Prime Minister Manmohan Singh noted when he launched the urban renewal mission recently, “Rapid urbanization has not only outpaced infrastructure development, but has also brought in its train a terrible downside - the downside of proliferating slums, the downside of increasing homelessness , the downside of growing urban poverty and crime, of relentless march of pollution and ecological damage. This gives you an idea of the massive challenge that lies ahead.” At this moment in time, the future of India is largely pivoted in the way we plan our urbanization and in due course the efficiency of our cities.

Over the last 50 years, the administration has never looked at urbanization as positive tendency. Ever since independence, the population of the country has escalated two and half times but urban Indian population has risen by over five times. But the focus on renewal of cities, creation of new urban centres or upgradation of urban infrastructure and services has been insignificant.

Logistically, a country like India cannot sustain solely on agriculture. Cities drive the economic and social development of the country. The economic foundation of the nation is rooted in industries, business, trade and services present in cities. The usual notion of a mostly rural India is also misguided- approximately 30 percent of the India lives in cities and they contribute to over 60 percent of national income. We have to recognize that cities have incredible potential as drivers of economic and community development by creating employment and generating wealth. Therefore, we have to promote a developmental pattern that will reorganize the urban-rural coalition. Focussing on establishing a good ambience for industries and businesses in urban centres, which create jobs for larger population, will also eventually warranty the growth of our agricultural sector.

Our urban policies have also been skewed and have always lacked long-term vision. Indian urban planners have a penchant to retard urbanization by promoting low density or low FSI thereby encouraging urban sprawl or larger municipal conglomerations. According to estimates, by 2050 the urban population in India is set to exceed 800 million , from the present 300 million. Our urban laws don’t even make an effort to tackle today’s population, let alone, even think about the unparalleled shift of our population to cities.

Promoting policies that encourage low density and large spread out development can have detrimental consequence in the future. It is practically unrealistic to advocate low density spread out cities. The inadequacies of sprawl are huge: steady creation of new infrastructure; new roads; unmanaged growth; ecological degradation and disintegration ; and scattered services. Municipal structures, urban administration, transport, public amenities, infrastructure and services will become uneconomical and unfeasible in larger cities as they will need to be extended over a larger geographic area. Higher density compact cities are economically feasible given that infrastructure, such as roads and street lighting, can be arranged cost-effectively per capita.

On a more significant note, larger endlessly growing cities have a critical ecological connotation. Land is not renewable resource. In a persistent manner, urban sprawl consumes rural agricultural tracts, which in turn forces the displaced agriculturists to convert forestlands into farms, increasing deforestation and permanently altering the environment. By limiting the size of city, land in the countryside is preserved; property in towns can be recycled for development even as our forests are preserved.

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