By 1851, empowered with expropriation laws and state funding, a new boulevard, Rue de Rivoli, was completed. A network of new boulevards was constructed from 1859 till 1870, opening up damp and foul-smelling areas of the city. Particular focus was given to the creation of green spaces, with parks in Paris rising from just four to over 80. Many architectural projects were fashioned, including the construction of grand train stations, town halls, central markets, the Paris Opera, reconstruction of the oldest hospital and expansion of the Louvre. The underground infrastructure of the city was reorganised. The city revitalised, Paris was now a city of light.
Cities should have personalities, India’s cities especially so, given our historic temple cities with an entire conurbation built around a temple economy. Instead, India’s cities are where the poverty of imagination prevails. Urban design in India is built to cater for utilitarian or affluent needs, with a deliberate neglect of local traditions and cultural influences.
Take sustainability. As of May 2021, only 16 cities had disclosed their plans to tackle climate change to international institutions, with just about eight having valid sustainability-related targets in their urban master plans. Only 43% of cities surveyed sought to address climate change adaptation as a topic in their master plans, while fewer than five cities had a greenhouse gas-emission reduction target.
There is a clear need to have more urban green spaces. In the Indian context, this may also include city forests, parks, gardens and roadside trees, especially in light of their numerous benefits – mitigating climate change, real estate appreciation, decrease in air pollution, recreation area and healthcare impact.
Even master plans have shown little concern for sustainable urban design. Mumbai’s development plans in 1964 and 1991 sought to plan out land use for 20 years. But this essentially resulted in a dilution of green spaces. Mumbai’s tree cover has fallen from 35% in the 1970s to about 13% in 2020. Any implementation of planned green spaces was found to be relatively tardy. Similarly, with the development plan 2034 (drafted in 2014), the city’s planned per-capita green space was sought to be reduced from 4 sq m to 2 sq m.
India should have its own language of urban design, built up from its heritage and around sustainability. Urban design and planning need a curriculum refresh and capacity addition. In 2019, about 26 town planning courses across colleges led to just 700 town planners yearly, with a shortage of 1.1 million planners. There is a clear need to set up more schools, with a push for local IITs and NITs to have a dedicated planning department. We also need more significant effort to construct guidebooks that suit Indian requirements.A straightforward way out is zoning mandates. Urban master plans should plan for identifying common public land in their outskirts and prepare for their conversion into forest land. Environmental zoning mandates – for Delhi-NCR, there is a 10% forest area mandate in the regional plan – can also be strengthened further, mainly to protect keystone geographical and biodiversity-rich areas such as the Aravallis, which provide water to cities like Gurugram. Implementing these master plans will require better collaboration with local ward committees.
Green spaces should be increased. Leading cities in the world like Singapore and Seoul have sought to build green spaces that allow all wildlife. Even the ministry of environment, forests and climate change’s Nagar Van project is promising. There has been talk of creating at least 200 city forests in India, although with little implementation.
We have been down this road before. There was a push for building about 200 city forests in India in the past, with limited implementation. In Bengaluru, the Turahalli forest has seen significant vandalism and waste dumping. We must push for an increase in aggregate and per-capita urban forest area in the upcoming master plans.
Urban forestry can also be encouraged. Consider Warje forest in Pune, long considered Maharashtra’s first urban forestry project. The forest was developed by a non-profit, TERRE, in partnership with Tata Motors. This project saw the conversion of a 16-hectare land strip into an evocative landscape brimming with biodiversity.
Civic society must be encouraged as well. With a volunteer force of 1,800, the NGO Thuvakkam in Chennai has been able to grow 25 Miyawaki forests in urban areas in Tamil Nadu, helping to raise over 65,000 trees covering 9.2 acres. Now, such ‘urban forests’ can be found in places as varied as the Tamil Nadu Housing Board and the Anna Institute of Management in Chennai, along with other cities like Tuticorin, Vellore and Kanchipuram.
Until recently, Gurugram had a monument to its historicity – the Kama Sarai, a distinctive colonial structure built in 1820 as a halting station. By 1975, the local city thana had been established in the location, with scenes from the movie Bandit Queen also shot here in 1994. Unfortunately, the structure was demolished in mid-2020, with a push for creating a multi-level parking area. Without action, the historicity and greenery of Indian cities will soon be lost.
The writer is a Lok Sabha MP and author of ‘The Indian Metropolis: Deconstructing India’s Urban Spaces’