The Limits to Urban Growth

Ten years ago Srinagar was drowned in an epic flood. While the reasons for the flood may have been disputed its effects are etched in memory. Water up to the rafters in the higher parts of the city and to the second storey eaves in Jawaharnagar; it’s a miracle no one drowned.

Floods, fires, and famines were supposed to be the traditional disasters of Kashmir – fires are nowadays far less frequent and even less destructive, while the last famine was not in living memory. Floods are still with us, though - now and then.

Srinagar’s problem is the river of course, but one that is self-created. The city continues to expand into the lower reaches of the flood plain. Not one lesson seems to have been learned from the drowning of 2014.

Over the centuries Srinagar has expanded well beyond its origins in the higher contours around Hari Parbat. It was in the 20th century that the worst kind of expansion took place, in Rajbagh, Jawaharnagar, Shivpora and then the colonies beyond Rambagh bridge towards the airport into traditional wetlands through which the flood channel was built to drain the Jehlum of its excess water.

It continues to expand that way: not towards the upper contours of Wagura,  or the slopes of Harwan, or even towards Badgam, but persistently into the low lying paddy fields without sewerage or prospects of natural drainage.

Driving the lateral expansion of the city is the aspiration for the kind of traditional home that people aspire to live in. It’s a cultural thing. Plots is what people want, and that is the driving impulse behind the city’s expansion into a low rise ugly sprawl with narrow roads and open drains. The builders set the tone and direction; Government follows two paces behind with infrastructure; always inadequate, always unplanned, always messy.

Jammu has grown the same way, but there was not much to ruin in Jammu. Srinagar was unique, and still is. Unfortunately, it’s a text book example of bad town planning, or, the absence of it. Its expansion, particularly after 1947 at the start of the era of planned development has been much the way it was before, haphazard and opportunistic, and in all the wrong directions.

But not illogical; it follows the logic of opportunity. The city grew in the direction of the airport where the roads were widened and along ribbons of road construction.  J&K had a law to prevent ribbon development. It proved ineffective in the face of determined builders and pliant officialdom.

Srinagar has grown into low lying areas prone to flooding. As the new emerging classes abandoned the old city they spread out in the direction of economic opportunity and this was westward into the swamps and wetlands. Not many would remember that massive swamp adjoining the backwaters of the Wular was reclaimed for ‘development’ during Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed’s time and given the felicitous name of Sonwari.

The city is sited at the narrowest spread of flat land in the Valley, connecting Maraz with Kamraz divisions. The whole area, except where it begins to slope up to Wagura or South west to Badgam, is a natural wetland, extending into Hokersar and Haigam further North West.

The Dal and Anchar lake system extended well into the vicinity of Manasbal in earlier times. Anchar is now but a swamp and the Dal on the verge of becoming a cesspool.

In Mogul times the Dal was three times its current size extending well beyond Bagh Ali Mardan Khan, connecting with Khushalsar and Anchar. If the Dogra Rulers had not made Hokersar into their shooting preserve, or created Haigam as a reserved area, urban development would have lost these remaining wetlands to us as well, becoming versions of Bemina and Mehjoornagar, or Jawaharnagar and Tulsibagh.

The city of Srinagar is safe, when it is safe, because of the extensively constructed bund. Much of the city lies below the high water mark of the Jehlum, with flooding threatening after every episode of heavy rain from March to September.

Nothing, not even floods, stops the relentless build in low lying swamp, whether it is Shivpora at the Southern approaches of the city, or north-westerly while leaving it. It is a failure of both planning and administration.

If the natural containment area of excess flow is blocked with landfill as happened with Srinagar’s urban growth, then each flood will be worse than the last, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Coping with floods is one thing, polluting ground water is quite another. With no natural flow for the sewage generated or planning for the treatment of one has to shut off the mind to the horror being created beneath the soil.

The solution, if Srinagar is not to become a Venice of drain waters, is to build upwards not laterally. This means high rise buildings, where people live in flats, not independent villas.

It is also the way of the future. In a recent study by researchers in the US and Germany satellite data was used to measure 1550 cities in three dimensions. They found that while in the 1990s, ninety percent of the world’s cities were expanding laterally, that is, by spreading outwards in low rise construction, the figure dropped to 28 percent by the 2010s.

This means that urban growth is now happening upwards. Urban development is now much more through taller buildings that house more people than outward expansion. Typically, the researchers found, this trend to high rise construction begins from the centre of the city and spreads outwards.

Is that the future saving of Srinagar?

The most famous example of urban sprawl is Los Angeles, but we need not go so far. Delhi is a notorious example of inappropriate growth. It is not just Delhi; all over North India town planners have encouraged lateral spread and shunned high rise.

When Le Corbusier planned Chandigarh he wanted high rise, but his suggestions were shot down by a self-righteous moral aversion to the idea. As a result Chandigarh too, and the rest of Punjab, Haryana have also been victim of the 2 ½ floor obsession.

For reasons which remain obscure this obsession continues to cloud the mind of urban planners. Srinagar caught the same disease post-independence. One can see 5 floor residences in old buildings and photographs, but few in recent times, other than commercial buildings.

The trouble with high rise residences is in the ownership structure. When building high rise one builds for many families, not just one. This requires capital of course, but it also requires a mentality of risk. Most important it requires buyers who are willing to live in flats.

In other words, high rise in Srinagar is pre-conditioned by three necessities. First, laws that allow high rise residences. Second, builders, willing to risk capital in constructing high rise buildings, and finally, a class of people willing to abandon the villa mentality for flats.

All three are missing now. But high rise is the only answer to the disorganized spread of Srinagar into wetlands and paddy fields. Unless we want our city spread out to Anantnag and Baramulla. Already unregulated growth has taken it to Magam, and is threatening Tangmarg. The same thing seems to be happening towards Ganderbal.

We don’t have to wait for the next big flood to wake up to the perils of uncontrolled urban spread into a flood plain. The time to act is now.

The author is a retired IAS officer