This video is sponsored by Curiosity Stream.
Imagine a city so large and growing so fast
the federal government has to encourage
development in nearby cities
to absorb the migrants moving to the main city,
and those smaller cities would already, on average,
have a million people living in them.
That's exactly what's happening
in India's National Capital Region, home to Delhi.
Delhi is a city experiencing rapid urbanization
thanks to in-migration from rural areas in India.
The city boasts per capita incomes
three times higher than the national average,
and that level of opportunity is appealing.
At the same time.
Delhi is struggling to welcome all migrants
by expanding roads, sewers, water,
and other essential services.
The result is a proliferation
of slums and informal settlements.
The city can't keep up with growth.
Back in 1985, the National Capital Region's Planning Board
proposed a solution:
identify cities within 100 to 400 kilometers of Delhi
and encourage migrants to move there,
usually through development projects
in those satellite cities to encourage new development,
affordable housing, and job opportunities.
These satellite cities would be called counter magnets,
because they're meant to attract people away from Delhi,
itself a massive magnet for migrants.
The planning board chose five cities
from five different adjacent states,
each situated to form a ring around Delhi
to hopefully attract migrants from every direction.
This plan makes a lot of sense on paper at least,
and since the program began,
those cities have received loan assistance
to build the required projects
of the counter magnet program.
The results, though,
have not been what Indian authorities would've hoped.
There were simply not enough new opportunities
created for migrants,
and people kept moving to Delhi.
The Regional Planning Agency
has since added more cities to the program.
Will more mean better?
It remains to be seen,
but this is the kind of large scale creative problem solving
a region like Delhi has to undertake
to solve its growth management issues.
In 2030, the region will be home
to a projected 39 million residents,
meaning it will overtake Tokyo in the world rankings
to become the most populous city on Earth.
And that's just the UN's estimate.
India's own estimate for the region
has the population at 46 million people.
I did a video on Tokyo a couple years ago
profiling the history of today's world's largest city.
I think it's time to do one for Delhi,
seeing as how it'll become the world's most populous city
in the next few years - if it hasn't already.
In this video, we're gonna explore the mega city of Delhi
and try to understand how it's facing the challenge
of being home to 46 million people
and has to employ
some pretty innovative planning techniques.
Let's get into those after the bike bell.
(bike bell dings)
46 million people in one city, well, kind of/sort of.
When you're talking about the largest cities in the world,
the measuring stick is usually the metropolitan region.
In India, the National Capital Region
coordinates Delhi's planning.
It includes the entire National Capital Territory,
a state level division,
as well as several adjacent districts
from the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan.
The region is massive, 55,000 square kilometers.
Only about 63% of the region is actually urbanized,
though urbanization is happening rapidly.
Here's a look at Delhi's urbanization through time,
starting with the boundaries of the urbanized area
at about 1950.
Everything built between 1400 BCE to 1950 fits in there.
By 1975, the urbanized area more than doubled.
That's because its regional population
doubled from 5 to 10 million
right after Indian independence and the partition in 1947.
And by 1997, the area doubled yet again
and was really absorbing nearby cities.
And today you can see the enormous extent of the urban area.
There are a couple of landmarks
worth pointing out right here.
First is Old Delhi, or Shahjahanabad,
built by the emperor Shah Jahan
when he moved the capital of the Mughal Empire
from Agra to the city in 1638.
He built a magnificent palace
called the Red Fort right here.
He also built the massive mosque Jama Masjid
shortly afterward.
The main roads between important buildings in Old Delhi
became large bazaars, shopping streets, basically.
Old Delhi's urban fabric is obviously quite different
than the urbanism found in New Delhi,
designed by the British
when they made Delhi the capital of colonial India in 1911.
The British Raj originally had the capital in Kolkata,
but the city became a hotbed
for nationalist anti-British sentiment.
The British justified the move in part
because they felt like Delhi had a healthier climate
for its imperial workforce,
and they had control of large parcels of land
where they could build a capital city
worthy of the jewel of the British colonial empire.
Designed by the British architect Edwin Luytens,
the plan was meant to convey British colonial power.
It was considered a more civilized view of a city,
meant to contrast with the dense energy of Old Delhi.
If you've noticed the axes and diagonal boulevards
looked like Washington, DC, you'd be right.
Washington was indeed a key precedent used.
And if you noticed that it also looks suspiciously
like the plan for Australia's capital, Canberra,
you'd also be right,
and now you're just flexing your knowledge
of planned capitals.
Canberra was designed
at essentially the same time as New Delhi,
and both had garden city origins.
What was urban development like in Delhi
after the British built New Delhi?
Well, New Delhi normalized
leafy, low density suburban development in the area.
