Death of Cities?

Context: Urban centers around the world have been struggling with the spread of the virus since they are known for spreading infection and wealth, both at the same time.

Challenges to the Cities

• Amidst Pandemic: 

• Rising spread: Major hotspots have been all large cities like Delhi, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Pune, Indore and Bengaluru – accounting for 80% of all reported infections.

• Lack of physical distancing: Half the residents of our most prosperous city, Mumbai, live in slums, with no possibility of social distancing.

• Declining economic growth: due to severe lockdown.

• Gross domestic product (GDP) declined 30 percent in Q1, the worst performance in our history.

• Unemployment and change in the nature of work:

• • • • Poor and manually-employed have been left unemployed.
      • The educated and affluent have been working-from-home.

• General Issues:

• Stymied development: 70 years after Independence over 70% of our population is still rural, is a statement of failure.
• Massive under-employment: Rural under-employment is so massive that we can increase output strongly and still have a hundred million people left over
• Low floor area ratio: 

• Cities, marred with false assumptions of limiting building heights as a way to limit urban growth.

• Height restrictions force people to crowd into illegal slums rather than legal apartment buildings.

Significance and Importance of Cities: Despite all the challenges above, the importance of cities cannot be substituted by an idea of a new rural economy expected to remove the need for migration.

• Cities don’t make people poor; they attract poor people.
• A 10% increase in the share of the urban population of the country leads to a 30% increase in the per capita Gross Domestic Production (GDP). 
• The 1/3rd of our population that is urban accounts for over 2/3rd of our GDP.

Way Forward:

• Invest in Urban Infrastructure: 

• Provide clean water and sanitation to every resident including slum dwellers.
• Building high rise infrastructure to accommodate the bulging urban population. New York City, Tokyo and Hong Kong have a floor-space index of 15-20 vs Mumbai’s (revised) 3-5.
• Strengthening public transport for an easy commute.