A question that echoes in my mind each time I step outside. The answer depends on the door you walk out of. In the heart of a city, it feels like a definite yes. Elsewhere, not so much. So why are cities overcrowded?
The reasons are familiar: job opportunities, better infrastructure (or at least that used to be the case), access to education. Cities offer a stage for life’s many pursuits. We marvel at the architecture, the café interiors, and the malls. Cities are magnets, and magnets attract.
But the crowd is subjective. Tolerance varies, often proportional to the cause. Who am I to call a city overcrowded when every resident is fighting to live, to survive, to thrive? People wear many hats, lead layered lives. Infrastructure must serve all and without bias.
It begins with the road. Like any resource, it’s finite. Roads, pipes, drains, they all have a breaking point. You can tweak them temporarily, but the load doesn’t vanish. It builds.
So, who monitors these resources? We pride ourselves on IoT and AI, the buzzwords for over a decade. Have they failed us? Were they ever truly implemented? My answer is simple: there is no solution. Surprising? Maybe. But sometimes, honesty is clarity.
Let’s take a thought experiment: calculate the total length of all vehicles registered in a city over the past 15 years. Compare that with the length of the street. Now imagine parking two-wheeler on both sides of the road. Would there be any road left?
Traffic flow is directly affected by vehicle volume. Illegal parking narrows roads. A single road connecting multiple high-rise apartments, no separate entry/exit lanes. Public transport helps but only to a small extent. And last-mile connectivity? How far are we willing to walk or cycle? Are those options even safe?
Pedestrian neglect is equally high. We blame motorists, but rule ignorance is shared. If signal duration aren’t respected, how do we expect to control chaos?
Overcrowding isn’t just about people around me. If I have an emergency, can I reach a hospital in time? Will a bed be available? A doctor? When I walk to the neighborhood store, is the pavement clear or blocked by parked vehicles and electric posts?
78 years post-independence, it’s time to detach ourselves from city mania. Let old cities stand as cultural testaments. Let new cities rise as models of planning and dignity.
This is a manmade disaster. The blame doesn’t lie with census figures alone. Other metrics screamed the warning: housing loans, vehicle registrations, school enrollments, employment data…
I wish our rights were valued. Let’s hit reset. Let’s build a more efficient nation by our 100th year of independence.