Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Urban agenda should be implemented carefully' that was published in Newsband

Urban agenda should be implemented carefully

The new Bharatiya Janata Party government wants Indian cities to be ‘symbols of efficiency, speed and scale’. To achieve this, it plans to prioritise housing and public transport, build 100 new cities, use technology to improve urban services, and make development sustainable. The government has also ambitiously declared that everyone would own a house by 2020.

The new government should create opportunity for new housing and a system through which people can afford to have their own houses. Slums should get discouraged. Second: connect the city with high speed public transport system and high speed inter city train/tram system. Third: focus on Waste minimisation, recycling and move towards Zero Waste system. Fourth: give the real qualified professionals on Urban Systems to manage the city.

But care should be taken that environment is not adversely impacted at the cost of Industrialization. Green spaces are must to live healthily. Nothing should be done in hurry and in a restrictive manner. Creating 'new' cities is a great idea, but while doing so there is danger of more forests getting cut, more land getting barren which will badly hit the environment. The current government should develop plans for environment issues as well while simultaneously solving housing related problems.

Every year, world’s cities are evaluated and rated. India should study success models from other countries with comparable population densities and adapt carefully with essential modifications. Singapore is World’s super-model for efficiency, productivity, infrastructure and discipline. Porto Alegre city of Brazil is World’s super-model for equitable and sustainable development thru ward-wise decentralization; its governance process is world famous as Porto Alegre Innovation. It is now copied in over 40 countries including the US and China.

The new Modi-led BJP government's urban planning agenda brings in hope to make Indian cities world class in standard. The initiative to integrate new cities in the form of satellite towns or twin cities with the existing metros to ease of the urban pressure is brilliant and is already in development in some cities e.g.: Newtown near Kolkata. Integration can be best achieved by optimal and judicious combination of Surface Rail Transit, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and Metro Rail systems depending on the feasibility to develop into a fine grained efficient and cost-effective urban transport.

We are seeing that each and every metro city in the country is overpopulated and has turned into a virtual slum. Added to that the roads in these cities are so narrow that traffic in these cities has become a casualty leading to traffic snarls. Buildings are old and are ready to collapse any moment. One solution to all these could be that the civic authorities could permit demolition of all the old buildings in narrow roads allowing for wider roads and safer buildings. Banks could finance these new buildings and the government on its part can allow more FSI which would encourage building owners to demolish their old buildings.

One should also not forget Mahatma Gandhi’s words: India can be developed only by developing its villages. Villages should not be neglected, pushing people to suicide. So the real answer could be: develop villages, create job opportunities within villages and stop migration to cities.