31 Future of Our Cities

Prof. Dipender Nath Das

Currently more than half of the world population is living in the cities and towns and it is expected to grow by 75 per cent by 2050. Developed countries have already attained a very high level of urbanisation while in the developing countries more than half of the population are still living in the villages. However, as compared to the developed countries, rates of growth of urbanisation are very high in developing countries and it has been projected that in the coming decades most of the population which will be added to the urban net will come from developing countries. While growth rates of urbanisation in developing countries are comparatively higher, it is interesting to note that not all the urban centres are growing in high pace rather only large cities are growing faster. As a result, distribution of urban population in the developing countries is skewed towards the large cities. In 1950, there was only one city (New York) with more than 10 million population and currently (2015) 211 such cities of which 18 are from developing countries. Along with the city growth in developing countries, countries’ economy is also increasingly concentrating in the cities. Like other developing countries, in India too, large cities are growing faster (although, the rate of growth has been declining since the last three decades) and more and increasingly larger proportion of urban population are concentrating in a handful of large cities. In 1951, there were only five million plus cities in India which have increased to 53 in 2011which account for 43 per cent of total urban population.

In this backdrop of comparatively rapid rates of population concentration in the cities of South as well as in Indian cities, following questions are worthy to discuss in detail: How long the cities will continue to grow? If cities keep on growing, will they cater the demand of the city poor and lower-middle class who constitute bulk of the cities’ population? What would be the spatial form of the large cities? What are the issues cities likely to confront in the near future due to the changing economic, social, demographic and environmental characteristics? How far the use of natural resources by the cities is sustainable?

Future of city growth

At the outset we have discussed about the faster pace of urban growth in the developing countries. However, one should note that the high pace of urban growth or city growth is in comparison to those of the developed countries. From the Table 1 it is clear that the rates of

1 . Figure was projected in 2002. See Mohan and Dasgupta, 2005, p. 216, table. 4 for details. urban growth in the last five decades have declined considerably and these will further decline in the future. Up to 1970s growth rates were fluctuating but since 1980s these have been declining steadily. Declining rates of natural increase and net migration are the main drivers of the declining urban growth in the developing world. While with overall progress of society rate of natural increase of population is expected to decline, rate of migration from rural to urban areas is expected to increase as Davis (Davis, 1951 in Kundu and Gupta, 2000, p. 260) argued increase in the level of education, dilution of caste system, emergence of nuclear family structure, delay in marriage, improvement of transport and communication facilities, growth of non-farm activities etc. increase the rural-urban migration. Liberalisation of economy in the developing countries since 1980s was also envisaged to boost the rural-urban migration as on the one hand, liberalisation creates new employment opportunities in the cities (as argued by the proponents of liberalisation) and on the other hand it (along with adaptation of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs)) leads to the stagnation of agrarian economy in rural areas (as argued by the opponents of liberalisation). Fortunately or unfortunately rate of urban-ward migration has not increased in the past two-three decades rather in many cases it has actually gone down or has remained stagnant. In fact, the policies to restrict the flow of migrants to the cities (such as “hukou” system in China, “Closed city” policy in Jakarta, “ho khau” policy in Vietnam etc.) and deliberated initiatives taken by the governments for the rural development and that of employment for the rural poor (for example, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in India, rural industrialisation in China in 1980s etc.) have curbed the flow of exodus to the cities. As a result, rural-urban migration is losing its dominant control in the growth of city population and currently city growth is largely driven by the natural increase (UN Habitat, 2013, p. 25). Given this trend it would not be erroneous to believe that in the near future growth of cities in developing world be more and more sluggish.

Table 1. Trends of Urban Growth (Average Annual Exponential Growth Rates)

  Source: Kundu and Kundu (2009, p. 26).

