1. What are the significant features of recent trends in the development of principal cities across the world?
The most powerful single change is globalisation, the moves to integrate or fuse national economies in a single world economy. Of course, it is far from being accomplished - at its most advanced stage in, say, the European Union; to a lesser extent, in the North American Free Trade Association; and at its least in, say, south Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa. Where it is advanced, supernational and subnational agencies become increasingly important and supersede some of the sovereignty of the old Sovereign State, and this involves a reassertion of the dominant economic role of cities; and of cities competing with each other. At an extreme, the world economy would become once again a network of cities, organising the globe, rather than a set of national economies.
Each government has moved at different speeds in trying to catch up politically with this economic process by according decentralised powers to cities or provinces, but most have made considerable changes to empower city governments. At the same time, city governments have been dispersing powers to both private firms and non-governmental organisations. The final picture is thus, very far removed from the old order, a world of dominant national governments. Power dispersal has shifted attention from city government to city governance, that is, including all those who are involved in managing the city, the "stakeholders". Under the old system of government, institutions did not accommodate all these players - private firms, NGOs, community groups, trade unions, universities, etc. Now, many cities in Europe and North America have created a Forum, a citizens' body, to focus these diversified forces and provide a place for a much bigger audience to discuss and define where the city is going. Planning shifts from the expert document delivered from on high to a politically negotiated document, a rough working plan that has to be flexible and changed as circumstances change.
The other changes have also been important. One is the radical decline in manufacturing as a city activity. Cities are becoming centres of the provision of services - from transport junctions (multi-modal junctions of air, sea, road and rail), junctions inflows of information (through telecommunications and the mobility of people), providers of health, educational and cultural and sport services, the location for information technology services and services enabled by IT, etc. Services as internationally traded activities are only possible if the city is safe and secure - if its water is clean, its solid waste disposal services impeccable, its streets safe, its transport clean and cheap etc., and its neighbourhoods pleasing and well-designed. Thus implicit in the shift from an industrial to a servicing city is the old municipal agenda, now made doubly vital since it is a key factor in facilitating the growth of jobs and income in the city.
The changing basis of the city (as well as changing incomes and transport innovations) is producing a dispersal of population over much larger areas than the old city. The administrative boundaries rarely manage to keep pace with the spread of population, so there is a tendency for the city polity to become remote from the city in population or economic terms. Almost everywhere, big cities are not growing fast any longer (although the class of big cities is growing through the addition of new arrivals) - that is, the population within the old city boundaries is not growing. In the region, matters look different. For example, you could say that "Mumbai" now covers, in population and economic terms, the triangle between old Mumbai, Pune and Nasik. Thus, the city region has become, in one sense, economically a decisive factor although you could also say that dispersal represents the erosion of the difference between urban and rural, the urbanisation of larger and larger areas of the countryside.
2. What lessons do you think Mumbai should derive from the emerging context of liberalisation and globalisation?
Of course, each city is unique so it is not easy to generalise from the experience of other cities as to what Mumbai should be doing. India has been very slow to reform, to open the national economy, and very slow to decentralise serious powers to the States and cities, so the processes described earlier have been slow to develop here. But of course, people in Mumbai, one of the most advanced cities in the country, are increasingly becoming aware of the external competition - of Singapore's containerised wharves, its financial district, and its service provision - which is a sign that the same processes are afoot. It is in the field of governance - and the associated self-consciousness embodied in collecting city-wide data and promoting research on the city - where Mumbai appears most archaic. Consider that the current Prime Minister of China was formerly the Mayor of Shanghai - it is inconceivable that a Mayor of Mumbai could become the Prime Minister of India. This is not about the people involved but the political stature of the city in the national context. There are vigorous NGOs in the city and greater interest is shared by private businessmen in making the city work better, but little participation.
3. You have been closely watching the progress of Mumbai for the past three decades. Do you find any disturbing or worrisome features in the ongoing transformation of Mumbai?
