'Our cities need diversity in housing stock, more open space'

With more than half of its people projected to live in urban areas by 2050, India faces the challenge of planning and managing this high-stakes transition over the coming decades. This will also determine how the country optimises the promise of economic growth, jobs, and a better quality of life for its citizens while making it environmentally sustainable. Hindustan Times spoke with Parul Agarwala, country programme manager, India, at UN-Habitat (United Nations Human Settlements Programme) and formerly a planner in New York City’s planning department, to understand the challenges and opportunities in India’s urban journey and the course ahead. Edited excerpts:

- Shivani Singh

Officially, about one-third of India has urbanised. There are the urban peripheries and rural spaces that have grown organically and urbanised poorly but are not counted as urban. How can this situation be reconciled?

If we go by city jurisdictions and municipal boundaries, India is about one-third urbanised. However, we are certainly more urbanised if we take the parameters of urban characteristics — access to a certain amount of infrastructure, social and health care amenities, the labour force, or densities. Some of those numbers are based on satellite imagery and night-time lights, which put India’s urbanisation at around 40-45%, based on agglomeration.

Some of this (variation) was addressed in the last census (2011), which made the distinction between census towns and statutory towns. If we look at Indian cities and the census towns (about 7,000-plus), it is the second largest system of cities in the world after China. This makes sense because we are also comparatively populated.

Is there a way to bring these areas into urban planning? Also, is it possible to retrofit planning in poorly planned towns and cities?

It is possible. A very stark example is the rebuilding of cities post World War II. The way urbanisation stimulated development towards prosperity and better socio-economic progress was a significant retrofitting exercise. Singapore, a fishing town, was transformed over a short period of time. The four Asian tigers — South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore — industrialised and urbanised in three to four decades and had double-digit growth. India is also aspiring for a double-digit transformation, and we see similar intentions in how programmes are designed.

Much of India’s growth will be in urban areas. What do we want our cities to be like?