URBANISATION

Maharashtra to get nation’s first real estate regulator

Priyanka Kakodkar

To control builders’ lobby, has powers of a civil court

In 2009, Avadhesh Agarwal, 35, paid Rs. 2.8 lakh as instalment towards a flat in a project coming up near suburban Kalyan. Three years later, the project was grounded because the developer could not get clearances.

“I got the money back, but could not invest elsewhere. By then, real estate prices there had doubled,” Mr. Agarwal, who works for a private firm, says.

In a city where real estate prices are among the highest in the world, many like him are hoping the country’s first real estate regulator will control the powerful builders’ lobby. Maharashtra will be the first State to appoint one as the Maharashtra Housing (Regulation and Development) Act, 2012, received Presidential assent this week.

The Act makes it mandatory for developers to disclose property title and layout and completion plans to buyers. The project details have to be registered with the regulatory authority and will be displayed on its website.

Refund for delay

Developers will be responsible for fixing major defects that crop up in the building during the first five years and may have to refund buyers for delayed projects. The regulator has the powers of a civil court and can impose fines of up to Rs. 1 crore and prison terms up to three years.

“This is a landmark Act for boosting transparency and protecting buyers,” Minister of State for Housing Sachin Ahir says. The Centre is mulling over similar legislation, which will take precedence, if passed.

“Pricing issue

not addressed”

Critics say that unlike the telecom and power regulators, the housing regulator does not address the critical issue of pricing. “The main problem in Mumbai is the lack of affordable housing. How does this law change that?” housing activist Chandrashekhar Prabhu asks.

Activists feel the new law does not improve on the existing Maharashtra Ownership Flats Act, 1963, much. “The earlier legislation allowed for criminal complaints against developers. The new Act allows for imprisonment only if the orders of the regulator are not complied with. This weakens the consumer’s position,” Shirish Deshpande of Mumbai Grahak Panchayat says.

The Act excludes large housing stock from its purview: houses built by the State-run Maharashtra Housing and Development Authority (MHADA) and City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO). Also, the rehabilitation component of redevelopment projects, which form the bulk of construction in the city.

Builder groups are unhappy with additional regulation. They say this will delay projects and raise costs.

Road to urban future

The grim future of cities played out in Paris recently. Smog wrapped the city and air pollution increased beyond safe limits. Pollutants, particularly particulate matter measuring less than 10 micrometre in diameter (PM{-1}{-0}) reached unsafe levels of 180 micrograms per cubic metre, against the WHO’s permissible limit of 50 micrograms per cubic metre (24-hour mean). Though bad weather contributed to this high concentration, the principal cause, as is often the case, was increased fuel emission. The city authorities had to take drastic steps to reduce pollution since prolonged inhaling of particulate matter would cause respiratory diseases, lung cancer and cardiovascular ailments. They imposed restrictions on the use of cars, permitting vehicles with odd and even number plates to ply only on alternate dates and encouraging shared use of cars. People were allowed to use buses, Metro rail and other public transport, besides shared bicycles, free of charge during weekends. The reasoning was that restrictions and incentives would encourage commuters to shift to public transport, thus reducing pollution. Initial reports indicated that these measures worked, and congestion had come down by 60 per cent. Free use of public transport cost the city about $5.5 million a day, but considering the public-health interest it was a necessary investment.

There is a lesson or two here for Indian cities. The Central Pollution Control Board has listed more than 70 cities that have violated ambient air quality standards. Places such as Delhi and Ludhiana have unacceptable levels of PM{-1}{-0}— 198 and 259 micrograms per cubic metre respectively. Mitigation efforts thus far have been limited to improving the fuel efficiency of vehicles. Enhancing emission norms is necessary, but equally critical is the need to increase the use of public transport. Delhi is a case in point. The Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority for the Delhi region, in a recent report, stated that all gains made by converting buses and three-wheelers to Compressed Natural Gas have been lost to a rapid increase in the number of private vehicles. The level of particulate matter has increased substantially over the years. Though various urban policies have stated that public transport is a priority, on the ground, investments have not matched intentions. The modal share of public transport has steadily declined in the large cities. It is only in recent years that State governments are trying to increase transport options by building metro rail networks. This alone may not deliver. Integrating city functions with transport plans and encouraging non-motorised transport such as cycling are also critical. The future of Indian cities is inextricably tied to the improvement of public transport.

