Green field or brown?
The current buzz in India on Smart Cities fascinates me. They say in Central Asia that if you repeat the word «halva» several times it gets sweeter in your mouth.
In my humble understading Smart City is an urban development concept which uses IT and IoT (Internet of Things) technology to manage cities. The task is to make life in the city more comfortable, secure and healthy. In the project my colleagues implemented in Moscow some time ago the major KPIs were:
- reduction of average time needed for an ambulance to reach a patient after a call (in minutes);
- reduction of average time needed for a fire brigade to reach a fire (in minutes);
- reduction of traffic jams index (in units);
- reduction in accidents in schools and other public spaces (in %), etc.
Decisions on how many cameras to install in the schools and in the streets, and how many screens to install in the control room was left to the discretion of the service provider — the cost plus basis of charging was rejected big time.
A Smart City project is financed from the budget of the respective city or the federal budget — tax payers money are used to make life of tax payers better.
I had a lot of talks with Indian officials at all levels on how to bring international expertise in this field to India. All these talks went dry when I asked the question on the source of funding. There is no consensus even on the definition of a Smart City «Indian way» — usually it all gets down to a green field project of the real estate developers who try to get cheaper land from the states using this fashionable rethorics.
Varanasi is one of the places on the list of the cities designated to be Smart. You can give the project any name but Varanasi badly needs new roads, cleaning of garbage, and anti-flood channels. It’s a great place, it does not deserve floating rubbish at the ghats covered by backwater from Varuna — the scene I wintessed last weekend.
But India already has a Smart City — Chandigarh. All the principles on which Chandigarh was planned and built are absolutely relevant today. This is what makes the city a museum, and a laboratoty of modernist urban development. To name just a few Smart City features:
- convenient sector structure, with each sector 1,200m by 800m in size. The idea is by an American architect Albert Mayer, the author of the first master plan, later slightly modified by Le Corbusier (LC). It’s easy for the traffic to get to any sector’s boarder, and inside the sector the traffic is limited and kids can safely play cricket;
- segregation of pedestrian and vehical approaches and clear transport management system based on seven types of roads. This idea of LC was not fully implemented but it’s worth giving it another try today, I am sure it’s not outdated as well as his other urbanistic novelties;
- major government buildings are put in a separate area, apart from downtown;
- beds of rivulets have been kept intact and parcs spread around them. It’s the best natural flood prevention measure, a dream for Chennai;
- standard plans for private houses (but there are 18 types to keep diversity) make life of municipal services much easier. Plus the rule of four floors maximum. Another advantage — your eyes feel relaxed looking at the front lines of the streets;
- houses are climate-centric. In housing the heat was considered the main natural challenge, and to fight it was a construction priority, while light/shade play came as an esthetic by-product, but not in public buildings. Local bricks are used as major construction material, the houses are turned to an angle that allows the wind go through, and brise-soleil system protects them from direct sun rays. These are brick jalies — LC and his team were fascinated by hand-made mud houses of Punjabi villages that use the same principle.
When Nehru invited foreign architects to plan and build Chandigarh in late 1940s — early 1950s, he put a condition that they should train a body of Indian architects as part of the contract. Around 60 Indian architects worked at Chandigarh’s Architects Office, and they implemented and developed LC’ concept further in Chandigarh and beyond.
Now foreigners are not needed to upgrade Chandigarh to the standards of the modern Smart City — there are many interesting Indian urbanists of international calibre, both planners and architects. Chandigarh has a an excellent College of Architecture established in LC’s time, a ready pool of qualified specialists. Chandigarh can staff a Smart City Creative Centre for the whole India. It could start with upgrading of its native Chandigarh.
Chandigarh needs urban planning update — it was designed for a half million people, and today its population exceeds 2M due to the inflow of the poor from the neighbouring states. The graduates of city’s good colleges have to leave the city to find a job elsewhere, as there is not enough business activity in the city. Another reason they can not afford settling down in Chandigarh is high reals estate prices, inflated by inflow of black money from Punjab and Haryana — ironic situation in the city which was a successful experimental ground for economic housing. The city needs cheap and smart houses again — Chandigarh 2.0.
Chandigarh Smart City Centre would stimulate business life in the city, retain youth and will work as a practical kick off for Smart Cities initiative — otherwise we keep repeating «halva».
In the end I can not resist a temptation to cite LC — not particularly relevant, but so good: «At the end of 1951 in Chandigarh; possible contact with essential delights of Indian philosophy; fraternity between cosmos and living beings; stars, all of nature, sacred animals, birds, monkeys, cows and in the villages the children, the adults and the still active old people, the pond and the mangroeves, everything has an absolute presence and smiles: everything is miserably poor but well proportioned». No, it’s relevant as it gives inspiration.