    However, identity of city is not confined within its administrative boundary rather it extends beyond. Keeping this in view, experts have made a strong case for considering metropolitan region2 as an urban unit (for the metro cities). And if we consider metropolitan region as an unit the city will continues to grow in the near future, although different parts of the metropolitan region will grow in different pace and that will depend on the other factors like history of the city and the region, size and age of the main city, nature of economy of the whole region, attitude of local governments towards the poor migrants etc. Taking the case of Indian metropolises we can show the complex pattern of their growth and comment on their future growth. However because of the lack of available data we confined this analysis with the urban agglomerations3 of the corresponding metros rather than considering the whole metropolitan regions. As per the Table 2 pattern of growth of the urban agglomerations can be conceptualised in four ways of which “growing core; growing periphery” and “declining core and declining periphery” are the two major types. Former is more applicable to the small (like, Agra, Amritsar, Dhanbad etc.) and economically vibrant (like, Pune, Surat etc.)

2 Metropolitan region is a planning area of a metro city, demarcated by the respective planning authority. It consists of the metro city (or the core city) and surrounding urban areas and rural areas which would be urbanised in the near future. Thus, metropolitan region is much larger than the urban agglomeration.

3 Urban agglomeration is a contagious spread of urban areas consisting of a core town/city (which must be a statutory town) and its out growth or a core town/city and the adjoining urban areas. Thus, urban agglomeration has two components- core i.e. the core city/town and periphery i.e. the urban units surround the core city/town. Unlike metropolitan region, urban agglomeration is defined and demarcated by the census of India. Almost all the metro cities are virtually urban agglomerations metropolises while latter is largely associated with the very large metropolises (like Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai) and those with comparatively stagnant economy (like, Allahabad, Lucknow, Vijayawada etc.). On the other hand the urban agglomerations which are characterised by “declining core; growing periphery” fall somewhere in between the previous two extreme category. Another important findings from this table is that growth rates of the cores of all the large metropolises (except Bangalore and Pune which are relatively new in origin). There are two major reasons behind this, firstly, from the old areas of the city core working age-group population is out-migrating because of stagnant or declining employment opportunities (as large scale industries have been shifted from the core), deterioration of housing stocks, narrow lanes, lack of enough space for car parking, “waterlogging during the rains” etc. (Shaw, 2015, p. 150); second, large scale slum eviction from the cores (except in Kolkata) (Bhan, 2009, 2014; Bhan and Shivanand, 2013; Dupont, 2008; Johnston, 2014; Mahadevia, 2011; Modi, 2009; Ramnathan, 2005; etc.).

Table 2: Growth Rate Differentials of Core and Periphery of Metropolitan Cities in India.

Source: Sivaramakrishnan, 2015, pp. 6-7, table no. 1.2.

Notes: *Boundary changed between 2001 and 2011.

     Bangalore Municipal Corporation was reconstituted as Bruhat Bangaluru Mahanagar Palike in 2007.

 Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad was constituted as Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation.

Dhanbad Municipal Corporation was created by merging Dhanbad Municipality and surrounding areas in 2006.

Thus, it is likely that in the near future the metropolises with “C” type of growth will graduate to “A” type and subsequently will move on to the “D” type of growth and future growth policy and nature of economy will determine the length of time required for these transitions.

Future of Cities’ Economy and Labour Market

Liberalisation has made way to structural transformation of the urban labour market in the developing world. Earlier production was labour intensive, now it has become capital intensive, technology based and knowledge based which result into the huge labour cut in the firms. Large scale old industries are being modernised and in turn labour absorption is declining. Furthermore, large scale firms are, one the one hand, employing mainly contractual labourers and on the other hand, subcontracting their production activities to the small firms located in the rural areas which are mainly unorganised in nature. In addition to this structural change in the production system, cities are going through the process of deindustrialisation as industries have been shifted from the city core to the periphery which often comes under the jurisdiction of rural panchayats. All these changes have been contributing to the decline in the growth of manufacturing employment in the cities and informalisation of work force. And informal workers are often less paid and neither have job security nor have covered under social security measures.

