The City and the Development- A Counter Narrative of Sustainable Development

Sustainability of earth has been challenged by the incidents and events of climate change. Although the world is more developed today yet is highly threatened by the prospective natural calamities that continue to jeopardize the possibility of human life on earth in near centuries. Rather it has started influencing the climate-cycles. In today's world, city becomes synonymous with development. Major processes of development in modern world are city-centric. Be it Industry, multiple modes of transportation, spread of corporate business houses involving concrete buildings, huge population as workers and consumers of modern modes of production, etc. This all pollutes the environment and helps in increasing the temperature globally. Initially a city promises 'convenience' to human lives and possibility of human growth and development. Technology becomes the latest catalyst to bring convenience to human lives. Despite all these 'trusted' modes of human progress, recently, human society has started realising the flip side of this city-based urbanised economic development. City of modern world pollutes more than villages. Pollution, population and preservation remain the 'inter-related' buzzwords in the age of 'sustainable development'. In the modern liberal state, no model of development and no Individual Right (other than Right to Life, in its traditional sense) can be justified if anyone violates environmental sustainability. Traditional concept of city-based development faces challenges from the environmental perspective. Production and consumption patterns of cities are more polluting than that of villages. What alternatives are we left with? Has the time come to decentralize our 'economic development'? This paper explores and evaluates the relational quotient between the urbanization and sustainable development. The very idea of city is based on the counter-narrative of the idea of sustainability. It impels us to think about the urgency of bringing change in the discourse of development that so selectively puts the city in its centre and makes climate change inevitable!