INDIAN CITIES AN EXAMPLE TO THE

WORLD
d
Enrique Pealosa
November 17, 2014

India is missing its greatest historical opportunity:

to create the worlds best cities

Around 90% of 2070 Indian cities has not yet been built.

Indian cities could be much better than New York, London

or Parisso far they are not even equal to them

Latin Americas is the most recent urbanization process

before Asias

India should learn from the Latin American urbanization

process

what NOT to do.

Today India is 32% urban

Between 1950 and 2010 Colombia went from 32% urban to

75% urban.

Between 2010 and 2050 India will go from 32% urban to

52% urban; and in 2070 75% urban.
(United Nations projections)

As Colombia went from 32% urban, to 75% urban, the

population of its main cities grew more than 700%:

Bogota: 1069%

Medellin 523%

Cali 872%

The population of Indian most cities will multiply at least

300% over the next 55 yearsin many cases by more
than 500%

But the growth of Indian cities from now to 2070 will be

much higher than population growth, (600%? 1200%?) for
the following reasons:

Households will be smaller

Income growth brings much more square meters of city per

person: more offices, industrial facilities, universities,
shops, movie theaters, restaurants, sports facilities, etc.

Will the part of Indian cities to be built any different

and better than cities that exist today in the world?

Why were Latin American cities NOT done well?

It was not yet clear then that car dependent American

urban model was wrong

It was not as clear how important walking and bicycling

were to a good city

Private property of land made it impossible to plan well

urban development

Indias advantage is late urbanization

it could create different, better cities than any which have

yet existed.

But India is not doing it. It is missing a unique, formidable

historical opportunity

The most important thing we are doing in our time is

creating our cities

To a large extent they will determine our happiness and our

economic development

A good city is an comparative advantage which cannot be

copied

a bad one is an comparative disadvantage which cannot

be overcome

Economic development per se will not produce good

cities
It is rather the opposite:

Good cities produce economic development

Cities today are not a bit wrong: they are radically wrong.

Sometimes we have terribly wrong things before us and we

do not notice there is anything wrong.

Less than 100 years ago women could not vote and it
seemed normal.

Just as we think there is nothing seriously wrong with our

cities today.

What is wrong with our cities today?

Human life is permanently threatened by cars

In the last 90 years we have designed cities much more for

cars than for people

Tell a 3 year old: Watch out! A car! And the child will jump
in terror.

What is most disturbing is how we got used to our children

growing up threatened with being killed by a car.
We think it is normal

Cars are extremely recent in human history

Rue Rambuteau

When cars appeared we should have build a parallel

road network in cities: half the streets for cars, half for
pedestrians only
but we just made bigger roads

Towards the end of 20th Century it was realized we

had made a big mistake making cities for cars and
began to redress it

In every city in the advanced world they would like to

have more road space for pedestrians and bicyclists

Footpaths are the most important infrastructure of a

democratic city

In terms of infrastructure what makes a difference between

advanced and backward cities are not highways or subways,
but quality footpaths.

Lack of sidewalks or cars parked on sidewalks are a symbol of

lack of respect for human dignity and inequality:

It shows citizens with cars are superior to those who do not

have a car

Sidewalks are not relatives of streets but of parks

After

Before

Before

The most important criteria to evaluate a buildings

quality is: how does it affect pedestrian space around it?

Does it become pleasant to stand next to it? To talk there?

To play there?

Buildings must be fun to walk next to: they must not

blind walls: they should have windows, shops

Mobility is a peculiar problem:

It can get worse as society gets richer (more cars, longer

distances).

Mobility solutions are also different, because more than a

question of money or technology, they are a matter of political
decisions, equity and behavior change

The most important determinant of quality, urban mobility is

WHERE cities grow

And HOW they grow

Low density spread out development makes it impossible to

provide low-cost, high-quality, public transport

Private property and market economy do not function well in

the case of land around growing cities

when tomato prices increase, tomato supply increases and

tomato prices go decrease

when prices of land around cities increase, supply of land

around cities cannot increasetherefore market does not work

Most land around cities should be owned by government.