While this is the macro trend of urban labour market, proponents of liberalisation argue that liberalisation has made way to several new job creations. Indeed the argument is true but we should not forget that the newly created jobs are very few in numbers and most of which are for those who are highly educated and well acquainted with technological know-how. For example, Bangalore, the economy of which is considered as direct fall out of liberalisation, has less than 10 per cent of its work force employed in “knowledge economy” (McKinnon, 2011 in Biau, 2012). In the era of liberalisation demand for some kind of unskilled workers have also been created like security guard, house keeper, waiter, car driver etc. but as mentioned before, they are poorly paid even though they work for 12 hours or more per day and have no job security.

    Given this changing pattern of urban labour market, there is remote possibility that unskilled or semi-skilled workers will be absorbed in the organised sectors of employment. On the other hand, according to an estimate (Kundu, 2014), because of “demographic dividend”, 410 million people would be added in the labour force by 2050. Importantly, majority of this additional labour force would come from rural areas and it is not likely they would be absorbed in the primary sector because of very low or no marginal productivity of labour in that sector. As a result, it would not be erroneous to believe that majority of that additional labour force would migrate to the cities (as scope for employment in the small and medium towns is limited) in search of employment and would be self employed in the low productive informal sectors. Growing proportion of self employment is the indication of that.

At this juncture, India has much to learn from China. In China, following the liberalisation of economy in 1978, employment have increased considerably in the manufacturing sector which is the major receptor of the rural-urban migrants. Widespread rural industrialisation (Township and Village Enterprises [TVEs]) made this possible. As a result, employment in the TVEs were increased from 28 million in 1978 to 135 million in 1996 (Thomas, 2012). Consequently, numbers of towns have also risen to 7,168 in 1984 from 2,968 in 1983 and 19,555 in 2001 (NBS, 2002 cited in Shen, 2006). On the contrary, in India, in the post liberalisation period (1993-94 – 2009-10) only 10.64 per cent of newly created non-farm employment were from manufacturing sector and employment in manufacturing sector were fell by 11 per cent in the 1990s and even the absolute numbers of employees in this sector declined by 5 million in the later part of the last decade (2000s) (Thomas, 2012). In this back drop, around 3000 new towns were emerged in 2011 which were, unlike China, guided by the agrarian distress-driven increase of non-farm employment in the villages (Guin, 2015; Guin and Das, 2015; Mitra and Kumar, 2015). Thus, there is remote possibility that these new urban centres will help to provide employment to the (additional) labour force that will be added by 2050. Hence, policies and programmes should be adopted to create employment opportunities in these new towns (as well as other small and medium towns), otherwise migration of this future labour force to the cities will make the cities over-urbanised.

Future Demographic Structure of the Cities

With respect to the future demographic structure of the cities, there are two important issues of concern- “demographic dividend” and population ageing. Former has already been discussed and the latter is discussed here. Because of fast decline in the age specific death rates at the age 60 and beyond, there are rapid concentration of aged population. In addition to falling death rates, declining birth rates also contributes to the relative concentration of the aged in the population of a given country. From the table 3 it may be seen that the countries where population ageing (percentage of aged population is 7 %) appeared in the second half of twentieth century, it has grown/has been growing much faster than the countries where it appeared before Second World War4. Thus, in India, although, currently (as of 2010) only 7 per cent of population are aged population, it will double by 2045( Fig. 3).

Table: 3. Speed of Ageing in Some Selected Countries

     While this is the scenario of the whole country, in the cities, the issue of population ageing (percentage of aged population) is much more pronounced because both the age specific death rates (for old ages) and birth rates are comparatively lower here. For example in West Bengal percentage of aged population is (as of 2001) 7.1 while in Kolkata it is 9.9 per cent (Das and Bhusan, 2015), again in the inner wards of Kolkata Municipal Corporation the percentage is even higher because working age population leave the inner city in search of better job and life-style (Shaw, 2015). Therefore, it is obvious, that in the near future the issues related to the aged population like the diseases occur in old age, pension etc. will be aggravated. Apart from these general problems, the unique problem to the senile population in the cities is that they are left alone in the house as working age members of the family live in other places (in other city or in different location of the same city) with their children and spouse. In such circumstance, caring of the old age persons is a major issue. While the old

