It is an ostensibly paradoxical statement that almost all the major cities or rather, developed cities in India have nevertheless been inflated by the generally claimed advancements in metro transport system, telecommunication, entertainment and corporate sectors. The very notion of urbanization happens with the inflow of the floating, dwelling, as well as the migrating labour force, or, in the reverse elucidation, surge of labour force towards a centric point could be understood as urbanization. Be it commercial, industrial, medical, educational or whatever sector in a city, everything falls under the unanimously abiding and cohering label, namely “Business”.

On deeper examination, it could well be understood that the concept of development in an arena or zone is relatively depending on the business it scales successfully, along with the concentration towards improvisations in the physical infrastructures of a city. The profile and morale of a city passively depend on the tangible factors like business/ corporate markets, while intangible factors such as culture, custom, climate, natural resources, etc happen to be the major aspects that embraces the same. Having established the relativity between the commercial stances of a city and the advancement of an urban or even be it a suburban zone, the encumbrances or rather the loopholes in the existing framework of Urban fabrics could be pedantically investigated.

Development of a city happens in parallel with scopes of opportunities that the particular territory or region has got to offer, which again boomerangs back to the statistics and relativity of inflow in labour force with the commerce. Over a period of time, the city breaches and reaches its saturation point, as it is undisputedly subjected to rising in population, pollution, exploitation of natural resources, tampering in climate culture and quality of livelihood. Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, etc. cities are the top notches to cite examples for dreadful and disquieting urbanization. However, this outburst could be drastically curtailed and constrained or even improved with a novel or grand old, forgotten concept of “Distributive or Scattered Urbanization.”

It is the basic human nature to head right to the nucleus ie: heart of the city, irrespective of however long or short the distance they are likely to cover to make their purchases on petty groceries, clothing, etc. The very notion of blindfolded belief in hypermarkets and malls has led to the decline of the entire business system alongside the overall development of the city. To be surprised, it is a proven and researched fact that 65% of the malls in India run in loss as the only profit they make is through the cinemas. This is not due to the lack in business with the clothing, food and other sectors, but that the rent the sectors in mall pay, never falls in equation and equilibrium to the profit percentage they retain after settling the labours.

People incline to visit the malls for window shopping, which could be inferred from the facts and figures provided by “The Business Times” as it says, only 12 out of 95 malls in Delhi run decently, or at least close to success in profit. Keeping aside the window shoppers, the purchasing group of the customers happens to become the main target on which the entire focus ought to be shifted to. Apart from the customers hailing from the neighbourhood, or within 1-2 kilometres of the radius of a mall or any hypermarket, almost all other inflowing customers or rather public, fail to encourage the business hubs in the circumference of their respective locality.

There has always been an untameable belief that good quality goods are available only in the malls, supermarkets and such units. This presumptuous and false certainty has been radically daunting the businesses in Indian urban contexts as the remote and suburban peripheries continue to be hindered and under-developed. Given that the public or precisely, consumers start enquiring and placing their demands in the nearest commercial houses, the demand eventually goes up. If 50%-60% of a particular region, develop the audacity to depend on their neighbouring business units, not only will their business pump up, but also will the quality of service improve over the period of time and subsequently create and open up opportunities for the inflowing or stagnant labour population, which otherwise settle down at a single concentrated point. Transportation, Pollution, economy, institutional services, entertainment, etc. improves majorly by the basic concept of promoting the circumferential business sectors, which could never be accomplished by streamlining and curtailing the accumulation of the labour force or by going into the urbanised zones of the city.

Practicing and encouraging this system of Urbanisation would not only ease the overall morale of the city, but, also will it help in retrieving and retaining the culture, custom, heritage and other intangible assets that India has been and is still being known for, amongst other countries in the world. No longer will the environment required to be disturbed for expansions in transport systems, nor will the heritages and monumental structures be demolished to house residential and commercial units. The veracity of the discussed content about the Urban context may not seemingly be in inclination of acceptance of many, but may be understood as a speculative or theoretical articulation to enliven and alongside meticulously organise the cancerous developments, by creating options to retain the existing identities of an urban.

The author is Arun Shankar, Architectural Journalist

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own