Unclogging Mumbai





BC Khatua works at Botawala Building opposite the 140-year-old Horniman Circle Garden in south Mum bai. To meet him, you'll have to dodge sweaty work men perched precariously on ladders and make your way to the dimly lit lobby of the ancient building. A dust covered British-era elevator creaks its way up to the third floor, where Khatua works in a room whose only decoration are maps of Mumbai. Khatua heads MTSU, or Mumbai Transformation Support Unit, a body mandated to advise, coordinate and monitor projects undertaken by the city's multi ple governing bodies. MTSU's one-point agenda: to facilitate the transformation of Mumbai into a world class city. It is ironical that the man keeping an eye on the city's transformation sits in a building that could do with a lick of metamorphosis itself. “Just step outside this building and look at Horni man Circle,“ says Khatua, director, MTSU. “It was de signed such a long time ago and it's so beautiful after all these years.“ In the same breath, Khatua says, the beauty of the city of the '60s and '70s is gone and has been replaced by a concrete jungle. Too Little, Too Late But then again, over the past year, Mumbai has had a few reasons to smile. If you have been away from Mumbai, you are likely to be surprised by the change in the city. It now has a Metro line, a monorail, a freeway that connects the eastern suburbs to `town', and the Santa Cruz Chembur Link Road (SCLR) and a double-decker flyover which connects the eastern and western suburbs over a swathe of slums. That's just one way of looking at it. Most of the projects were delayed. One of them, the SCLR, earned the epithet “world's most delayed road project“ from the World Bank. The monorail was greeted with derision as the project in its current state hardly connects populated areas. As for the Metro, it's too little, too late. To put Mumbai's Metro push in perspective, the 11.4-km line was built over six years. Delhi adds more Metro track than that in just a year. The scariest part? Mumbai has no visibility about when the next Metro lines will be operational. 2019 is the most optimistic view. So, what's going wrong with Mumbai? Like Adi Godrej, chairman of Godrej group, puts it, “Mumbai is not in a decline...things are changing, but not at the pace they should be. The city has to keep up with the times.“ The dhobi list of Mumbai's problems is familiar and frustrating. One, it is an extraordinarily congested city. “The Mumbai Metropolitan Region [MMR, which includes Mumbai and its satellite towns like Navi Mumbai and Thane] is about 4,350 sq km. Of this, Mumbai and its suburbs account for 482 sq km, just 11%“ explains Khatua. “However, the population is largely focused around Mumbai and its suburbs. So, we have a situation where nearly 12.5 mil lion people out of the 22 million [in MMR] living in just 11% of the city's land mass,“ adds Khatua. This has started to change as people are moving beyond Mumbai city limits and its suburbs to its satellite towns in search of more affordable dwelling. Like the 2011 census showed, the population of the island city of Mumbai came down from 33.26 lakh in 2001 to 31.45 lakh in 2011 (down 5.4%). During this period, Navi Mumbai grew by 59%. The dense population of Mumbai makes any major infrastructure work in the city and its suburbs a nightmare. Unique Problems, Zero Planning Even as the city has struggled to add infra structure, its challenges have mul tiplied. Mumbai's vehicle popula tion has shot up from just under 7 lakh in 1991 to 21 lakh in 2013 -that in a city surrounded by sea from three sides. BMC reportedly has just 12,000 official parking lots for this ocean of vehicles. Moreover, over 450 vehicles get registered in the MMR region every day. And that's just one part of the challenge. “Seventeen agencies are involved in the city's governance,“ says Narinder Nayar, chairman of Bombay First, a body that is working with the Maharashtra government and local bodies to better the city's cause. “I compare it with an orchestra. You have 17 players -each one of them good at what they do -but without a conductor...it simply can't work,“ says Nayar. This orchestra produces almost comedic situations in Mumbai's infrastructure planning, if only the results were not painful to the public. A recent example: when the eastern freeway was inaugurated, planners failed to budget for the thousands of cars that would land up at one of the junctions where the freeway ends (Shivaji Chowk). What ensued was absolute chaos for a few days. The chowk is now being remodelled. “Mumbai's approach to infrastructure has been reactive instead of proactive,“ says Pranay Vakil, chairman of Praron Consultancy, a real estate consultancy. “Also, the projects are so behind schedule that by the time they are complete, the growing population exceeds the project's utility,“ adds Vakil. And then, there is the big one: political will. “Most Maharashtra politicians hail from rural areas. They do not understand or care about urban issues as their political interests lie beyond the city,“ says a former bureaucrat, who did not want to be named. As a result, despite every political party staking claim over Mumbai, very few are really committed to fixing issues specific to the city. CEOs and CRZs So, what can be done to fix Mumbai? Most people agree that a good starting point would be to make one person accountable for Mumbai's growth and development. A CEO of sorts is what we need, argues Nayar. “Most cities across the world be it New York or London have powerful people like mayors who are responsible for the fate of that city. It's only in India that this does not happen,“ says Godrej. MTSU's Khatua believes that a minister for the MMR region whose sole agenda is Mumbai might be a good idea. Most people ET Magazine spoke to also believe that some laws like the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) laws need to be eased for Mumbai. “Mumbai seriously needs to consider reclaiming land. Three-fourth of the Netherlands is on reclaimed land. This can be done in an environmentally conscious way,“ says Nayar, who adds that building a coastal road along the western coast will ease congestion on the city's western suburbs. But for that, a central level intervention would be necessary to ease CRZ laws for Mumbai. The Next Big Things Most importantly, Mumbai should give up its piecemeal approach to planning. A few flyovers here, a Metro line there -that's the approach that got Mumbai into trouble in the first place. “We need an integrated approach to infrastructure development not just random fixes. For that we need somebody with vision, willing to take the hard decisions,“ says a former planner, who retired last year. “Otherwise, Mumbai is going to be in serious trouble, five years from now,“ he adds. So, what can Mumbai do over the next five years? “We need to open up the mainland,“ says Milind Mhaske, project director, Praja Foundation, a Mumbai-based NGO working on civic issues. “Mumbai has just four exits from the city. In comparison, New York has 11 exits. If we open up the mainland, housing would become affordable,“ he adds. The Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link, a 22-km proposed sea link, does just that. It has been in the news for almost a decade but nothing concrete has happened. The next two lines of the Metro should also be commissioned at the earliest and planning for further lines should also start simultaneously, city watchers say. More importantly, Mumbai should focus on improving public transport. “Mumbai should put a bus rapid transit system in place like Ahmedabad,“ says Mhaske. He says the project would not be as expensive and would reduce private vehicle traffic in the city. Mumbai should also actively renew its intra-city sea ferries. However, a former bureaucrat ET Magazine spoke to said that efforts to introduce a ferry service from Nariman Point are being stymied by the Bombay Port Trust. The trust has the right of way for the waterways in that part of Mumbai and it is expecting a commercial fee that would make the project unviable, he says. “Mumbai badly needs more FSI [floor space index, or the ratio of built-up area and plot area available] so that we can grow vertically. Most global cities have an FSI above 10,“ says Godrej, who believes that the new international airport in Navi Mumbai should be expedited. For instance, Shanghai has an FSI of 13 and New York 15. Mumbai's FSI currently ranges between 1.33 and 4 depending on the locality and the nature of the project. “The government can use the additional revenue [courtesy of an increased FSI] to build infrastructure,“ says Godrej. A Ray of Hope MTSU's Khatua believes that the city has a golden opportunity to rewrite its destiny. “When the city's mills died, the state had the opportunity to redevelop that massive parcel of land to make it a green, modern hub. But we lost that opportunity,“ recalls Khatua with a hint of regret. But Mumbai still has a chance, a healthy one. Of the 4,350 sq km in the MMR region, 39% is what Khatua calls “non-urban“ land. Of this, 28% is “developable“, that is, it is not within forests or creeks or marshes. That amounts to 475 sq km of virgin land, almost the size of Mumbai city and its suburbs put together. “If we use this land in a planned and judicious manner, Mumbai can be a city of the future a few decades from now,“ he adds. Khatua also sees an opportunity if the 700 acres of land held by the Bombay Port Trust is freed up. “Like Sydney harbour, Mumbai can create a marina, develop floating restaurants, host water sports...“ When asked if Mumbai was in a decline, most people ET Magazine spoke to said: “No.“ But all of them paused a bit before they answered that question. The doubts have clearly crept in; if the city isn't given a boost soon, the pauses may get longer.









