Chapter 1: Restructuring urban galaxies

Introduction

• In Indian cities and towns nowadays, there is a lot of discussion regarding sustainable development. Sustainability guarantees sustainable growth without becoming overly centralised.

• India is unique in that it features a hierarchical network of urban settlements of different sizes, including metropolises, cities, and towns.

• They resemble "urban galaxies" because of their naturally created scales between entities, connectivity, and convenient locations.

• Based on regional resources, climate, and available land characteristics, these networks have distinctive lifestyles and habitat patterns.

• The links and dissemination of the advancements suggest a "biological" growth, complete with adaptation, mutation, and reproduction.

Sustainable cities in India

• We are depriving the smaller towns in the region of their small-scale industries due to our development strategy, which mainly centres around one place/city, where all the institutions, and employment prospects. This also encourages migration and overburdens the megacities.

• Greater distances and longer commutes require more time and effort spent on daily activities like living, working, or spiritual and mental development.

• Sustainability guarantees sustainable growth without becoming overly centralised.

• Megacities and metropolises can operate much more effectively by upgrading their infrastructure.

• Habitats that are organically produced and interconnected will necessarily contain features like empty tracts between entities, shorter distances connected by locally developed transportation networks, and a limited number of entry points to major motorised traffic.

Obstacle to achieve sustainable city

Missing the Point

• Although its infrastructure can be improved, the quality of life may not necessarily be raised.

False Model

• Our development efforts are centred on a single region or city. By doing this, we are robbing the smaller towns in the area of their local small-scale industries and crafts.

• By doing this, we are also promoting migration and overcrowding the megacities, which will eventually collapse under the weight of their own complexity, management, and affordability.

False Idea That Larger Is Better

• Megacities that are now expanding can only afford to sell branded and mass-produced items to more people.

• More production facilities, industrial complexes, a wider network of transportation infrastructure, etc., are required for this. As a result, enormous urban centres like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Bengaluru were formed.

Key planning lessons for conventional planning:

• Planning takes into account not just physical development but also spiritual and cultural development, both of which are reliant on the availability of resources.

• Many studies show that each region had unique culturally oriented laws that defined its needs and controlled the use of resources for those purposes.

• Around the nation, one may observe the distinctive and honourable talents of the native inhabitants. Decentralization and letting human energy to pursue its own paths of exploration within the regional context of resources and values are key to achieving this.

• Instead of focusing on single, enormous banyan trees that can grow indefinitely, absorbing smaller entities along the way and weakening their advantages, planning must consider multi-nodal conglomerates.

• Planning must prioritise protecting and expanding a natural network of significant water bodies, woods, and animal life that includes irrigation systems and a water supply.

• Non-motorized transportation promotes quieter, cleaner, and greener environments.

• Hence, "appropriacy" has served as a virtue that has influenced the sizes and life-enriching features of each habitat in India. This has been the key to their long-term existence, despite hunger and floods.

• It will be possible for other villages and smaller habitations to learn, earn, and develop without having to spend time and energy on communication and travel if smaller towns with a population of around one lakh are developed as growth centres and developed as magnets. By choosing to stay close to our parents' region, we can enrich both family and individual life in the community.

Way Forward

• To be freed from our innate egocentrism, we must cultivate our talents and abilities, work together with others, and serve others.

The rural and hinterland have been supported for generations by microfinance and the sharing of frugally multifunctional attitudes about life and lifestyles.