Reducing pressure on city with smart townships

Reducing pressure on city with smart townships
GEORGE K KURUVILA
Deccan Herald
The creation of self-sustaining satellite towns with the active involvement of the private sector is the answer to decongest the burgeoning Bangalore city.

BANGALORE has grown from a population of two million in 1980 to almost seven million today i.e., 3.5 times in 25 years. At this rate of increase, Bangalore’s population will more than double to 15 million by the year 2020. What kind of city planning do we need to accommodate15 million people by that year? With the Information Technology (IT) boom, Bangalore is one of the fastest growing cities in India and Asia. With the emerging Bio-technology (BT) boom, Bangalore’s population growth may be even faster in the coming decades.

Vehicular growth has been even more exponential, averaging consistently more than 8 per cent in previous years. At this rate of increase, total number of vehicles will double in the next 8 to 9 years. The present number of vehicles being about 22 lakhs i.e., by 2014 we can expect 44 lakh vehicles at the present growth rate. But our city streets are already choked with traffic. What used to be a 15 minutes drive, now often takes an hour or more. Bangalore is currently one of the most polluted cities in India. With all this, can we accommodate much more traffic on our streets? With continuous widening of roads, the ample wide pedestrian sidewalks with large trees have disappeared, which were one of the main attributes of the “ex-garden” city.

Green belt shrinking

Parks and the “green belt” are shrinking. The existing “green belt” is officially proposed to shrink by about one-third, from 742 sq km to 494 sq km, in the Proposed Comprehensive Development Plan for Bangalore 2005-2015. Our streets are flooded even after short rainfalls due to acute lack of rainwater outlets and clogged storm water drains. Our roads are often potholes ridden, a result of shoddy workmanship and erosion due to flooding in the rainy season. There is a shortage in water supply and electric power resulting in frequent stoppages. How will the city provide adequate water and power to the projected 15 million populations by year 2020?

In short Bangalore’s infrastructure is over stretched, crumbling and facing a crisis. Due to lack of basic infrastructure in Bangalore, IT and BT firms may want to relocate to other cities, as they have already suggested. Would our government want to lose out on such non-polluting, income generating industries?

Satellite towns

In this high tech era, supposing a fairy queen or Aladdin’s genie was to come over to our chief minister and suggest a way out, what would that be? “Sir, will the government please allow for new self-sustaining satellite towns/cities around Bangalore? (Towns are classified with below 100,000 population and cities with between 100,000 and one million). These would help arrest the seemingly never ending outward growth of our metropolis, as they did to the primary cities in Europe and America, primarily in the middle part of last century. More importantly, these proposed new satellite towns would allow for development of centres of urban infrastructure in rural areas, thus reducing the endless need for rural migration to the primary city. These proposed self-sufficient satellite towns/cities would provide ample work and opportunities.”

May be we need a mind shift from “What the government can do” to “What we can do” i.e., instead of depending on the government developing the proposed new satellite cities, we the people through private enterprise should help in accomplishing the goal together. With the recent relaxation of FDI rules in development of new townships, this is supposedly a preferred possibility. Then why hasn’t new satellite towns become a reality in and around Bangalore? May be, private players need government approvals and facilitation. The government should help to achieve this win-win situation (both for the government and the present and future generations of citizens). Then the government can focus on improving infrastructure within Bangalore, thereby insuring that MNCs and IT/BT firms do not leave Bangalore. May be, we can do a Shanghai or Singapore in Bangalore, as then we would be able to decongest the metropolis and government can be focused on redeveloping the main city.

Smart cities

Satellite towns can be designed as “smart cities” (as suggested by Royal Raj International Corporation) and contain top international class infrastructure with private players contributing. This will lead to healthy competition and stabilise prices. It will also generate more employment.

One question which is asked is where will the water come from for these proposed new cities? Karnataka has an average rainfall of 60 cms per year. According to economist Jacob John, considering the area and population of Bangalore, this translates to 602 litres per person per day. This is 5 to 6 times more than the average daily water consumption in India. Even if we harvest one-third of the rainfall, this should be sufficient for the populations water needs. To conserve water, further effort should be made to recycle treated grey water discharge (i.e. all used water from our homes other than from toilets) for landscape/gardening purposes.

As Bangalore’s population is projected to add at least another five million residents in another 10 to 12 years, we would need about 10 self-sufficient satellite cities with 300,000 to 500,000 population each, around Bangalore. These should be all ready and built by 2015, which means we should start planning and encouraging private players right now, just to keep pace with the projected growth.

Now’s the time for our people and government to start moving in the direction of developing self sustaining satellite cities, if we want to make Bangalore livable and have a cutting edge advantage over other cities. Do we have the will and the burning desire to make Bangalore and its surroundings a green livable city once again?

The author is an architect and urban/regional planner. E-mail: gkk_townplanning@yahoo.com