It is indeed heartening that at the very highest level the nation is focusing so much on urban renewal. Huge amounts of money are being earmarked for this enormous and critical task. Are we certain that we will revitalize our cities and make them the wonderful, livable places we dream of? Or, will we have only a smattering of modern infrastructure and a dazzle of stylish buildings? The announcement of various urban initiatives by the national government is historic. It would be tragic if this momentum were not productively harnessed.

     No doubt, one has to tackle the urban conundrum by targeting the symptoms of urban decay:  redressing key infrastructure bottlenecks- surface drains, water-supply schemes, roads, flyovers, solid-waste-disposal and collection systems, slum-improvement, etc. However, simultaneously, one has to traverse farther and confront those root issues that are basic to urban development.

    Consider, for a moment a walled township developed by a colonizer, spread over say 100 acres, with neat and orderly housing, its own social and leisure facilities, clubhouse, parks, lawns, security, shopping area etc. The basic infrastructure-physical, social, services etc are all there. Everything is hunky-dory. But when the developer begins to expand by acquiring more land and rips open the boundary wall to start a new colony, and changes the rules of the game, new issues arise. The existing infrastructure is now being shared with new occupants? The residential protocols have been unilaterally altered. Will all residents enjoy the infrastructure and services equitably and share the costs of extra-load ? Can the basic comfort level of the earlier residents be sustained? When this analogy is extended to an entire urban agglomeration, suddenly there are questions of equity and governance.

   The key conceptual issues that need to be addressed lie in the realm of political economy. They are the issues of exclusivity, externality, expansion, utility and efficiency. While it would be naïve to offer simplistic answers, it suffices that their criticality is brought into the public domain. Let us examine these issues one at a time with some provocative thinking.

   Are our cities not meant to be spheres of excellence in which those who contribute to the revenues of the city are afforded a unique experience of comfort and convenience? Should cities be demographically elastic and accommodate all, irrespective of whether they get paid for the civic services that they provide?  Intel Corp. shall, to take one example, have to pay the local body of Portland, Oregon $ 1000 per year per extra person it hires to pay for the extra load on the city.

 Do we regulate fresh influx into the city? Or do we encourage anyone to migrate (“premature urbanization” in UN-Habitat parlance) to the city- in the absence of adequate employment opportunities elsewhere? Is in-situ slum management the right thing? Are we aware that encroachments today are incubators of crime, not because the poor live here, but often because they are unregistered and unrecorded. It is even profitable to run shops here because no taxes need be paid and hence the overheads relative to an organized shop are less (also a reason why Mom and Pop retail stores are never really threatened in the Indian context).

 Do we want our cities to serve as funnels that attract investment? Or, are we looking at bridging the urban-rural divide by making our cities extensions of the rural areas? Do we increase the infrastructure of cities only to allow new waves of urbanization? Should cities have a distinct brand-identity? Should cities be for all, irrespective of their ability and willingness to pay for the services provided? In short, where does the line between inclusion and exclusion get drawn?

   Some urban personae impinge relatively more on the common infrastructure and services in the city than others. How do we bridge this externality? Are we prepared to charge differential tariffs based on the principles of social cost-of occupation of common space, cost of pollution, cost of service delivery, etc. The cost of parking a bigger car in a public parking and for a smaller car is presently the same. But the bigger car takes -more space and, causes more pollution. Thus, the marginal private cost of keeping a bigger car is less than the marginal social cost that can be attributed to it. Likewise, the number of cars a household maintains also has a similar impact on the available space and the overall pollution caused to the colony. Should there not be differential incremental car license fees, akin to the certificates of entitlement that are auctioned in Singapore?

 Another area of externality is the use of low-cost services in the neighborhood. Whenever it suits us, we speak disparagingly about the existence of jhuggis in our vicinity. Yet when it comes to getting domestic help or getting our clothes ironed cheaply, or buying fresh fruits and vegetables we don our socialistic hats and voice the need to create employment opportunities for the urban poor. There are modern cities today that have periodic public markets or haats that are located right in the heart of the city. It is fun to shop and bargain for vegetables and fruits there, but there is an urban problem if they become shops for furniture, packaged food and gifts, right at stones-throw from regular retailers who are paying for all their overheads.

  Poor civic policing is another cause for various civic violations-building laws violations, occupation of public spaces by extending private lawns, pitching tents for weddings and functions, parking of vehicles in public spaces, etc.- this causes a separation- between law-abiders and the law-violators, and a asymmetry of economic incentives. Should we not streamline use of economic instruments to bridge this asymmetry and thereby homogenize our cities-as areas of high-security, environmental-equity and civic-discipline?

