Quietly but surely, a string of satellite cities have come up dotting India’s urbanscape in recent decades. These offer affordable housing and jobs that help decongest the old, creaking megalopolises.
Gurugram and Navi Mumbai come to mind first. But in more recent times, there are also the quiet successes of Sri City in Andhra Pradesh, Shendra-Bidkin in Maharashtra, Hosur in Tamil Nadu and Manesar in Haryana.
These new industrial hubs have taken the pressure off the mother megalopolis, allowing the older cities to rebuild infrastructure without having to accommodate an endless stream of immigrants. Perhaps the biggest success of the new cities has been creating planned townships without shanties, and maintaining a decent level of civic services.
Significantly, the satellite cities that have emerged recently are different from the older, integrated models like Noida and Navi Mumbai. The new ones are smaller and more focused towards housing communities that serve specific industrial sectors.
Sri City, for instance, is a 40-sq-km sprawl synonymous with 220 companies, mostly multinationals. Shendra-Bidkin, near the industrial zones of Aurangabad, is being developed as a hub for export-oriented businesses. Hinjewadi, a Pune satellite, has developed as a concentration of IT companies.
Perhaps the smaller satellite model is more workable than the Union government’s not-so-successful Smart City Mission launched in 2015. The smart cities programme, initially aimed to be completed by 2021, sputtered to a halt after two extensions and hundreds of incomplete projects.
Public-private partnership projects never took off in nearly half the 100 smart cities. In comparison, smaller satellite cities - where private and corporate groups drive job generation and build residential complexes, and the government participates in infrastructure and civic services - has proved successful.
In this context, the redevelopment of 500 acres of Dharavi, a massive slum agglomeration in the heart of Mumbai, is turning the clock backwards. Besides choking the city with high-density construction, the project also envisages annexation of salt pans and waste dumping grounds for rehabilitating slum dwellers.
The project is facing a groundswell of opposition. Conceptually, there is still time to go back to the drawing board. The way forward should be to disperse, not concentrate communities within the old city.