The idea for this blog post was prompted by a photograph that someone had shared on Blue Sky Social – where I have only just joined – of a McDonalds eatery being gobbled by a large medieval gate in some city in Estonia, I think. I shared the image post on LinkedIn and X as well. It reminded me of the time when I was visiting Paris decades ago and how irritated I was at the sight of a large McDonalds restaurant right next to the Opera House!
There’s another way to look at this kind of cultural superimposition, though. It is what cities are all about. From time immemorial, towns that grew into larger cities almost always retained a bit of the old, while adding the new. Most great cities around the world – and I include many of our metropolises in India – feature an old part of the city, often walled and gated because they were at some time the capital of some kingdom or the other. Around these fort or fortress walls, newer and more modern structures sprang up to suit the work and leisure lives of the city’s residents. If the city or country happened to witness distinct periods of foreign influence, all of these tend to mingle with the original and together they create an interesting cultural tableau of life. New Delhi, where I spent more than half my life is one such city where remnants of the oldest sultanate in North India stand cheek by jowl with Mughal forts and mausoleums as well as British colonial structures in Lutyens’ Delhi. This, I think is one of the capital’s greatest treasures and it is a pity that some political groups wish to bring down many of these structures not only to build high-rises, but also to erase our history.
There are several reasons why cities change over time, and the most important ones are economic, cultural, trade and travel-related. As cities attract more people for study, for work and business, they become magnets for ideas, innovation and capital. Agglomeration means more of these flow to cities that are already large, vibrant and productive, and as a result, cities become more cosmopolitan, open and multi-cultural. I think if one wants to see how a country has changed and understand it better, it’s best to visit its largest cities, or its capital though capital cities are not always the best window to a country’s dynamism and appetite for change and growth. I wouldn’t visit Washington D.C for example, to know or understand America; NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, etc. seem better options.
On the other hand, if one wants to see how the masses live, head for the countryside. At least in developing countries like mine, India, this is where the unchanging life of the poor can best be glimpsed. On a more serious note, however, the countryside is where life seems to stop still, where time hasn’t moved, and one can still sense the old-fashioned leisurely pace of life. This would be true of country life in most developed economies, where people either settle down when they retire, or where they visit for short holidays. We have such places in India as well, such as Goa where my aged parents decided to settle decades ago and where I now live with my aged father. Many people from across India have bought up homes here for a retreat, and even otherwise, Goa is where people from Mumbai and Bangalore and elsewhere keep visiting. Hilly states in North and East India also attract visitors in large numbers. It is the serenity, the idyllic surroundings and the quiet and laid-back pace of life that city-slickers yearn for, when their hectic urban lives get too much for them.
This brings me to a larger point: why cities must change in order to survive and thrive and why on the other hand, country life can go on without ever feeling the compelling need to change. Industrialised economies that once had a feudal past with a landed gentry – an aristocracy – have changed both in urban and rural life, thanks to greater economic development reaching smaller villages and hamlets. One doesn’t sense such a great chasm or deep divide between urban and rural folks. In fact, in UK, France and probably other European countries many city-dwellers buy their second home out in the country, precisely to be able to enjoy a certain unhurried life whenever they feel the need for it. But even if the economic disparities between urban and rural folk aren’t as wide as they are in populous, low- income countries such as India, there is definitely a slower, quieter rhythm to life in the country.
Although I have never travelled to the US, from everything that I have read about the country, their path to economic development has been so different and so relatively new. They lack an ancient and medieval history, with so much of it from the native American period perhaps unrecorded. From the time the earliest European settlers landed in America, their journey of economic development consisted of driving native American Indians from their farms and ranches in order to build relatively modern towns and counties. Then came the railroads, roads and highways and industry, almost all of it together at the same time. The result is that America urbanized across the country rather rapidly and I get the sense that there is therefore a certain homogenized kind of urbanization that took place. Where other cities have stood for centuries, building and growing organically over different periods in their history and economic development, American cities haven’t had the benefit of time. They were almost all built from scratch and nearly all to similar plans.
From what little I have read, there might be some cities in the American south that might have traces of early French and Spanish influence, such as New Orleans in Louisiana, just as NYC ought to have signs of Dutch influence, though I am not sure it does and if they have been retained by design. And as far as rural life is concerned, many outsiders say that America has not known a rural way of life for centuries. Even the smallest village or town deep in the heartland of America is said to be urban in every sense of the term. I suppose this comes from the fact that even if the rural population is occupied in farming and ranching activity, their lives are not entirely shaped by it. Farming in America being conducted on an industrial scale, mostly for large companies or for export, it bears little resemblance to what we see of agriculture in India or in the developing world. That said, I think change would be slow to reach these small towns and villages in America as well, and their way of life too would be relatively unhurried, as has been captured in plenty of America’s country music. In fact, I think that this could be one of the main reasons why America lost whatever strengths it might have had in arts and crafts, especially in handcrafted objet d’art, since these might have resided in the small villages and towns in the early days of the settlers. I mention this in my blog post on why America is lousy at luxury and how they can try and revive it.
