Globally, city-regions are the new mantra in urban development. It implies that if a city, particularly a large one like Bengaluru, is to flourish as a live and work place, it needs a guardian at the regional level. For Bengaluru that would be BMRDA covering 8,000 square kilometers. Simply put, in our current political lexicon, it needs a ‘chowkidar’ in the form of a proactive and vigilant regional authority to plan and secure our cities’ future.
Urban expansion is inevitable. Proactive planning of city peripheries and extended regions is desirable, so there is continuity of infrastructure, natural networks such as roads, open spaces, environmental features, amenities, etc. The state needs to view a larger regional area that goes beyond the current few satellite centres around a city. Unless this forms, any incremental fixes to making a city liveable will lead to further influx causing infrastructural collapse and deterioration in quality of living.
Karnataka could have a set of such regions visualised around cities Bengaluru, Mangalore, Hubli, Dharwar, Mysuru and Belgaum. The future lies in having ‘live and work’ clusters that within the regional network. They should have high-speed connectivity (rail and road) that allows travel (including airport access) within two hours. The political leadership and system requires a huge mindset change since it challenges all conventional thinking about jurisdictional boundaries like districts, administration planning and more.
The local communities in clusters around a city have a chance to become beneficiaries of the regional development, by having a stake in it with industry providing skill enabling programs. There is greater scope for local aspirations to be met in a distributed development model in contrast to focusing on just the one major city. This could ease pressure on land acquisition, with cooperative land owners.
While the proposed STRR road connecting satellite towns around Bengaluru is welcome, the idea of city-regions is a more transformative idea. One would think that politically this is a catchy sell to voters. It creates local jobs, pitches for balanced regional development and will aid in attracting investors to all parts of the State during Invest Karnataka meets. Chowkidar anyone?
V. Ravichandar
Twitter @ravichandar
Author is an urban expert, who calls himself the Patron Saint of Lost Causes