‘Enforce norms to save lives’

Ambika Pandit

New Delhi TNN





Disasters In Buildings, Slums Taking A Toll: Letter To UD Dept

About 2,000 people lost their lives in fires in the capital between 2007 and 2012. The capital’s vulnerability on account of poor structural safety norms comes through in data with the Delhi government that reflects that nearly one lakh blazes have been reported since 2007 and over 11,000 were injured or burnt.In 2013 alone, 93 structures collapsed and 64 factory fires were reported from different parts of Delhi. These incidents claimed 42 lives and left 194 people injured. On May 30, 2014, winds of moderate intensity led to 14 deaths; 11 people were injured.
Citing this data, Delhi’s divisional commissioner Dharampal has written to the urban development department and civic agencies, seeking a techno-legal framework for regulating and monitoring all construction activities. He has emphasized the enforcement of structural safety guidelines to prevent loss of life and property in an earthquake or any other natural or man-made disaster.
“It is, therefore, of utmost importance that structural safety norms, including earthquake-resistant building codes as prescribed by the Bureau of Indian Standards and National Building Code of India 2005, be strictly enforced,” .
The Delhi Disaster Management Authority feels the challenge lies in putting in place a techno-legal framework for regulation and monitoring of all construction activity so as to ensure that all built-up structures, whether residential or commercial, comply with minimum standards laid down for structural and fire safety.
It is recommended that no building be allowed to come up in Delhi without sanctioned building plans.
It is also felt that there is a need to create awareness about fire safety in unauthorized constructions, slums and congested markets as the problem is more acute in overpopulated commercial and industrial areas. Officials feel that fire safety audit of such buildings need to be done as a priority. Local bodies must consider imposing heavier fines and in extreme cases shut down units which flout rules.

