limit and villages be allowed to decay steadily?
Go for smaller cities
We, in India, have the JNNURM — the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission — as also the Bharat Nirman of rural development. The two schemes have different emphasis: the rural scheme aims at a much lower level of achievement than the urban one. Further, the urban one aims to help only the top 60 cities in the country. The result: India will indeed be spikier in the times to come.
At the time of Independence, Bangalore had a population of three hundred thousand. It was the capital of the State; it had excellent medical facilities, schools and colleges including the Indian Institute of Science plus a fair amount of industry too. It was a nice, gracious city to live in.
Now it is 20 times bigger, but it is certainly no longer as gracious as it used to be. Increase in size does not necessarily make a place better. Likewise, JNNURM will definitely make cities larger, not necessarily better. Bharat Nirman will make villages a little better but not good enough to compete with cities.
We do need large cities. Only large cities can support stock exchanges, governments, business centres or airports. However, large towns, rather than cities, are enough to sustain large hospitals, universities, factories and the like.
The Medical College in Manipal, the Birla Institute of Science and Technology in Pilani as well as innumerable sugar or paper factories have emerged and flourish in relatively small towns. Even some of the finest cities of the world — Edinburgh, Frankfurt, San Francisco — have all populations barely larger than half a million.
Bane of cities
India has seven large cities with populations in excess of five millions and growing faster than other cities and, of course, villages too.
Life in them, the traffic and the pollution are all getting worse. Should Delhi add ten million more people; should Bangalore double itself? Or, can we have a larger number of relatively smaller cities?
Why not plan for a couple of cities of around three to five hundred thousand in every district to absorb the increasing urban pressure instead of expanding our largest cities? Should we have a different form of JNNURM which builds more nice cities of the type Bangalore used to be?
Traffic and its associated pollution is the main bane of all cities. Ideally, we should be able to walk to the place of work. The larger the city, the longer are commuting times, the greater the pollution and the lesser the social life of the people. Neighbours do not know one another. People cease to live in houses; they live in dormitories.
If we accept the arguments in the Jane Jacobs classic, The Death and Rise of Great American Cities, a city (but not a smaller establishment) should have high population densities, around thirty to fifty thousand per sq.km.
On that basis, a city with a population of three to five hundred thousand can be built within a space of ten square kilometres. That would be much, much cheaper than adding the same size population to an already large city. It will also be viable. Unfortunately, unless checked, it is also liable to grow to become unlivable.
As Jane Jacobs book title indicates, cities also die. In our own country, Vijayanagar, considered to be much larger than London in its heyday, died. So did Pataliputra. Delhi died several times but was reborn again.
However, villages, as a class do not seem to die. Hence, why should we not develop villages and make them support modern industry and services the way our cities do?
Build string of villages
Villages are places where one walks to work, where you know your neighbours. However, they are not well connected. Fortunately, that need not be a problem any more. We can string together a number of villages, may be towns, to support modern industry and services. That will be cheaper than building very large cities. Hence, we have three options. One, expand existing large cities the way the JNNURM plans to do. Two, build anew a couple of thousand fairly large cities with populations of three to five hundred thousand. Three, refurbish villages by distributing most of our industries and services, just one per village and invest in connecting them well.
The problem with JNNURM and with Bharat Nirman is that neither is thinking of the two later options. I remember an IAS officer in Chennai telling me that when he first built his house in Shenoy Nagar, he could get to his office in about fifteen minutes but now it takes three times longer. Waste of time is the bane of large cities. People forget that time is irreplaceable; once lost, it is lost forever.
Would Bangalore have been better if all its new services had come up in the villages some distance away? Would Chennai have been better if it had expanded the towns and villages in its vicinity rather than expanding on its own periphery? The same can be said of all our cities — Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, let alone Meerut or Nagpur.
Do we need more of JNNURM or a different mission that builds new cities on green field sites or towns? Can we think of self-sufficient neighbourhoods where people walk to work, live in houses where children share playtime and schools rather than cities where people commute hours everyday from dormitories to places of work and children too do the same?
Can we have a rule that no district will have an urbanisation level less than the nation’s average? Also a rule, that the bottom 80 per cent of the houses will occupy at least half the residential space?
Can politicians and the bureaucrats change; can they at least consider alternatives?
(The author is a former Director, IIT Madras. blfeedback@thehindu.co.in)
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