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NEW DELHI: India's two top metros, Mumbai and Delhi, still lack what it takes to be world class cities. In a United Nations report on world's cities, India's financial capital ranked 52 among 95 cities while the political capital came in 58th.
The State of World's Cities report released by UN Habitat on Wednesday, ranked cities on five parameters of "prosperity". While Shanghai, Beijing and Bangkok were all ranked higher than the two Indian cities, Kathmandu and Dhaka came in below Delhi. The five parameters were productivity, infrastructure, quality of life, environmental sustainability and equity.
The report says while conceptually, prosperity is usually related to economic growth, but it has to do with more than just "economic well-being and material progress". The two Indian cities were "half-way to prosperity" and "political and technical" interventions were needed to improve conditions, said Eduardo Lopez Moreno, head of the city monitoring branch of UN Human Settlement Programme, while launching the global report on Wednesday.
For the first time, UN Habitat has ranked all the cities on five common parameters. "Delhi and Mumbai are doing moderately. They are comparatively better (but) there is ample scope for improvement," Moreno said.
He said both Indian cities had an overall low ranking because of their poor record in environment index - primarily due to high air pollution. Mumbai, which scored 0.645 on a scale of one in the productivity index, left cities like Cape Town, Jakarta and Casablanca far behind. He added that while public transport in Mumbai is better and more accessible than in Delhi, there is enough scope for improvement.
Responding to the report, A K Mishra, Union housing and urban poverty alleviation secretary, said the Centre needs to take a more holistic view of the problem and not just formulate schemes to tackle one aspect of city development. "Unless we integrate infrastructure development and prosperity with concepts like equality and quality of life, the city is not going to be livable," he said.
The report for the first time has exposed the trend of how city planning and urban development always protect the interest of the rich. It says that in many cities, urban planning has been controlled by the real estate business. "Cities that report to the interests of the better off or only focus on strategic economic interventions in specific spaces, tend to create enclaves of prosperity for a select few," it says.
It has also quoted a portion of the UN Habitat policy analysis in 50 cities in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Arab States (2011), which shows that up to 80% local experts (in countries) believe the benefits of economic prosperity mainly serve the interests of politicians and the wealthy.
"Through political influence, bribery and corruption, these powerful groups manage to distort urban plans, dodge spatial or legal rules, reduce the production of public goods and manipulate the power of eminent domain; in the process they capture unfair shares of a city's potential, resources and prosperity to the detriment of large, poor majorities of urban populations," the report says.
Delhi, Mumbai far from being world class cities, says UN - The Times of India
The State of World's Cities report released by UN Habitat on Wednesday, ranked cities on five parameters of "prosperity". While Shanghai, Beijing and Bangkok were all ranked higher than the two Indian cities, Kathmandu and Dhaka came in below Delhi. The five parameters were productivity, infrastructure, quality of life, environmental sustainability and equity.
The report says while conceptually, prosperity is usually related to economic growth, but it has to do with more than just "economic well-being and material progress". The two Indian cities were "half-way to prosperity" and "political and technical" interventions were needed to improve conditions, said Eduardo Lopez Moreno, head of the city monitoring branch of UN Human Settlement Programme, while launching the global report on Wednesday.
For the first time, UN Habitat has ranked all the cities on five common parameters. "Delhi and Mumbai are doing moderately. They are comparatively better (but) there is ample scope for improvement," Moreno said.
He said both Indian cities had an overall low ranking because of their poor record in environment index - primarily due to high air pollution. Mumbai, which scored 0.645 on a scale of one in the productivity index, left cities like Cape Town, Jakarta and Casablanca far behind. He added that while public transport in Mumbai is better and more accessible than in Delhi, there is enough scope for improvement.
Responding to the report, A K Mishra, Union housing and urban poverty alleviation secretary, said the Centre needs to take a more holistic view of the problem and not just formulate schemes to tackle one aspect of city development. "Unless we integrate infrastructure development and prosperity with concepts like equality and quality of life, the city is not going to be livable," he said.
The report for the first time has exposed the trend of how city planning and urban development always protect the interest of the rich. It says that in many cities, urban planning has been controlled by the real estate business. "Cities that report to the interests of the better off or only focus on strategic economic interventions in specific spaces, tend to create enclaves of prosperity for a select few," it says.
It has also quoted a portion of the UN Habitat policy analysis in 50 cities in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Arab States (2011), which shows that up to 80% local experts (in countries) believe the benefits of economic prosperity mainly serve the interests of politicians and the wealthy.
"Through political influence, bribery and corruption, these powerful groups manage to distort urban plans, dodge spatial or legal rules, reduce the production of public goods and manipulate the power of eminent domain; in the process they capture unfair shares of a city's potential, resources and prosperity to the detriment of large, poor majorities of urban populations," the report says.
Delhi, Mumbai far from being world class cities, says UN - The Times of India
There is lot of room for improvement and good thing is that our gov is working on it..
