Future cities should be more compact

Bumper-to-bumper traffic has a different connotation in Gurgaon, and especially during peak office hours. Most regular commuters to Gurgaon have nightmares to recount around the toll-plaza gates and beyond. While the average travel time by road from/to Delhi is one-and-a-half hours each way, people are known to have spent more than five hours on the roads on a bad day.

How about cutting down the travel time to only half an hour each way?

That’s the inherent promise and the most people-friendly salient feature of a ‘compact suburb’.

INTEGRATED LIVING

The concept of compact suburb is intertwined with how and why suburbs developed in the first place. In India and all over the world, city-suburbs developed as people either moved out of cities by choice (for want of a better lifestyle) or by compulsion (cheaper real estate). However, a large section of the suburban residents continued to commute to the cities daily to earn their livelihood. In the present context, much of the traffic congestion across India’s metros is on account of office-goers from one part of the city/suburb moving to another far-flung area to reach their place of work.

The way out is to develop modern township projects in the suburbs where residents can experience a sustainable, integrated and better quality of life. We recognise that only suburbs have the wherewithal to provide a superior lifestyle. In fact, we have even coined a term — Modern Suburban America — drawing an analogy between what’s happening in India at present (more and more people moving to the suburbs to live a life of luxury aka the American dream) and what happened during the suburbanisation of America (a socio-economic phenomenon where hundreds of thousands of people left American cities to live in the suburbs during the 1940s-90s) for a better life.

If the suburbanisation of America was a congregation of economic, social and cultural trends seen first and most visibly in the American suburbs, we see the same trends getting reflected — albeit distinctly — through the development of Modern Suburban America in India. While enjoying a luxurious life is conceptually alluring, many of our prospective customers complain of the long commuting hours. A compact suburb is the perfect answer to their woes, where people can live and work within a radius of 15 km.

A compact suburb proposes a mixed land use policy, where residential complexes co-exist with commercial facilities, with the emphasis on vertical development. In plain terms, this means developing scores of high-rises and offering both residential and commercial spaces across these properties.

The concept, of course, does not limit itself to only building these high-rises; a compact suburb also calls for developing a world-class public transport system which is accessible, fast, reliable and affordable. Such a transport system conceptually discourages usage of personal vehicles, while keeping the suburban commercial centres within reach. A compact suburb also encourages environment-friendly initiatives, including rainwater harvesting, harnessing wind and solar power, and designing green buildings which make maximum use of natural light.

FUTURE CHALLENGES

Intrinsically, the concept of compact suburbs draws inspiration from the concept of ‘compact cities’ — fairly popular in developed nations but something which has resolutely stayed beyond the grasp of India’s city planners so far. Compact cities, too, have a mixed land use policy, where city planners focus on a vertical expansion, instead of a horizontal one.

However, in the Indian context, re-developing existing cities into compact ones is fraught with challenges and conflicts ranging from heritage laws, FSI rules and red tape to NGO activism and political interference. If certain stray pockets such as central Mumbai are showing the first signs of a compact city, it has more to do with the sudden availability of open spaces from defunct mills. While cities are figuratively bursting at their seams, having little room for reinvention and large-scale redevelopment, it is the suburbs that still retain the opportunity to being properly planned.

And India — according to Prof Reuben Abraham of Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business — would certainly need some serious planning. According to Reuben’s research, some 300-400 million people will be migrating to India’s cities over the next 25 years. Surely, many of the country’s existing cities — with crumbling utility services such as power, water, sewage disposal, etc., and a transport system which is grossly ineffective — cannot possibly accommodate these large numbers. The answer lies in the development of compact suburbs.

Mckinsey’s June report on urbanisation trends predicts the development of 36 new ‘emerging’ cities in India by 2025. While the report did not mention the location of those emerging cities, it did indicate the broad geographical locations.

Many of those emerging cities appeared as clusters around existing metros. Going by the current trends, it is unlikely that a complete new set of cities will grow out of rice fields or orchards. What, therefore, seems highly probable is today’s clusters developing into tomorrow’s compact suburbs, which finally metamorphose into full-blown emerging cities.

Bangalore’s Electronic City is a prime example of a compact mini-suburb. The 440-acre area houses offices, residential complexes, shopping malls, etc., and sports an efficient public transport system to boot. On the other hand, Gurgaon-Manesar in Haryana and Vashi-Nerul-Belapur in Maharashtra have the makings of becoming tomorrow’s compact suburbs. The lack of quality public transport is, however, a bane of both these locations.

Across India, there is a huge potential of existing far-flung suburbs around commercial hubs growing into tomorrow’s compact suburbs. However, these suburbs have only witnessed residential and commercial development in patches so far. Typically, they have expanded in an inefficient, sprawling manner where a lot of land has gone unutilised before another stretch, a few miles away, has been up for development.

The government and civic authorities must put an immediate stop to this unstructured expansion and encourage planned and managed development. Organised real estate players are willing to help in drafting a policy framework and to also implement the plan. Planners will do well to remember that compact suburbs, rather than sprawling ones, represent a good model for achieving economic growth, social inclusion and environmental sustainability as these promote connectivity, mobility and an overall better quality of life.

(The author is Managing Director and CEO, Tata Housing.)

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