Thank you dear subscribers, we are overwhelmed with your response.
Your Turn is a unique section from ThePrint featuring points of view from its subscribers. If you are a subscriber, have a point of view, please send it to us. If not, do subscribe here: https://theprint.in/subscribe/
India’s largest metros (Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Kolkata) power the country’s economy but struggle under the weight of their own scale. Population growth has outpaced infrastructure, leaving cities with congested roads, water shortages, limited public spaces and fragmented neighbourhoods. These cities continue to attract talent from across the country, yet their ability to absorb more people, more jobs and more cultural diversity is reaching its limit. If India expects to maintain economic momentum and foster genuine cultural integration, it must build new cities that are designed from the beginning to be inclusive, resilient and cosmopolitan.
To achieve this, urban planning must start with a set of non-negotiable principles.
The first is diversity by design. New cities need to attract people from different income levels, languages, ethnic backgrounds and professions. This requires an early commitment to mixed-income housing, creative studios, student accommodation and a variety of job clusters rather than a single dominant industry.
The second is the creation of mixed-use and walkable neighbourhoods. Homes, offices, markets, cafés, schools and cultural venues must sit close to one another. When people can walk to work or spend leisure time near where they live, the city becomes more sociable, more productive and less dependent on private vehicles.
The third is a high-quality public realm. Cities thrive when residents have easy access to parks, plazas, waterfronts, libraries, markets and cultural venues. These shared spaces act as the backbone of social life and encourage the chance interactions that define cosmopolitan culture.
Fourth, affordability must be a foundational design principle. A city that welcomes only the wealthy cannot be cosmopolitan. Affordable homes, reliable low-cost transit and accessible services ensure that entry-level workers, artists, gig workers and students can participate fully in urban life.
Connectivity is the next pillar. New cities need fast public transit within the city and strong national and global links through airports and high-quality rail. Without these, talent and capital will not stay.
Economic diversity is equally important. Anchor industries are useful, but they must be supported by creative, cultural and knowledge-based ecosystems. This combination creates resilience during downturns and produces the cultural complexity that makes cities interesting.
Finally, inclusive local governance is essential. Decision making must be responsive, representative and able to experiment quickly. Safe public environments, respect for civil rights and protection of free expression deepen the sense of belonging for residents from different backgrounds. Sustainability rounds out the blueprint, with resilient infrastructure, green public spaces and climate-proof services that appeal to modern urban residents.
Even with these principles, new cities can fail if they repeat the mistakes seen across Indian urbanisation. Luxury-first development often creates gated enclaves that shut out most of the city and weaken public life. Dependence on a single industry reduces economic variety and makes cities brittle during downturns. Weak last-mile transit, poor pedestrian design and a reliance on cars suffocate cultural life. Cultural districts that are programmed in a top-down manner rarely build genuine attachment among residents. Aggressive land speculation drives up prices and pushes out artists, service workers and small entrepreneurs who are essential to a vibrant city. Treating informal vendors and performers as nuisances instead of supporting them removes the everyday charm that keeps streets active and safe.
To ensure accountability, new cities need measurable and transparent indicators. Key metrics include the share of residents who were born outside the state, the extent of affordable housing within the total housing stock, and the proportion of daily commuters using public transit. Additional indicators include the number of cultural venues per one lakh residents, the size of the night-time economy, the variety of languages spoken at home, the level of income inequality across neighbourhoods, the rate of violent crime and the perceived sense of safety reported in surveys. Urban form can be tracked through walkability scores, tree cover and the amount of public space available per person. When these indicators are published regularly, they prevent cities from drifting into exclusivity or unsustainable growth.
The ethnic and linguistic divides that burden India’s existing metros are rooted in a long-standing failure to enable healthy assimilation. Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Chennai already suffer from over-stretched services, high pollution and severe water scarcity. Expecting them to shoulder the next wave of economic growth is unrealistic. The next phase must come from new cities that are built with cosmopolitan culture as a core objective, not an accidental by-product.
This is where regions like Andhra Pradesh enter the conversation. The legacy of Hyderabad’s rise under earlier leadership shows what is possible through coordinated land policy, infrastructure planning and focused economic strategy. With new investment announcements by Google, Adani, Reliance and several global technology and manufacturing firms, expectations from the state’s next urban centres are high. Cities such as Visakhapatnam and Amaravati have the potential to absorb population pressure from older metros, provided their development is guided by affordability, walkability, culture-first planning and strong governance.
India has the economic engine, the demographic momentum and the technological capacity to build the next generation of great cities. What it needs is a disciplined playbook, political commitment and accountability through measurable outcomes. Done well, new urban centres can reduce pressure on existing metros while becoming true cosmopolitan hubs that reflect the diversity, ambition and energy of modern India.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.