Mar 30 2017

India is transforming from a rural to an urban country. To prepare our cities for the future – we need to reimagine concepts of shelter, utilities, culture, health, and economy. Unless we plan today, we will build cities that codify inequity and unsustainability.

In the next three decades India will transform from a rural to an urban country

Approximately 1,800 Indians move from rural areas to a city every hour. The pace at which Indian demographics are shifting from rural to urban is unprecedented. Major cities such as Mumbai and Delhi are no longer “cities” as traditionally defined but megalopolises – a collection of urban conglomerates whose borders have merged to become the Mumbai Metropolitan Region and Delhi NCR respectively.

Consider this: by 2050 60% of Indians will live in cities. Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata will be amongst the world’s largest cities and cumulatively become home to nearly 100 million people. How will these cities that are already bursting at the seams ensure basic quality of life for all these new citizens?

The answer is in reimagining the construct of cities. We need to shift away from thinking of cities purely in terms of fixed locations and physical infrastructure such as roads and buildings, and towards cities as dynamic living systems. We have an opportunity ahead of us to overhaul our existing cities and carefully plan new ones as we prepare for the future. Resilience to natural resource scarcity, extreme weather conditions and human-made disasters, as well as inclusive growth will need to be the bedrock of the future of Indian cities. At Intellecap Innovation Lab, we use five lenses of enquiry to think about these future-ready cities: