Will future cities be friendly?

It is rather naive to delink urbanisation from the rising lifestyle aspirations and the imperatives of economic development. Opportunities, power and prestige are some of the irresistible attributes of the growing urban centres which attract migrants on a large scale. In India economic liberalisation and urbanisation have become complimentary to each other. Although the wave of urbanisation is sweeping the entire Asian subcontinent and giving it the kind of preeminence that Europe and North America enjoyed due to their industrial socio-economic set up, it is India and China which are drawing attention. It is estimated that by 2025 around 2.5 billion Asians will turn city dwellers which will be nearly 54 per cent of the world’s urban population.

Between 1950 and 2005 India urbanised at the rate of 29 per cent, which was way behind China’s 41 per cent. According to a report by McKinsey Global Institute, by 2025 India will add 215 million people to its cities, whose population will account for 38 per cent of the country’s population. Urbanisation of this magnitude will not only impact world economy but also the environment, with its ever growing need for energy, fuel and consumer goods.

The India Infrastructure Report of 1996 estimated that in the next 10 years India would require an investment of Rs 28,035 crore on sanitation, water supply and roads. The Ministry of Urban Development estimates that in the next 20 years cities having a population more than 100,000 would require an investment of Rs 207,000 crore on urban transportation alone. This is a huge investment and cannot be met either by the budgetary allocation of the Centre, states or local civic authorities. Public-private partnerships and foreign direct investments are being suggested as panaceas. But they do not take into account the basic requirements of the 15 per cent of the total urban population of India in slums.

Rapid urbanisation is a typical developing nation syndrome and India is no exception to it. As against the developed countries which urbanised at a gradual pace, the developing countries urbanised faster. According to the World Bank Research Observer report of 2002, during the 1970s urbanisation in the Republic of Korea was 40 per cent but by the 1990s, 78 per cent of Korea was urbanised. Urbanisation attained by the US in 90 years was reached by Brazil in 30 years. The pace of urbanisation in India is not comparable to these countries but matters get complicated because the phenomenon is unevenly spread across regions and within cities.

So urban design in India has not just to cater to infrastructure, but also address issues relating to socio-cultural cohesion and sustainability. In other words, the biggest challenges are not creating urban infrastructure but making them friendly for the diverse socio-culturaleconomic background users.

There is no doubt that the city dwellers have to adapt to the culture of the city but at the same time they also often mutate the infrastructure to their convenience and create a new urban culture. A pertinent example in this context is the urban traffic culture and transport system of the two megacities Delhi and Mumbai. While in Delhi traffic rules are often flouted, people by and large adhere to it in Mumbai. But in Mumbai itself many commuters often risk their life by travelling atop the roof of the Mumbai suburban railway. Is this a problem of urban infrastructure design both in terms of system and function, socio-cultural incongruity to use the system, a simple case of overburdened infrastructure or a mix of all?