The urban population is set to double by 2050
THE BRITISH, under whose colonial rule Bombay grew from a collection of mosquito-infested islands into a metropolis, called their creation “Urbs Prima in Indis”—the first city in India. So it remains. Home to corporate headquarters, the country’s biggest port, and the film and television industries, Mumbai—as it has been called since 1995—is the richest, densest and most liberal city in the country. It is urban India at its most intense.
It is also the most extreme example of the myriad problems facing all Indian cities. Mumbai has more billionaires than any city in the world barring New York and London, but it also has a greater proportion of people living in slums than any other Indian city. It has been battered in recent weeks by incessant monsoon downpours that, as they do every year, have caused flooding and destroyed roads. Its public transport is bursting at the seams. On average, seven people are killed on the commuter-rail system every day.
The government’s answer is to build more. Projects already under construction include a six-lane highway along the western coast, a series of bridges linking the western suburbs, roughly a dozen metro lines, a new airport, a high-speed rail link and a plan to rehouse the million-odd residents of Dharavi, a giant slum, at the cost of tens of billions of dollars.
Splurging on infrastructure, though necessary, will not be enough. Metro lines and coastal highways were first proposed in the 1960s, when Mumbai’s population was just over 5m. Today that number is estimated at around 20m. It is projected to double by 2050. So is the population of urban India as a whole. “If you think that urbanisation is a problem today…try overlaying another Mumbai on top of this Mumbai,” says Shashi Verma, who oversees technology at London’s transport authority and advises Indian policymakers on a pro bono basis. Preparing for this growth, says Mr Verma, “is not tomorrow’s problem. It’s not even today’s problem. It is actually yesterday’s problem.”
India is far from ready. No one knows how many people live in its cities today. The last census was taken 13 years ago. The central government shows no signs of conducting a fresh one. The census definition of an urban area is narrow, but even by its strict standards one in three people lived in cities in 2011. Today perhaps as many as one in two do. One thing is clear: the hundreds of millions of urban Indians will soon be joined by hundreds of millions more. Yet the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs was allocated a mere 1.7% of the national budget announced on July 23rd. For India’s cities to cope, urban authorities must focus on three things.
The first is to deal with the main reason that cities fail to build adequate housing: land-use regulations. An overly prescriptive, 2,200-page National Building Code and a surfeit of local rules prevent developers from making optimal use of pricey urban land. Mumbai has some of the most restrictive land-use regulations of any global megacity. In most well-functioning cities about 90% of land is given over to streets, public spaces and buildings. In Mumbai and other Indian cities, those uses take up less than half of the land area, according to analysis by Bimal Patel, an urban planner. The rest is wasted on “private open spaces”—mostly building compounds that are walled off and put to no good use.
The result is that Indian cities are sparsely built-up yet feel densely crowded, note Sanjeev Sanyal and Aakanksha Arora of the prime minister’s Economic Advisory Council. Cities sprawl outwards, driving up the cost of providing infrastructure.
Making India’s cities denser and more affordable would help with the second challenge: public transport. If India’s cities are to double in size, private vehicles cannot be the answer. Of the world’s ten most gridlocked cities, three are in India. The government has splashed out on costly metro-rail systems in recent years, but less glamorous (and more useful) public bus networks have been neglected.
The third issue facing India’s cities is climate change. This year the country experienced its longest-ever heatwaves. They will only become more frequent, India’s chief meteorologist told a local newspaper. Urbanisation is itself a cause of higher temperatures, accounting for roughly 38% of warming in Indian cities, according to a recent study. Concrete and tarmac retain heat, cars stuck in traffic radiate it and air-conditioners breathe it out. The poorest suffer the most. In Mumbai, densely packed slums can be between 5°C and 8°C hotter than neighbouring residential areas. Researchers estimate that the city’s economy stands to lose $6bn annually from excessive rain and flooding by 2050.
Many Indian cities have disaster-management protocols and “heat-action plans” to deal with extreme weather. These revolve around providing flood shelters or cooling stations. But they tackle only symptoms. Robust public-transport systems and affordable housing are better tools for dealing with causes. So are greenery and building design. India’s building code should shift its focus towards insulation and ventilation.
In 2022 economists at Kyushu University in Japan found that despite poor conditions and the absence of basic services, slum residents in Mumbai were happier and more satisfied with their lives than rural populations in the city’s hinterlands, owing to higher social trust and better wages. So long as India’s cities offer the hope of a better life, however slim, they will continue to grow—whether they are prepared for it or not. ■
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