Reimagining the City

Context: Urban and metro-centered population growth rates with concentrated high-density cities have made the need for more frugal and sustainable alternative models of habitations.

Issues with Overpopulated Urban Cities

• High global energy consumption: two-third of the total.
• High greenhouse gas emissions: 70% of GHG emissions.
• High Risk:

• Most affected and vulnerable to natural and man-made disasters.
• High disease burden, air pollution, water contamination, and crime infestation (low-income areas of cities with shared facility).

Need for Alternative Models of Habitations

• UN projection: 28% of the world population will live in dense, congested spaces, jostling for ever-dwindling space, and choked infrastructure (by 2030).
• India will require about $2.5 trillion of investment until 2030 to create more congested urban spaces.
• Cities fail to provide an adequate return on investment, quality of life and happiness to all their inhabitants.
• Increasing population densities (Dharavi slum) and associated problems.
• Diseconomies of Scale: Cities beyond one million population generate more pressure on every urban amenity by increasing exponentially.
• Domino effect: minor and local failure is compound into a catastrophe.

Way Forward

• Digital technologies (cloud): can ensure access to online interaction, which is equally rich in content and covers a wider range of disciplines and can also be accessed from widely-spread geographies.
• Inspirations: Refocus Gandhiji’s model of gram swaraj, APJ Abdul Kalam’s vision of providing urban amenities in rural areas, and Nanaji Deshmukh’s idea of self-reliant village development.
• Villages (land, people and resources): as an alternative model of development where agriculture, industry, and service sectors move in sync for sustainable development.