More greenery or better infra?

Young children constructing feats of infrastructure in simulation PC games, teenagers submitting intricate maps in artwork competitions, adults devoting their productive work hours to protest against a governmental decision.

The desire for a better Bengaluru is universally shared, even by the higher-ups who make decisions that are seemingly insensitive to the aesthetic quality and environment of the city. The physical quality of a city is important not only for the comfort of citizens that can afford a high standard of living, but for those that depend upon public amenities for basic sustenance.

One may even lament on how, many Indians, particularly many young Indians, do not feel a sense of belonging in the less-than-ideal physical environment that Bengaluru offers to its citizens.

But perhaps it is a social taboo acknowledging that the administrative machinery is required to balance a vast variety of expectations of its citizens when it comes to the city’s infrastructure, and that the choice of adding more gardens or software parks is not as easy as it seems.

The project of improving the infrastructure of the Karnataka capital essentially aims at improving the quality of life of its citizens, which is ambitious and extremely difficult. It requires coming up with conclusive answers to two key questions: (a) what does ‘quality of life’ mean?; and, (b) what is the best manner to employ scarce resources to the physical environment so that everyone (or, at least, a large majority of individuals) can confidently state that the quality of their lives has improved?

The first question is not easy to answer accurately. “Quality of life” differs from “standard of living”, because the latter refers to objective criteria to measure the level of wealth and material comforts available to people in any given area. But quality of life cannot simply be dismissed as “everyone being happy”, because the happiness that each individual experiences on account of their physical environment is understandably subjective.

There have been attempts (most notably by the World Health Organisation) to identify various objective factors that can be included in the quality of a person’s life – physical health, social relationships, the environment, to name a few. Even these factors, however, do not exist in a vacuum.

Indeed, a high quality of physical conditions such as exceptional malls or lush gardens alone does not reflect a quality of life. In order for the malls and gardens to successfully generate a higher quality of life, there must be a high value that individuals and community attaches to the physical environment that is available to them in any given city.

Hence, even if we covered Bengaluru in a beautiful carpet of grass and flowers, there may be many entrepreneurial citizens, for instance, who were expecting the fiscal budget to be allocated to more air-conditioned offices for ease of business rather than a prettier city.

So far, the debate has developed a large blind spot when it comes to appreciating how an ideal city should reflect how people perceive themselves and their happiness based on the physical environment they live in. The physical features of a city are unconsciously translated into symbols with deeper meanings, and often these meanings are shared between different communities.

How does a simple pavement, bridge or tree embody a better quality of life? The city has lakhs of students and professionals travelling abroad each year. They admire and cherish the cleanliness of Singapore and attach a sense of pride in experiencing an environment of high quality. They return to the city and label it as a ‘disappointment’.

Old couples may lament on how empty lands that were once their playgrounds have now been acquired for swanky malls, reducing the happiness that they derived from the memories of a physical place. These may seem trivial and worthless to consider in the planning of Bengaluru’s infrastructure. But the next time a riot breaks out, notice how a dissatisfied public first attacks the government buses as a symbol of what they are fighting against.

Physical environment
As far as the second question is concerned, a realistic standard for the physical environment of any good city ought to be that it balances these expectations. But between better roads where executives feel comfortable travelling in this city and invest more, or gardens that can allow older generations to lead their twilight years in piece, is a choice of prioritising certain citizens.

Making such large-scale choices necessarily involves a lot of money, which, in turn, involves a certain kind of politics – meaning that the city will never be ‘perfect’ and ‘ideal’ in the way we want it to be. But politics need not be the dirty word here.

The planners of the past, despite their genuine political will, may have made several mistakes in the layout and zoning of the city. As our acknowledge of infrastructure develops, and society collectively improves its skills and moves up in social strata, we learn that there is always scope for further improvement in Bengaluru’s physical environment.

In my opinion, the city has the potential to achieve a remarkable balance of expectations. In its own unconventional way, it is a pluralistic hotchpotch of buildings, religious buildings, clubs, graffiti on the walls, malls, gardens, stadiums and large trees. It also has the potential and capacity (and indeed, enough land) to translate the hopes and desires of a vast majority of Bengalureans.

The real problem is that a sizeable part of Bengaluru’s population has no capacity, in terms of their education, health or economic resources, to enjoy the infrastructure that the city offers. Can the homeless enjoy another garden or a mall without the threat of policing? The quality of life in a city requires a high quality of its people – the question ought to be whether the citizens of Bengaluru can truly value the addition of gardens or infrastructure.

(The writer is a visiting faculty at CMR Law School,Bengaluru)