India needs 800 new cities

Reclamation is a good option, but it can’t be sustained in the long-run, says Anil Baijal

Reclamation is a viable option for a land-scarce city like Mumbai, and I have been advocating it as one of the solutions to combat the city’s artificially high property prices.  But reclamation has to be seen in the light of other equally viable options available today. It can work for a city only if it is sustainable. Singapore, Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent Dubai, are examples of how land can be reclaimed in an environmentally friendly and financially sustainable manner.

In Mumbai, as of today, the per square feet cost of reclaimed land is higher than the per square feet cost of a satellite town. Newer technologies are available, and if there is a concerted effort at evolving an all-India policy on this issue, then reclaimed land can be competitively priced vis-a-vis other land.

If a reclaimed land project is commercially more sustainable than setting up a satellite town or green field development, then Mumbai should opt for large scale reclamation.

But the larger issue is that of sustainability of metropolitan centres. There are constraints on several fronts from infrastructure, density of population and provisioning of services. Beyond a point, it is technically not feasible to increase sustainability. 

What we need to do is look at setting up satellite townships and new greenfields, which will be sustainable on a long term basis. As a general policy, India must  set up somewhere around 600 to 800 new cities across the country. These cities should be vibrant commercially sustainable cities. Everything should be provided in such satellite townships so that the pull factor of the limited metro towns is diminished.

In this context, beyond a point, the economies of scale become diseconomies as they become technically unfeasible. But we have not been able to create many satellite cities — examples such as Chandigarh, Gandhinagar, Bhubaneswar and Itanagar are few and far between. In Mumbai, reclamation of land should go hand-in-hand with setting up of satellite towns.

Anil Baijal is former secretary, ministry of urban development, and the brain behind the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. He spoke to Ameya Bhise