New Delhi was designed to house 60,000 people
at a density far lower than Old Delhi,
yet middle class Indians now viewed low density sprawl
as the way to grow,
and many areas of Delhi now exemplify that model.
But you also have other incredibly dense nodes
throughout the region,
which include other old cities like Old Delhi
absorbed into the metro by suburban development,
or high density unplanned slums.
The east bank of the Yamuna River in particular
has experienced rapid urbanization
that has outpaced the extension of critical services
like water and sewer.
Delhi's population grew after it became the capital
and exploded after independence with the partition of India.
How did the city start responding to this incredible growth?
The city adopted the Delhi Master Plan of 1962,
written by a group of American and Indian planners.
It definitely came with a Western bent too,
and viewed the density of Old Delhi as undesirable,
and instead preferred a low density residential development.
Mixed use development was discouraged.
Commercial development was to be clustered in nodes
that were often far from housing,
and the entire city would be ringed by a greenbelt.
How did the plan work out?
Well, Delhi grew a lot faster than planners envisioned.
The greenbelt eroded,
and Delhi eventually grew and merged with nearby cities.
At the same time,
the city didn't build enough of those commercial centers.
Mixed use development happened instead
and it was sort of ad hoc
and they didn't achieve the organization
they were hoping for.
By the 1980s the city was adding
1.6 million people per year.
Traffic emerged as one of the biggest challenges
as the distance between land uses grew
as the metro area grew.
The city had highways and a bus network,
but no metro system befitting a city
that now had about 9 million people
just within the city limits.
In the 1990s, local officials began to draft
serious plans for a new system,
and construction began in 1998.
The Red Line was the first to open in 2002,
and since then eight more lines have been added,
with the most recent opening in 2019.
The system now has 254 stations and 384 kilometers of track.
The Delhi Metro provides about 2.5 million rides per day,
which is substantial but still somewhat below expectations
for a city of its size.
By comparison, Tokyo's two metro systems
provide nearly 10 million rides per day.
But there's already an adopted plan
for another round of expansions
that would add 100 kilometers of lines in 115 stations.
Getting Delhi residents out of cars is imperative,
as air pollution is nearly off the charts.
In November of 2021,
India's Supreme Court announced a lockdown
of the capital region
that would ban all non-essential travel
to get the air pollution under control.
The air quality index in some places
was over 400 on a 500 point scale.
For reference, here in California,
students are not allowed outside during a recess
if the AQI is above 100.
In Delhi, no surprise,
schools were just straight up canceled.
The region sees bad air quality in the winter months
when vehicle-related emissions
mix with nearby crop burning practices after the harvest.
Next on the list of mega city challenges
after air pollution and traffic are slums.
Delhi does have some,
though less than 1/5 of the urban area is covered by them.
That's a percentage lower than a city like Mumbai.
This is due in part to the system of urban villages
that already exists.
These 135 villages originated as agricultural towns
that lost their agriculture due to urbanization.
The National Capital Region's policy for these villages
was simply to draw a red line around them,
exempt them from any planning regulations,
and prohibit outsiders from buying land there.
Villagers then began to subdivide properties
and build dense housing
to accommodate growing demand for affordable housing.
As they're largely unregulated,
these urban villages are still not up to code
and are rather haphazard,
but they acted as a sponge
and soaked up some of the migrants
so they didn't have to build their own slum homes.
Some of the urban villages have even transformed
into hip, trendy destinations
as they attracted artists and small business owners
looking for affordable places to set up shop.
Haus Khas Village is known in Delhi
as the prime example of this phenomenon,
with its art galleries and alleys,
food stalls and fancy restaurants.
The problem with doing a video
on the soon to be largest city on the planet
is that there's so much to talk about.
This has just been a brief overview
of the way this city has been dealing with the challenges
associated with extreme urbanization.
If you'd like to see some more Delhi content,
check out the video on New Delhi over on Nebula.
New Delhi is a fascinating piece
of British colonial urbanism
and a unique entry into the planned capital genre.
And if you're not interested in Delhi,
I might still have you covered.
I have seven other videos not available on YouTube,
and I add a new one each month.
I also have 16 videos with bonus content
not available on YouTube,
and an entire 20 minute video on planning Ancient Rome
that might be one of my favorite videos of all time.
There's also a ton of exclusive content on Nebula
from Real Life Lore, Mustard, and more.
And that content actually replaces this ad
because there aren't any ads on Nebula.
And this deal gets even better
because Nebula is bundled with Curiosity Stream.
Curiosity Stream is the source
for high quality, engaging documentaries.
If you're interested in learning more
about the British Empire in India,
you can check out "Empire,"
a mini series that chronicles the way the British Empire
reshaped the globe for its benefit.
It adds some great context
to the discussion of Delhi and New Delhi.
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