Great sustainability can be achieved by investing heavily in nuclear energy generation and later in making best use of available land in the present city areas to the utmost extent so as ensure better living standards. Presently, Indian cities are dense conurbations but are largely low-rise due to limited floor-space-index ratio. Cities need to be accommodating more people within their edges and are required to arrest their suburbanization by building more high-rises. The cost of transporting people over longer distances can greatly be reduced by building more mixed-use and high-rise developments, where walking would be the most preferred mode of transport at the ground level.

The report, though elaborate, falls short of providing other facets of urban and rural income growth. It takes a simplistic view of the urbanization process in India and considers agglomeration benefits to rise unrestricted, one way.

It says a natural increase in population is the single most important factor of urban growth. In reality, it is the in-migration which is the largest contributor to urban growth. It underestimates the growth in rural areas in the last four years becuase of better farm prices and state support. There has been a rapid growth of tertiary sector in many parts of rural country.

Urban India is dependent on rural India for food supply, which, if goes slower than increase in consumption, would give more income in hands of farmer than an urban migrant because of increased food prices.

The report, though informatory, is at best an indicator of rapid growth in urbanization. It indirectly implies an increased necessity of urgent and better infrastructure creation, failing which urbanized states will be left counting necropolises.

Umesh’s points merit a serious consideration: Sustained improvements in quality of life across the entire ecosystem, not just in urban centers.

And, stop the migrations to only a few “hubs”.

A ‘systemic’ planning and execution, which leverages resources, attributes, and concerns of the entire ecosystem, is a must! Such an approach will make healthy organic progress, build incremental momentum, preserve local uniquenesses, and develop a richly diverse set of civilization centers.

Such a systemic execution provides system-wide adoption of ‘local’ succcesses and lessons learned.

The governments—at all levels—must play an orchestrated role and invoke wholesome public-private collaboration, both domestically and internationally.

Rapid urbanisation, I feel, is the single biggest internal challenge facing our economy. This has implications for socio-economic and regional stability. Where we really show up poorly versus the other nations is our pathetic and chaotic urban organisation. At the pace at which we are urbanizing, it will take an iron will and rock solid implementation to ensure we don’t end up with swathes of urban shanties under the name of cities. In most countries, they first develop and then populate. In India we first populate and then think of developing. Look at Mumbai and then Delhi. After the cities have engulfed the available space we are building rapid transport systems and flyovers. We in India need to reverse this trend and develop infrastructure first, and then allow populations to settle.

India has lot of potential for future expansion with respect to the growth projections of Indian cities. I see some comments arguing to reduce the pressure on the urban cities. I partially agree to this. This is due to few reasons:

1. The existing urban cities are too crowded which poses challenges for proper planning and waste management. As already mentioned in one of the comments, it is better to have an urban population which helps in concentration of people and supporting industries but, dont you all think that the current population numbers is enough? In my view, the current population in some cities is even more than population of some highly industrialized countries. We should invest in developing the existing labor and industrial potential of the cities but not to increase their size.

2. My second argument is that India is one of the largest countries in the world. Why is India focusing on the existing cities? Instead we should focus on the development of new cities, highly planned, and organised, which makes sure that new urban cities are created but does not put pressure on the environment and and existing cities. As you can see in the interactive map there are very few cities in the country compared to similar-sized countries. One more thing to bolster this argument is that the population is also very high compared to US or other large countries with high number of urban cities.

From a 30,000 foot level, I foresee the following challenges for India’s urbanization, though not necessarily in any order:
1. Planning and and policy. Rapid expansion of lower-tier towns would result in a construction frenzy. Everyone knows what happens in that case. Let’s guard against our cities becoming “bada gaon”, a village—a large one!

2. Demand-supply mismatch of utilities. Bringing power and water from far-off sources, setting up a distribution network, metering, and the resultant transmission loss would be a critical challenge. While power is still one-way traffic, about 85% of water will have to be treated and disposed of appropriately. Mumbai dumps 70% of sewage into its seas and this is absolutely untreated sewage!!
3. Transportation systems. Roads cannot be expanded after the population has come in. Right of way for rail is very difficult after population expands.
4. Governance and Law and Order. Managing an unplanned city is a nightmare! Indian cities have experienced this since independence. Ghettoization which is quite natural in an unplanned city would definitely lead to a law and order problem.
5. Constitution of the city. City management should be the responsibility of the state and the party which runs it. Multiple authorities resulting in one-upmanship and passing the buck are a guarentee for poor governance. One can’t have a BMC run by Shiv Sena and State run by NCP-Congress! This is surely a recipie for disaster.

Though there are as many issues as the stars in the sky, these 5 would be the most critical.

Most of the recommendations made in the article are very pertinent to solve India’s urbanization problem. I think investment in education should also have been highlighted as a solution. Whether it’s an issue of awakening citizens for their rights, demanding more from government, skilled urban planners, engineers for infrastructure development, or anything else, education facilitates all aspects.

