Indian Cities - Can they be more liveable, equitable and sustainable.

Received this from one of my Indian friends in Chennai. This is their vision for Indian cities. As we work with our Indian counterparts, I truly look forward to the day when Indian cities will be more liveable, equitable and sustainable.

As the Indian economy grows, cities are expanding faster than ever before. Just look at Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata etc. The challenge is to provide top class urban living spaces in such cities as they grow. 

While the government is battling to renew the cities with funding under the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission, it can do little to stop the migration of people from the villages to the cities and the creation of new urban extensions. A ranking of Indian cities by a Ficci-Ernst & Young study, titled Indian Real Estate Report 2007: Growth and New Destinations, maps India’s most and least liveable cities on several counts. New Delhi, the Capital, tops the overall ranking.

Streets of Kolkata

Its steaming streets crammed with vendors, pedestrians, and iconic Ambassador taxis, the Indian city Kolkata throbs with some 16 million people—and more pour in every day from small towns. In 1975 only three cities worldwide topped ten million. Today 21 such mega cities exist, most in developing countries, where urban areas absorb much of the globe's rising population. Photo © Randy Olson/National Geographic

Indian cities today are over populated. In spite of that it is teeming with activities and vibrancy. Professor Ehrlich’s original population epiphany was triggered by a wild ride in a Delhi taxi which he described in the prologue to The Population Bomb:

I have understood the population explosion intellectually for a long time. I came to understand it emotionally one stinking hot night in Delhi a few years ago. My wife and daughter and I were returning to our hotel in an ancient taxi. The seats were hopping with fleas. The only functional gear was third. As we crawled through the city, we entered a crowded slum area. The temperature was well over 100, and the air was a haze of dust and smoke. The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing, and screaming. People thrusting their hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People clinging to buses. People herding animals. People, people, people, people. As we moved slowly through the mob, hand horn squawking, the dust, noise, heat and cooking fires gave the scene a hellish aspect. Would we ever get to our hotel? All three of us were, frankly, frightened… since that night I’ve known the feel of overpopulation.

Far more people in India have access to a mobile phone than to a toilet, according to a United Nations study on how to improve sanitation levels globally.

India's mobile subscribers totalled 563.73 million at the last count, enough to serve nearly half of the country's 1.2 billion population.

But just 366 million people - around one-third of the population - had access to proper sanitation in 2008.

Poor sanitation is a major contributor to water-borne diseases, which in the past three years alone killed an estimated 4.5 million children under the age of five worldwide, according to the study.

Do you think we can transform Indian cities to be more liveable, equitable and sustainable ?

Visit this link for more information on liveable cities discussed at the World Cities Summit, 2to4 Jul 2012 in Singapore