Context: In this episode of the Perspective Prog. based on Rapid Urbanisation: Opportunities & Challenges. India is the second largest urban system in the world with almost 11% of the total global urban population living in Indian cities. In absolute numbers, the urban population in India is more than highly urbanised countries/regions across the globe. 

• The country has reached a turning point in its journey of its economic transformation wherein half of the country would be ‘urban’ in a few decades. Urban growth is expected to contribute to 73% of the total population increase by 2036. 
• Urbanisation is Central to India’s Economy. For India to become a global player, Urban India needs to take a giant leap with Indian cities being well-prepared for dealing with current challenges and a competitive future. 
• Several bottlenecks and impediments such as lack of availability of serviced land, traffic congestion, pressure on basic infrastructure, extreme air pollution, urban flooding, water scarcity and droughts have been restricting urban planning capacity in the country. 
• Over the last few years various programs have been launched to tackle the challenges and make appropriate use of opportunities in the urban development.  

Need for Urbanisation and the rate we are Urbanising our city

• Well India got Independence we are only 15% urban, now it taken us around 60 years to reach about 30% level which means India's urbanisation doubled but it does not take us so many time for next doubling.
• As Mahatama Gandhi one time said India lives in its villages that is not going to be the case because very soon more than half of its population going to live in Urban areas.

What does this mean?

• This mean lot of challenges whether its water, mobility, housing or jobs. We already seen that more than half of the country GDP is actually now coming from the Urban areas. While agriculture is also important but then for the contribution to economy, growth and development urban areas have a major role to play. So, how well you craft urban areas, how well you make lives to better place to live in. 

First , urbanisation is one of the domain of job formation and the reason why people today migrating there . 

• Second and the most important thing is facilities that we get from this , like proper schooling , health facilities, goods availability, etc 
• Third , apart from schools , hospitals , goods availability etc we also get infrastructure facilities like better roadways , metros thus proper transportation.

All these facilities is thus demanding the need of rapid urbanisation but we have challenges on ther side of the same coin as well.

• First challenge is pollution that has always been a hub in big cities especially if we talk about our own capital delhi which is in a serious pain by pollution especial in winter the smog makes things more worse . Tackling this problem not through air purifying towers which is prevalent now but green space is tye first thing that we need to look on before creating any kind of urban projects
• Second is again pollutants in different public spaces which drags the public health more . Dumping of wastage in river is a major cause of it . So waste management is the second challenge in front of us if we talk about proper urban projects.
• Third which is a major thing , education and health facilities that is a definition of urban areas. But that should not be made sude by side because that somewhere create problems for both sides  . Schools and hospitals should be made in the region where less crowd could take place. 
• Fourth as I mentioned about crowd management , wide roads with two ways side by side is something we should look on . Walkable spaces and parking facilities is something a needy portion for proper balance of urban areas. 
• Management is something that is required especially from administration level with responsibility to citizens keeping in mind can give a fruit laden results.

Key Solutions

• Indigenization: Integration of Mobility, large people walks, roads arenot made of mobility but also a source of Livelihoods for lot of street vendors.

Curb three main problems: Mitigate and adapt to climatechange; how to protect your biodiversity and how to ensure human well being. Now we can't use the tools of last century to solve the problems of this century. For this we need five things

• 1) Access to basic urban services to all which means closing theis urban divide must be the priority of cities going forward.
• 2) Creating liveable and connecting neighbourhood like affordable housing, public spaces because when you create liveable neighbourhood it is key to attract talent and skilled workers, when talent and skilled workers coming to the city the revenue will automatically increases.
• 3) Integrating Blue-Green Infrastructure, looking at nature based solutions, looking at ways to built next century infrastructure better and more resilient.
• 4) City Region Planning: Like there are issues of air pollution which you can't solved out at certain geography or an administrative boundary so there is need to balanced regional growth 
• 5) Leverage data: Because good data leads to good governance and improves decision making because you can't manage what you cant, measure.

Agreement and suggestions from public must be there and especial emphasis on sustainability because we can't ignore climate change action. Green space is a dire need. We know that how important the urbanisation is so why not we make something that is permanently suitable and sustainable for people . Let we make the world environmentally protected without loosing the actual nature for fresh air . Lastly, in the last couple of years India seen many successful public campaigns Like Swachh Bharat and Make in India campaign. So the next one for us should be equal cities where we talk about access to public spaces and affordability for all.