" I will leave the city more beautiful than I entered it. "
- Ephebic Oath
Lord Richard Roger : Architecture & The Compact City at UNSW
In this post I am going to summarise the ideologies of a compact city by Richard Rogers which he discusses in his presentation for the first twenty minutes. Later, I will compare these ideologies with the actual ground work done by Indian architect Charles Correa behind planning and building a new city called Navi Mumbai. The focus is to discourse between an idea and reality of a city.
An ecologically friendly home in the country side is not sustainable compared to any regular home in a city. One needs to drive to the country side which amounts to almost a third of the total CO2 emissions in the world. Also infrastructure like schools,banks etc. need to be locally available in order to sustain in the country side. Hence, a high energy rated house outside a city is not environmentally sustainable. But can this model be turned on its head through thorough planning and government involvement?
According to Rogers in 2010, an ideal city is..
- Compact & Poly-centric - uses derelict land first
- Well connected - encouraging walking and public transport
- Multifunctional - live,work,leisure
- Socially Inclusive - for both; the rich and the poor
- Supportive of good design
- Environmentally responsible
- Just
It is believed that 80% of the world population is going to live in cities by 2050. Keeping that thought in mind the state Government of Maharashtra in association with Charles Correa, envisioned a city outside Mumbai in the 1970s to have a planned and orderly growth of Indian city due to population boom. To sustain the future, 'Navi Mumbai' came into being. The design and planning was all based on the above mentioned concept of Rogers' except for 'JUST'.
Initial notion was to decongest Mumbai of growing population and move key government offices to Navi Mumbai. Unfortunately, the city of Navi Mumbai took over 3 decades to populate and to reach a stable socio-economic platform. The government took a back turn and didn't move the financial hub to Navi Mumbai and the proposed local transport system at the time did not kick in. People who bought homes at the beginning were either left unemployed or had to travel long to find work without proper public transport.The City & Industrial Development Co-operation body of India (CIDCO) started selling land at a low cost in Navi Mumbai to lure people back to the new city.
At the turn of 21st century, CIDCO started auctioning land, resulting in the skyrocketing of real estate prices. In the early 2000s, villages near these lands organically developed into slums. There is still a major encroachment of slums,defeating the purpose of a planned city.
Though today the numbers show a positive trend towards a new city taking its shape. In retrospect the city has seen a setback for many years. If the government had taken steps justly at the time, Navi Mumbai would have been a success story and a model to follow.
References:
Shaw, A 2004, The making of Navi Mumbai, Orient Longman Private Limited,New Delhi
Arora K, Whose city is it anyway: Investigating Navi Mumbai’s city fathers, Graduate School of Design, Harvard
Video : University of New South Wales, 5 Oct 2010, Lord Richard Rogers: Architecture and the City
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