   Another crucial issue is that of growing city sprawl. Today our cities have spread far too wide. This is unaffordable for a poor country as it severely constrains the competence of the civic authorities to deliver services across the ever-expanding geographical boundaries. And yet, every Elected Body includes new villages within the city boundary on the pretext of wanting to stabilize land prices and making living more affordable. However, every inclusion of new villages in one direction leads to a new impetus for inclusion of yet other villages in another direction. Often the expansion is driven by real-estate developers who have acquired agricultural land on the outskirts of the city at a throwaway price. It is likely that they will deliberately ignore costs of external road connectivity, long-term water supply and other services while marketing their housing colony, with the intention to later load these costs onto the unsuspecting Municipality. Conventional wisdom seeks to legitimize low-density urban spread in preference to high density construction on the mistaken premise that low-rise allows for more greenery, is more cost and energy-effective and hence is good for the environment whereas high rise is bad. But, it is overlooked that cities usually spread in a radial fashion. Hence, for an increment to the existing radius of 20 Kms of a city A by a measure of, say, 5 kms, leads to an increase in the area of city A by 675 sq Kms! This is 50% increase in the area of the city. Thus an innocuous increase in the spread leads to a huge urban sprawl. Can the quantum of civic services, roads, drains, street-lighting manage to keep pace with this sudden surge in demand, with each new colony built along the new radius demanding water, roads, lighting and  municipal services-janitors, waste-collectors etc. Wanton expansion in the limits of a city is also the cause of higher level of traffic density along the arterial roads and traffic congestion, especially when with rising incomes people are able to afford more and bigger cars and don’t hesitate in commuting long distances to flaunt their cars. Increase in the number of passenger-miles and congestion are an issue even in the developed West today. In fact, this is also one cause for urban-alienation, where a resident on the periphery, with limited ability to commute, is not able to build harmony with the core, and feels marginalized. On the contrary, a tighter spatial core of city leads to greater community feeling, closer social interaction and cultural identity. With economic convertibility of time, such planning is more cost-effective as it saves on time-to-travel. Barcelona, a great city, for instance, has a density that is about 10-50 times that of East Manchester. Municipal services can be better maintained and delivered and overall a higher level of satisfaction delivered to the citizen.

     Zoning, Master-Planning and Building-Laws are the essence of city-management. Both in terms of structure and functionality, they breathe life into planning. Yet this critical task is the most poorly handled in the States and this is the bane of urban planning. Most Town Planners actually do not have adequate training in urban matters, let alone in urban planning. Often, there are allegations that each senior planner is aligned to some section of builders. Most second-tier cities do not have approved Master-Plans. Where they do they are under review or litigation. Either they are too inflexible or too easy to be manipulated. The Town Country Directorate, which exercises powers of interpretation and implementation of the Town ad Country Planning Act, works not in a statutory manner, but as an extended arm of the Housing and Urban Department of the State Government. The Commissioner of the Town and Country Department reports to the Principal Secretary of this Department and is therefore totally dependant on him for existence. Even if this Directorate were to be made a part of the Local Body there would be abatement in political and local interference in its working.  Should the Central Government not create general guidelines to harmonize and standardize Master-Planning and building laws while leaving prioritization and reform within the competence of the State Governments and the Local Governments? Should we not make the Town and Country Planning Directorate an autonomous body headed by a 3 Member Bench of experts serviced by the bureaucratic support staff, and most importantly, adequate number of technical experts- architects and town-planners. The Bench can be insulated from narrow local interference and mandated to hold office for a period of at least 3 years. Our Master Planning and land-use regulations suffer from the key weakness that they do not integrate transport planning into them. We are at first organic creatures that need a habitat- but we are also social beings that need to commute and interact socially. Issues like amendments to Master Plans and making transport management as a key ingredient of city planning and zoning are critical to this overall task as the economy grows rapidly. Do we encourage more density so as to reduce the need for vehicular travel?  Should we not allow higher FARs?  If that allows for better transport planning, why not?

   Another issue is that of effective municipal governance. Should we have a strong Mayor and a not-so-strong City CEO (Municipal Commissioner) or should it be the other way round with the Mayor being essentially a cut-ribbons figurehead. As of today most Mayors are strong but share their powers with their Mayor-in-Council of Corporators who function like a Cabinet with charge for individual subjects being allocated to each of them. Rarely do we come across a strong Municipal Commissioner, and when that rarely does happen it is with the express support of the Chief Minister of the State, no less. Thus we have had a successful Nagpur and a successful Surat, in each case because a CEO who was able to establish excellent rapport with the political powers that be while he headed the local body. But this may not always be possible. So should not the correct systems  be put in place so that even an average officer is able to make a reasonable impact?

   One major area of neglect is the lack of public parking and public utilities. Most of the time Municipal Corporations are not able to create the requisite utilities because there is no free land available and the cost of creation of multi-storeyed parking suitable for a relatively congested area is prohibitively high. It must be remembered that parking should not be treated as a building-specific issue but as an area-specific one. Our obsession for parking space to be provided in each building is misplaced. This is why such private parking almost always gets converted, often inadvertently into commercial usage. Ideally, there should be adequate space reserved for public parking in each congested area, and the local authority should develop this, whether directly or under public-private partnership. Roadside parking should be made prohibitively expensive, and priced very much more than formal designated parking that is created for that area. Conversely, underground or multi-level parking should be priced less. For creation of such facilities the Municipal Corporations should develop economic instruments so that a sufficient corpus develops for purchase of land by the Municipal Corporation for public facilities. For instance, each building owner should have to pay to the civic body according to the built-up space that he occupies, rather than having to necessarily create a basement parking. There can be different multiplication factors for residential and commercial areas and these can vary from area to area. Most of the time in the absence of strong templates and past convention, land acquisition is frowned upon and the effort is only to secure available Government land for these facilities. But it is not always possible to obtain government land in commercially important areas and hence exclusive private lands will have to be acquired, either through the Land Acquisition Act route or through the private negotiation route. Such land will invariably be expensive due to its high opportunity cost. Should not there be a corpus of fund available (War Chest) that can be leveraged for land acquisition for urban facilities at any given time?

 There are no easy solutions, but we need to discuss and deliberate on these issues if we are to sustain the economic growth agenda and to make our cities to responsibly shoulder and support the national endeavor.

  (The author is an IAS officer The views expressed are personal).