Delhi downsizes as population in NCR booms

Subodh Varma

TIG





Honey, they've shrunk the city . Recently re leased census data shows that between 2001 and 2011, population in Mumbai, Kolkata and two inner districts of Delhi declined, while in Hyderabad and Chennai only a small increase took place. But surrounding regions of these cities showed phenomenal growth, indicating a shifting center of gravity in metropolises.Declining populations in some of the metropolises is notable though unsurprising. These cities are unable to absorb further migration due to high cost of living, explains RB Bhagat, head of migration and urban studies at the Mumbai-based International Institute for Population Sciences.
“These districts also have the lowest fertility -much lower than two children per woman. Slum relocation/squatter clearances may also have contributed,“ he told TOI.
Two of Delhi's nine districts showed a decline in population between 2001 and 2011 Censuses -New Delhi and Central Delhi. But all other districts in Delhi showed increases, with some like South-West increasing by 31%. Population of four adjacent districts of Delhi, Gurgaon and Faridabad in Haryana and Ghaziabad and Gautam Budh Nagar (Noida) in UP, have exploded. Gurgaon leads the pack with a jaw-dropping increase of 73% in a decade, while Noida grew at about 50% and Ghaziabad at 41%. Mumbai city district, which extends from Colaba in the south to Mahim and Sion in the north, saw a population dip of about 8% between 2001 and 2011. The adjacent Mumbai Suburban district grew at a sedate 8% in the same period. But Thane grew at 36% and Raigarh district by 19%.
Kolkata too has a similar story with the city district's population dipping by about 2% while population in the surrounding North and South 24 Parganas, Hoogly and Howrah districts have all increased by 10 to nearly 20%. Chennai grew by about 7% percent but the adjacent Thiruvallur district grew by 35% and Kancheepuram by nearly 40%.
Overall, 21 districts in the country have shown an absolute decline in population.
Six are in Nagaland, the only state in the country where population declined between 2001 and 2011.
Lack of employment opportunities is the prime reason why people are moving out from remote areas to urban centers, and then out of the state altogether.
Other districts which show a similar trend are mountainous districts like Lahaul & Spiti in HP, Almora and Garhwal in Uttarakhand, and the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu. Three hilly districts abutting the Konkan coast ­ Chickmaglur in Karnataka and Sindhudurg and Ratnagiri in Maharashtra too show population decline.
Coming back to metros, Hyderabad showed a tiny increase in population of about 3% in a decade. But the surrounding Ranga Reddy district's population zoomed up by a phenomenal 48%.
Pune and Bangalore seem to be exceptions to this trend.
Pune grew by over 30% and Bangalore by over 47% between 2001 and 2011, reflecting their new IT hub status perhaps.
The adjacent districts do not show an exceptional increase, because both these cities had enough space to absorb the growing population.
But this may change in the coming years as saturation takes place.
According to Bhagat, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts have been traditionally out-migration districts and people from there are moving to both Pune and Thane.

CITY CITY BANG BANG

TV Mahalingam





Narendra Modi’s dream project, the GIFT megalopolis in Gujarat, offers vital clues to the NDA government’s vision for 100 smart cities

