Barun Roy: The cities of change

ASIA FILE

To me, walking the streets of Hong Kong is like visiting an art gallery. If ever there were such a thing as a photogenic city, Hong Kong is certainly one, with a gleaming pile of beautifully sculpted buildings, scattered between its hills and the sea, that one can spend hours gazing at. It's lively, it's clean, it's orderly even in its busiest areas, and it's always getting better.

Singapore has a flatter, featureless terrain, but every single part of it is like a framed painting, transformed, as if by magic, into one vast nature park with a fine balance between built and unbuilt spaces.

Everything is just right in Singapore and the experience is truly refreshing. One can lie down anywhere on its grass without the fear of getting sullied or smelling stink.

Back in 1969, when I first visited the place, Kuala Lumpur was a sleepy little town as perfect as a picture postcard. Well, it's no longer sleepy and it's certainly not little any more, but it's as beautiful now as it was then, probably far better chiselled and organised.

And it definitely looks smarter with its psychedelic downtown and the marvel of the Petronas twin towers. Glitter is written all over its face.

There are other cities across south-east, north, and east Asia that wear the same freshly painted look, the same neatness in their buildings and orderliness in their streets, and the same graceful touches of manicured green. These are the new-age cities of Asia.

Makati, for one, in the Philippines, always had the look of a city from the American suburbia; now, with all the recent developments, it has begun to dazzle.

With 380 bridges, overpasses, underpasses and tunnels, and some 750 parks laid out like beautiful carpets, Taipei is a changed city now. And Taipei 101, supposedly the world's tallest building at this moment, is leading its march towards modernity.

Seoul has bared plans to make pedestrians the masters of the downtown, where citizens' squares and wider sidewalks will dominate. Yes, Seoul is crowded and vendors clutter sidewalks in some parts of it, but the city looks fresh in its wonderful variety of new architecture, its wide, immaculate avenues and its great leisure sites, green belts, urban forests and charming street-side parks.

Along the tributary running next to the main river in the centre of Seoul, there are six kilometres of sidewalks where nature lovers are left alone to watch wild flowers and fish and food stands are banned.

Cities are changing all over China, too, bearing the stamps of famous international architects and town planners. Beijing has long outgrown its stodgy Stalin-era look.

The inner city, with 100 square kilometres of green belt around it, is a masterpiece of urban development and all over the city old shanties and entire networks of narrow, winding lanes are disappearing at a furious rate, yielding to sleek, soaring towers, sweeping bridges and flyovers, and dazzling malls.

In some areas of Shanghai, it's hard to find houses over 10 years old, and a forest of glitzy skyscrapers in the financial district of Pudong dominates the skyline above the Huangpu. Even in remote Chengdu, ramshackle wooden houses are going one by one.

It's true that, in the process, Asian cities are losing their distinctive traditional looks and flavours. Singapore has sought to preserve some of its shophouses but these are little more than curiosities.

The temples of Bangkok are on the point of being drowned under the unrelenting tide of spectacular modernist constructions. Hong Kong has ceased to be a typically Chinese city. All over China, the old is on the retreat.

While this may worry conservationists and some western tourists who come to the East for its typical smells and sensations, it doesn't worry me. To me it reflects a new Asia full of youth and enterprise and the freedom it has gained from the bondage of false traditions, a freedom that gives it the courage to embrace change.

A city must be beautiful to look at and comfortable to live in, before anything else. It must be efficient and organised, decent and inviting.

A neat urban environment is as important for a nation's well being as its rivers and lakes and forests. The westerners discovered the truth long ago. Asians are discovering it now and much of this ancient continent is beginning to look wonderfully fresh and new.

There's one exception, though "" south Asia. It's one part of Asia where cities still look like malformed and severely malnourished children, woefully undefined, and a bunch of chance-directed oddities in a permanent state of chaos and decay.

We are unable to change them because we refuse to veer from our false beliefs and traditions. We won't even demolish an unauthorised temple to straighten a road, lest we offend the gods.