Politics Insight News Without Politics
(Pi Bureau)
Virendra Singh Rawat
Economic Journalist
The rapid pace of urbanisation and unbridled migration of people from rural areas to cities for employment has always been a big challenge for government, municipal authorities and urban planners.
Since these matrices are difficult to predict or project, any urban plan has a high propensity to fail, thus putting pressure on the existing urban infrastructure, including roads, housing, medical and education services etc with the addition in resident population.
Growing digitisation and progress in information technology are at the same time continuing to transform the dynamics of job profiles and mode of delivery of services. Going forward, the constraints of time and space are getting increasingly blurred with the use of technology.
Nevertheless, the migration of people would still continue to urban centres for jobs and in quest of better civic amenities.
In this context, there is an urgent need to develop hundreds of futuristic satellite towns in the periphery of existing big cities and metros.
These new urban settlements should be integrated with their primary metro centres via fast expressways, both physical roads and IT highways to minimise people’s travel on a daily basis. Metro rail services between these towns would also take load off the already busy highways, thus cutting vehicular pollution and congestion.
These futuristic cities would not only check over-burdening of existing big towns, but provide quality urban life to its settlers.
Besides, the town planners should give due emphasis on maintaining ecological balance to cut emissions and water pollution. Provision of using solar energy for captive use, rain water harvesting and effluent treatment would go a long way in ensuring the sustainability and viability of these urban centres.
