While our moral universe shrinks and we are condemned to becoming a banana republic, urban India is slated to double in population in the coming decade! This will put unprecedented pressure on both the ethics and practices of city planning. From precedent, we know that the likely outcome will be a crudely put-together patchwork ‘master plan’ that, at best, will paint a shockingly incoherent future, for the long and short term. And even if the ‘plan’ has valid vision, its interpretation at the local ground level will be accidentally or purposefully distorted, as it divides itself into ‘mini’ plans so disparate they appear orphans unrelated to the parent plan. The resulting mayhem becomes, among other things, a breeding ground for scams.
It is not a lack of talent or ability but a lack of foresight — to first imagine and then be responsible for an ideal future. Or perhaps the imagined future is so like the present that it ceases to be ‘future’ at all.
In stark contrast are the Chinese, who on the peripheries of their cites have planted thousands of hectares of orchards with trees of varying heights and ages to eventually shade the expressways that are yet to be built!
So where do we go wrong?
Imagine a house planned for a family of four, built over two decades, where the base walls are designed to be immovable. In the process of building, alterations to the rigid structure, due to the changing conditions and requirements of the family, are inevitable. The resulting structure, in trying to match the pace of growth of the family and individual needs, will end up as a convoluted maze and may bear little resemblance to the original idea.
This is exactly how urban master plans are conceived and implemented. Typically designed for a future lasting two decades, their inflexible structures are constantly augmented with gestures to keep abreast with the rapidly changing urban environment and keep the plan ‘viable’.
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These are not bold shifts to address the issues head-on, with clarity and reason. Instead they are incremental steps that tiptoe around the master plan looking for loopholes, designed for troubleshooting or to serve a political need.
No master plan can be a static drawing. It has to be one of stunning imagination rife with dynamic optimism for a perfect or ideal future. After all, we have to hope that a new plan implements what is best for the city.
Ironically, therein lies the first loophole. We casually replace ‘best’ with ‘better’, and accept the better without knowing what is best.
So who knows ‘best’? Does a utopian plan need a utopian society for implementation?
My sense is it does not. It needs a process based in debate and mandate between agencies and stakeholders through open and participatory forums. In this age of vociferous and ‘instant’ media, that is not impossible to achieve.
Design competitions and challenges, inviting ideas from all quarters, publicly exhibited, will help us understand why our cities take the shape they do, and how — why a street is widened or flyover built, a street made one-way or bus route changed, a mall added and park turned into parking. These are the small questions that need to be part of a single big answer, one that allows us to relate seemingly disparate things to each other. Vision is thus linked to accountability and, more importantly, the city is connected to its citizens.n
Suparna Bhalla is a Delhi-based architect