Limiting growth of cities?
Limiting growth of cities?
Indian Transportation Minister Nitin Gadkari recently mentioned that planners should limit growth of Pune city. Is he right? Can it be done? How? Lets discuss.
To say that Pune has developed haphazardly is an understatement. Hence the recent statement made by Nitin Gadkari noting this haphazard growth is not surprising. The same statement can be made about any city within India. This poses a question.
Urban population growth is going to be a certainty in the next few decades across the world. We cannot stop people from migrating to cities in search of opportunities. But we can definitely plan for urban population growth in a better way. So how do we plan for urbanism better?
Perspectives in planning for urban development
While developing urban centres, we can take various perspectives and, please note this, ALL of these need to be planned for. A city must have proper water, garbage, sewage, electricity, telecom, and other resource capacities.
Every person, as per the Bureau of Indian Standards, should be given 200 litres per day (lpd). So when you plan to increase the population by 100,000 people, you need to make sure that extra 20 million lpd water is available in the city.
We need to plan for additional electric supply. There must be enough capacity available for this.
The next most important thing to consider is public transportation - buses, metro trains, taxis, autos, rental bicycles, school buses etc. Without transportation, no new area develops. This principle is behind the transit-oriented design approach followed by most well-functioning cities.
We need housing for the new population. It means you need to be aware of the income profile of the incoming population and what kind of homes they would buy. For every X high-income families added, you also add Y low-income families to work in services supporting the high-income households. This means planning for new projects in different classes of income levels.
All these new people will also need office space, retail space and other leisure spaces. You will need schools, school buses, classrooms etc.
All these new people will create more sewage and garbage. That much extra garbage will have to be collected, processed and treated.
We need road capacity in proportion to the population. This means we must build more roads to access different parts of the towns you plan to populate. If you plan to increase the density of the population in certain areas, you need to widen the roads and allocate additional parking spaces.
More people also need more open spaces. This conflicts with space requirements for building more housing. It takes ingenuity, repurposing, demolition and recreation to get the mix right.
We also need to plan for more trees and adjustment of green spaces without sacrificing the total green cover in the city.
Planning for wind patterns, breeze changes across the year is also essential. It is also essential to note the effect of additional housing, office and commercial spaces on wind patterns in the city.
We also need to think of the quality of life dimension. We need zoo, parks, museums, public performance areas, private performance areas, theatres, art galleries etc.
So is Nitin Gadkari right?
Yes and no! I would rather say we need an overhaul of the entire urban planning and municipal governance system. Let me know what do you think we can do, how much we can do.
You can read my previous post about planning in cities in India.