Eighteen kilometers off Ahmedabad airport, two tall buildings rise out of literally nowhere. The twin towers with cobalt blue glass façades are anomalies in the otherwise brown, dusty landscape. At 122 metres and 28 floors high, the towers are the tallest in Gujarat. But height isn't really their claim to fame. The towers are the first buildings to go up in Narendra Modi's dream project: the Gujarat International Financial Tec (GIFT) City. GIFT City, in all likelihood, will be India's first `smart city' to be built from scratch. At GIFT City, the action is happening on the ground and under it. An army of workers is sweating in the sweltering sun, pounding roads and erecting buildings for a school, a fire station and a cooling plant. Workmen are also burrowing underground, digging what will eventually be a 12-km long maze of utility tunnels, through which everything from power cables to fibre optic cables to water pipelines will be routed. When GIFT City's cooling towers will become operational, buildings won't use air-conditioning but district cooling technology, a far more energy-efficient process that circulates chilled water through buildings to cool them. Solid waste will be sucked out from homes and offices at 90 km/hr using pipelines leading directly to a waste processing plant. When fully functional, GIFT City will have a command centre with information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure spread across the city which will manage everyday chores like traffic movement. The closest most Indians have been to experiencing anything like this is inside a cinema hall, for the price of the latest Hollywood sci-fi flick. But, that may change. A Hundred Cities In its election manifesto, the BJP had promised to build 100 hi-tech cities. The NDA government seems to be keen to fulfil that promise. “You cannot build cities overnight. It takes 20-30 years to build a new city. Instead of just making new cities, our idea is to make our exist ing cities smart,“ Union minister for housing and urban development Ven kaiah Naidu told ET a cou ple of days ago. “There will be a mix. One, to con vert an old city into a smart one. Two, to build new cities wherever possible,“ said Naidu. For instance, seven new smart cities are being developed from scratch along the proposed Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC). “We expect the first phase [40-50 sq km] of three smart cities -Dholera [Gujarat], Shendra-Bidkin [Maharashtra] and Global City [Haryana] -to be delivered by 2019,“ says Amitabh Kant, secretary, department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP). Kant, a former CEO and managing director of DMIC (he's still a director on the board), expects these cities to be home to 2-2.5 million people by 2040. India is not the only country building such cities (see What's Happening Beyond India, pg 11). Brand new smart cities are mushrooming in China, the UAE and South Korea. Meanwhile, cities like Barcelona in Spain and Montpellier in France are implementing smart city solutions to deliver better services to their citizens. In fact, over the next 20 years, over $41 trillion is expected to be spent on smart city projects. Given this, it is not surprising that everybody from the computing giants like Cisco, IBM, Oracle to surveillance solutions vendors are licking their chops in anticipation. “About 10% of the overall cost to build a smart city [or upgrade a current city] will be the cost for implementing surveillance solutions,“ says Sudhindra Holla, country manager, Axis Communications India, the Indian arm of the Swedish manufacturer of network cameras. What's Makes it Smarter So, what is a `smart city' all about? “Smart cities are not about just e-governance. A smart city is one that uses technology to transform its core systems to optimize the best use of its finite resources,“ says Rahul Sharma, executive director and partner, global business service, IBM In dia. Currently IBM is working on 2,500 smart city projects globally. At the heart of the smart city is a vast and all-pervasive ICT network that serves three broad purposes: improving a city's economic efficiency; promoting a better quality of life for citizens; and thereby promoting a sustainable urban environment. Like Kant puts it: “In the new smart cities like Dholera [in the DMIC], we have planned for ICT as another layer of infrastructure along with roads, sewage. It is embedded right in the planning stage of the project.“ So, how different are the new smart cities likely to be from other cities? For one, most of them are not expected to be large urban sprawls like the existing metro cities. Take GIFT City, for instance. “GIFT City has two main features: a smart city and a global financial hub,“ says Ramakant Jha, managing director, GIFT City. “We see nearly 30,000-40,000 people working out of GIFT City by the end of next year. In 10 years, GIFT City will create 5 lakh direct jobs and anoth er 5 lakh indirect jobs,“ says Jha, ple will be living in GIFT City by adding that 60,000-80,000 peo 2024. But then, is GIFT City re ally a city? Or is it just a well-planned central business district (CBD) with fancy technology? After all, when it is fully built up, GIFT City will be about 900 acres in size -less than a tenth in size of Dubai's International Airport (8,500 acres). But then, consider this: the two most talked about smart cities in the world, Songdo (South Korea) and Masdar (UAE), are just about 1,500 acres each in size -larger than GIFT but much smaller than Dubai's airport. Reluctant Urbanizer “GIFT City's planners have moved away from the notion that Indian planners traditionally suffered from...to build long, sprawling green cities which frankly isn't going to work,“ argues Angshik Chowdhury, director, operations, of Smart+Connected Communities at Cisco India. “Increasingly, most economic activities are going to happen in cities that are compact, where there is primary emphasis on transport and job creation...GIFT is not a very, long sprawling city and the ability to manage the city is built in,“ a d d s C h o w d h u r y. C i s c o ' s Smart+Connected portfolio includes remote access to city infrastructure management solutions for connected parking, traffic, safety and security. On the other hand Dholera, which is planned as a manufacturing hub, is spread across 900 sq km -twice the size of Ahmedabad. Does India really need such cities? If there is one thing everybody agrees on, it is that India is urbanizing and really fast. A 2010 McKinsey report throws up numbers that are any urban planner's worst