I am truly delighted by readers’ response to this series of articles on how to create better cities, and to the column that engendered the idea of the series. A professor in IIM Bangalore wants to do a case study on Hivre Bazar village for his course on leadership. A senior executive in Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) sent me a superb Harvard Business School study titled ‘Informed and Interconnected: A Manifesto for Smarter Cities’ (http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-141.pdf). From Bangalore, Ashwin Mahesh, a noted civil society activist who co-edits an excellent public affairs journal India Together, (www.indiatogether.org), wrote to me about a unique public-private partnership initiative for the urban renewal of India’s IT capital.

This initiative—Agenda for Bengaluru Infrastructure and Development (ABIDE) Task Force—is chaired by Karnataka’s Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, and convened by Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajya Sabha MP. It is formulating holistic recommendations for the Bangalore Regional Governance Act, traffic and transport, water and sanitation, public health, power, housing and heritage conservation. The ABIDE has brought together several leading citizens such as Mohandas Pai of Infosys, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon and Dr Devi Shetty of Narayana Hrudayalaya. If you have visited Bangalore lately, you know that the city has improved in the past one year, although a lot still needs to be done. The credit for this must go to the ABIDE. Why can’t we have such strong and result-oriented public-private partnerships in every Indian city and town? This is my third of 10 ideas for India’s urban renewal.

The fourth and fifth ideas have to do with a deep commitment to egalitarianism, especially in the area of urban transport, as the leitmotif of any urban renewal initiative. A city whose roads are only for the rich and not for the commoners is not a livable city. A constant focus on expanding and improving the city’s common resources that can be enjoyed by all is the hallmark of a smart city. For example, Enrique Penalosa, the visionary former mayor of Bagota who implemented a major urban transformation project in the Colombian capital, believes that a great city is one in which people want to walk around outside to savour, and in turn enrich, the street life. He says: “The most valuable asset in a city is its road space. The road space can be used as a society wishes. How do you want to distribute this space between pedestrians, bicycles, mass transit and cars—this is a political decision. Trying to solve traffic jams with bigger roads is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. If there was more space for cars in London or New York, there would be more cars.”

... contd.