New age urbanism in India: Time to have a serious look

Surendra HiranandaniIndia's economic growth has been matched by rapid urban development in recent years. In line with the principles of New Urbanism, the urban landscape is being significantly re-modelled by creating diverse, inclusive and sustainable spaces where people will want to live, both now and in the future.Urbanisation will be central to India’s strategy of achieving faster and more inclusive growth. The collection and diversification of economic activities in urban spheres stimulates economic efficiencies and provides more opportunities for earning livelihoods. Thus, it increases avenues for entrepreneurship and employment compared to what is possible in dispersed rural areas. It, thereby, enables faster inclusion of more people in the process of economic growth. According to a UN report our economic growth is expected to surpass China with an expected GDP growth of 7.7% in 2016. From an agrarian economy, India is rapidly moving towards being an industrial economy. The challenge before the government is to guide this process and ensure that basic amenities are provided to the citizens. The country’s economic growth is being fuelled out of its cities, which are expanding in a haphazard manner, meeting the nation’s ambitious growth requirement. If the challenges are not tackled expressly, not only would India’s cities get increasingly chaotic and choked, rural poverty will be converted to urban poverty with no gains to improvement of livelihood. It is heartening to know the union government is realizing the predicament. It has realized that that the country’s futuristic development will come by building smart cities and modernizing the existing cities by including smart elements in them.To begin with, the Indian government has announced its plans to build 100 new smart cities recently and smartly modernize the country’s existing 500 cities with its AMRUT (Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation of 500 cities) plan. The initiative is expected to give a major boost to a futuristic urban development. However, care should be taken to combat the urban growth with sustainable use of resources for future generations to live. The government’s focus of developing cities on the themes of ‘live, work and play’ and ‘walk to work’ will ensure a sustainable development to new age urbanism.Smart cities should ensure that residences are aligned with the work places. The residences, work and leisure should be developed at short distances from one another, thereby reducing the travel time, traffic and pollution and stress. Further, smart cities need to be pedestrian focused. Trying to build a car focused city through broad roads can worsen the transportation problems in India. The United Nations environment programme has showed that chronic traffic congestion amounts to time and productivity losses and such costs can add up to nearly or over 10% of a region or country’s GDP.To conclude, urbanisation is increasing at a faster rate than earlier. This would also result in significant spill over in semi-urban areas and therefore, these areas need to be included in urban planning and provided for. While India needs to plan for its urban expansion, the conditions of delivery of services in existing cities and decent housing even for the current level of urban population is highly deficient. The task identified above calls for a renewed thrust towards improvement in governance structure especially at the level of urban local bodies and a major improvement in delivery of urban services in cities. Author is founder and managing director of House of Hiranandani