Urban’s the urbane thing to do

Urban’s the urbane thing to do

In this year’s Union budget, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed the creation of five new smart cities in collaboration with states, as part of GoI’s thrust on economic development with significant emphasis on infrastructure. No discussion of economic development is complete without reference to cities.

Smart cities are those that facilitate a good quality of life, comprising employment and investment opportunities, leading to better city competitiveness, with the use of technology where possible. Hence, it is expected that such smart cities attract firms and residents, and create better economic opportunities along with infrastructure. Put simply, the creation of such cities will attract a larger number of firms to locate there.

Creating more cities, smart or not, is good for a country. This reduces urban primacy — that is, spatial concentration that, when it exists, indicates an unequal distribution of population and economic activity over space, and makes the primate city congested. Hence, the creation of more cities spreads economic opportunities, population and public services and infrastructure more evenly.

A whopping ₹1.7 trillion was allocated in the Union budget for transport, to develop several networks of highways. The high-speed train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad and the development of the Chennai-Bengaluru Expressway that were proposed should facilitate the development of new cities along that corridor. The creation of additional cities will lead to a large number of policymakers attending the immediate needs of these cities. This, in principle, will spread economic activities away from a single city, designated for the purpose.

Further, with policymakers living in the additional cities, this will lead to economic spin-offs in these places. Once better public services capitalise into property, and property taxes become resilient to reflect that, city economies become a lot stronger.

It is welcome that the Union budget proposed a new suburban railway system for Bengaluru at the cost of ₹18,300 crore. This should relieve the congestion of Karnataka’s primate city, also one of the world’s most congested now. Indeed, in the Karnataka state budget that was presented on March 5, more than ₹8,000 crore was allocated for Bengaluru’s development, including its pothole-ridden roads, suburban rail network to tide over its congestion, waste management, and water supply and sewerage, for the recently included peripheral areas.

The Union budget announcing a new fund for cleaning the air in cities with one million-plus population is welcome. These are the habitations that are the most polluted with vehicular mobility, what with coronavirus adding to that health scare now. Also, its proposal to set aside ₹12,300 crore for the Swachh Bharat Mission is much needed as good quality of life infrastructure — even though the jury is still out whether this amount is adequate, given our cities are far from being open defecation-free.

The proposal of young and tech savvy engineers as interns in urban local bodies (ULBs), as also advocated in this year’s Union budget, could help us with our infrastructure and public service problems. Currently, according to All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) reports, roughly 60% of the more than 800,000 engineering students who graduate every year remain unemployed, due to inadequate skills. While the Karnataka state budget proposed a fund to make such students more employable with industry-specific courses, to have young engineer interns in ULBs would be a welcome move, in contrast to ULBs’ current lackadaisical approach, even as there will be challenges in implementing the system.

While the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train and the suburban railway infrastructure for Bengaluru may seem to be isolated developments, it is noteworthy that in Maharashtra, the primacy of Mumbai has declined over time partly due to the natural rise of several Tier-2 cities such as Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Nashik, Solapur and Kolhapur. Rightly, the Union budget proposed hospitals in Tier-2 and 3 cities with private sector collaboration, which will lead to agglomeration spin-offs in the form of diagnostic laboratories and other infrastructure needed for healthcare.

Similarly, the budget’s proposal to set up data centre parks could benefit information and communications technology (ICT) firms and enable them to cluster in Tier-2 and 3 cities. The creation of new smart cities, along with significant emphasis on infrastructure, should imply the better provision of public services and amenities in each to enable them to create ripple effects.