Urbanization and Sustainable Social Design in India
By: Mihir Bholey
Economic liberalization and urbanization in India have become complimentary to each other in recent years. McKinsey Global Institute estimates by 2025, Indian cities will have additional 215 million population equal to 38% of its total population. During 1950-2005 India urbanized at the rate of 29% which was way behind China’s 41%. It’s expected by 2025 close to 2.5 billion Asians will turn city dwellers which will be nearly 54% of world urban population. The global impact of urbanization will hugely influence India too where 2/3 of its GDP and 90% of government revenue are generated by even less than 1/3 of its urban population. Urbanization is thus also the economic imperative of the rising India. Its growing economy, rapid urbanization, sustainability and environmental issues are not only of serious concern for the global world economy but for the world environment as well. India’s ever growing need for energy, fuel, consumer goods, housing, and infrastructure
are matters of concern for economic and environmental sustainability and urban design.The Ministry of Urban Development data reveals out of the total population of 1027 million as on 1st March, 2001, close to 742 million people lived
in rural areas while 285 million lived in the urban are as. India has experienced 2.1% rate of growth in its urban population beginning the era of economic liberalization in 1991 till 2001. Is the expansion of this kind making Indian cities unsustainable both economically and environmentally? The India Infrastructure Report of 1996 estimated that in the next ten years India would have required an investment of Rs. 280.35/ billion on sanitation, water supply and roads. Some of the biggest challenges of urbanization in India is not just creating urban infrastructure but also making them socio-culturally and economically sustainable. The growing Indian economy of the post-liberalization
is shaping the process of urbanization. Maturing financial market, robust banking and credit system, flow of international capital and infrastructure are precipitating the process. As a result, urban housing and realty has become a product of investment and market forces rather than basic necessity. To sustain the cities like Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi having estimated population of over 16, 13.2 and 12.7 million respectively is nightmarish for the urban planners, designers and environmentalists alike. The development deficit always looms large in urbanizing India.Of late, urban infrastructure, spatial planning and the growing environmental concerns are getting more and more integrated. The cities are in a perpetual state of developmental chaos; laying of cables, drainage lines, new roads, additional lanes, flyovers, drainage, demolition of good habitable houses to construct malls, business centres or multistory apartments are the infrastructural pangs cities have to bear with. An environmental audit can highlight their ecological impact. ‘Brown Agenda’, which include concerns like water pollution due to untreated municipal and industrial wastewater, lack of sanitation, adequate solid waste collection facilities, indoor and surrounding air pollution, soil and land contamination because of improper disposal of solid and hazardous waste among others are emerging as the major environmental anxieties. Simultaneously, green and sustainable design is also being seriously discussed among the designers, architects and urban planners, but the impact of green and sustainable design in urban planning look like an oasis in the island of clutter and pollution.
To an extent India has inherited overconcentration of population in certain urban centres as the colonial legacy. The British-India presidency cities like Bombay, Calcutta, Madras became the seat of power, prestige. The emergence of cities like Delhi, Bengaluru (earlier Bangalore), Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Surat and their like have though succeeded in creating wealth but not in bridging the growing regional disparity, poverty and rural-urban divide in India as much. Interestingly, the urban policy in India has provisions of establishing suitable alternative centres of trade, commerce, industry, residential dwellings with investment in infrastructure so as to reduce pressure on the existing cities. But in reality, instead of creation of new cities, it’s mostly the existing big cities which are expanding and converting into megacities. The policy also has provisions for nurturing and encouraging economic and social activities with large infrastructural investment in relatively smaller cities to check migration and concentration of opportunities in few big cities. It’s in this context that the rationale of organizing international events like Commonwealth Games in a city like Delhi can be questioned. Perhaps with the same infrastructural investment an altogether new modern city could have been established. The new CWG infrastructure in Delhi added more chaos than comfort to Delhi, besides the huge financial mismanagement.
There is no effective mechanism either to stop the exodus or to stop the expansion of the cities beyond a certain size which is a major concern of sustainable urbanization. On the one hand the overconcentrated cities are becoming environmentally and socially unsustainable, on the other the urban planning in India seems to be more concerned with quick fix solutions rather than visualizing a long term plan for development. The real issue of urbanization, urban planning and design today is not only about the design of infrastructure and spatial artifacts. It’s also about shaping and designing the society and social set up of the present and future. Urbanization has to be sustainable not only ecologically and environmentally, but also socially, economically and culturally. Eventually, it should not be seen as the process of designing dwellings and infrastructure alone rather as the larger process of creating sustainable social design.
(Mihir Bholey is a Senior Faculty at National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, INDIA)
(All Images: Mihir Bholey)