4 After Second World War there was major break-through in the medical science which led to faster and sudden decline in the death rates. age persons belong to well off families manage to avail the service of caring by paying to the private service providers, old ages persons from poor families unable to afford such services. A recent study conducted by HelpAge India (2008) in the eight cities5 of India finds that while around 30 per cent elderly suffer from chronic diseases like arthritis, hypertension and diabetes, only 13 per cent of them (total elderly) have health insurance (and this 13 per cent belong to the upper echelon of the society) and less than one third of the “elderly avail pensions or support of any kind”. The study also reveals that social security, free medical services, free public transportation, “love and respect from younger ones” and “club/old age homes” are some of the areas prioritised by the elderly; they also want yoga and meditation facility, “religious discourses”, facility of library and indoor games etc.

Thus in the near future governments and non government organisations should intervene in these areas with utmost priority to make the life of millions of elderly happy.

Future of Cities’ Environment

As more and more population and wealth are concentrating in the cities, their footprints are also increasing and in turn, question on the quality of cities’ environment is arising among the urban environmentalists. Here quality of environment means quality of air, water etc. in the cities. In this regard several initiatives like “low carbon cities”, green building, green economy are being taken (albeit in piecemeal basis) but environmental resources are still depleting rapidly. As a result, in most of the cities (of both developed and developing countries) environmental resources are running out of demand and given the business as usual policy they will continue to do so in the future. Not only the quantity of the resources is reducing but also quality of the same is deteriorating(Fig.4).

Table 4. Air Quality in the Major Indian Cities

5  The cities include Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Bhubaneswar and Vijayawada.

Source: Sivaramakrishnan, 2015, p. 115, table. 6.2. *Concentration exceeding National Ambient air Quality Standard

Direct impact of city growth is the air pollution. From the table 4 it is clear that in India, concentration of SPM in most of the cities is higher than the permissible limit (National Ambient Air Quality Standards). Direct effect of high SPM concentration in the air is asthma, bronchitis, lung cancer etc. Main reason behind this high concentration of SPM is the vehicular pollution which contributes 70 to 80 percent of pollutants present in the air in the large cities of India. As numbers of private vehicles are increasing day by day, concentration of SPM is also increasing simultaneously and given this trend, it can safely be commented that in the near future air quality of the cities would be further deteriorated. In different cities several initiatives (such as, the use of compressed natural gas in the autos, taxies and buses in Delhi) have already been taken to combat the impact of transportation sector in the air pollution but such initiatives fail to serve the purpose partly because these (the initiatives) are piecemeal in nature. Along with such initiatives, increase of private cars should be checked. While most of the countries have imposed several restrictions on the use of private cars in their cities, in India, there is no restriction in the use of private cars (Sivaramakrishnan, 2015) rather it encourages the production of diesel cars which are more polluting (Mahadevia, 2001).

As developing countries are adopting the SAPs, they seek to increase the growth of their economy at any cost. As a result, polluting industries are coming up in a big way and almost all these industrial activities are concentrating in the metropolitan areas and in turn, not only air pollution is occurring in the cities but also rising emission of green house gases (GHGs)6 from the industries is leading to the global warming. According to an estimate of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, by 2010 average global temperature will rise by 40 C (Moriarty and Honnery, 2015). Environmentalists believe that this global warming will have huge far reaching impact on the cities. Because of global warming, tropic diseases will spread towards the temperate regions. Global warming induced sea level rise will cause submergence of several coastal cities (or part of such cities). Extreme atmospheric events like flood, draught, cyclones, cloud bursts etc will increase in the future (Ravi, 2008; Sharma and Tomar, 2010). From table 5 it is clear that flooding is a major issue of concern in most of the south Asian cities. Further increase of this hazard will cause huge loss of life and properties in the near future if serious adaptive measures are not taken.

