New cities for old

The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) is in need of a renewal itself. It is barking — partly — up the wrong tree by trying to beef up the infrastructure of existing cities. While old cities like Mumbai do indeed need renewal, India’s urban nirvana lies in creating new cities. Scattering thousands of crores on decaying cities is like sprinkling expensive cologne on garbage dumps. They may lessen the stink, but the decay will not go away.

Consider this stark number. India’s current urban population is reckoned to be around 300 million. This figure is expected to balloon to 600 million by 2030. The additional 300 million can either congregate at the existing cities and make them completely unliveable or be redirected substantially to new ones, creating a better life for all.

Assuming one million as the optimum population for a city, it means we need to create 300 new cities in 20 years to handle the influx. Every year we need 15 new cities. Since it takes at least five to 10 years to create infrastructure for a brand new city, it means the first cities cannot come up before 2015-2020 even if we start today. We thus need to double the rate of yearly city creation to 30 a year. 

Creating new cities is easier than renewing existing ones for commonsense reasons. One, its costlier to construct infrastructure in overpopulated areas. Two, it will also take longer.

Since existing public spaces are congested and substantially encroached upon, creating one km of railway line or road or even a water pipeline will probably take twice the time in an existing city than in a new one. Three, it’s easier to plan a new city than replan an old one.

Some idealists may like to romanticise rural life, but urbanisation is the inexorable law of life. Development equals urbanisation. Maharashtra is already 50% urban, and many other states are headed that way. If we accept this as reality, we have to shift policy mindsets in a different direction — towards new urban centres.

First, the JNNURM, which funnels money to 63 identified cities, needs to focus 80% of its resources on building new infrastructure away from old cities and connect new urban hubs.

For example, instead of investing the bulk of its resources in
Mumbai or Pune, it should be creating new towns some 50km away by connecting them with high-speed trains to the existing metros. The Mumbai trans-harbour link needs to go deeper into the hinterland, and not just pitch its tent on the shore opposite the island city. The same applies to satellite cities for Bangalore or Kolkata.

Second, the balance 20% of JNNURM money can be ploughed back into the older cities, but with a caveat: whatever infrastructure is built there must be recovered through higher user charges. The logic is this: while subsidies must be directed towards new cities, the older cities must learn to pay more for the advantages they already enjoy and to help the authorities to clean up the air, water or ruined earth. No policy will work unless we incentivise desirable change and disincentivise filth and environmental degradation.

There is, for example, no reason to subsidise car travel in Mumbai when public transport should be the norm. Car owners today pay practically nothing for the amount of road space they occupy and pollution they cause. If we recognise the principle that public transport must be given primacy, it follows that cars must be heavily taxed in Mumbai, both upfront and for monthly usage.

It is possible to ease Mumbai’s transport problems in months (not years) if we do two things: banish cars completely from all trunk roads between 8am to 8pm on all weekdays, and invest in thousands of eco-friendly buses and public vehicles of all kinds — AC buses, minibuses, vans, taxies. The roads will be less congested, and cars will be used only on weekends for family outings or late-night movies.

The excess supply of cars in the city can be partly converted to luxury taxies, which will help the moneyed to enjoy their daily car rides without owning cars themselves. Like in Singapore, owning a car should be made prohibitively expensive in overcongested cities like Mumbai.

Once cars are off the roads and buses fill the immediate transport needs, it would also be easier to build metros at a saner pace — assuming they are still needed. Entire roads can be excavated at once since there will be no cars 12 hours of the day.

In Maharashtra, one could emphasise the shift in focus from old cities to new by moving the state government machinery out of Mumbai. This will force influence peddlers, companies and other interests of shifting, too. When the rich move on, the poor follow