A Way to Build New Cities
““Establishing new cities is a science and an art. It is a science because technical skills connected to urban planning, economics, information technology, etc. are required... it is an art because we are locating cities within a geography already containing cities and villages, not a blank landscape.””
Prior to colonialism, India possessed a well-developed urban system. However, the colonial enterprise reshaped the Indian city pattern with a specific purpose. The primary aim was to establish cities that could gather commodities, primarily raw materials, for export, and serve as distribution points for imported goods to the hinterlands. This led to the development of port cities like Mumbai, which were connected to strategic cities through direct transport links.
In turn, the strategic cities played a significant role in bulk exporting, consolidating primary product purchases from local markets, and breaking down wholesale consumer goods for distribution to dispersed local marketplaces, which were located at the lower end of the settlement hierarchy.
Therefore, the British colonial rulers concentrated their efforts on developing port cities and later extended their attention to strategic cities, which served as centers for transportation, communication, maintaining law and order, and regulating agricultural product markets. Unfortunately, this approach left villages largely neglected.
As a result, at the time of India's Independence, the country inherited an imbalanced hierarchy of settlements, with a disproportionate distribution of cities and villages and their sub-optimal interconnectivity between them. For example, a study in the 1950s revealed that India should have had 47,000 towns based on the ratio seen in the United States, but it only had 2,000.
Furthermore, the geographical arrangement of settlements was distorted. Ideally, settlements should form a hexagonal pattern, with smaller towns or villages surrounding a larger town in the hierarchy. While this hexagonal arrangement exists in some parts of the world (e.g. USA, Germany, and even China), India's settlement pattern resembled a tree, with port cities directly linked to strategic cities, which, in turn, were connected to surrounding villages. This tree-like pattern was also observed in other colonies and did not lead to the realization of a region's full productive capacity or the best economic outcomes for the nation.
Recognizing these distortions, the National Commission on Urbanization in 1988 acknowledged the need for corrective measures. The commission recommended focusing on specific cities that served as transport hubs, ports, and industrial centers, as they played a significant role in the secondary and tertiary sectors, and had emerged as essential economic centers.
To rectify the imbalances, the commission proposed the creation of 329 cities called GEMs (Generator of Economic Momentum), consisting of NPCs (National Priority Centres) and SPC (State Priority Centres). Additionally, 49 nodes and corridors were identified as Spatial Priority Urban Regions (SPURs) where urban growth was expected to occur.
Establishing new cities required careful consideration and adherence to certain principles:
New cities would address the existing distortions in the arrangement of cities and villages.
The guiding rule would be to create new cities in locations that lead to hexagonal patterns of settlements as far as possible.
The locations of these new cities would be determined by their primary function, such as providing goods and services to surrounding settlements, acting as transport hubs, or serving as administrative centers.
Each state would require a unique treatment based on the history of the development of its settlement patterns. States could be classified into three groups: those with a single, large primary city, those without a primary city but with a network of medium-sized cities, and those with a mix of the two. Each group would be dealt with differently.
Establishing new cities is a science and an art. It is a science because technical skills connected to urban planning, economics, information technology, etc. are required. At the same time, it is an art because we are locating cities within a geography already containing cities and villages, not a blank landscape. Here an artist’s skill is required to place cities approximating a hexagonal pattern.
