Are our cities ready for migration surge? 

According to the World Urbanization Prospects of the UN Population Division, the percentage of people residing in urban areas is slated to rise to 60 per cent by 2030 and to 66.4 per cent by 2050, up from 54 per cent in 2015. In 1950 the corresponding figure was just under 30 per cent. This shows the magnitude of change happening across the world with an ever-increasing percentage of people residing in urban areas.

India, as a country, has been slow to urbanise. At present, according to Census 2011, roughly 31 per cent of Indians reside in urban areas. Over the next few years, India is expected to urbanise rapidly – and this percentage is slated to rise sharply. A pertinent question that arises is: Do Indian cities have the wherewithal to be resilient in the face of such unprecedented migration?

In the case of India, governments before the present dispensation and the present dispensation have been trying to find solutions to these questions. The earlier JNNURM and the Smart Cities Mission now are both part of the resolve to improve India's urban ecosystem. It is in this context that a recent book by the World Bank becomes pertinent. "Regenerating Urban Land - A Practitioners Guide to Leveraging Private Investment" has laid focus on a hitherto less-focussed area in urban affairs that can be leveraged for better livability and competitiveness, namely, regenerating urban land.

The book details a conceptual framework for understanding the urban regeneration process as well as mentions eight case studies of such projects from across the world. According to this important work, urban regeneration is done in areas where there are pockets of under-used and under-utilised land or distressed and decaying areas. A successful urban renewal process has four phases. These include an initial 'scoping phase', which primarily provides decision makers with analytical tools to confront issues facing the city. It is both forward looking and backward looking. It looks backwards for the city's history and DNA and looks ahead to what is required.

The book goes on to cite Ahmedabad's Sabarmati Riverfront Development project (SRDP), one of the eight case studies, as an example of a scoping exercise that took a long time for completion. The second step is the 'planning phase'. This involves 'designing a web of actions and institutions'. The book explicitly mentions that a successful planning framework brings together an inspiring vision with a clear regulatory process. A planning process with the help of scoping process must detail all the vital assets and elements including land, community and environmental issues.

In the case of SRDP, the planning phase was initiated once the special purpose vehicle (SPV) for riverfront development was established. Post this, the third stage is financing with sops for private sector. In the case of Ahmedabad, an innovative financial scheme was utilised for financing. Fourteen per cent of the reclaimed land was used to finance complete regeneration of the riverfront. The city used its serviced public land to raise a loan from the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO), a central government public sector undertaking.

In the case of SRDP, post the establishment of SPV, a diverse board was enabled with members from the private sector, the bureaucracy and the political parties (both ruling and opposition) which enabled the project to be viewed as a civic work rather than one aligned with any party's agenda. Over the next few years, more such thinking is required for countries like India to face some of the challenges that may arise due to their massive and haphazard urbanisation that is underway.

By Amit Kapoor