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EDITORIAL

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TRAFFIC PROBLEMS

The menace posed by the rapidly growing density of traffic in the world's great cities is making the earth a dangerous planet to live on. This applies with even greater force to India's metropolitan cities, where the state of roads and traffic arrangements have failed to keep pace with new requirements. The great number of seminars, conferences and reports by indigenous and foreign experts that have punctuated this period of galloping traffic growth has not been matched by practical action. It must be realised that what is involved is much more than the personal convenience or otherwise of the individual citizen. The present state of traffic, by consuming his time, fraying his nerves and sapping his energy, is a considerable factor in reducing his city's contribution to the wealth of the nation. If those concerned with traffic matters could be induced to look at the problem from this point of view, perhaps it would spur them to more positive efforts.

The success of the scheme proposed by Mr. A. Bhatnagar, Chairman of the Indian Institute of Road Transport, for a highpower authority to co-ordinate all problems connected with the regulation of traffic, will depend in the final analysis on the degree of earnestness with which the authority will discharge its functions and its ability to command the co-operation of the several sectors concerned. Mr. Bhatnagar's suggestion for the establishment of bus and truck terminals in the major cities is useful. There is also need for more fly-overs or over-bridges, more parking lots, and wider roads. It is time the pavements were cleared of hawkers and unauthorised occupants to keep the motorways free for vehicular traffic. It is also time that motorists among themselves and in their behaviour towards pedestrians were made to shed their selfishness in the use of roads. If friendly persuasion fails, other means may have to be adopted to bring the lesson home to them. There is no longer any point in tinkering with the problem, nor can insufficiency of funds be accepted as an excuse for an intolerable situation.

DIRTIEST CITY

Khuswant Singh, writes in the Statesman :

"I had placed my money on Patna as the dirtiest city in the world. This was before I had seen Gaya. Gaya has all that Patna has-open sewers, garbage, pigs, pariahs, flies, mosquitoes, dust and stench-and all of them packed in a much smaller area. It is Patna in miniature. I was told that Gaya also had a municipality."

Month Reviewed

The Growth Of Cities-100 Years Of Civic Administration

In South India-Building Research

The Growth Of Cities

"Our cities are continuing to grow despite all the theories of our city planners who long ago declared a verbal war against giant cities and despite the ban on constructing new industries in large cities", says a Russian town planner. The three giant cities of the Soviet Union are Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, but in the last few years another five cities have passed the million population mark. In all countries, planners have wanted to foster the growth of smaller towns and check the expansion of the vast metropolitan jungles that develop with industrialisation. In Britain, Ebenezer Howard suggested the "garden city" and Patrick Geddes proposed that the expansion of London should be checked by forming "new towns" to which industries could be transferred. Britain now has more than a score of new towns, eight of them around London. They have an average population of about 50,000 each and are self-sufficient as regards employment, housing, schools, markets and industries. Yet the total population of all these towns is only 6,50,000 and the big cities of Britain continue to grow apace. In the United States, the whole eastern seaboard from Boston through New York to Washington and beyond is becoming one vast conurbation as the suburbs of the big cities eat up the countryside. The same thing is happening around Chicago in the Middle West and San Francisco and Los Angeles on the Pacific Coast. We have to face the fact that modern technology favours the unlimited expansion of the big cities.

In our country, we have the vast urban growth of Calcutta and Bombay while Mad ras and Delhi are reaching the two million mark. Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Kanpur are around a million each while Nagpur, Poona and Lucknow are about half a million. We have a hundred towns of one lakh and over and another 141 between 50,000 and 100,000. The planners in India have been hoping to develop these smaller towns so that the pressure on the big metro

politan cities could be relieved. But it has proved easier to develop neighbourhood or satellite towns near the metropolis than to expand the smaller towns. No doubt the new industrial towns growing around f ctories in Nayveli, Durgapur, Rancni, etc., will attract a growing population, and the development of seaports like Kandla, Paradeep, Tuticorin, and Mangalore have growth potentialities. But there seems to be no escaping the mag. netism of the big cities which tend to grow vertically when they cannot expand horizontally. A big city is the forcing house of talent and enterprise, and where it is a seaport it is linked with the world network of commerce and technology. In countries which have traditionally been agricultural rather than industrial, the big city appears to be a cosmopolitan sink of crime and disorder, but there is another side to the coin. The economic growth which has enabled advanced countries to banish the spectres of scarcity, disease and illiteracy is promoted by the development of vast urban concen

trations.

100 Years Of Civic Administration In South India

The year 1966 Which is fast coming to to a close forms a notable landmark in civic administration in this part of the country, as can be seen from the spate of plans for the celebration of the centenaries of quite a few municipalities in Madras State. Madurai, the second largest city in the State, and Tuticorin have already held their formal and festive functions. Coimbatore, Vellore, Tiruchirapalli and others are following suit to mark suitably their survival and growth over a hundred years. The somewhat halting British attempt, way back in 1866, to associate Indians with the civic administration of 29 towns in the then Madras Presidency has no doubt led to several desirable results. The still primitive standards of sanitation, water supply and housing, not to speak of not infrequent eruptions of factious bickerings in the municipal councils that are so much