OPEN FORUM
New Delhi,
21 March 2012
Urban Sprawl
TAKE CUE FROM AMERICA
By Proloy Bagchi
Migration from rural areas to urban India has been on a steady rise over the past
few years and New Delhi
is rightly concerned. Other than launching the next phase of the National Urban
Renewal Mission, the Centre is soon to initiate a National Urban Livelihood
Mission, as mentioned by President Patibha Patil in her address to Parliament. To
meet the big challenges of growing cities and urban unemployment, it will tap State
Governments for suggestions. However, this may not be enough. The Centre needs
to look beyond.
Urbanisation is a phenomenon that is closely
linked to industrialisation and modernisation. More and more people are
flocking to urban centres seeking well-being and prosperity. There is no
gainsaying the fact that urban areas are centres of economic opportunities and
growth, providing not only the wherewithal for survival but also prospects of
self-actualisation and openings for satisfaction of the higher needs of human
life. No wonder, worldwide a phenomenon that is called the “urban drift” is
occurring and people are migrating from rural areas to urban centres seeking
the “good life”.
The United
Nations had projected that half the population of the world would be living in
urban centres by 2008. That has indeed already happened. Around 74% people in
developed countries now live in urban centres and 44% in less developed
countries. It is a far cry from 1950 when only 30% of the population resided in
towns and cities.
In India, too,
urbanisation has picked up pace, though rather belatedly. Through most of the
decades after independence India
was predominantly a rural country with an agrarian economy. Almost 80% of the
population used to reside in the country’s villages. That, however, is
changing. The 2011 Census has revealed that about 32% of the country’s 1.2
billion reside in urban areas which means migrations from rural areas have
picked up during the last few years. In absolute terms, while 285 million
people resided in Indian urban centres in 2001, in 2011 that number has
inflated by more than a hundred million.
Rapid
economic growth and a steadily rising population with the inevitable “urban
drift” have created a situation that has prompted most of the urban centres to
burst at their seams. Other than urban unemployment on the rise, all over the
country cities and towns are growing, spreading out all around their cores in a
haphazard manner, gobbling up farmlands and forests. Colonies – authorised or
unauthorised – are being built, mostly devoid of civic amenities. Builders and
developers are having a field day, constructing condominiums, self-contained
colonies or gated complexes where the local bodies generally fail to extend
civic services. Neither there are sewer lines nor are there water connections,
making such colonies and complexes dependent on groundwater with all the
economic and environmental consequences.
Besides, for
want of suitable public transport such unplanned growth has necessarily
promoted use of personalised vehicles, fuelling their demand as also of
precious imported oil – a non-renewable energy source – significantly
contributing not only to its escalating price but also emission of the
country’s greenhouse gases.
Newspapers
every day carry advertisements with offers of flats of varying sizes, detached
or semi-detached bungalows in plush surroundings. What is more, ‘aawas melas’ (housing fairs) are held
where crowds throng looking for their dream-homes. But all the ads or the propositions
made at such fairs are for the well-heeled and the aspiring upper (and middle)
classes who think nothing of investing half a million or more on a fancy house.
There is
nothing for the masses that are migrating into urban areas in millions, offering
themselves as cheap labour or seeking opportunities for self-employment. Having
no other alternatives, they indulge in slumming on the available vacant lands.
In fact, Indian cities are not prepared to receive the economically weaker
migrants from the country whose numbers are going to rise by about a hundred
percent by 2030 when India is likely to become the world’s most populous
country.
Even
currently, urban India
is struggling with the problems caused by uncontrolled outward spread of
settlements that in their relentless advances eat up fertile farmlands and the
environmentally useful forests. The rural inhabitants are induced to migrate
into the urban agglomerates and their lands, if not built upon, are used as
dumping grounds for wastes of the newly developed colonies/complexes – a
process that has together been branded as “predatory” urbanisation. Be that as
it may, the year 2030, therefore, holds out a frightful prospect before the
country.
In order to
restrict the urban sprawl a visionary set of laws has been enacted by several States
of the US.
The first was Oregon which, enacting and
enforcing laws for delineation of “Urban Growth Boundaries” (UGB), transformed
its capital, Portland,
into the greenest of cities in the country. The concept of UGB, essentially the
antithesis of ad-hoc and predatory form of urbanisation, seems to hold an
important lesson for the exploding Indian cities.
In a blog
posted by her, Ishani Mehta, Urban Vision's Fellow at The Young Urban Leader
Programme working in Portland, states that by keeping urban development
contained in a compact boundary UGBs promote more efficient land-use planning,
along with an assurance for businesses and local governments about where to
place basic infrastructure necessary for future development. Moreover, limited
resources can be invested on making existing infrastructure more efficient
rather than constantly building new capacity for an ever-expanding urban area.
Apparently, in
Portland the
metropolitan region is required by law to have a UGB that contains at least
20,000 acres (81 sq km) of vacant land, in addition to maintaining restrictions
on the development of farmland. While land outside the boundary allows
protection of forests and farmland, the land-use within the boundary supports
urban services including roadways, water supply and sewerage systems, and other
utilities that are conducive to compact and liveable urban communities.
The State-wide
planning law requires the city to maintain a 20-year supply of land for future
residential development inside the boundary and also determine the requirement
to maintain 20-year land supply for new jobs, thus allowing for sustainable
economic expansion of the urban areas as well. An urban growth report is
prepared every five years that analyses both the residential and employment
needs of the region. If the report suggests need for expansion of UGB, it is
considered, but only as a last resort. The metropolitan council, however, has
powers under special circumstances to expand the UGB to meet immediate needs to
provide lands for specific purposes that cannot be accommodated and cannot wait
till the next urban growth report.
A time now
seems to have come to halt India’s
urban sprawl. Every small city seems to be enlarging itself to eventually
become a metropolis and every metropolis a mega-polis, steam-rolling over
everything that comes in their way – farmlands, hills, forests or whatever.
Within their respective confines, people lead a miserable life owing to
over-crowding, insanitation, environmental degradation, water scarcity,
transport bottlenecks, and what have you. UGBs seem to provide a way out for
reasonably restricting urban growth, fostering development of smaller cities,
promoting more efficient use of scarce land, protection of rural economy,
prevention of denudation of the country’s fast-disappearing forests and
enabling people to live a healthy and fulfilling life. New Delhi should take a cue. ---INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
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