The changing face of urban India

Look around you.

(That is, with an mindful eye, an eye that "remembers".) 

Chances are -- immaterial of which Indian city you live in -- you would have seen a lot of greenery disappear in the last couple of years, and a lot of open spaces too.

Across most cities, this happens only around the suburbs, mostly because the city proper is already choc-a-bloc "developed".

But, among many...it is also happening in once-relatively-more-living (and saner) areas. As the cost of land (available for buildings / real estate) goes up...keeping it unpaved becomes an impossibility. An economically unviable proposition, if you will.

Most of this so called development is supposed to lead to "wealth creation." After all, for many people a house (or a flat) or any other property is nothing but an investment...something that will appreciate, something that will make them wealthier in the years to come.

And yes, all this "development" is supposed to be inevitable and an indicator of India's status as a "developing" nation.

But is it?

Can our already cluttered, close-to-asphyxiation polluted, highly overpopulated cities survive if we do away with whatever little soul that remains in them -- in the form of green and open spaces?

And, is it the right way to "develop", the right way to aspire to catch up to international standards of living, to give our citizens a quality of life at par with the US or UK?

(Especially considering the fact that...urbanization is not something that can be rolled back.)

Lets take the case of the UK, how much of greenspace does it have? How much of it is built on?

"
The urban landscape accounts for 10.6% of England, 1.9% of Scotland, 3.6% of Northern Ireland and 4.1% of Wales. Put another way, that means almost 93% of the UK is not urban. But even that isn't the end of the story because urban is not the same as built on.

In urban England, for example, the researchers found that just over half the land (54%) in our towns and cities is greenspace - parks, allotments, sports pitches and so on.

Furthermore, domestic gardens account for another 18% of urban land use; rivers, canals, lakes and reservoirs an additional 6.6%.

Their conclusion?

In England, "78.6% of urban areas is designated as natural rather than built". Since urban only covers a tenth of the country, this means that the proportion of England's landscape which is built on is…

… 2.27%.

Yes. According to the most detailed analysis ever conducted, almost 98% of England is, in their word, natural.

Elsewhere in the UK, the figure rises to more than 99%. It is clear that only a small fraction of Britain has been concreted over."

I wonder how much of India is built over. And how much of it can still be called greenspace.

But...oh wait.

We are a "developing" country. Ha!

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