Kala Seetharam Sridhar and Om Prakash Mathur, Costs and Challenges of Local Urban Services (Oxford University Press), 2009

Abstract

Explosive growth of cities raises a question about how the increasing concentration of population in urban areas will change the world. Based on two decades of fieldwork, the author argues that cities are the medium for change. The book is divided into three parts. These parts deal with Urban Revolution, City Adrift and Strategy for Urban Planet, respectively.In the book, Brugmann describes the urban revolution in small cities like Machala (Ecuador), Tiruppur (Tamil Nadu, India), Irwine (California) and others influencing the world. Many things were influenced by cities globally even before the Internet. Scale, density and association cluster together, bring cost efficiencies and investments, and this leads to global urban growth. Recent World Development Report 2009 also presents similar views. The Dharavi slum in Mumbai is a good example. It has very high density leading to low transport cost, high utilization of property, close linkages with suppliers and retailers, and so on. It also has close urban associations. Today, Dharavi has global business linkages.Brugmann proposes total transformation in city planning and management systems. He argues that city systems grow organically not by technical planning. In days of market-driven development, urban policy makers should create commercial opportunities so predictable that they rally a city's private interests to support necessary market disciplines and reforms and have stable alliance. Avoiding a crisis on urban system requires that we design cities as efficient productive systems that are governed by communities with strategic purposes.