No man is an island, entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of tBetter he continent, a part of the main.
Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
— Jonne Donne
town planning standards are the remedy. Our cities have been planned for the bullock-cart age, not for the motor age. Let us take a simple issue: How wide should a neighbourhood street be? In this age, a street should have space for two lanes of traffic even with cars parked on either side. With footpaths added, the minimum width for a neighbourhood street should then be fifty feet, no less.
Even arterial roads in many of our cities are not that wide. In the US, the number of dwellings one can have in a street is limited by the size of the sewage pipe. We have no such scruples; we do not even have any sewerage system to speak of. Yet, our land prices are as high as in medium-size American cities.
Further, our housing densities are appallingly high. According to Encarta, New York (admittedly one of the most crowded cities in the Western world) comprises an area of 800 sq. km. and had a population of 8.008 million in 2000. That gives it a population density of 10,000 per sq. km.
As for London, Encarta states that “London’s population is heavily concentrated (at about 4,409 persons per sq. km.)”. Most cities in the West limit their population densities to 3,000 per sq. km. In contrast, the suburbs of Delhi (admittedly the most generously planned city in the country) are designed for a population density of 35,000, and that does not take into account the slums that will emerge inevitably.
Bangalore (and other cities too) would not be in the mess they are in today if their streets had been wide enough to handle traffic, and if the population density had been limited to Western practices.
That does not mean that we should ape all that Westerners do. For instance, they deliberately locate employee residences farther and farther away from the place of work, leading to long hours of daily commuting. Money wasted in travelling long distances is the least of the harm that commuting does. The time wasted, the pollution caused, the tensions created, and the social togetherness that is lost cause even greater damage.
Even if streets are as narrow as they are in Bangalore, and even if population density is as high as it is, not much distress would have been caused if employees had resided close to their place of work. In that case, there would be little need for flyovers and other expensive modifications to the road system. That money could, instead, have been used for better water and power supply and for keeping the city clean.
We often hear the excuse that with a population of over one billion, our country cannot afford to make generous allocation of space in our cities.
That excuse will not wash: The crucial factor is not the size of the country’s population but its density. Countries such as England, Holland or Belgium all have higher population densities than we have. Yet they all keep urban population densities, at 3,000-4,000 per sq km.
As a matter of fact, the uncultivable land in India is around 15 per cent. That is space enough to accommodate the entire population of the country within our wasteland at 2,000 persons per sq km. Yet, we have made our urban densities 10 to 40 times higher.
People can also argue that lower population densities will need larger plots and that, even as it is, land prices are beyond the reach of most people. That argument too will not wash. Our land prices have no relation to costs; they are high because of artificially created scarcity. Step out of the cities and, within a relatively short distance, land prices become a tenth, even a hundredth of what they are inside cities.
When businesses are located where there is little space for dwellings, employees are forced to pay high prices. Increasing land prices lead to high-rise buildings which, in turn, lead to further congestion and thus a vicious spiral results. Let businesses move to where there is space for sprawling bungalows, and land prices will plummet. It is strange but true: Land prices rise when you try to save space.
Entrepreneurs would argue that services are non-existent outside a few large cities, and hence, it is commercial suicide to locate their business elsewhere. They would assert that, subjected as they are to global competition, they cannot afford to pay for the luxury of broad streets, bungalows, and civic amenities. That argument, too, is incorrect.
The same entrepreneur will happily set up sugar mills or cement factories in primitive locations. Therefore, for businesses to move out of cities is not infeasible. Obstacles are not commercial but psychological. In fact, so large is the disparity in land prices between crowded cities and rural areas that profits can actually increase when businesses move away from expensive congested cities.
In this situation, there are two alternatives: One, add more and more to the congestion of the already overcrowded cities and pay higher rents, suffer greater pollution, make employees sick, and drive people mad. Two, move far enough from the polluted cities to escape high costs, avoid pollution too but pay for the cost of installing afresh commercial services. Corporate Social Responsibility will indicate the latter.
Business leaders claim with some truth that they do take Corporate Social Responsibility seriously. Usually, they organise their CSR as a programme for remedying civic ills. A better CSR would be not to cause any illness in the first place.
It is usual to treat CSR as an exercise in philanthropy. Instead, CSR should be an integral part of the business model — a profit centre. That kind of CSR will cause least harm to employees and their families. It will not force employees to waste their money, their time, their health and their patience commuting every day to work from slummy dwellings.
Not long ago, Malaysia was no better than India, but it took barely two-three decades to make Malaysia comparable to advanced countries of the world. Wisely, Malaysian leaders did not compel existing businesses to change. Instead, they adopted best practices for expansion only. That was enough to create a popular mood in favour of improving existing urban areas too.
Taking the cue from East Asian countries, let us adopt best practices for future urban expansion only. Let us modernise our town planning standards. Let us plan even better urban expansion than in Shanghai or Singapore or Kuala Lumpur. Designing better plans is not difficult; enforcement is the problem.
For that reason, let us adopt the following rules:
In new neighbourhoods, the population density will be limited to 10,000 persons per sq km.Further, workplace and residential space will be kept within a km of each other — except in the case of hazardous industries. Chief executives of municipal bodies will be liable to pay a fine if they fail to enforce these two rules.
In the organised sector, managers will pay a fine if they add to the workforce without arranging a minimal quality dwelling for the families of the new employees. Managers need not construct dwellings on their own; it is enough if they help employees to find a proper and nearby place to stay.
These rules do not prohibit either poor town planning or anti-social business practices. Prohibition invariably leads to corruption; it is unworkable. However, fines are fine. After its disastrous plague, Surat was cleaned up not by prohibitory orders but by imposing fines on polluters. Actually, it did not become necessary to impose fines; the threat alone was enough.
These rules are simple; hence, violations can be detected easily. Punishments are mild; hence, magistrates will have little hesitation to impose them, the way they vacillate where penalties are draconian. As punishments are mild, it is not worth making interminable appeals to higher courts. Justice will be done without undue delay.
In particular, fines are leviable on administrators and on managers on the spot, not on all-powerful businessmen and politicians who pull strings from afar. That decentralised responsibility will promote decentralisation of authority. Then, citizens will have easier access to those who take decisions.
Our businessmen and politicians see every day how employees and ordinary people suffer. They hear every day about growing urban crime. Travelling in air-conditioned cars from air-conditioned homes to air-conditioned offices, they think they escape all that chaos. They may, but not their children and children’s children. They may be protected today but, tomorrow, pollution will take its toll.
Paraphrasing poet Donne, we might say: No man is an island; never send to know for whom the pollution tolls, it tolls for thee.
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