The Ring-a-Ring-a Roses – Decentralising Urbanisation to Small and Medium Towns

An intriguing article by Chetan Bhagat in Times of India on July 7, 2018 argued that to relieve the choked metros (it is where we opinion-makers live) fiscal instruments should be used so as to spread employment to urban centres other than the metros. In India, we forget the recent history in the quest for glorious past (and I am not saying Chetan Bhagat is inflicted with it), and fear that we would be branded as being Nehruvian, we are not willing to say that this was exactly the urbanisation and economic growth policy in the early periods of independent India. Now that our metros have become dysfunctional, roads choked – by traffic and by garbage – and we are forced to jostle with people on roads and public places (wherever they are), idea of decongesting them has arisen. The easy victims of the malaise that our cities have become – filthy, chok-a-bloc with people and vehicles, and unaffordable realty prices – idea is to spread economic growth to other urban settlements than metros has arisen.

The dynamics of urbanisation is such that people congregate to the metro cities in search of work, better education facilities for their children, access to better health care and to some extent access to recreation. The recreation through movies does not remain anymore a metro centric phenomenon as one can watch movies – of all types – on mobile phone if one has smart phone and a reasonable speed mobile network connection.

Cities happened because there was surplus wealth to sustain those who did not engage in agriculture. Cities became larger and larger because more and more wealth was created and more and more wealthier got concentrated in the larger and larger cities. For example, in India, if definitional complications are left aside, we had 33% of the urban population living in metropolitan cities (million plus cities) in 1991. But in 2001, 38% and in 2011 43% urban population lived in metropolitan cities. Number of metropolitan cities have increased while the very large metropolitan cities such as Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai (and not Delhi) have not attracted new migrants.

The idea that small and medium towns should be promoted to attract economic growth incentives to not just decongest metropolitan cities but also have equitable or what was then called balanced urbanisation and hence economic growth was first introduced in the Second Five Year Plan in India, through creation of New Towns in the backward regions of the country where heavy industries were located. The Steel Plan city of Bokaro, Jamshedpur and many others were part of this idea. The first Master Plan of Delhi (1962) also talked about dispersal of population to satellite towns around such as Faridabad, Gaziabad, etc. which did not develop then but are now taking in Delhi’s population without decongesting Delhi.

The support to Small and Medium Towns (SMTs) came up in 1975 during the Fourth Five Year Plan. Plan pronouncements meant direct investments by the central government in the proposed activities. Subsequently, tax incentives were also given for industrialisation of backward regions since Fourth Five Year Plan onwards to attract private investments. Direct investments, subsidies and tax incentives all were targeted towards promoting industrial development and economic growth in what was called ‘backward regions’, along with investments in infrastructure in the SMTs. Both came as a package. But, these ideas were reviled as ‘Socialist’ in post-1991 period of economic reforms. Now these would be branded as ‘Nehruvian’ and again blasted by the current political dispensation.

In between, our former and now deceased honourable President of India Abdul Kalam had proposed the idea of ‘PURA’, Providing Urban facilities in Rural Areas, with the same idea of supporting economic growth and improving living conditions in villages around cities. The idea did not take-off. The current government has introduced the idea of ‘Rururban’ Mission for planned development (economic growth with infrastructure) through Rural Development Ministry, in line with what was called ‘Rururbanisation’ in China promoted through development of Town and Village Entreprises.

Whether the idea of pushing economic growth to small and medium towns is being argued as new idea by Chetan Bhagat or is considered a rhetoric, it is worth exploring and promoting. This is the only pathway to sustainable development and sustainable urbanisation. It is the only way India will be able to meet the Paris agreement commitment on Climate Change, as small and medium town will be able to manage their waste better, will require low energy as there can be high-density low rise development, and the mobility can be through non-motorised transport and walking rather than energy intensive metro systems. These towns and cities have still to be built and provide us opportunities to in-build low-energy development. But, it will require very strong government intervention; markets alone will not deliver. If we do implement this reinvented wheel, would it be resurrection of Nehruvian idea or neo-socialism?

Le Corbusier Lives in China

Bijlmermeer neighbourhood, the south-east suburb of Amsterdam, which today houses almost 50,000 people of over 150 nationalities, was designed as a single project as part of the modernist approach to urban development. Its first few buildings were completed towards the end of 1960s, after which some residents begun to move in what was advertised as ‘paradise with modern towers’. The original neighbourhood was designed as a series of nearly identical high-rise buildings in a hexagonal grid and has been called honeycomb housing. The urban planning principles were influenced by CIAM, the International Congress for Modern Architecture, set up by Le Corbusier, the master of modern Architecture and his contemporaries.

Le Corbusier’s idea of urban planning was the concept of ‘Radiant City’, wherein, the people were to be put in multi-storey housing so as to allow for large open spaces for recreation and green cover. The circulation was to be at two levels, the elevated roads to reduce traffic congestion and hence pollution and lower level for pedestrians and bicyclists. Upwardly rising residential towers would provide residents with the views as also clean air and sunlight. The original honeycomb housing can be seen in Photo 1.

