If you believe that Indian cities should be more just and humane and truly provide for all, rather than conceal the urban poor behind shoddy curtains, then the two volumes of 6 Metros may reaffirm your faith. The authors have the temerity – given the times we live in – to aver that “we want neither ghettoes of the poor nor gated enclaves of the rich”, and that a government can intentionally plan and administer the city such that it engenders an equitable and just society and a vibrant economy. This is heavy stuff, and so is the book: two hefty volumes, the first titled “Signposts” and the second, “Mappings”.
The cryptic titles understate the investment of effort in comparing six cities – London, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Delhi, and Mumbai – about the ways they acquire, plan and regulate land and utilise it for housing, transportation, civic amenities and open spaces, and deriving general principles, a theory for the future. Informing the almost clinical “mappings” of the cities is a humanitarian philosophy and an attempt to reconcile market capitalism with welfare statism, a tightrope walk that the authors almost pull off. More on that later.
Cities under scanner
This book neither has to be read in a single sitting nor, surprisingly, in full measure. The second volume “records in detail the city by city research” while the first volume “draws upon to make comparisons that lead finally to recommendations for the new growth areas of Indian cities.” Readers with a technical interest will enjoy the entire 600 or so pages, including maps and statistics, while those who have a general interest in matters of public policy and are curious to know how Indian cities compare with global exemplars can derive the gist of the comparison from the first volume.
As is common in comparisons, information about other cities and countries produces a better understanding of our own. It is educative to learn that all countries must have transparent systems by which farmers receive fair compensation for their land. We are reminded that multi-tiered governance produces more prosperous cities. Metropolitan authorities in London, New York and Tokyo handle strategic planning and policy, while multiple local authorities in each city collaborate, respectively, with Neighbourhood Planning Committees, Community Boards and the Machizukuri process of community dialogue.
The Mayor of New York sets the housing targets to be delivered by the boroughs, applying the principle of eminent domain and “appropriation for public purpose” to negotiate with property owners. We learn about how the French Law of Solidarity and Urban Renewal of 2000 ensures that all communities provide a minimum of 20 per cent social rental housing or reserve equivalent floor space for inclusionary housing. Catalonia in Spain fixes the requirement at 50 per cent. Hong Kong follows a strict regime of defining housing standards as per family size, even transferring growing families to larger public housing units.
The book resonates with the principle that local issues require local management, best represented by the fact that in London, each Borough Council formulates its own building bye-laws, whereas the Indian government is promoting standard regulations for all cities, regardless of their geography, density and building technology. Tokyo’s differentiation of “additional land use districts” such as “urban renaissance districts”, “distribution business zones”, and “productive green zones” is an inspiring example of how cities can respond to local potential, a good practice noticeable in the diversity of educational facilities in London and healthcare facilities in Delhi.
‘The 60-minute city’
The authors emphasise providing housing, transportation, and civic amenities as the prime responsibility of city government. They propose that Indian cities should have a Mayor as the principal authority, supported by a Director of Planning and Implementation for housing, transport, utilities and the environment and a Director of Services for delivery of health, education, policy and emergency functions.
Clear roles and responsibilities enable the main instrument of equitable land distribution: the Community Land Reserves, inspired by such models as the UK’s Community Land Trusts and London’s Registered Social Landlords; quite different from the Cooperative Housing Societies in Mumbai, as the authors explain in a detailed Appendix. It is proposed that housing should be added to the list of “off-the-market” lands, such as allocated for schools and hospitals, thus treating housing as a public good rather than an exclusive commodity.
The authors’ investigation of global examples of planning yields a key proposition for Indian cities, that the provision of land for amenities must precede the provision of housing. It should determine the densities of housing units. Proximity to amenities and “endogenous jobs” would reduce travel demand, and create vibrant local economies and compact cities, which are more sustainable than the sprawl that currently defines India’s urbanisation. The aim is to create a “60-minute city” with walkable and “self-sustainable” neighbourhoods, where “the simpler modes of travel deserve facilitation and preference over the more complex ones.” The city requires a grid for transportation, with local transit networks at one level and longer distances to “exogenous jobs” traversed at higher speeds at a different level – a repudiation of the congested concatenation of flyovers and local roads that currently define our experiences of mobility.
Not many authors of books on cities will bat unequivocally for the right of the urban poor to be accorded the dignity of being treated as equal citizens of India. Public policy rarely affirms “the commons” and the forgotten hypothesis that “the city is a public space.” It is refreshing to read the authors’ commitment that in the city we want, “gated communities will not be allowed.” As they progress through the book, readers will find that the bold pronouncements in the opening section titled “Core Beliefs” are not mere authorial biases but the results of comparative analysis. Such “core beliefs” may seem romantic and anachronistic to Indian readers, deprived as they are of public policies that respect the Directive Principles of state policy rather than presume that politically laced rhetoric can be implicitly constitutional.
Yet this is not romance but a choice made by three practitioners: Patel, a recognised guru who was deeply involved in the planning of Navi Mumbai, and Kapadia and Saluja, able collaborators committed to city-making through participatory planning processes. The idealistic approach is attuned to the crescendo of public opinion that demands that India’s cities be driven by principles of social justice and the rule of law.
A city for all
While the ambivalence between romance and pragmatism energises the book, it leaves unresolved the tension between welfare statism and market capitalism. It is uplifting to read that “the world is moving ineluctably towards a more egalitarian society with diminishing income differences” and equally disappointing to read only a few paragraphs later that the evil of caste and apathetic governments allow the persistence of inequality. The insistence that the density of plots should be the same for the rich and the poor resembles the utopia of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, sans the automobile. While it is disarmingly honest of the authors to say that they “offer no solutions” for the rent-seeking by officials dealing with land, it is of piece with their general presumption – expectation, really – that the sovereign is a fair, just and public-oriented entity.
The role of the state in building new cities is one of many significant political issues for which this book provides research material. It focuses on the expanding periphery of cities by drawing on principles and experiences from the brownfield, therefore, perhaps, the “core beliefs” could also be applied in the redevelopment of the brownfield. Further research will be required to understand how effective urban institutions evolve through restructuring, dissolution and supersession of redundant agencies and institutions. It will trigger new research about the seemingly synonymous concepts of decentralisation, devolution and subsidiarity. Whether local governments in India can look beyond classist divisions to build an egalitarian social order will be a lingering doubt, dispelled only when the book inspires corrective action.
6 Metros is replete with examples of how policies, plans and lived realities are connected by causality. A prodigious effort has resulted in a vast amount of evidence distributed across the two volumes. While the authors disclose their bias at the outset, they do not dictate the final analysis but encourage the reader to delve into the comparative matrix and draw their own conclusions. The treatise is at once a call for inquiry.
Jagan Shah is the CEO of The Infravision Foundation, and former Director of the National Institute of Urban Affairs.
6 Metros: Urban Planning and Implementation Compared; London, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Delhi, Mumbai, Shirish Patel, Oormi Kapadia, Jasmine Saluja, Plural Urban Lab.