Union Urban Development Minister, Kamal Nath, voiced his thoughts of making New Delhi 'vertically developed' to cope with the growing population pressure. Like other developing countries, India continues to face an alarming scale of urbanisation with an estimated 700 million people likely to move to cities by 2050. Now, this would certainly put pressure on the infrastructure facilities in the cities as well as on natural resources. It is worth noting that globally, cities use 75% of the world's resources and are responsible for 67% of all energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. But urbanisation is an eventuality to which India practically has no option. There are two main problems that India faces. One is, of course, that of high population. The other concern is that development in terms of growth of manufacturing and services has been restricted to few metros and Tier 1 cities.
So, is vertical development a real solution? Although we believe that in the short run, the fact of growing urbanisation can be addressed by taking resort to measures like raising the floor space index (FSI), leading to vertical development. However, we think that both government and corporates should focus on promoting growth to various parts of the country. This is the only way to achieve a balanced and holistic development across the nation.
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