nightmare. By 2030, 590 million Indians will live in cities, up from 340 million in 2008. It took almost 40 years (19712008) for India's urban population to grow by 230 million. The next 250 million city dwellers will be added in half that time. The report suggested that India build nearly 25 satellite cities near large tier I and tier II cities, each accommodating up to a million people. “India has been a reluctant urbanizer... but urbanization is inevitable,“ says Kant. “When America was urbanizing, both land and gas prices were cheap. As a result, the cities were built as large urban sprawls,“ adds Kant, pointing out that Indian cities don't have that luxury. “The use of ICT is an opportunity for Indian cities to leapfrog to the level of cities in developed countries,“ says Kant. From Scratch or Not? What is likely to be the Indian government's approach? Given that building cities from scratch is time and capital consuming, retrofitting smart technology in existing cities may be the way forward. “It is easier to do it in a greenfield project as you start with a clean slate. Also, in a greenfield project, you can offer all services together,“ says Aamer Azeemi, managing director, Cisco Consulting Services, India who has spearheaded the American networking giant's ICT master planning efforts for Dholera. However, brownfield projects (building on sites that have been developed before) are more expensive and tend to be painful to implement. “Just imagine the hassle of laying fibre in any part of Mumbai city,“ says an industry executive. Kant says that the cost of ICT in the proposed DMIC greenfield cities is just 3-4% of total project cost. However, retrofitting cities with smart technologies can cost 1-2% more. “In brownfield projects, cities first tend to offer services that have a revenue potential. How do I make parking smart so that it generates revenue to sustain other activities,“ asks Cisco's Azeemi. “In greenfield projects, city managers tend to leverage the greatest asset they have the right of way for the information highways they have built. A lot of cit ies invest in putting fibre on the ground and lease that out as it is used to offer common services,“ he adds. Building cities -smart or otherwise -from scratch is easier said than done. “The most important part of building a city is to focus on its economic centre,“ says Ajit Gulabchand, chairman, HCC, whose construction company is developing a `hill city' called Lavasa in Maharashtra. “A good starting point is to ask: what is the anchor identity of the city? What is the soul of the city?“ says Vinayak Chatterjee, chairman, Feedback Infra, a consulting firm. “Is it a refinery city or a university city? That answer will tell you where the city must be located and its master-planning contours.“ For instance, refinery cities have to be based near ports, and a university town could be based in the hills, he adds. That will also determine how large or small a city is spread. That explains why Dholera, which is focused on manufacturing, will be almost 250 times larger than GIFT City, which is focused on financial services. Then comes, what Chatterjee calls, `the anchor magnet' of the city. For instance, in Jamshedpur's case it was the Tata Steel factory. New or Renew “I will be glad if we have the economic plans and financial models tied up for five new smart cities in the next five years. That would be a considerable achievement,“ says Chatterjee. “My suggestion would be that the government, in addition to developing these five cities, pick five towns from each region in India and improve basic and core infrastructure, governance in these towns. These could become a model for rejuvenation of existing towns,“ adds Chatterjee. It's a point of view others see merit in. “The greater wave of urbanization is happening in tier II and tier III Indian cities,“ says Ayona Datta, senior lecturer in Citizenship and Belonging, University of Leeds. “The government would serve people better by focusing its resources -by building schools, colleges and hospitals in these cities rather than creating large, expensive cities from scratch that serve the interests of very few people.“ Another industry watcher ET Magazine spoke to put it more bluntly, “Today, we have over 4,000 towns that are badly in need of urban renewal. Do we really want to put financial resources and bureaucratic bandwidth behind creating brand new cities? The choice is this: do you want to have another baby or adopt an orphan?“ Beyond the Hype Globally, greenfield smart cities are still experiments in progress. Their financial models are untested and breakevens a long time away. There has been considerable debate on whether smart cities are a passing fad. In a debate in The Economist last year, Anthony Townsend, a researcher who specializes in new technology in cities, had this to say about smart cities: “...in their rush to leap into a well-planned digital future, the designers of these prototypes have ignored historical experience, how people shape cities, and the messy and organic nature of urban development. Sterile utopian enclaves, they have failed not only as real estate developments but also as incubators of future urban lifestyles.“ Simply put, researchers are asking if smart cities put technology as the prime catalyst of change and not people. “My fundamental problem with the smart city model is the assumption that a city can be built with technology and...technology alone. Cities are built and shaped by people,“ says Datta. Land acquisition is another problem that new cities are likely to face. In Dholera, farmers from 22 villages have already formed groups to protest the acquisition of fertile farm land for industrialization, says activist Sagar Rabari of Jameen Adhikar Andolan Gujarat. More importantly, even if India builds new cities, can it manage them effectively? For that, India may have to get some structural fixes in place. “India has two tiers of governance -central and state -which work in parallel. There is no concept of city level governance in India. City mayors are not powerful in India unlike the rest of the world. Indian cities don't decide their own destiny. That needs to change,“ says Gulabchand. A hundred smart cities may sound like a woolgatherer's wishlist, but the good news is the intent behind that vision -and the government's realization that India badly needs to overhaul its urban infrastructure. As one analyst who did not want to be named sums it up: “If we manage to renew even 10 of our tier II cities in the process, it would mean a great deal for India.“





