Which is the greenest, cleanest city in Asia? Ask anyone and the answer would be predictable and unanimous: Singapore. An Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) survey specially commissioned by Siemens has just reconfirmed this. But if you ask any expatriate in Asia to name the region’s best liveable retirement city, the answer would be equally predictable – Manila – even though, in all international surveys of liveable cities, including EIU’s own annual index, the Philippine capital always figures pretty low in the ranks.
One of the reasons for Manila scoring as the best liveable retirement city is its low cost of living. I know many Americans who went to work in Manila and stayed back after retirement simply because home, and even Singapore, would have been too costly for their pension dollars. Besides, Manila is warmer, friendlier and freer. People are naturally zestful, with no hang-ups about foreigners. They sing, dance and smile a lot, putting one at ease. And you won’t be fined for leaving a public toilet without flushing.
So, yes, Manila has crime, Singapore is absolutely safe; Manila has squalor, Singapore is squeaky clean; Manila has pollution, Singapore is healthy and fresh; Manila is chaotic, Singapore is very, very orderly. But Manila is livelier while Singapore is staid, unnervingly proper and psychologically limiting.
Well, in the end it’s a matter of choice and one can’t quarrel with it. But even “liveable” cities must have a degree of orderliness to remain so. This is something that even Manila seems to understand – aware of its many problems, it’s now working on a major plan to reconstruct its urban landscape – but we in South Asia don’t.
Take Kolkata for example. Personally, it’s not my kind of a city and in the Siemens Asian Green City Index it’s ranked, perhaps most fittingly, as “below average” (along with Manila, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hanoi, if that’s of any comfort). But ask the city’s residents, Bengalis and immigrants alike, and they’ll all say they love it there. It’s a place, they’ll point out, where people from all walks of life and economic levels can coexist in perfect harmony, in their own different spaces and be themselves. Yes, Kolkata is dirty, crowded and ill-kept but that’s precisely why it’s to be preferred, they’ll argue. Nobody bothers about anybody. If you can’t find a roof above your head, there’s always the sidewalk.
That’s a fine sentiment, but that’s also why our cities remain what they are — human corrals. Kolkata hasn’t changed in all these years, in a fundamental sense, even as it has come to acquire some so-called accoutrements of modern living, like shopping malls, high-rise apartment blocks and flyovers. Mumbaikars seem to nurse a sense of pride when they talk of Dharavi as the world’s biggest slum. Dhaka feels no shame even after being branded by EIU as the world’s second worst liveable city, after Harare. People in these cities and our other urban ghettos in South Asia have only thing to say: “We’re fine.” And that’s a pity, because that gives the authorities the licence to feel smug and do little.
But one must realise that cities aren’t villages and can’t be run like one. A city is a different social organisation, where living a purposeful, organised, time-barred economic life is the desired objective. So, even an informal city must have all the necessary systems in place for it to function smoothly. Otherwise, after a point, it’s bound to degenerate into a “minimum city” unable to cope with its burgeoning population.
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We can’t stop new millions from coming to live in cities. The pattern of global economic growth has led us inevitably into an urban way of life from which there’s no return. Unless we prepare ourselves to redefine the urban landscape, with visionary planning and pre-emptive action, we’ll end up facing an urban tsunami over which we’ll have no control.
Not that our cities aren’t trying to change. They always appear to. But, strangely, the more they try, the more they remain the same, because the approach is short-sighted and wrong. Over the years, Kolkata has acquired a metro, built flyovers and forged connector roads, but its traffic remains as bad as before. In the sixties and seventies, Kolkata was in constant international media focus, triggering huge flows of Ford Foundation and World Bank dollars for the city; but it remains as decrepit and disorderly as ever. If Dhaka thinks it can ease up its notorious traffic gridlock by 2013, as its recently-announced “comprehensive” plan seems to suggest, then it’s only kidding itself.
A livable city isn’t just a matter of building a flyover here or widening a road there, or stacking high-rise apartment blocks on every available piece of land, but creating a living, interacting organism that functions as a whole. This, for some strange reason, we’re unable to comprehend.