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Should our cities be private or public spaces?

A. Srivathsan

From Hong Kong to London, new towns have failed to contain the overcrowding of the parent city. And if private enclaves proliferate, we could end up with the dilution of the public nature of the city.

IN 2005, South Korea's Assembly voted in favour of splitting the capital city Seoul and creating a new administrative city in the Yongi-Kongju area. About 12 Ministries and 30 government agencies were to be shifted to this new city and this, it was hoped, would reduce the overcrowding of Seoul. The move was opposed by a few groups including Lee Myung-Bak, the Mayor of Seoul. He pointed out that the new city would not reduce the number of people coming to Seoul but would increase it. Whatever be the politics behind these approvals and objections, the doubt raised about the efficacy of such new towns is not without reason.

From Hong Kong to London, new towns have failed to contain the overcrowding of the parent city. It did not matter whether they were conceived as self-sufficient towns or as dormitory towns. Seoul tried various measures such as introduction of a green belt in 1971 and followed it up with plans such as population dispersal and restrictions on the construction of large buildings in the capital region. In the late 1980s, five new towns such as Bundang and Pyungchon were built within an hour's commuting distance of Seoul to serve a population of 1.2 million. Seoul continues to remain as crowded as ever.

In Hong Kong, between 1960 and 1982, seven towns within a 5-40 km distance were designated as new towns. The population in all these towns has grown substantially but they could not contain Hong Kong's growth.

The Indian experience is not any different. The idea to create a new town and decongest Mumbai was proposed as early as 1948. But it was taken up only in 1970 and a new town was proposed on the mainland across the creek. It was to hold about 2 million people on 19,394 hectares. This new town was built and run by the City Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO), a company fully owned by the Government. Even after 35 years, Navi Mumbai has not achieved its target population. The same can be said about jobs too. Not only was the State Government unwilling to shift its offices but it was also not serious about mitigating the growth of Mumbai. Mill land development and proposals such as private enclaves and cities on the outskirts continue to subvert the growth of Navi Mumbai.

The experience in Chennai is not promising either. Take the case of the two satellite towns at Manali and Maraimalai Nagar. Maraimalai Nagar was proposed over 1,335 hectares to accommodate a population of one lakh and Manali spread over 570 hectares was planned for a population of 1.75 lakh. Both the towns never managed to reach their target. On the other hand, Chennai has continued to grow unchecked. The reasons attributed for the failure of new towns to meet the objectives range from bad location to lack of transport to insufficient economic activities and administrative failures.

The new town idea was conceived in Europe so as to avoid high population density in cities. However, Asian cities are culturally and historically used to high-density living. In this context, the World Bank policy note on Kabul's new town proposal is revealing. The Bank is of the opinion that the construction of new towns is strongly inadvisable in spite of the perceived advantages. It feels infrastructure must be developed long in advance of actual occupation and the large capital and transportation investments will cause negative cash flows for many years. In addition, it is also apprehensive about large subsidies especially to public transport. It concludes that large capital investments for new areas will be hard to justify when 80 per cent of Kabul's existing population has inadequate access to infrastructure.

No clear strategies

India's present national policy on managing urban growth can at best be seen as floundering. There are no clear national, State or city level strategies. All indications are that the state is slowly withdrawing from active large-scale urban intervention. Energies are focussed on creating corporate spaces — special economic zones, hi-tech-cities. Private enclaves are mushrooming on the outskirts of the metros. Are these private enclaves the way towards sustainable urban development? How would they work in relation to existing cities?

The Centre for Real Estate at MIT, Massachusetts, identifies such enclaves emerging at the intersection of technology, new economy, and real estate development. Singapore's One North and Seoul's Digital Media City are examples. One North district, a quasi-government project, is proposed on 200 hectares. Digital Media City is a project of the city government and spread over 55 hectares. On the other hand, similar enclaves in India are totally private in nature and hardly have plans for integrating with existing cities.

Such brand cities are proposing many offices, hi-tech corridors, acres of lawn, pools, lakes, and gardens. These are projected as efficient cities where there will be no dirt, no waiting, and no interruption in power supply. As one critic remarked, they will also have no burial grounds and no cremation sheds. It is not clear whether these cities will alleviate the problems of the parent cities or add to them.

For example, one of the enclaves coming up on the outskirts of Mumbai is meant for a population of one million spread over 14,000 hectares. This is exactly half the projected population of Navi Mumbai. The proposed density of this new city is about 71 people per hectare or 7,214 people per square kilometre. This is one third of the existing Mumbai city. According to the Urban Development Plans Formulation and Implementation (UDPFI) guidelines proposed by the Union Ministry of Urban Development, the preferred densities for large metros are about 125 people to 175 people per hectare. In other words, these private enclaves are planned as luxuriously spread garden cities.

Such low-density development has serious implication for a country with a large population and food security issues. Studies show that in 1901, the land available per person in India's urban areas was about 1.28 hectares while in 2001 it had shrunk to 0.32 hectares per person. On an average worldwide, every new urban resident is converting some 500 square metres of non-urban land to urban land. This affects the extent of cropland available. Numbers on that front are grim. Studies by the Earth Policy Institute, an independent environmental research organisation, show that cropland in India declined from 0.22 hectares per person in 1950 to 0.10 hectares in 2000. It is projected that by 2050, this will further shrink to 0.06 hectares.

Besides the environmental questions, the lack of mixed housing within private enclaves raises other social issues. The Navi Mumbai scheme had dedicated low-income housing. Apart from reducing trips to the workplace and the cost of transport, it promoted heterogeneity. On the other hand, the new enclaves are exclusive and have no social housing component. In addition, the low-density development will price houses out of the reach of most. This means the parent city will end up taking the additional burden of housing the cheap labour for the enclaves.

Inequality in cities has been there for ages. Plato describes the divided city in his Republic, but the issue is not just difference but polarisation. Earlier cities were uneven, but what we could now end up with is the dilution of the public nature of the city. Critics use the analogy of the hourglass to explain this. Cities that earlier had a thin section of elites and poor at the top and the bottom are now acquiring an hourglass shape — where the top and bottom are wide and almost completely separated. Such polarisation will not help reinforce the public nature of the city. Instead it may provoke people to perceive corporate cities as parasitic entities.

The Randstad urban model of the Netherlands might not entirely serve as an alternative but has some principles worth looking at. The Randstad is a horseshoe-shaped 70-km-wide region, which includes large cities such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Utrecht. These cities have less hierarchy and urban growth is limited to the rim with a protected green area at the centre. Since 1998, these cities have not been developed individually and independently; instead they are networked, integrated and developed. Here the shift is from simple physical expansion of cities to a broader integration of transport, governance, and citizens of a region.

If such a policy was considered, Chennai might not have looked to develop a new town. It would have looked at its own horseshoe that encompasses Kancheepuram and Chengalpattu. Instead of acquiring large parcels of land, it would have proposed a high-speed public transport network between the three cities, and provided incentives for the cities to grow and reduce the hierarchy between them.

Neither the unrestricted expansion of mega cities nor encouraging private islands of development is a way out. What may be useful is a radical rethinking that will shift emphasis from individual city development to integrated development of cities.

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