American Suburbia Sprawls Its Way To India

"Visualise this. Houses on one-acre plots with low tiled roofs, two car garages and picket fences, picture windows, neatly curtained, looking out on trimmed lawns -- a transplanted subdivision of New Jersey, complete with rambling ranch-style homes? No. Just a private housing estate in suburban Bangalore, built as promised in the brochure, along American lines...An American answer to every Indian urban situation produces this sort of misguided animated development, now found throughout India."

"The perfect picture has already formed somewhere in the world and we are merely buyers on an expensive and indulgent shopping spree. Take an American highway and string it between Mumbai and Pune. Plant a New Jersey suburb in Bangalore, copy a California condominium in Gurgaon. Help yourself to South Korean rail technology, buy yourself German carriages. Ask a Spanish designer to build a world-class airport. Do it, because action must be seen to have been taken, and it's just too bad if the international amalgam is a mess."