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If the bureaucrat and the politician wish to deal with the real city today, they must look closely at Lagos and Kumasi rather than Copenhagen or Shanghai. Like Delhi and Mumbai, West African cities are migrant towns whose development and future prospects are tied to the economy of day-to-day minor endeavours. To give civic space to people with nothing, to allow for a spread of temporary commerce, cattle fairs, public festivals and vegetable markets as the mainstay of civic life makes West African towns strikingly similar to Indian cities. A mix of agricultural town, rural outpost and cosmopolitan centre, the city’s migrant economy takes centre stage in civic life. Indian towns too rely on the surrounding farming economy or are artisan centres for small-scale — often illegal — industry.

Consequently, the signals are all directed towards a future urbanity made up of rural inhabitants, where the more pressing needs of civic life will be addressed by informal associations. Norms of space occupation, building design, size and density have to therefore grow out of people’s own comfort and familiarity, not as an imposition of imaginary European models or even Indian middle-class values. Civic mayhem is created by persistent and erroneous calls for public space, cultural centres, stadia, etc., rather than open maidans and temporary bazaars where migrant patterns can be openly expressed in city life.

Demographic changes in Indian cities occur much too fast to be acknowledged in government policy. In fact, perceptible changes in the city’s public disposition have already begun to project rural patterns. The wide open green space at Delhi’s India Gate — designed as ceremonial space for government monuments — now functions as an unselfconscious city ground for the capital’s poor. The northern fringe of hillocks outside Jaipur’s old city is a cataclysm of expanding tenements. Mumbai’s Marine Drive is public space without intent, as is Chennai’s Marina Beach.

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