NEW TOWNS & POLITICS - GOVERNMENT-LED VERSUS PRIVATE SECTOR DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA AND INDIA

When it comes to comparing the development of New Towns in India - the largest democracy in the world - to their autocratic counterpart China, the built reality on the ground is showing as many similarities as there are differences, despite contrasting realities in the planning, design and development process. 

The increasingly strong role the Private Sector plays in the development of New Towns in both China and India has resulted in many New Towns being cut up in chunks and sold to the highest bidder. The lack of a strong integral Urban Design Vision leaves a similar urban fabric to emerge of large gated communities framed by wide traffic corridors, forming a Patchwork City of individual urban enclaves. While in China this is largely the result of its stress on building efficiency, speed and targets set by the authorities, in India it is the result of a lack of an integral urban vision and the largely incompetent and corruptible authorities not able to come to a consistent and centrally guided urban planning policy.

The Chinese authorities are also believed to have good reason not to abandon the Gated Community style development. As a result of the widening gap between rich and poor in Chinese cities, the sharp social spatial segregation has become the norm. It’s the spatial segregation that not only helps to reduce crime, but more importantly helps to avoid social conflicts and the authorities to maintain control over the existing public order. While in China the widening wealth gap in urban society is dealt with by authorities actively promoting the Gated Superblock Model, the authorities in India have reluctantly accepted the Gated Community as the new face of urban development, with the Private Sector now dictating the face of Indian urbanization.

Concept Master Plan Nav Surat - Privately Developed New Town

The recent trend in India of large scale New Towns being entirely developed by the Private Sector, gives the country the opportunity to catch up with China in providing its new Middle Classes finally a place to live that provides public services and amenities of international standard and well maintained, clean public spaces. With the local government basically playing no role within the development or management of the private New Towns, the project developers have created special Development Corporations for the New Towns. All common facilities like schools and hospitals are also privately operated and with the private New Towns often also privately policed, they effectively become very large private cities entitled to set their own rules and regulations. Considering the Private Sector’s crucial role in meeting demands for urban housing in the coming years, the Indian authorities are however not in a position to question the lack of democratic accountability and widening social-spatial divide associated with the emergence of the private New Towns.

The text above is a summary of the Article “New Towns in China and India – government- led versus private sector development” written by Steven Beunder, Associate Master Planner at TOWNLAND. The full length article will be part of the Book “New Towns and Politics” that will be published by INTI (International New Town Institute) in Almere, The Netherlands in October 2011.

PEDESTRIANISATION AND THE INDIAN CITY

Traffic Calming Pondy Bazaar, Chennai

Indian cities are famous the world over for a host of different reasons. One of them is certainly their unique urban street life. This picture of the quintessential Indian commercial street is changing however before our eyes on many different levels. The adverse effects of growth on the live-ability of city centers with a finely grained urban fabric one can experience in Indian cities every day.

With a building frenzy of elevated roads, fly-overs, foot-over-bridges and skywalks in cities across the country, it’s clear that most city governments are prioritizing a drastic increase of road capacity and the creation of a spatial separation between motorized traffic and pedestrians.  This is being achieved by lifting either the motorized traffic or the pedestrians up into the air. Instead of indiscriminately paving the way for motorized traffic with flyovers and skywalks, the time is right for India’s urban authorities to start adopting alternative planning scenarios with a focus on pedestrianisation and traffic calming along with investment in mass transit systems to reduce car dependency.

A good example is the large scale pedestrianisation project that is being planned in the heart of Chennai, around the overburdened public space within the commercial district of Thyagaraya Nagar (T Nagar). At the core of the interconnected redevelopment proposals lies the desire to create a network of pedestrian friendly streets which keep motorized traffic out as much as possible. Major shopping streets are proposed as a continuous car-free spine through the heart of the pedestrian-friendly zone. Other streets in the pedestrian-friendly zone will be transformed into ‘traffic-calmed streets’, with no on-street parking allowed for non-residents, and with restricted vehicular traffic on a narrow segmented area of the road.

To face the growing competition of suburban malls head-on, it’s important for India’s inner cities to invest in the quality of their Public Space by building upon their ‘Unique Selling Points’. Every suburb and township is capable of building a host of new shopping malls, but they will never attain the set of unique historical, cultural and socio-economic characteristics as evidenced in the urban centres and which have developed organically over many years.




Pedestrianisation Pondy Bazaar, Chennai

        

The text above is a summary of the Article “Pedestrianisation and the Indian City” written by Steven Beunder, Associate Master Planner at Townland Consultants. The full length article will be published in the Indian magazine Architecture + Design in August 2011.

 

 

Usman Road, Chennai

 
 



Photomontage Usman Road, Chennai