Future of Cities

Planning, Infrastructure, and Development

Ashok Kumar, D.S. Meshram, Ashok Kumar, D.S. Meshram

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000598940
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Urban Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book critically analyses the existing condition of cities in developing countries with special reference to planning and infrastructure networks in India. It provides an overview of the nature of opportunities presented by cities; major challenges that cities would face in future; and codifies the ways and means to transcend the challenges of contemporary urban growth and quality of urbanisation. It discusses key themes such as architecture of density, transformation of land-use zones to development zones, development of railway infrastructure, planning and design guidelines for bus rapid transit, and urban water planning and universal access to housing to create an enabling environment for deliberations and a better future for cities in the developing world.

The book integrates insights from governance, planning, and design and highlights implications of spatial integration. It brings together current issues in Indian urbanisation, smart technologies used in building smart cities and high-rises, and urban and regional governance to explore forms of sustainable development planning that factor human needs.

Accessible and topical, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of urban studies, urban and city planning, development studies, sociology, public policy and administration, political sociology, anthropology, architecture, geography, and economics, as well as to professionals, planners, policymakers, and non-governmental organisations.

1 AN INTRODUCTION – FUTURE OF CITIES Planning, Infrastructure, and Development

Ashok Kumar

DOI: 10.4324/9781003296218-1

Introduction: Economic Reforms and the City

Indian cities and towns have experienced major transformations since the economic reforms of July 1991. Large-scale investments have been made to build global quality infrastructural elements, such as metro systems, international airports, seaports, highway road networks, and rail-centred corridor developments, among others. Today’s middle classes have abundant opportunities to make housing choices within urban areas and their peripheries. Indian cities are increasingly characterised by modern shopping and entertainment spaces where the consuming classes lavishly spend their earnings. A world-class, private sector–led health system has been developed, which treats Indian, as well as foreign, patients who can afford the luxury of expensive health care. In a few decades, Indian cities have become places of modern living for the aspiring and elite classes, and as Hindol Sengupta¹ argues, ‘India is being recast, remoulded and redefined’ for the enterprising middle classes. As Indian cities are being recast, urban residents are breaking free, benefitting from new opportunities, as well as creating their own. Thus, urban India is transforming itself into a beacon of hope for the country’s large aspiring middle class, which has always desired to compete with its global peers. Hope has replaced despondency.

All of this has been made possible by a long-lasting economic boom that began three decades ago, when the Indian economy was gradually freed from state constraints with increasing private-sector participation in almost all areas. The aforementioned reforms resulted in the speedy growth of the gross domestic product (GDP) and radically changed India’s economic position in the world. As Sadiq Ahmed and Ashutosh Varshney² note,

[r]apid growth since [the] 1980s transformed India from the world’s 50th ranked economy in nominal US dollars to the 11th largest in 2009. When income is measured with regard to purchasing power parity, India’s economy occupies fourth place, after the United States, Japan and China.³

Emboldened by the sustained upturn, the current prime minister has predicted that the Indian economy to reach US$5 trillion by 2024 – although this boisterous projection was announced prior to the crippling onset of COVID-19. Given that the global pandemic has struck India, its real GDP is predicted to contract by 3.2 per cent in 2020, which would be a decline of 7.4 per cent from 2019.⁴ However, from 2021, the Indian economy is expected to begin growing again, albeit at a low rate.

Cities have played a prominent role in the Indian economic growth story, and they will continue to serve as the chief nodes of productive investment for the near future. A number of studies have highlighted the supremacy of the urban sector as a predominant contributor to India’s GDP. The Indian government specified that in 1999–2000, cities contributed 52 per cent to the Indian GDP growth, and this figure increased to 63 per cent in 2009–2010.⁵ According to another estimate, the urban sector currently contributes 66 per cent to the Indian GDP, and this figure is expected to rise to 75 per cent by 2031.⁶ Furthermore, the economic future of the Indian cities looks bright, as all of the global top 10 fastest growing cities by GDP are located in India⁷ (also see Table 1.1). As indicated earlier, Indian cities are also places of the great consuming classes.⁸ A recent report by the McKenzie Global Institute shows that India’s 54 metropolitan districts accounted for 45 per cent of consuming class households in 2012, and this figure is likely to increase to 50 per cent of households in 69 metropolitan districts by 2025.⁹ Without a doubt, the Indian city has become the seedbed of economic growth, and urban pre-eminence will likely only increase over time.

TABLE 1.1 Top 10 Fastest Growing Cities in the World, 2019–2035

Rank	Growth (% Y/Y)	City	GDP 2018 US$ Billion, 2018 Constant Prices	GDP 2035 US$ Billion, 2018 Constant Prices
1	9.17	Surat	28.5	126.8
2	8.58	Agra	3.9	15.6
3	8.50	Bengaluru	70.8	283.3
4	8.47	Hyderabad	50.6	201.4
5	8.41	Nagpur	12.3	48.6
6	8.36	Tiruppur	4.3	17.0
7	8.33	Rajkot	6.8	26.7
8	8.29	Tiruchirappalli	4.9	19.0
9	8.17	Chennai	36.0	136.8
10	8.16	Vijayawada	5.6	21.3
Source: Wood (2018).
Note: GDP = gross domestic product.