In this way, cities can grow in the right places, with the right
urban design

Latin American cities would have been much better today if

they had grown on publicly owned land

When I was mayor we did a small land reform project:

The Municipality bought land in optimum locations

The Municipality did quality urbanism (water and sewage
mains, roads, pavements, parks
Large urbanized lots were sold to developers who had to
build homes in less than 3 years and sell them at below
pre-established prices

Seattle

Despite giant highways, all

American cities have more
traffic jams every year.

What creates traffic is not just the number of cars, but the
number of trips and the length of trips:

Ten cars doing 10 miles each generate the same traffic than
one car doing 10 kilometers.

There will be many more cars, more trips and longer trips in
Indian cities

Double decker flyovers destroy a citys human quality and

lower property values

And they do not solve traffic jams

Despite the severe damage they do to cities

most urban highways do not even allow public transport

buses in them.

Urban highways are like poisonous rivers: people cannot be

near them. They lower property values around them.

Much better than urban highways, are avenues, or

boulevards

Mobility and Traffic Jams:

Two different problems, two different solutions.

Mass transit will solve mobility but will not reduce traffic
jams. Only restrictions to car use will reduce traffic.

The simplest car use restriction are parking restrictions.

Parking is not a constitutional right in any country

More parking, more traffic

Most cities would improve if curbside street parking is

eliminated in order to make space for wider sidewalks and
bicycle ways.

For several decades new buildings in central London have

not been allowed to have parking beyond a few for the
handicapped.

One of important political issues of our time is how should

we distribute that most valuable urban resource which is
road space, between:

pedestrians
bicyclists
public transport
private cars

Public transport is the solutionbut, which public transport?

Buses can do pretty much what subways can do...if road

space is used in a democratic and technically rational way

It is politically very easy to build subways

Everybody supports themespecially higher income

citizens who usually they have no intention of using them.

The poor, for example in rural areas, who will have less
schools or sewage systems because of it do not realize it
has anything to do with the subway building

Democracy: If all citizens are equal, a bus with 100

passengers has a right to 100 times more road space than
a car with one.

It does not take IIT Ph.Ds:

A committee of 12 year olds would rapidly conclude that

the most efficient way to use scarce road space is with
buses on exclusive lanes.

Metros can cost 10 to 20 times more per kilometer than a

BRTand a BRT can do basically the same

But it has to be well doneand the political will to confront

powerful upper income car owners is a requirement

BRT is not the best mass-transit solution to mobility in

large and growing developing country cities:

It is the only oneeven if there are several metro and train

lines

BRT in Bogota

Why did Delhi BRT fail? It was not a matter of

technologyIndia is much more advanced in science and
technology than Colombia.

It is a matter of political decision and management

Bogotas TransMilenio moves up to 47,000 P/H/D, more than

most of the worlds subways

TRANSMILENIO

As buses zoom by expensive cars stuck in traffic, BRTs are a

powerful symbol: almost a picture of democracy at work

TRANSMILENIO

Delhi metro moves 12,500 passengers per kilometer daily

TransMilenio moves 20,700 passengers per kilometer daily

MIO

MIO

Ultrapassagem nas Estaes

Fuente: IPPUC

Ultrapassagem nas Estaes

Fuente: IPPUC

Any new road should have BRT lanes from the start: it is
much better to put them in before it is politically difficult

Advanced cities give more importance to bicycles every

day

CICLOVAS

CICLOVAS

In Bogot there was not one meter of bike-ways and rider-ship

was insignificant. Today while 19% use of the population uses
a car, 6% of the population bikes daily

Saving on public transport by using a bicycle saves between

15% and 40% of a low income person in a developing country
city.

A protected bicycle way is a symbol of democracy. It shows

that a citizen on a $ 30 bicycle is equally important as one on
a $ 30,000 car.

Would we dare think different and create

different and better cities?

Why not a city with hundreds of kilometers of bus-only roads or

greenways with bus lanes?

CICLOVAS

Render Bus-only roads

Why not a city with a network greenways and bicycle highways

hundreds of kilometers?

CICLOVAS

JUAN AMARILLO GREENWAY

We did not have any support for the Alameda Porvenirthe

city would grow around it only years later

EL PORVENIR PROMENADE

Render peatones