Blind to own interests
Planned cities do make sense. Here’s why

By Meha Mathur
When talking of city planning my pet analogy nowadays is that of a balanced diet. We don’t need just proteins to increase our height, we need carbs for daily energy too. We don’t just need vitamins for immunity, we need fats too. Imagine going without one component of a diet for years at end! We might gain a perfect outer figure, but how fighting fit will we be to take on the daily struggles of life?

The same goes with a city. We don’t just need car parkings. We need much more. For the complex social animals that we humans are, and given our complex needs, imagine the number of ‘nutrients’ that each individual needs for his/her mental growth and emotional well-being. As demanding individuals that we all are, here’s a list of things we desire in our locality.

• A decent accommodation with enough living space to facilitate each family member’s growth
• A nice park in the vicinity, for the refreshing morning walk
• Parking lot, not just for ourselves, but for visitors
• Decent garbage disposal
• Uninterrupted electricity
• Water supply
• School, market, cinema hall, eateries
• Sports facilities for not just for the young crowd but for retired folks as well
• Space for holding functions, like B’day bash or holi sammelan
• Breathing space, at least for me

Imagine then, what happens, when a few families try to adjust a bit more people in their households, by building an extra room here, an extra floor there. It’s only a small adjustment, you would say. After all, we are all adept at such small adjustments in life! Well, this is the essence of the entire debate about land usage that’s going on in the national capital. A residential locality is designed to cater to the needs of a certain number of people. The needs include most of the things listed above. I say ‘most’ because no one could have visualised the exponential increase in car usage in the country when cities were being designed. So car parking was certainly not included as a ‘need’. In New Delhi for example, perhaps only India Gate and the Diplomatic Enclave were so designed that they can today take in a large number of cars. But mind you, that was not the purpose. The idea perhaps was to have some breathing space.

Coming back to the point. What happens when family X decides to add a floor and give it out on rent. The family that comes on rent brings with them a car, which might take away the area that was till yesterday a toddler’s playing ground. It might mean more clothes drying up on the terrace, taking away the beauty of the potted plants. It might mean less water for the inhabitants of that building, and perhaps of that locality. It might also mean one more school bus driving into the narrow lane to drop the school-going kids of that new family. And it might mean more functions and more noise. And imagine what would happen if 10 or 20 such families start thinking on similar lines and add floors to accommodate more people!

Without our realising it, the resources meant for us start getting usurped by others. When the judiciary and civic administration say that population pressure on a given locality will lead to crumbling of infrastructure, this is what they mean. After all, land can take only a certain number of pressure. Just as these two pages can take in only a certain number of words. After which, the column cries out for a breather.

—The author is the Executive editor of Management Compass and Career Choices