The city today is bigger, better and more prosperous than ever before. Even as it has proved its capacity to house and feed numbers that in the past would have seemed inconceivable, so the quality of life has improved in important respects - shown perhaps most vividly in the indices of health and of longevity (including the infant mortality rate). Of course, it is not enough, and too many of the citizens continue to eke out a precarious existence on the margins of the city, abominably housed and served. With continued - or preferably heightened - economic growth, it becomes increasingly possible to do something about these questions, and there are many innovative schemes afoot to seek measures of amelioration.
In contrast to the improvement of livelihood, the transport system seems to have got worse. A poor and impoverished public transport system has encouraged private transport and, despite massive physical improvements in the road system, it cannot keep pace. Of course, the scale of transport is a mark of success in economic growth, but that is no consolation to those condemned to waste their days in traffic jams.
I have already mentioned the appalling weaknesses in governance, the vacuum at the level of the city. When a local government is so impoverished, it does not attract the sort of people who will make a mark. The lack of participation in other ways is striking - there is no common assembly for the people of Mumbai. And without that active and engaged audience, there is little interest in what the city is and does, in monitoring its performance (measured against, say, Singapore) and stimulating research in anything other than the most obvious sores - squatter housing, the poor and so on. In such a vacuum, an hostility to immigrants serves as the political outlet, as it sometimes does in Europe - the poor worker, coming at great cost to do Mumbai's worst work, is then blamed for all the ills of the city. He - or she - is a classical scapegoat.
4. We have always appreciated your passion for the smooth transition of Mumbai to becoming a powerful financial and commercial capital of India. What are the pre-requisites for moving towards this goal?
I have already suggested some of the key components of a city based upon services. The essence of such a city is in the intelligence of its works, and the task of governance is to facilitate the interaction of those intelligences. The workers can go elsewhere - and the city would be stripped of its capacity to grow and prosper. In an increasingly integrated world, migration carries away the most valuable assets of a locality. Thus, the workers must want to stay in the city - as much because it is the best place to be in professionally, because it is clean and works well, provides good housing and shops, is aesthetically pleasing, because it offers the best schools to its children and the best medical care to its sick. The competition among cities is thus in part a competition to provide these things - from clean drains and safe streets to royal opera and active drama.
All this is related to a financial centre. London has 800,000 employed in financial and business services, and much of it is there because of the cultural life of the city, its fine neighbourhoods, and its ease of entry and exit (its airports, roads etc). It is not necessarily beyond challenge - there are other beautiful cities in Europe and a failure in London could lead to emigration. All can match London's telecommunications, its digitalisation, some have better transport systems, more beautiful neighbourhoods and so London's governance is endlessly preoccupied with preserving the environment which holds its labour force, the key to economic success.
5. You are very familiar with the activities of Bombay First ever since its conceptualisation and incipient stages of its establishment. What role do you envisage for such an institution in the propagation of its cause? How do we go about in the pursuit of our goals?
When we originally envisaged the organisation of the body, which ultimately became Bombay First we had a different idea. It was to create a citizens' forum, an assembly for all in the city who were involved in its governance - from business and trade unions, NGOs, universities, professional associations and so on. This body would seek to map out the desirable directions of change, to debate the key issues, to be a think tank for the city. Going with it was to be a small research agency, compiling the data on the city, monitoring its performance, undertaking research projects, providing briefs, holding press conferences, advising, warning of dangers and highlighting opportunities. In fact, it worked out differently with Bombay First becoming an agency to promote the city as a location for inward investment, and closely associated with the Chamber of Commerce. There is, of course, a place for such a promotional body although it is not clear why it should be separate from the Chamber or relevant agencies of the government. But, politically, it cannot itself constitute a forum for the citizens at large. Insofar as it has already established a reputation in its field, it would be most difficult - if anyone was persuaded to try - for it to turn itself into such a forum. The vacuum in terms of governance continues.