What Can Cities Do To Ensure They House A Happy Community?

Most of us moved to the city to find jobs. We also hoped for a much better lifestyle. By and by, you would realise you have lost more than you might have gained from the city — you have no time for yourself though your huge paycheck brings you a great feeling of self-contentment; you have a big house but you come here only to sleep. On most days, your movements are restricted only to the bedroom and the washroom. You drive a fancy car but the daily traffic jams force you to go slower than the pedestrians at times. You keep hearing about the rising pollution levels in your city that have the potential to give birth to life-threatening diseases.  As a whole, you stay discontented and often yearn for a life in the countryside. Soon enough, you would be reminded of the huge paycheck and all the facilities that come along with it, and you forget about the countryside till the feeling of discontent takes over again.

Despite the gloomy picture, this happens to be the best-case scenario. The not-so-fortunate ones have it much tougher. According to estimates of Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI), "more than 70 per cent of residents in fast-growing cities across the developing world lack access to basic services such as clean water, affordable transportation or decent housing". This means more than 70 per cent people of each large city is an unhappy lot. By 2050, 2.5 billion people will move to world's cities. This could mean if countries do not work towards addressing their urban life woes, most of their people will be discontented and unhappy.

How can authorities make sure this does not happen?

Rather than putting all their expenditure on developing suburbs, redeveloping city centres might be a good idea. Owing to the lack of property housing, informal settlements mushroom around city centres. These are the places where most workers live and even if they are provided several incentives to move to suburbs, they are unlikely to do so; their jobs are concentrated in city centres and they cannot waste time, and, more importantly, money in travelling. This is the reason why large-scale redevelopment projects fail to achieve any success if the plan involves slum dwellers moving to suburbs.

"It's often cheaper in the long-run to improve informal settlements rather than building roads and other infrastructure to expand suburbs to accommodate new arrivals," lead author of the WRI report Victoria Beard was quoted by Reuters as saying.

In the end, it all boils down to basics. The success of cities urbanisation process would depend on providing the common man regular supply of clean water, an efficient sewage system, a decent housing and an affordable transportation system; other improvisations will only act as a bonus.