How the Outdated Design of Indian Cities Leads to Extremely Poor Living Standards

By now, we all have heard or read news about potholes in Bangalore causing massive issues, or that roads being dug up in Mumbai have actually doubled the traffic, or the massive waste and sewage disposal on the side of the road in Kolkata is eating up walkable spaces. These issues aren’t outliers, and are neither specific to these cities. It’s a problem that the whole country suffers from, while only a fair few, owing to their metropolitan or urban status, get highlighted.

All of these issues about city planning and infrastructure can be traced back to how and why Indian cities were designed in the first place. And it is truly awful that they still exist today and continue to cause massive problems. So, let’s delve straight into it, as to why it happened, and how it can be solved.

It wouldn’t be a massive overstatement to suggest that the living standards have significantly reduced in India. It has been a while since India took over China as the most populous country in the world, and yet, very little has been done in cities to address this massive growth that will significantly impact living quality. To look at this broadly, let’s start from the beginning.

Let’s take Mumbai and New York, for example. The two cities at the two far ends of the planet are a set of Mandelbrots. It means that if you zoom in and zoom out of both cities, you will find a pattern of eerie similarities between the two cities. But what you will also find is a stark contrast to how both those cities were planned in the first place.

New York, as with many other Western cities, is extremely well planned with high-rise buildings that reduce the urban waste space to a minimum. Mumbai is also a city with high-rise buildings, but the poor planning results in swathes of urban space lying around as waste. There is a deeply complex reason for that.

Most Indian cities suffer from what’s called ‘Private Land, Public Area.’ Private land that is owned by wealthy individuals or political figures will not allow for that to be transformed into anything public – Parks, Gardens, Open Spaces, etc. At the same time, there are building restrictions sanctioned throughout Indian cities that prevent any construction in those spaces.

Therefore, the result is that large areas of land remain empty with nothing to do in them. Either an old, dilapidated scooter rusts somewhere, or a car is abandoned, or just waste keeps accumulating. This is where the problem is.

With nearly half the land of a city like Mumbai not being put to use, urban planners, builders, and construction magnets had to come up with a creative solution to accommodate India’s enormous population.

The only creativity they could come up with was “Tall, Towering Residential Areas.” India has a rule that states that every building has to leave a certain space on the four sides of its base, which is proportional to the height of the building. This meant that the taller the building, the wider the space around it would be.

This mandate, combined with the increasing ned to house everyone, automatically raised the expenses, and therefore, it ensured that the only way to balance it was to raise the price of living exponentially. This is why you see the price of rent in Mumbai skyrocketing to a level today that it’s almost at par with Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but the living conditions are far inferior.

Higher prices of living are asked of lower-middle-class Indians meant that they would seek alternate, cheaper places of living. And this is where slums, encampments, and tin-roof shelters came into existence.

All of these factors combined ate into the Space Design of a city. Inherently, to the naked eye, it seemed like these economically challenged people were to be blamed. But the truth is that it was a result of nothing but improper planning and a capitalistic mentality.

When a city is improperly planned, it not only hurts the looks and aesthetics of the city, but also has real-world consequences for those living in it. Take a household maid, for instance. For her minimum wage income, she has to walk to as many houses as she can to earn more money. So, a city with bad planning and improper use of space will reduce walkable paths and make it harder and more cumbersome for the maid to walk in an area.

But if the design was good and properly done, she could cover more area by walking, reaching more houses, and earning more money, all in the same time and effort it would’ve taken her anyway. Therefore, the lack of good urban planning has direct economic impacts on society. As author Alain Bertaud said in his book, “Order Without Design – How Market Shapes Cities,” a city isn’t just a piece of architecture; it is also a labor market. It should connect workers to jobs.

So, how did we get to such a mismanaged state in the first place? To reach the answer, we have to go back to 1898 Bombay.

