What kind of cities is India’s infrastructure rush building?
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I have spent much of my professional life looking at cities from two directions: India, where I grew up, and New York, where I now practice architecture and urban design.
This has made one thing clear: cities do not become successful because they possess the right collection of infrastructure. They become successful because their infrastructure, land, housing, economy, public spaces and institutions work in relationship with one another.
This distinction matters enormously for India today. The country is entering one of the largest episodes of urbanisation in its history. The World Bank estimates that India’s urban population could rise from roughly 480 million in 2020 to 951 million by 2050.
India is building metros, expressways, airports, industrial corridors, housing, logistics infrastructure and digital systems at a pace that would have been difficult to imagine a generation ago.
But what kind of city are we building through all this infrastructure?
Infrastructure is not the same thing as urbanism – the unique social and cultural patterns that emerge when residents of a city interact with their built and natural environments.
India’s problem may not be that it is building too little. It may be that we are building the pieces of the city faster than we are designing the relationships between them.