I wish the report had spent more time looking at the impact of urbanization on sustainability. It also bundles sustainability and climate change in one. This is not so. An urban area can pass strict legislation on emissions in compliance with global/national climate change regulations. But the same urban area can allow destruction of ecosystems under the name of development. (e.g. As we speak, in or near Mumbai, various proposed SEZs and residential developments are threatening valuable wetlands and magroves.) The kind of affordable housing construction the report speaks of, or the $1.2 trillion investment it mentions—is it really going to happen by protecting all ecosystems as they are today (to the extent they exist)? I wish the report had spent some time looking at bold alternatives which help us avoid further inflation of our current big-city populations and distributing the growth over a larger number of smaller cities.

@Umesh: While I can probably understand what you are speaking of in terms of how an increasing pressure on cities can potentially ruin the overall environment (as is quite evident in Pune over the last 5 years), I have to differ on the intent of reversing urbanization. Think of urban areas from the point of view of scale. It’s like, the margins involved when you sell, say, 1000 units of some part, compared to 10,000 or 100,000 of it. Similarly, to carry out dedicated work (of any type), it is better to have it concentrated at a place (city) than spreading it out to all nooks and corners.

See, basically, the troubles that we have in current cities is that they were simply not planned with the future in mind. The case of Pune is probably a little more complicated, given the fact that it is surrounded by hills and hillocks with no major water source (remember 3 of the 4 original metros are coastal cities, and maybe a major river nearby) and a major portion of its real estate ‘grabbed’ (if I can use that term) by the Armed Forces. However, the overall state of affairs can be much better if proper design goes into it. You must have seen the complete PDF from McKinsey Global Institute and one graphic at the start summarizes all that we need in a city and bench-marked with global counterparts (I think it was water, sewage, infrastructure, and a couple of other parameters).

There are a lot of things that will need to change to build up better cities to attain these things, apart from the sheer dollars pumped in (a feedback here for MKQ is that for the Indian readers, it is great to have it converted to crores, to get a perspective). Better governance, awareness among the public and better enforcement—in general, a cultural change as much as an economic one. Pune is a beautiful example of how lax enforcement directly diminishes quality of life (helmets for 2 wheeler riders. Go to Kolkata or Delhi and you’ll find even pillion riders wearing one). I say awareness of the public as opposed to saying that the Indian public is simply not literate or educated or “gentlemanly” enough to follow rules. The systems need to improve. Its always a process problem, not a people problem. Remove grade-separators, turn-arounds, button-pressing road crossing, proper lane definitions and implementation from the US roads and it will take minutes for them to resemble the state of affairs that we have in most cities here.

I know I have rambled on about a lot of things in trying to explain that change towards urbanization is a good thing. We can actually create better, green cities if we want to (I think with the alternate energy potential today, this is a perfect opportunity for India to build). Personally, I’m in favour of new cities, but even existing cities can be bettered. For all its pains, Pune probably has already given us a pilot of how things can be improved in a city in a short time (think Youth Commonwealth Games, 2008).

There is an immense potential in the real estate, transportation, power generation, sustainability, and water resource sectors. Large investments over a period of time will ensure benefits to the tune of billions of dollars; maybe more than the revenue generation of Europe and the US combined. But it’s important to pick up talent and resources from the sector which you targeting. It’s easy to get the best talent from the best institutes, but what would actually make a difference is picking up talent from the streets. With the Indian democratic system and widespread corruption, it’s vital to understand how to get over these hurdles (since it would not be wise to hope a rise of Mao Ze Dong in India) in the most ethical way! And someone who has witnessed the hurdles at a close range can give better insight and add more value compared to an individual who is simply intellectually superior.

A mode needs to be developed within organizations to tap into this potential of people who are street smart with an eagle vision. This would actually mean changing the way business is done; and in the near future creating a model of rebuttal to fight back the system misuse.

The GDP growth rate in India is providing opportunity of a lifetime to investors and entrepreneurs. Urbanization is a natural phenomenon of this. Respective state governments should get their act together otherwise the quality of life of urban citizens will be deplorable.

On a recent weekend holiday to Mysore, I couldn’t help but notice the number of rural folk who thronged every public holiday spot. It made me think about the implications from a shopper’s perspective. Undoubtedly, these folks would shop at urban shopping centers too. Arguably, their shopping behaviour would be different from that of an urban shopper.

Reading this article makes me think about the challenges this scenario will pose for brands. As a country, India is still probably at the beginning of its maturity phase on consumer insights translating into branding and communication. Shopper research and insights are still being explored by a relative few. In such a context, migration at the speed and scale envisaged by this report would certainly impact the way brands and retailers would need to see the urban and rural landscapes.

What would the implication of this shift be? Would this mean further segmentation of urban retail by catchment area and shopper segment and tailoring the marketing mix accordingly? What about the urbanization of rural India that seems an inevitable result as populations mingle more? Will malls start resembling ‘haats’? Will barter move from the villages to cities? Will ‘haats’ be air conditioned and have shopping carts?

Being an Indian and resident of Pune I have opposite interest in the topic of urbanization: how to stop this?

I feel urbanization is degrading either the nature or the standard of living. You try to fix one and the other item suffers. The sustaining model for any civilization is to use the entire land with ‘equal stress’. Urbanization puts a stress on a small piece of land and whereas the large land is under utilized.

Maybe what encourages civilization is the ‘work for all’. But why has this topic been so important? It is not just the population but the excessive focus on ‘economy’ rather than the complete ‘civilization’.

-Umesh