The reason I ask this is because we still don't have a clue about what urban growth will mean for us. We cannot see beyond the glitz of malls, the swank of private housing apartments or guarded green areas.
We cannot and do not know how we will supply water to all, build houses for all, treat sewage, provide the required parking for an ever-expanding fleet of vehicles or even more basic, where we will bury the growing mountains of garbage our cities throw up. We seem to live in a make-believe world where infrastructure is the buzzword and hope funds for urban renewal will make problems go away.
But the reality is a little different and difficult. The fact is that cities represent a face of development that is resource and capital-intensive. The resource intensity of the model of urban growth means that it uses huge amounts of energy and materials and leads to huge amounts of waste.
This then requires investment - huge and continuous - to mitigate adverse environmental impacts. On the other hand, the capital intensity of urban growth means that it divides the rich and the poor. The high cost of the urban services - for water supply, sanitation, garbage removal, transport - requires big investment in social services and provision of basic goods for poorer sections of society.
We must understand that our urban services are stretched not because these are subsidised for the poor. The capital and resource intensity of this model means that these services are too expensive for even the relatively rich in the developing world.
In this scenario, cities cannot under any circumstances extend these services to all. The problem is that our cities remain inhabited by relatively poor people. In most cities - rich and modern - as much as 30-50 per cent of people live in poverty, in slums, "unauthorised" colonies or illegal settlements. They remain outside the purview of development.
In supposedly modern and car-dependent cities, as many as 20-30 per cent of people walk or bicycle to work. They cannot even afford public transport. In surveys done in Delhi, it has been found that even now, 60 per cent of the people commute by buses, which occupy less than 7 per cent of the road space, while cars which crowd over 75 per cent of the roads, transport only 20 per cent of the people.
In other words, in these cities, the car has not replaced the bus or the bicycle, it has only marginalised it; crowded it out. In this situation, the answer will not be in building more flyovers or expanding roads, but in reinventing the very idea of mobility with massive investments in public transport. In other words, even as the whole world looks for solutions to pollution and congestion, we must find our own answers.
This requires finding ways of "leapfrogging" so that they can have progress without pollution and inequity. But this will demand the concept of modern cities must be re-imagined so that it does not follow New York or Shanghai, but instead is based on the reality of building a liveable, safe and healthy Raipur, Guwahati or Mumbai.
