Creating sustainable, liveable and resilient cities imperative for urban development: Mr Sanjeev Sanyal, Member, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India
As India rapidly urbanises and transforms into an urban majority country, it becomes imperative to create cities which are sustainable, liveable as well as economically viable for which primacy should be given to its design. We need to design urban spaces by adopting the aesthetics suited to Indian conditions and focus on density. This was stated by Mr Sanjeev Sanyal, Member, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India during the session on Building New and Sustainable Urban Centres in India at the second edition of the Global Economic Policy Forum 2024 organized by the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) today.
Elaborating further on the subject, Mr Sanyal dwelt on three key principles which need to be considered for designing new viable cities. First, the cities should be reimagined on per capita terms in view of our growing population and the design should be based on the density of population. The country needs high density cities which creates conditions for income gains by way of monetising land and generating tax revenues while having lower running and operational costs by way of laying cables, pipes etc.
Secondly, the cities should be viable from the Indian perspective, eg, special enclosures or gates for commercial and residential areas are not viable as this leads to wastage of space by creating unnecessary walls, while the last point was about the building codes in the post-independence India not recognising the aesthetics and design of traditional Indian architecture. Fractal mathematics rather than Cartesian geometry should drive the design of new cities, he averred.
H. E. Mr Kimmo Lähdevirta, Ambassador of Finland to India, during his address, dwelt on the scope of partnership between the two countries for urban development. Emphasising that urbanisation is reshaping lives and livelihoods, the Ambassador touched upon five areas, namely taking a systems approach to development; water management; sustainable construction and infrastructure; energy and waste management; connectivity and mobility, for enhanced cooperation and partnership between the two countries for building sustainable urban centres.
The Ambassador maintained that the expertise of Finland in terms of technology, innovative capability and experience combined with India’s intrinsic capabilities in terms of skills, ambition and scale would work wonders for developing world class cities.
Mr Rajat Kumar Saini, CEO and MD, National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation eluded that unlike the legacy cities, the industrial corridors/smart cities faced the challenges pertaining to inadequacy of social infrastructure, something that was not anticipated when the corridors were initially planned.
Mr Saini was of the view that it is not sufficient to just announce the creation of industrial smart cities. It is equally important to ensure that industry is provided the requisite infrastructure to start its operations. We need to make cities the hubs of growth and jobs, he said.
Mr Jagan Shah, CEO, Infravision Foundation (India) opined that the country should build on the capacity of brownfield cities, which presently have a strong ecosystem for service based economic activities, to include new economic activities.
According to Mr Shah, while creating new cities or industrial corridors, the model of grid, expounded by President Thomas Jefferson and adopted by the US to provide efficiency in layout of cities, should be studied.
Mr Shah also alluded to the issue of financing urban cities and recommended the creation of a sovereign wealth fund for funding urban development.
Mr Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII moderated the discussion during the session.
12 December 2024
New Delhi