Abhishek Kumar Singh
The global pandemic era has shattered the notion that the real growth lies in the cities. These are the conditions when, for the last five years, a campaign is going on to make selected hundred cities in the country smart cities from every point of view. Therefore, the question arises that can an epidemic do so on foot to our cities, which are considered to be ideal models with resources and excellent infrastructure?
Cities are considered as the mirror of the development of civilization. Every country presents its large, feature-rich cities to the world with a lot of glitter. Big cities are the center of attraction not only for outsiders, but also within the country. They provide employment. Life becomes easy with the amenities available there. But the corona pandemic has changed these concepts. It has taken away the glory of the cities.
The situation is that the glory of big cities from America to China has faded during the pandemic period. Five major cities of China are still facing strict lockdown. According to a report, in the last one and a half years, millions of people living in big cities of America have said goodbye to the cities. The question is, how has urban development become so hollow from within that it is not able to withstand even a long period of an epidemic.
Amidst the Russo-Ukraine war, there has been a worldwide panic due to the complete ban in five major cities of China including Shanghai. It is being said that this may reduce the demand for oil. Since China is also a big oil importer country like India. This country buys 10 million barrels of oil every day. In such a situation, the rising oil prices can come down in a jiffy. It was claimed that the new figures of corona in China had reached close to sixty-five thousand.
In such a situation, an attempt was made to handle the situation by imposing a complete ban in five cities. Its zero covid policy has failed in the cities, which is itself a matter of grave concern. Due to the increasing number of patients, there is no space left in the urban hospitals of China. It is not only about China, the condition of American cities is also very bad. New data from the US Census show that millions of people migrated from large US cities to smaller cities during the year 2020-2021. New York was the first of these. More than 1.25 lakh citizens of this city migrated to live in other areas.
Census figures show a significant decline in New York’s population, which is considered a major concern. Similarly, the population of Los Angeles has decreased by two and a half million. About a million people moved from Chicago to other places. About 30,000 people fled the capital, Washington. This apathy of metro cities is also being seen in other countries of the world. However, the new census data in India is not yet available. But it is estimated that here too people have migrated from big cities to small towns.
Due to the Corona epidemic, in the last two years, the situation has become such that now no one wants to go to the big cities. From the capital Delhi and the financial capital Mumbai to most of the big cities and metros, people have been badly disappointed. The global pandemic era has shattered the notion that the real growth lies in the cities.
These are the conditions when, for the last five years, a campaign is going on to make selected hundred cities in the country smart cities from every point of view. Therefore, the question arises that can an epidemic make our cities, which are considered to be ideal models from employment to education-health, with resources and best infrastructure and on foot? Talking about India especially, the question arises whether it is not so that COVID-19 has exposed all the diseases of the cities, which have become incurable due to corruption, negligence and underdevelopment. .
If we look at the figures, last year more than sixty percent of the cases of corona infection were detected in only eight major cities of the country. About half of these cases were also reported in the top four metros – Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. The chaos that took place in the first four-five months of the year 2021 is not forgotten. In cities like Ahmedabad, Indore, Pune and Jaipur, the situation was not being handled.
If asked why this happened, the reasons are very clear. Like after independence, due to continuous neglect of health sector and migration of population towards cities for employment, these two important reasons, most of our cities became helpless in front of Corona. These are certainly two important reasons for the destruction of cities. But this story does not end here. If an epidemic is so severe, there is bound to be a shortage of resources, this happened from New York to London. It has to be understood that the roots of this destruction seen in the cities are deep and have been infiltrated here for a long time.
Urban planners and experts, who attended a conference in Delhi in 2007, nearly a quarter of a decade ago, pointed fingers at this merger. They were all in agreement that unintentionally surrounding cities with tall buildings and glass towers was in fact a kind of ‘monstrous and inhuman’ practice that would someday overwhelm cities. At that time there was no crisis of virus-borne epidemic in front of him, but anticipating the immense pressure on resources, he had definitely said that if the desire is to build the cities of the future, then we should look to the past, When people lived a little far apart in the same floor houses built on the ground.
We cannot ignore the fact how poorly populated India’s cities are. The randomness with which they were allowed to grow has resulted in the dreadful outbreak of Corona today. So far these cities have grown in two ways. On the one hand, crowds of people gathered within the already inhabited areas and in the narrow streets and adjacent houses. These were and are people with very limited income who could not live on rent or own flats in settled areas. The second society is that which, due to paucity of land, has shifted to multi-storeyed buildings built in areas away from the city. Due to both these reasons, our concept of sociality and community has suffered a deep blow.
With regard to urban planning, most planners are unanimous that only building tall buildings does not work, but for this the entire structure has to be made as in the West. It cannot be possible that the population of cities and the height of the buildings will continue to increase, but the facilities of hospital, electricity, water, road and transport should remain the same. This will lead to a bigger contradiction and such clumsy development will overwhelm us. It is a pity that these consequences are happening directly in front of us today. It would be good that the planners of the society and the government should sit together and think about how to get rid of all the merges that have got in their veins and have become the cause of not one but innumerable epidemics.