Sometime in the 1960s, American economist John P Lewis wrote in his book, India’s Political Economy about the many conundrums that India presented in the context of its economic development. One of his suggestions to help rural India grow and develop faster was to build smaller towns near these villages, that would help absorb some of the rural population in new kinds of employment and industry. When I read it, I remember thinking that this process of urbanising rural India didn’t consider that India’s rural economy is primarily agrarian and dependent on subsistence farming, especially at the time. It also assumed that education of the rural population was sufficiently widespread and adequate for jobs in nearby towns. Finally, it also assumed that business investment in these new towns would materialise of their own, if these towns were built. This, at a time of poor rural-urban connectivity both in roads, general infrastructure and telecommunications. These are all prerequisites for new towns to be built and for investment to flow in, in order for long-term growth and sustainability to take place, which an exercise in spatial planning of the kind he was suggesting might not deliver.
I suppose he had the kind of town planning and building that was prevalent in the US, in mind. Where rural and urban America meet on miles of tarmac highways and where one melds into the other. If I ever do visit the US – and I am certain it will only be on business and work – I would love to do one long journey on the road, especially on Route 66. Speaking of urban America, I get the sense that American cities are rebuilt every few years or decades at least, and given the importance of the real estate business in the US, I am not surprised that the Americans don’t mind sacrificing the old for the new in the process of renewal. There seems to be no compelling need to hang on to certain quarters or structures because respect for history demands it. Which is not something one would say about London, Paris or Berlin, for example.
Having visited Berlin years after the Berlin Wall came down and the reunification process was under way I consider myself lucky and privileged to have seen the city go through its renewal. The main focus of much of the rebuilding of the new capital was in the East Berlin part of the city at what was once Potsdamer Platz, which I wrote about in an article for The Hindu newspaper in India (their Sunday Magazine) in the late 1990s. The plan was to rebuild much of Potsdamer Platz in the way that it existed before WWII and the division of Germany and Berlin. Which is to say that it was meant to once again become the city’s hub of business, commerce and entertainment, including a bustling shopping and dining district. This suggests to me that there still exists a deep respect and nostalgia for history and what was once cherished by the city’s residents as the nerve-centre of economic activity.
I would have very much liked to visit China, especially since my old friend and former sister-in-law, Gargi and her family lived there. From what they have told me and from what I have read about the large cities in China, especially Shanghai and Beijing, new and swanky areas of the cities were being built from scratch, but the older parts of the cities too remained. The old parts of Shanghai and Beijing are said to be important areas to visit from a traveller’s point of view, but they are not merely museum relics. These are living and thriving hubs of life and economic activity even today, and offer a glimpse into an older, more traditional way of life in urban China. One can’t say the same perhaps for so many new cities that China has been building, such as Chongqing and the SEZ cities in the country’s coastal south-east, such as Shenzhen.
Unfortunately, millions of people who work in these new glittering cities in China come from rural China and do not enjoy permanent residency rights there, thanks to the country’s hukou system. Therefore, one doesn’t know the extent of economic disparities between urban and rural China, even as the world’s second-largest economy races towards technological supremacy. It would be fair to expect that cities across China, like anywhere else in the world, is where change, economic and technological progress, and the future can be glimpsed and experienced.
We live in troubling and conflicted times. But there’s no doubt that every country looks to its cities for hope and future growth and innovation. The sign of how economically developed a region or country is can be told from how many urban habitation centres it possesses, and the ideas and lives burning within them. Which is not to say that rural areas are to be neglected or ignored. Far from it. India has been taking economic growth and development to her villages for a few decades now, even as John P Lewis wanted economic growth to shift out from villages to new towns and cities. And small towns and cities are India’s fastest engines of growth.
The main differentiator between urban and rural life then lies in the fact that the former is shaped by intellectual ideas, innovations and discussions about the state of the world and its future. Cities are ideas factories of the future, while villages are where physical creation, craftsmanship and age-old traditional skills of that kind reside. These tend to be handed down from generation to generation and therefore need to be actively encouraged and promoted, even as they are unchanging in nature. In Indian villages, these traditional arts and crafts have survived, And I have shared my thoughts and ideas in a blog post on how these rural arts and handicrafts can be better connected to new urban consumer goods and needs in order to create India’s own luxury industry that finds markets both here and overseas.
Now, if only we could change the education and employment situation in our towns and villages, it would do justice to calling ourselves the world’s fourth largest economy, whenever that occurs.
Peripatetic Perch 