Photo 1: Aerial view of Bijlmermeer, Amsterdam

This location of Bijlmermeer was selected as it was then outside the city of Amsterdam and land costs were low. However, it took a long time before the public infrastructure such as good roads and metro line were constructed to provide good connectivity to the place. The residents of Amsterdam lost interest in the project and subsequently, it was used as a social housing which came to be occupied by the immigrant community of the city. The Surinamese immigrants were located here by the government, in what then became social housing. It became essentially a low-income neighbourhood. Low-income neighbourhood with concentration of immigrant community also meant high levels of unemployment among the youth of the neighbourhood. Eventually, it came to be known as a neighbourhood with high crime rates. The grade separation of roads provided automobiles to move fast on the elevated roads but the spaces below when the roads crossed the pedestrian walkways created potential negative spaces wherein crime thrived. In an endeavour to reduce crime in this neighbourhood, the city of Amsterdam decided to convert this into mixed-income neighbourhood, that is, to gentrify the neighbourhood by attracting middle-income families to it.

However, high rise living is not conducive to the living style of middle-income groups, who prefer to live in low-rise condominium housing so that the children can play outside and parents can keep a watch on them. The new concerns such as of safe cities and climate change mitigation efforts such as promoting cycling, has led to flattening of the roads wherein the mixed traffic, motorised as well as non-motorised and pedestrians can move together. In all, many of the high rises have been torn down to create a safe and liveable neighbourhood. The neighbourhood has now good public transport connections and a commercial centre with multifarious activities. There has been conscious efforts to convert unsafe spaces into safe spaces.

Photo 2: Renewal of Bijlmermeer, with low rise apartments

We shift to another continent, another country, China, another era, twenty first century. China, in its rapid pace of urbanisation and strides towards modernisation has also adopted vertical urban form. The cities, central parts as well as the peripheries are transforming into high-rise complexes. Within the city, the former low-rise housing with lower per capita living area have given way to multi-storey buildings, about 25 to 30 storey high having modern facilities and higher dwelling unit size. The per capita living area on an average has increased from 5.3 sq m per person to 36.6 square per person in 2016 (Source: http://www.chinabankingnews.com/2017/07/07/chinas-per-capita-residential-space-rose-40-8-square-metres-2016/). To keep lands free for green spaces and other public goods such as roads, gardens, education and health facilities, convention centres and sports complexes, the housing form has taken to be multi-storey.

On the urban periphery, in the rural areas and peri-urban areas, the high-rises house the rural population. The rural residents, some out of choice (mainly the young generation) and some by mandate (mainly the elderly who prefer rural housing type for social reasons) have been shifted to multi-storey buildings to release rural lands. In some villages, the village committees, which are the local governance units, have sold surplus lands through long term leases. The profits from such land-sales have been invested in improving the rural conditions and constructing public amenities of the urban areas. Such profits have also been used to cross subsidize new housing construction. 

Photo 3: A Village near Suzhou City in South China

Photo 4: New High Rises on Suzhou City’s Periphery, China

There has been a push in the recent years in China for increasing urbanisation, which is seen as a way to improve the living conditions of the rural population. The proportion of employment in agriculture in 2017 has come down to 17.5% in China from 55.3% in 1991 (Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS?locations=CN). Large number of rural residents are employed in non-farm work and a large proportion of agriculture is in the green houses with the application of modern technology. There is a shift towards industrialised agriculture, an aspect which is being promoted by the national government. Industrialised agriculture requires large land parcels. Further, the Chinese government is paying the farmers to grow trees, which will contribute towards carbon sequestration to meet its commitment under the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) after the Paris Agreement on Climate Change Mitigation. This also requires that lands be released.


A village in Suzhou City’s periphery in South China – Suzhou is a tourist town with traditional Chinese gardens of the former elites – where the residents were either engaged in some business (See Photo 3) or the males working in the city, was to be transformed into high rise living. Clearly, many had shifted out of agriculture to non-agriculture occupations and were unmindful of moving into modern housing. The type of modern housing that is coming up in this village’s periphery and likely for also this village can be seen in Photo 4. Photo 5 shows that general landscape of cities in China, which is of Suzhou city. Photo 6 is the landscape of peripheral areas of Tianjin City, which is an industrial city and this road is towards the Tianjin Free Trade Area.

Photo 5: From the internal city highway, Suzhou City, China

Photo 6: In Tianjin City Free Trade Area, China

Thus, we see very much the modernist transformation of China’s cities and its peripheral rural areas. This is very much the idea of New Urbanization, which is managed and is focussed on releasing lands for private and public transportation, green spaces and other public amenities. It is Le Corbusier ideas in practice in the twenty first century!