India urbanising, but slowly, UN numbers show

In 2050, India will be one of the least urbanised countries

Despite a view that India is rapidly urbanising, it will have just half of its population in cities even in 2050, new UN projections show.

In 2050, India will be one of the least urbanised major countries, with Sri Lanka, Uganda, Cambodia, Nepal, Kenya and Ethiopia for company, while China will be 76% urban.

The 2014 revision of the World Urbanization Prospects produced by the UN Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs was released on Thursday night. The 2014 Revision updates numbers and trends, and expands its analysis to a far wider range of urban settlements, the agency said.

In 2050, the world will have 9.55 billion people and India with 1.62 billion people will be the most populous country in the world, the numbers show, its population still growing. China, on the other hand, will have hit its peak of 1.45 billion in 2030 and have declined to 1.38 billion people by 2050.

Undoubtedly, India is urbanising, the numbers show; it will add 400 million urban residents between now and 2050, and will account for a third of all urban growth with China and Nigeria. However, the pace is not as fast as had been earlier imagined. The world’s rural population will hit its peak in a few years and is expected to decline to 3.1 billion by 2050. While India has the world’s largest rural population now (857 million), the number of rural residents is expected to decline by 52 million by 2050, as opposed to an upcoming decline of 300 million rural residents in China. India will account for a quarter of the world’s rural population in 2050, as it does now.

“In 2014, close to one half of the world’s urban population lives in settlements with fewer than 500,000 inhabitants. While this proportion is projected to shrink over time, by 2030, these small cities and towns will still be home to around 45 per cent of urban dwellers,” the report says. Another 10% of urban residents lived in cities of 500,000 to 1 million people, 20% of in cities of 1-5 million residents, 8% in cities of 5-10 million and 12% in cities of over 10 million.

Delhi, the world’s 12th largest city in 1990 but its second largest city today (after Tokyo), will remain the second largest in 2030 with a projected population of over 36 million people in the entire urban agglomeration. From two megacities (cities with over 10 million residents) – Mumbai and Kolkata – in 1990, India has three in 2014 – Delhi (25 million), Mumbai (21 million), Kolkata (15 million). By 2030, it will add four more – Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.

A ‘smart’ idea for urban ills?

Smart cities, the flagship project of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s urban vision, have received a firm financial allocation in the Union budget. The government has provided Rs.7,060 crore to build 100 smart cities as satellite towns on the outskirts of large cities to accommodate the burgeoning urban population. Foreign direct investment norms have been relaxed to attract investors to build them. Indian cities are in need of investment and innovation, and the government’s attention to these issues is welcome. The question is whether smart satellite cities would offer a panacea for urban ills and whether the money allocated is adequate.

What are smart cities?

There is no firm definition of what constitutes smart cities. The broad agreement is that places that mobilise information and communication technologies to deliver better services, reduce carbon footprint, create sustainable environments and improve living conditions are considered intelligent. Many cities abroad, realising that existing urban systems cannot cope with new challenges, have already taken this route. As a result, they are far ahead in terms of innovation.

Rio de Janeiro has invested about U.S. $14 million to monitor the city in real time. Data from 30 agencies stream into an operation centre from where responses to emergencies and accidents are efficiently coordinated. Madrid plans to invest about U.S. $20 million in a technology platform to manage a range of public services such as street maintenance, lighting and waste management. Using a sophisticated supplier management model, it pays each service provider according to the level of services provided. Many cities have focussed on reducing energy consumption and offering convenient transport service. Some like Tokyo are experimenting with technology to help the visually challenged to move safely. Special white canes with embedded sensors, which pick up signals from electronic tags and markers placed at strategic places in the city, help the disabled navigate.

Large investments

Such smart city programmes require large investments and a thorough integration of various systems. Industry and cities have to come together and introduce innovative products. Against these complex demands, how will the proposal to set up smart cities fare?

First, the sum allocated in the budget for the programme — about Rs.70 crore a city — is grossly inadequate. Unless the amount provided is only seed money to kick-start the programme, and more funds are to be sanctioned later, the smart city project would be a non-starter. Second, without the promise of good central funds, the State governments, too, may not take this initiative seriously. Since land development is a State subject, enthusiastic participation of the States is crucial. If the plan is to enable the private sector to participate in a big way, then the State has to put in place a detailed framework to guide investment and demarcate responsibilities. Funds are only one part of the problem. The key challenge would be to overhaul urban governance and infrastructure, both physical and digital.

Expensive real estate?

There is also a potential danger in the Indian approach to smart cities. The government views them as small greenfield enclaves on the outskirts. This has probably been done for convenience, but they have the danger of turning into expensive and exclusive gated communities.

