Column | What Works For Mumbai May Not Work For Varanasi: AGK Menon On Urban Planning Dilemma

The correlation between urbanisation and economic development is a well-established universal phenomenon. It is, therefore, predictable that in India, the dramatic growth of the economy will fuel massive urbanisation. Even as civic authorities around the country try to cope with the current level of urbanisation (31.16 per cent according to the 2011 census), they will have to deal with far greater volumes of urban growth in future (the erstwhile Planning Commission, for example, expected the urban population to double in the next 25-30 years). How urban planners engage with this challenge will determine the future of Indian cities.

The strength of post-Independence urban governance is that it has developed a strong culture of urban planning to engage with these challenges—the Delhi Development Authority, for instance, has formulated four successive master plans for Delhi to make it a ‘world- class’ city. But its weakness is that in spite of the earnest ministrations of professionals, this goal has remained a contentious and perpetual work-in-progress. The Delhi experience is replicated around the country.

There are many reasons for this failure, but an important one is that the dominant models and protocols of urban planning promise more than they deliver. The promises are based on applying strategies developed by planners in Western societies over a century ago to understand and engage with the urbanisation phenomenon in their societies. This knowledge is considered canonical and spread to explain the characteristics of urbanisation everywhere as a ‘universal’ phenomenon. Like other instruments of post-colonial governance, the universal paradigms of urbanisation have been duly ‘Indianised’, but as a planning tool it is still an inadequate measure to understand or effectively deal with the complexities of the urbanisation taking place in India.

This is because the roots of the problems of urbanisation in India are different. Its unique characteristics are rooted in the country’s particular political history and its rich and diverse cultural legacies. It is therefore not sufficient to merely ‘Indianise’ the ‘universal’ models and expect to achieve the same results. In pedagogic terms, it is akin to making the local problem fit the universal solution. The crux of the problem of urban planning in India is, therefore, to first understand the nature of the local problems of urbanisation and then formulate appropriate, context-specific strategies to deal with them.

But this has not yet been purposefully attempted, either in the classroom or in the field. Thus, the many ambitious urban development missions that the present government has initiated to make Indian cities ‘world class’—identified by their catchy acronyms such as ‘SMART cities’, HRIDAY, AMRUT, etc—are still determinedly following the ‘universal’ toolkits of urban planning to achieve results, albeit by introducing sophisticated technology-based infrastructural solutions, backed by large budgets to fast-forward their respective objectives.

Not surprisingly, these well-meaning missions are creating islands of ‘modern’ development for the relatively more empowered residents in a sea of existing, organically evolving neighbourhoods of the relatively less empowered, mainly poor, urban residents. The irony does not strike the project proponents. It is reifying not only the traditional inequities and inequalities of Indian cities but is creating new ones.

Upgrading Cities

The continued reliance on ‘universal’ paradigms of urban planning is also flattening the once culturally and environmentally diverse urbanscape by introducing ‘generic’ modern urbanism where all new developments begin to look alike, whether they are in Shanghai, Mumbai or Chennai. For instance, the consequence of this insidious strategy was in full display in a recent flagship project of the government in the historic city of Varanasi, where a most venerated religious precinct was levelled to construct a ‘world-class’ pilgrimage centre. Similar egregious redevelopment projects are proliferating around the country.

This propensity to eliminate existing urbanism a priori in order to upgrade cities is the blind spot in the ideology of Indian urban planning. It ignores the pursuit of better, culturally and economically more nuanced strategies to undertake urban redevelopment. It is in this context that the focus should shift to smaller town and historic precincts in the urban ecosystem that are also bearing the brunt of urbanisation because they offer better opportunities to reform the dominant urban planning strategies.

There are two strong pedagogic reasons to focus on smaller settlements. First, it would challenge the quotidian perception that urbanisation is mainly the problem of larger cities. This is the legacy of colonial interests in controlling the larger settlements like the port cities and other primate towns in the hinterland and ignoring the significance of smaller, so-called ‘native’ settlements. The last census, for instance, showed that there was a huge surge in population in the smaller towns in India as well, and critically examining their problems could help urban planners to incubate new, more context-specific strategies of urban planning. The knowledge gained in the process will enrich the local disciplinary imagination. For instance, how did a historic/native city like Varanasi accommodate both the impact of industrialisation and the growth of its traditional craft traditions? Or, how did the textile industry of the small town of Tirupur spawn a global export ecosystem to achieve its growth, prosperity and better quality of life for its residents? There are myriads of similar narratives waiting to be discovered to enable urban planners to develop fresh theoretical propositions that would be more context-sensitive in order to deal with the local problems of urbanisation and urbanism.

Second, it will open the door to studying pre-colonial and pre-industrial settlements, a neglected area of urban research. This will help remedy the Eurocentric/Orientalist influence on local disciplinary knowledge. For instance, urban theorists in the West consider the evolution of modernity on account of industrialisation to be such an important factor that all cities were expected to become similar in terms of their spatial imperatives. As Le Corbusier once famously asserted: “Modernity begins when history ends.” Such perceptions cast Indian urbanism as the ‘other’ to be wiped out in order to modernise it in accordance with the ‘generic’ template. A critical analysis of the history of their neglect and its continued relevance in contemporary times can not only upturn ‘universal’ theoretical propositions but also offer productive lessons to deal with the problems of local urbanisation.

Admittedly, this is a broad brush stroke of the narrative of contemporary urban planning in India, but it highlights another enduring professional pathology that is seldom examined, which is the transactional nature of professional engagement with urban problems. Master Plans have inexorably failed to fulfil their objectives, but policymakers, civic authorities and professionals do not feel responsible for their failures because they expect the police powers of the state to restore the order they had originally envisaged in their master plans.

Small Cities, Historic Towns

Shifting the focus to smaller settlements and historic towns can be a way forward to address this problem. Each settlement is unique and there are no ‘universal’ models to emulate. This should provoke professionals to examine each settlement and learn from its resilience and continued relevance to formulate locally appropriate strategies. Patrick Geddes pioneered this approach to engage with Indian cities almost a hundred years ago.

At another register, in 1988, The Report of the National Commission on Urbanisation (NCU) attempted a similar self-reflexive exercise when it stated that its objective was to view urbanisation as “the central, political, human and moral issues of our times, precipitated by the rising expectations of the millions upon millions of our people who want to find a better future”. Both approaches offer salutary lessons to confront the problems of urbanisation. These problems are being compounded by the imperatives of dealing with sustainability, disaster mitigation and climate change. The challenges have intensified. It needs to resist the easy allure of emulating ‘world-class’ cities and follow the more difficult road that Geddes and the NCU report opened.

(Views expressed are personal)

A G Krishna Menon Senior Architect, Urban Planner and Conservation Consultant based in Delhi

(This story appeared in Outlook magazine’s August 31 issue, 'Whose Idea of India?', in which India’s noted public intellectuals, policymakers, cultural practitioners, political leaders, scholars and economists write in detail about the idea of India they believe can best secure the nation’s future as we celebrate 80 years of independence.)