Despair of a fast growing city

Despair of a fast growing city
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: Of late, the global IT brand of Bangalore is threatened by a collapsing infrastructure and the ugly row between Gowda and Infy.

It is still unclear if the planners have failed to envisage the growth or is it humanly impossible for the infrastructure to grow in pace with such fast rate of growth.

Bangalore, a small town with over 1.5 lakh population in 1871, grew to accommodate 4.1 lakh people in 1941.

And as per the decennial census records, the city population has doubled every ten years since 1971 from 17 lakh to 56 lakh in 2001.

And in the last five years, the city has added another 10 lakhs.

The extent of the Bangalore Urban Agglomeration has also widened frm 177 sq kms in 1971 to 530 sq.kms in 2001. Over 150 sq kms are added to the city every ten years.

A closer look at how the city planning is done lets the Government down.

The planners have failed to take any measure to decongest the city.

The first priority of town planning is to distribute the growth uniformly by means of proper land use and infrastructure plan.

Only a pro-active approach can solve the problem, but the city has only reactive planning.

As a consequence, the growth of the city has only resulted in more congested clusters and roads have to be widened by demolishing buildings. The drains get clogged frequently and solid waste management is a mess.

Moreover the Government has not taken up any study as to how big the city may be allowed to expand as against the maximum resource capacity available.

What is the maximum population that the available drinking water supply can support?

What is the maximum limit of traffic load that the city infrastructure can allow? What is the maximum load the civic services can take? These are few questions the Government needs to answer.

The town planning engineering talks about a growth pattern for cities. Rapid urbanisation makes a neo-polis, which grows to become a metropolis.

And once the city grows out of its resource capacity it becomes a necropolis - a dead city.

The fastest growing city in Asia can become a necropolis equally fast. Do we have a study on that? What is the alternative plan? The Silicon Valley of India needs answers.