21st Century Micro Cities of the New India

Urban life in Indian cities has become bad to worse. Indian Mega Cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata Bangalore & Hyderabad are plagued with similar mega problems related to Air & Water Pollution, Traffic & Commuting times, Water Scarcity & Management, Monsoon floods, un-affordable housing and food, crime etc. In spite of the urban development we experienced in the last decade, the gap between the West and us has only increased multi-fold.  

Every major Indian city grapples with formidable traffic jams in both peak and non-peak hours. There is no sign of relief from traffic or pollution in spite of huge investments in building roads, flyovers, underpasses and public transport infrastructure like Metro rail.   

The number of private vehicles in Delhi crossed 10 million in 2017. 7 million private vehicles ply on roads in Bangalore in spite of having Metro and public bus services. The average traffic speed across Indian cities is between 8-20 kilometer per hour. Commute time of more than an hour by private or public transport has become the new norm in these big cities. Public transport has not yet proven to be a viable and cost-effective solution to reduce traffic and commute time in any mega city in India. This is mainly due to lack of last mile connectivity, holistic multi-modal transport, inefficient town planning and pedestrian killing roads and traffic. 

It is estimated that Delhi incurs a loss of 60 thousand crore rupees per year due to traffic congestion. The loss on Indian Roads is not only financial but also affects our productivity, health, safety and personal and social lives. Official data by the government shows that more than 150,000 people lost their lives in road accidents in 2016, which is a staggering 17 deaths per hour and nobody is held responsible or accountable. Apathy, irresponsibility, and negligence of municipalities cost both lives and money. Additionally, it’s very stressful to drive in this crazy chaotic traffic with a non-stop ear-piercing cacophony of honks, unruly driving, dust, pollution, and pothole-filled roads. 

We are not doing great in terms of water either. Every big city in modern India like Hyderabad and Bengaluru has water problems in most areas. The water supply within municipality limits in cities is irregular and not available in all suburban areas. The Water tanker mafia monetizes this scarcity, and exploit this opportunity in summers. It’s 21st century and even today we can’t ever dare to drink water straight from the Kitchen Taps.  

Let’s not even get started about the Garbage disposal problems we face in these megacities. The recent example is Bangalore where it wanted to dump its garbage near a village. Big cities like Delhi for example that generates approximately 10,000 tons of waste every day have no concrete environment-friendly plans to manage it. Plastics and other non-degradable waste make their way into the landfills and causes irreversible pollution of the land and environment. We have a big responsibility towards protecting the environment but have failed miserably specifically in these big cities. 

Oh, and how can we forget the great floods of Mumbai. The financial capital of India submerged in knee-deep waters! How can that happen? Unbelievable! It only took the blessings of Rain Gods to bring the financial capital of our country to a complete halt. Water can never be or ever should be a threat to humankind. It is supposed to nourish and nurture life not destroy it. Yet, on that day, we became slaves of water, because of our own wrongdoings. Monsoon flooding is also common in other cities like Chennai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad. 

 Well, let us accept it. Nobody can plan for the exponential growth that our cities have seen in the last couple of decades. This problem is not unique to any one city. Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Chennai… it’s the same story everywhere. Every major Metro city in India has clogged drains, water scarcity, erratic power supply in summers, pollution and hour-long traffic jams. The city governments try hard to control the situation, but obviously, it is all just patchwork. A fly-over here and an under-bridge there won’t fix these problems that are deep-rooted. 

To give an analogy, there is no solution to a badly designed and written software. A time comes, when no amount of patches can fix the design and implementation flaws. That’s when we have to take a tough call to re-design a new software from scratch.  

All the megacities of modern India have reached that stage because of the gross design and execution flaws at such a massive scale at all levels. Just look around. Everything around us has changed in the last couple of decades. The standard of certain aspects of our lives have improved dramatically like the way you communicate with people, the way social & political causes are fought on Twitter and Facebook, the ease at which you book tickets, transfer money, make payments, call a taxi, healthcare, education etc. Then look at our urban chaos. That is still a problem unsolved. Why?
 Recently, we have seen a rising trend of private & public greenfield cities in India, like Lavasa and Palava City in Maharashtra, GIFT city, and Dholeera smart city in Gujarat, Wave City near Ghaziabad, Naya Raipur in Chhattisgarh, Sri City in Andhra Pradesh & Amravati – the new capital city of Andhra Pradesh. We think it’s time India openheartedly embraces the idea of private greenfield cities, as one of our primary urban living spaces in the New India. 

I strongly believe that instead of building Mega Cities we should build thousands of fixed sized, limited population Micro-Cities distributed throughout the state and the country, which are interconnected with high-speed rail or road networks so that every village has at least one or two of them in the radius of 10–30 sq km. 

Any engineer or anyone with little common sense knows that one can only design and build a machine, system or technology to serve a limited capacity. If a machine operates beyond its capacity, it breaks. The main parameter that affects the efficient operation of a city is population. If the population increases beyond the capacity of the City, it is bound to break. Indian Mega Cities have crossed that tipping several years ago. 

Our major urban economies today are knowledge & service based industries that don’t require the setup of mega factories and are best suited for MicroCities model of urbanization. 

The advantages of such an urbanization strategy are multi-fold and benefits both the urban and rural residents. To summarize, by building a cluster of connected, fixed sized and limited capacity Micro Cities instead of Mega Cities, we can improve the life of both urban and rural residents. Kill two birds with one stone.