6  However, it should be noted that per capita emission of GHGs is higher in the developed countries.

Table 5. Number of Cities in South Asia Affected by Each of the four Major Hazards

Increasing rates of solid waste generation and their poor management lead to many environmental disorders like bad odour, soil pollution, pollution in the micro environment etc. From the table 6 and 7 it is evident that per capita waste generation increases with the increase of per capita income (table 6) and population size of the cities (table 7). Therefore, it can be said as cities will grow and wealth concentration rise, more and more solid waste will be generated. Given the rate of 2.7 to 3.5 per cent urban growth per year waste generation will increase by more than 5 per cent (Asnani, 2006, p. 161) and in the future within the solid wastes, concentration of “e-wastes” will increase which are highly harmful to the environment. In the absence of landfill sites, dumping of this enormous quantity of solid wastes will seriously affect the city’s environment in future.

Table 6. Waste Generation Rates in Developing and Developed Countries

Source: World Bank, 1997a, 1997b; OECD, 1995 in Asnani, 2006, p. 184.

Table 7. Waste Generation per Capita in Indian Cities

Source: NEERI, 1995 in Asnani, 2006, p. 160.

With regard to the cities’ future environment, quality and availability of water is another major area of concern. It is need less to mention that indiscriminate disposal of industrial and municipal wastes in the rivers and water bodies, directly influencing on the quality of urban water. However, in the near future, the availability of water in the cities is under severe threat because of overuse of ground water, growing construction of high rise buildings which lead to “dewatering”, spread of built-up area which reduces the recharge of ground water, increasing blockage of lateral flow of water from the river bed due to construction activities on the river bed etc. Already many big cities of India (except Kolkata) supply of water from domestic sources is running out of their daily fresh water demand as a result they are drawing water from the distance sources while five decades before all these cities were self sufficient in their water needs. Transportation of water from distance sources not only aggravates wastage of water because of leakage and other things, but also increases the chance of contamination. For example, Delhi draws water from Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh-some 300 kilometres away and “unaccounted-for water losses are more than 44 per cent” (Revi, 2008, p. 214).

Lastly, with regard to the future of cities’ environment, the proposition of environmental Kuznet’s Curve is important to note. According to it, there is an inverted U shape relationship between gross national product of a country and its environmental pollution. Thus, increase of per capita income beyond a threshold will lead to decrease the environmental pollution as stringent environmental rules and regulations would be followed. Therefore, according to this theory, cities of developing countries need not to be worried about their ever deteriorating environment and as environmental pollution is “self-correcting” in nature. But this theory has several drawbacks. More often than not, the damages made to the environment are irreversible. Thus, the cities of developing countries should not be allowed to continue to pollute their environment before their per capita income crosses the critical limit.

Applicability of the concept itself is questionable in the developing countries as they have adopted the SAPs which will resist them to follow stringent environmental rules and regulations. Hence, it is uncertain that the curve will dip at al even if per capita income rises above the threshold.

Conclusions:

Given the increasing dominance of cities in the share of country’s total population, economy, culture, innovation etc. it is often said that “our cities; our future”. Here we had made an effort to unfold the future of the cities of India in particular and those of developing countries in general, focusing on the future of cities’ growth, economy, demographic structure and environment. The analysis can be summarised as follows: Pace of growth of cities has already slowed down and in the near future it will decline further. However, taking the advantage of “economies of scale”, in the future, cities will continue to act as engines of economic growth but there is little hope that the urban poor, working class and unskilled or semi skilled labourers will be benefitted from the economic growth because the structural transformation of production system under the neoliberal regime goes against these under privileged groups. Along with the growth of cities’ economy and growing concentration of middle class population in the cites, quality of environment in the cities will be deteriorated further and there would be little possibility of improving cities’ environment as long as cities will be following the SAPs. Here, it is need less to elaborate that the deteriorated urban environment will affect mostly the urban poor. Apart from these, growing concentration of elderly population will be a new challenge to the cities of developing world as it demands active involvement of the government in the welfare activities while the governments of developing countries tend to follow the opposite path under the aegis of SAPs.

In response to these future challenges, several cities across the South have already taken several initiatives but most of such initiatives are being taken in piecemeal way without integrating different sectors of development. As a result, impacts of such initiatives largely remain unfelt in a macro perspective.

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