In 1898, a horrific Plague swept through Bombay, killing hundreds of thousands of people. Many more were injured and needed tending to. India was actively under British rule, and the British decided to start something called “The Bombay Improvement Trust.” This trust ensured that the urban planning of the city was too important to be left to the people of Bombay who lived in the city.

They passed bills, laws, and urban development initiatives for a place where thousands lived, without actually considering their well-being in the first place. It was a massive breach of trust of the Indian people.

Soon enough, this initiative spread across all major cities – Kolkata (then Calcutta), Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, etc. In 1947, after India gained independence, while the Improvement Trust was gone, the same policies were put in place in each city, but with different names. The problem remained.

The years 1956 and 1962 were two other years extremely crucial in keeping this institutional problem intact. In 1956, the Indian Government adopted an Industrial Location Policy which banned new manufacturing in cities with over 500,000 population. Industries were banned from locating within 50 kms of cities with 2.5 million people.

While the goal was to develop backward areas in Indian cities, it didn’t stop infrastructure development in places such as Mumbai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, etc. All it ever did was raise the price and become more informal. More crucially, it diverted government infrastructure spending away from cities. Hence, it was a net negative result.

In 1962, India’s first Statutory Master Plan was the Delhi Master Plan. Development authorities were given full power to forcibly acquire farmlands from villagers, plan new neighbourhoods, and sell off plots. This unjust plan caused decades of farmers’ protests, and court cases on unused lands piled up, while cities sprawled around them. Once again, it didn’t help the cause of utilizing unused land; instead, it was far worse.

As planners looked around, without considering the deep underlying reasons behind this strange use of some land while other areas remained empty, they saw a strong case for ‘Population Density’ being the problem. Population Density was never the problem in the first place. It’s literally what makes any urban area “Urban.” The problem was the inadequate infrastructure at that densely populated place, not the density itself.

So, the planners did what they deemed was right. They spread people out, capped floor space, and built standalone buildings within compounds with wide margins, etc. As usual, this further worsened the living standards.

So, this is where we are, after nearly 8 decades of Independence, the problem has only gotten worse. While some attempts at improvement have been made, they have been too little, with insufficient funding and widespread corruption. So, how does India and its cities come out of this perennial problem?

The answer isn’t straightforward, nor is it simple. India suffers from a twin problem of poor space design and urban planning, and the rapid population growth in urban areas. It is estimated that India’s urban population will exceed a billion by 2050, and we have no idea how to accommodate them all.

No effective solution exists as of now, and any attempt at a discussion is even more thwarted since the rich politicians, developers, and real estate agents all benefit greatly from it. If the price of living in flats and condominiums keeps increasing, they are the ones benefiting most from it. Hence, it serves them well to keep the system broken.

One solution suggested is the ‘Town Planning Scheme’ that A Mirams came up with. In India, only Gujarat has adopted it very actively, and that too for over a century. This cost-effective, win-win scheme has been widely adopted for city development or redevelopment throughout the world.

Tokyo used it after the 1923 earthquake destroyed the city, Germany used it to redesign its cities, and more than 102 cities used it to form themselves out of rubble after World War II. Gujarat adopted it to rebuild after the 2001 Bhuj earthquake. So, the real question is, why hasn’t any other Indian city that needs this adopted it yet?

The answer is that it requires skilled planners who can negotiate, value land, and exercise judgment, not just draw maps. Planning schools don’t really teach it, since the Master planning orthodoxy says the state should acquire land, not collaborate with land owners. Plus, development authorities have zero incentive to share power with the people whose land they are planning.

Therefore, in conclusion, India continues to suffer from the 3 problems – Fragmentation, Inflexibility, and Paralysis. The shorthand solutions for all of them are:

• Fragmentation – Public land through the Town Planning Scheme.
• Inflexibility – Building Reforms through Regulatory Reforms.
• Paralysis – Governance through empowered city governments with real authority.

So what do you think? Will this problem remain forever, or will we find a solution someday?