If the state overlooks the existing city and privileges new enclaves, the cities will be split into two unequal halves, and the smart city project would turn out to be an expensive real estate meant to serve a few. Smart cities cannot only be about displaying technology and delivering services; fundamentally, they have to be inclusive and equitable places to live in.

The urban future depends on making cities intelligent, and that applies equally to both new and old parts of the city.

Given the fact that the existing cities, which accommodate a bulk of the population, waste a lot of resources and are energy-inefficient, they urgently require smart solutions. It would be better to treat the smart city proposal by the government as a kind of urban experiment or a prototype, whose lessons and experience could be used to develop cities in general.

Arun Maira | Rebooting India’s urban renewal

Instead of creating brand new cities, India needs to spend more money and effort on its existing cities

Photo: Reuters

Narendra Modi, India’s new prime minister, has made several innovative moves that give hope that the country will be on a new path. Amongst these was his call to the citizens of Varanasi, when they elected him to Parliament, to clean up the city. House proud home-makers take pride in the cleanliness of their homes. Similarly citizens take pride in the cleanliness of their cities. Along with the size of its airport, the height of its skyscrapers and the spread of its metro, cleanliness is an important criterion of a world-class city. Clean cities attract more visitors. They are more pleasant for their habitants. India has a huge urban renewal agenda. The government’s principal thrust to meet this challenge so far, embodied in the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, has been to allocate money for urban infrastructure projects.

The funds available to the government are limited compared with experts’ estimates of how much will be required for India’s urban renewal. Moreover, the money-project orientation of this approach has created a system of rent-seeking. The corruption in the system and the misdirection of funds towards showpiece projects rather than the citizens’ primary needs (the Commonwealth Games’ projects in Delhi were an egregious example), has been breeding anger in citizens. The Aam Aadmi Party tapped into it to topple the Delhi government. Modi swelled it into a national wave for change.

In contrast to the disempowering, top-down approach, a bottom-up movement to make cities clean, as Modi proposed in Varanasi, will engage citizens and empower them. Keeping a city clean is a collective responsibility of its citizens. When they are engaged in movements to make their cities clean, citizens become active participants in the shaping of their own futures. Besides, cleanliness does not require much money.

India needs to renew its approach to urban renewal. Three fundamental changes are required in the architecture of its approach. Firstly, an approach that focuses on metros and large towns—the so-called engines of growth, or worse still, that tries to solve India’s urban problem by concentrating on the building of dozens of new world-class cities, is plain wrong.

Urban growth is happening in thousands of towns across the country along with the growth of India’s economy and population. Building more world-class infrastructure in the metros will not provide any relief to the hundreds of millions in the smaller towns. Nor can they wait for the new green field cities (which infrastructure companies and contractors salivate over) to provide them any relief. Varanasi’s citizens must live where Varanasi is: its location, its history, its cultural heritage, its craft traditions, is why they are there. A new Le Corbusier city (a la Chandigarh) can never recreate this. Cities have to be renewed where they are. Therefore any government-supported process for national urban renewal must focus on old towns and small towns, not just new towns and large towns.

The starting point for the renewal of any town should be a plan for its improvement prepared with the participation of its citizens. This must be the second architectural principle for better urbanization. Planning for Indian cities, if any, has been woeful. Plans have been made by engineers and architects. Such plans do not sufficiently take into account the softer, social and community aspects of a city which make concrete spaces into great places for human beings to live in.

A top down and elitist view of the physical infrastructure of a city often misses the essential infrastructure the poorer citizens on the ground need most of all: sanitation, clean water and housing to live close to where they can work rather than in some rehabilitation colonies on the outskirts to make way for the infrastructure the richer citizens want. The 12th Five-Year Plan has urged the government to insist that plans with citizens’ participation must be a threshold requirement for any town to receive government financial assistance. The spirit of Modi’s appeal to Varanasi’s citizens to take charge of their city gives hope the new government will implement this recommendation.

The third architectural foundation for an effective urban renewal programme must be rapid and widespread building of the capabilities of urban bodies in large towns and small towns too. The pathetic condition of infrastructure and public services in almost all towns in the country is glaring evidence of the widespread deficit in their capabilities to plan and manage. Giving more money to towns without first building requisite capabilities will result in more waste. Therefore a just-in-time and task-aligned process of learning, using technology, and leveraging existing institutions, is required most urgently as the backbone of a new urban renewal mission for India.

A core capability that stakeholders in a city require is the capability to work with each other to shape the city they all want. Returning to Varanasi and Modi: Cleaning up a city together, and holding each other accountable for keeping it clean, is an excellent way to learn to collaborate in the service of a cause that all care about. It has the spirit of India’s freedom movement. It can make better cities, and better citizens too.