Making and sustaining the economic growth of Indian cities depends on various factors, which this introductory chapter perceives as challenges to be overcome. Major hindrances to more widespread growth and prosperity include inadequate housing because of unemployment or low income; lack of access to water and sanitation; inefficient management of solid wastes; underdeveloped transport infrastructure; inefficient urban governance and a lack of authority and capacity; environmental vulnerabilities; social, economic, and political exclusion of marginalised groups; unaccountable and non-participatory city planning; and rent-seeking land markets.¹⁰

As is common in any capitalist system, the economic geography of India is characterised by a deep concentration of productive activities in only a few states. From an economic perspective, India can be divided into four groups of states, which range from very high performing to high performing to performing and low performing. McKinsey Global Institute estimates that by 2025, the first two groups, which comprise a total of 12 states, will generate nearly 60 per cent of India’s GDP and host 57 per cent of the consuming class. The top four very high-performing states of Delhi, Chandigarh, Goa, and Puducherry (all of which evince a very high level of urbanisation) are expected to generate double the country’s average per capita GDP. Spread across 794,000 km2, eight high-performing states – Gujarat, Haryana, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana – will also generate high per capita GDP ranging from 1.2 to 2 times the national average.¹¹ Here, the relevant question is why the highest productivity (per capita GDP) is concentrated in these 12 states. The answer lies in the agglomeration economies reflected in better housing, physical, and social infrastructure; concentration of financial institutions; the presence of high-level government decision-making bodies; and highly skilled human resources, which are unavailable elsewhere in the country. Moreover, in addition to a high literacy rate, an urban settlement with a ‘higher ratio of employment in manufacturing to that in services causes increases in the city’s non-primary output. Finally, good public services such as population coverage with primary schools also increase non-primary output per capita’.¹²

Following a brief account of the Indian city’s role in the past three decades of economic reforms and growth, the second part of this chapter analyses urban challenges. The third includes a review of book chapters, after which we divide the last part into two sections, the first of which summarises major conclusions and the second of which critically considers the future of the Indian city and recommends ways to resolve some of the major urban challenges.

Challenges of Urban India

In our view, urban challenges refer to absences, hindrances, inadequacies, insufficiencies, and incompleteness in planning and managing cities, which result in inefficiencies, inequalities, and inequities. Urban challenges differentially affect businesses, population groups, and individuals. For example, a lack of infrastructural elements, such as roads and rail links, power, and water, may adversely affect inward urban investment, thereby slowing down industrial development, services, and other productive activities. Inadequate infrastructure may affect the locational decisions of entrepreneurs, who may only opt for certain urban areas and states. City residents may face inequitable resource distribution because of inefficient governance, and low income may reduce some individuals’ quality of life relative to others. Unfair policies and decision-making processes may reduce equal opportunities for individuals belonging to certain racial, ethnic, and religious or caste groups. Urban challenges most brutally affect the urban poor, who normally are either unemployed or have low-paying jobs. In either case, they suffer from a lack of access to basic services and affordable housing and are compelled to live in slums and squatter settlements, ill-maintained night shelters, or even footpaths and streets.

However, before we discuss specific major urban challenges, determining which issues to highlight poses an additional difficulty. The inclusion and exclusion of challenges largely depend on who is making that list. For example, global funding agencies may prepare a very different set of urban challenges than scholarship produced by political economists and more recently by political ecologists. The following account is this author’s perspective on urban challenges, which we optimistically comprehend as ‘curable city disabilities’. Without being reductionist, for us, urban governance and finance are the most significant issues because these elements predominantly influence other challenges.

Deepening Local Governance?

The year 1992 marks the beginning of fundamental changes in the governance and financing of urban settlements in India. With the singular purpose of devolution of powers and finances to urban local bodies, the Constitution of India was amended to establish a uniform three-tier system of urban local bodies, thereby producing three types of municipalities, namely, municipal corporations for large urban areas, municipal councils for comparatively smaller urban areas, and nagar panchayats (city councils) for areas transitioning from rural to urban status. States used population size as a criterion to determine the largeness or smallness of urban areas. Other important provisions of this constitutional amendment included the formation of municipal-level ward committees, as well as district and metropolitan planning committees. Another critical provision was that each state would set up a state finance commission for financial devolution.

To deepen democracy, a provision of regular elections at all levels within and for municipalities was implemented, the responsibility for which was attributed to state election commissions. However, not all states have held regular elections. For example, the five-year term of elected municipalities ended on 29 September 2010 in Andhra Pradesh; however, in a complete violation of the constitutional provisions, fresh municipal elections were not completed until 12 May 2014. Municipal elections were also delayed in Odisha because several candidates fielded by the ruling political party lost assembly elections in urban constituencies. In Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, municipal elections were delayed primarily because of political manoeuvring involving drawn-out litigation in various courts and the state governments’ inability to delimit constituencies and reserve seats in time. Furthermore, in progressive states like Karnataka, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palika (BBMP; Bengaluru’s municipality) was administered without conducting elections from 2008 to 2010.¹³

Scholars argue that the constitutional configuration of the Indian state hinders decentralisation. According to globally renowned economist Pranab Bard-han, India is

a ‘holding together’ federation, where the states comprising the I...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 An Introduction – Future of Cities: Planning, Infrastructure, and Development
• Part I Governance of Cities
• Part II Production of the Built Environment
• Part III Movements of People, Goods, Information, Ideas
• Part IV Future-Proofing Cities
• Index