THE URBAN IMPERATIVE: TOWARDS COMPETITIVE CITIES
Editors: Edward Glaeser and Abha Joshi-Ghani
New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2015
463 pages; Rs 995
In 2015, Edward Glaeser published Triumph of the City. The central theme of that book was that "… cities magnify humanity's strengths … and that the achievements of cities - whether in Brunelleschi's Florence or Ford's Detroit - benefit the entire world". He gave his views on why cities decline or succeed with details on a number of issues from cities all over the world. Now, along with Abha Joshi-Ghani, Professor Glaeser has coedited The Urban Imperative: Towards Competitive Cities, a collection of 15 chapters commissioned under the Urbanisation Knowledge Platform launched by the World Bank in 2011. Professor Glaeser is the director for knowledge and learning at the World Bank, and Professor Joshi-Ghani the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University.
The 15 chapters are written by some of the best-known of urban scholars, and contain a wealth of knowledge for those interested in details of what is happening in cities around the world. However, the book is not for those who want a quick refresher course in urban planning. It is a collection of ideas and facts for those who want to be brought up to date on available knowledge on city dynamics.
According to the editors, cities can be understood as the product of three forces - streets and buildings, the public sector and the "magic" of human interaction. How these forces interact and shape cities is what the various chapters tell us. We are warned that no discipline has a monopoly on wisdom and the book is not intended to prescribe ways forward but to incite debate and further research.
Many of the conclusions in the volume would be standard stuff for an established urban researcher but new for beginners and policymakers. However, many of the recommendations go contrary to the current popular notions on urbanisation prevalent in India. For example, the editors conclude that the public sector must play a significant role in the growth of cities because without better decision-making "the world's cities will be unable to realise their true potential".
In his chapter on what makes some cities more successful, Enrico Moretti concludes that only governments can initiate big push policies because only the government can coordinate all the activities to get the agglomeration policies going. The authors suggest that public-private partnerships (PPPs) are not a panacea, as weak public sectors are less likely to manage projects efficiently with increased potential for corruption. The governments themselves have to develop institutional and human expertise in large measure to be able to take intelligent policy decisions.
We are informed that high-quality education institutions are powerful predictors of urban productivity. It is not surprising then that the cities that have taken off in India, not only had in place the country's best educational institutions but also very large public sector organisations that attracted highly qualified professionals. Working with better educated colleagues increases the productivity of an unskilled worker and increases their aspirations. And Professor Moretti also tells us that "despite all the hype about exploding connectivity and the death of distance location matters more than ever ... video conferencing, e-mail and Skype have not made a dent in the need for innovative people to work side by side". Higher educational qualifications in city populations also decide which cities develop as hubs of knowledge. As more married couples have two careers, the location problem becomes more serious. Today, one-half of companies report spouse's job as the biggest reason why employees turn down a relocation offer. Therefore, availability of professional jobs in a large number of disciplines becomes necessary for a city to grow and remain attractive.
While many of the principles on how and why cities grow may be common across the world, Ejaz Ghani and Ravi Kanbur inform us that, unlike in the West, with increasing incomes and urbanisation the availability of formal jobs has, in fact, slowed down in the developing countries, especially in India. Nearly 99 per cent of enterprises and 81 per cent of employment is now in the unorganised sector. It appears that, for the time being, there is going to be urbanisation of the informal sector and de-urbanisation of the organised sector. The informal sector may need to be viewed not as a problem but as something that will need to be provided support to enhance its productivity.
Now, firms doing research and development appear to locate in larger metropolitan areas, while mass production of standard items occurs in non-metropolitan areas. As development proceeds, manufacturing decentralises from large cities and moves to the periphery or to smaller cities. But in India, this may be happening prematurely as expensive land, lack of infrastructure and power force organisations to move to the periphery where they can establish their own facilities - thereby losing the advantages of agglomeration. There are no clear ideas presented on how to deal with this.
The book does not have much to offer on traffic management and pollution control in developing-country cities that is new or innovative. What is interesting is that this book contains a great deal of discussion on cities in developing countries, although almost all the authors live and work in Europe or the United States. It is quite clear that there are very few excellent professionals available in India to deal with these issues. Unless we set up dozens of research centres in our institutions to do this work, we won't have the correct answers to all the problems we are faced with. In the meantime, anyone working on urban issues should go and get a copy of this book.
The reviewer is at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
