The Hindu Business Line : Why we must aim for Golden Cities

The poor, like Oliver, ask for more; the rich will ask for something better. Our new Vision should be for better quality, not larger quantity. What India needs is not merely more urban development but quantity combined with quality. On that score, the Budget's contribution has been but marginal, says P. V. Indiresan.

A FEW years ago, the then National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government woke up to the importance of highways and the Golden Quadrilateral was born. In the latest Budget, the present Government has added a new dimension — urban development — to the vision of quality highway infrastructure. Will we now have Golden Cities on top of the Golden Quadrilateral and other highways?

India's population is expected to stabilise around 1,600-1,700 million. If Western experience is any guide, and if present trends continue, urban population would increase by as much as a billion and touch 1,300 million. An increase of one billion in urban population within a few decades is unprecedented; it requires a new Vision.

Obviously, very large investments have already been made in our cities; otherwise they would not have grown as much as they have. However, urban policy has been mostly laissez faire; cities have grown haphazardly and without a systematic plan.

If urban growth is allowed to drift as in the past, we will end up with a score of megacities; some of them with populations as high as 4-5 crore. Apparently, such concentrated growth is popular both with real estate developers and customers. Hence, without specific effort, such cancerous growth will be inevitable. However, the risks are high. Just imagine what the consequence would have been if the recent tsunami had hit not South Nicobar but the city of Chennai.

Policy-makers who are starry-eyed about unlimited urban expansion forget that large cities are politically inflammable too; even minor accidents can cause uncontrollable explosions.

The poor, like Oliver, ask for more; the rich will ask for something better. Now that we are on the threshold of becoming one of the wealthiest countries of the world, we should learn to ask for something better, not for something more. Our new Vision should be for better quality, not larger quantity.

Basically, high quality urban development depends on five components:

(i) Ample water supply of good quality;

(ii) Comfortable rapid mass transport;

(iii) Adequate housing, even for the poorest;

(iv) Efficient waste disposal and clean environment;

(v) Streets wide enough to allow fire engines at all times (Remember the school fire tragedy in Kumbakonam!).

Golden Cities should fulfill all five of these needs.

Water and waste disposal: It is widely accepted that future wars will be over water. Urban dwellers are not getting enough water and, as the economy grows, they will demand even more.

To complicate matters, rural folk too are suffering from increasing water shortage. They will resent diversion of water to cities more and more. Thus, we have a tailor-made situation for violent conflict. Wars over water have begun already in many parts of the country. In this situation, the only sustainable solution is for cities to generate their own water.

Local generation of water is not as difficult as it appears. The city of Frankfurt recycles water eight times. Simple techniques — recycled water for toilets, treated sewage for industrial purposes — can treble water availability for a small price. The monsoon in India may be erratic but the quantity of rain is thrice that in England.

If only we restrict urban population density to 10,000 per sq. km. (that is actually twice that of London), most parts of India can supply per day per capita 100 litres each of potable water, recycled water (for toilets) and treated sewage for industrial purposes. That is copious enough.

In civic cleanliness, India is probably the worst in the world. Even poor neighbours such as Nepal have better civic sense. In India, urban waste is mostly organic. Without treatment, organic waste causes avoidable disease; it stinks. Properly treated, it can yield clean smokeless fuel in the form of biogas plus high-value manure suitable for intensive farming. However, because of its bacterial content, its transportation is hazardous and because of its bulk, the transportation is expensive too. Therefore it is best to treat and recycle organic waste locally, not far away outside city limits.

Fairly simple modifications to current urban design will permit both rainwater harvesting and waste recycling locally. However, neither is feasible when cities are expanded without limit.

Urban transport: The policy-makers are already much exercised about urban traffic and have started investing heavily in flyovers. In addition, all large cities are dreaming of metros. However, both flyovers and metros are very expensive. They are luxuries, not necessities.

If city sizes are limited to 500,000 or even a million, there would be no need for either; urban transportation costs would be reduced to a one-tenth or less. In other words, we have two alternatives: One, increase city size without limit and incur heavy expenditure on glamorous urban transportation. Two, develop a number of medium-sized cities.

Or, the choice is between 20-30 megacities with multi-crore populations, or 200-300 smaller cities with populations not more than a million. That choice is a matter of Vision — Leaden or Golden!

Housing the poor: Our newspapers are full of alluring advertisements offering apartments that reach up to the sky but offer next to nothing for the poor. We have convinced ourselves that the poor cannot be allowed more than the inhumanly inadequate 15-20 sq. m. of space.

Such miserliness is due to the wrong perception that our country is over-populated and, hence, we must make our urban densities 5-10 times than those in Western countries.

As a matter of fact, Holland, has a higher population density than India. Yet, it has avoided monstrous skyscrapers and has next to no slums. There must be something wrong in our calculations.

Even when our urban population rises to one billion, at the density of 10,000 persons per sq. km. suggested earlier, our cities will need only 5 per cent of the country's land area. With that population density, even the poorest can be allotted as much as 70-80 sq. m. of space. With so much space, even if the poor may live in huts, cities will be slum-free. Contrary to what many policy-makers have imagined, slums are not necessary; they are an artificially created malady.

For India's population density, high-rise apartments are not necessary. High-rises are ill-advised too. World over, by painful experience, civic authorities have found that crime increases when the poor are confined to high-rise tenements. The rich may be happy living in splendid isolation, but the poor like to congregate. They need communal space; they need to be close to the ground. High-rise apartments deny both needs.

Till now, we have had no logical plans for water supply, we have shown little interest in waste disposal, and we have preferred expensive congestion.

As a consequence, urban poor have been forced into appalling slums. While the national population is increasing a little less than 2 per cent a year and urban population by 4 per cent, slum population is increasing at an astronomical 7 per cent a year.The bottom 25 per cent of the population requires no more than 10 per cent of the total space. If a bare 10 per cent of both residential and commercial space is reserved for the poor, and their business, slums will not erupt.

Street widths: In recent months, there have been three major disasters where fire killed large numbers of people. Rescue operations became all but impossible, even ambulances could not reach because the streets were narrow, and parked vehicles made a bad situation worse.

The vehicle population in India is increasing so rapidly that it appears we have to live with vehicles parked on either side of our streets.

Then, we should make our city streets wide enough to allow free passage for emergency vehicles like fire engines even when there are parked vehicles. Our streets have to be at least 15 metres wide.

Golden Cities are not all that much difficult to implement. They ask for just a few simple rules:

Restrict population densities to 10,000 or less per square kilometre;

Limit population size to a few hundred thousand;

Provide for local rainwater harvesting and waste recycling in the town plan;

Keep streets reasonably wide;

Reserve 10 per cent space for the poor.

Once these rules are observed religiously, our cities will be transformed beyond recognition. If this is all that is necessary to have quality habitats, why has it not happened? There are two reasons: One, the present policy provides windfall gains to real estate sharks.

Two, town planners have convinced themselves and others that anything better is too expensive to contemplate.

The financial power of the former has combined with the untrammelled authority of the latter to prevent any suggestion for better urban design from being accepted.

The Finance Minister has taken the stand that the responsibility for implementation rests with other ministries. That does not absolve him from setting the stage for efficient implementation.

In the Budget, he has confined himself to allocating more money for urban development but has made no attempt to direct the funds towards quality urban development.

What India needs is not merely more urban development but quantity combined with quality. On that score, the Budget has made no contribution.

(The author is former Director, IIT Madras. He can be contacted at indresan@vsnl.com)

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