Subir Roy’s thoughts on city planning (“Brownfield incremental cities” on July 7 and “Let’s build a few Chandigarhs” on June 23) are interesting. Unfortunately, however, cities are not made on the drawing board on a clean slate. We cannot take the 5,000 acres that Roy desires, leaving forests, agricultural land, water bodies, etc. Cities are not dead objects that can be subject to dissection and reorganisation. Industrialisation does have an impact on cities. It is the economic flow of the city, and not its geographic restriction, that guides its expansion. Chandigarh was built on an almost clean slate, with rural areas around and not much cultivation. Even then, nearly half of the city population lives in slums.
Moreover, the drawing board solution of city development does not consider political divisions. Land is predominantly a state subject. One major reason why the concept of National Capital Region (NCR) could not take off in time was that it involved two more state governments apart from that of Delhi. There is a vast difference between planning and implementation. Even an excellent city plan may go haywire because planners are not implementers.
Shipra Maitra, Uttar Pradesh
