Why Do Writers Of Narrative Non-Fiction Dislike Urban Development?

Many narrative non-fiction works of Indian writers are based on cities. While they usually love the cities they write about, but there is a constant disliking for everything that makes these cities liveable. It is not true of everybody who write about Indian cities as some authors who build narratives around India do hold a relatively market-oriented worldview, like Patrick French and Edward Luce. But this is not true of a majority of them. Why do writers of narrative non-fiction hate skyscrapers, modernity, and urban development? Why do they romanticise the past?

Indian writers of narrative non-fiction tend to believe that old decaying buildings and slum settlements are a superior way of “inhabiting space”. They also tend to believe that real estate developers are indifferent to culture and arts, and that glass buildings that sprout across major Indian cities are not appealing. Understanding the world is very difficult. Things are not what it seems. For example, two cities that look very different on the surface may be similar when you look at data on how urban space in the city is organised. Similarly, two cities that look very similar on first glance may start looking very different you look at data on how urban space is organised. This is not because such studies are useless. This is not because the best way to understand the spatial structure of a city is to see what is on the ground. Data usually give you a much broader picture of how things are. Narratives are rooted in the narrow, personal experiences of authors.

Will housing prices rise if developers are allowed to build high-rises? We need data, and a deep theoretical understanding of the housing markets to answer questions like this. This does not mean that narrative-based reasoning does not help much in understanding cities. Narrow, personal experiences of writers certainly help in understanding the world, too. For example, why are slum-dwellers so hesitant to move to public housing projects in the suburbs or periphery? Basic economics gives a partial answer. Low-income households do not want to be dependent on a small labour market. In the suburbs and the periphery, the labour market accessible to the poor is small.

But this does not completely answer the question. A small labour market is a problem, but it is not plausible that this is a problem big enough to force them to live in slums.  It is perhaps true that the poor need a wide network of allies and potential allies, because formal contracting is nearly absent. For example, moneylenders in Dharavi perhaps prefer to lend when they personally know debtors and their families. When formal contracting is absent, this becomes important, just as it is important to charge a higher interest rate.  Such wide networks also act as insurance that comes in handy when they are unemployed or ill. This may also explain why India is largely rural, despite urban wages being high. People do not want to lose such networks by moving to a city.  

Why are cities thriving more than ever in the internet age? Why cannot companies cut costs by allowing people to telecommute? The answer traditional economics gives is that people learn more and trade more when firms are close to each other, and that face-to-face contact is important for learning. There is something to this, but this does not even begin to answer the question. Let us suppose that the internet replaces offices, and that newspaper reporters start filing their stories from where they prefer. What is likely to happen? Not many people will work inside a newspaper office. But such offices still will not be empty. It is impossible to run a large business with a team of telecommuters. Some operations of the business happen in the real world. If the most important employees telecommute, employees who handle real world operations will take control of the office. They will shift policies of the company in their favour. This may lead to chaos. This is partly why the internet has not made cities irrelevant. This is also why real estate in the core of cities is so expensive.

So, the narrow, personal experiences of writers do matter a lot. The truth is that we need such experiences to answer the most important questions. Then why is narrative non-fiction so wrong on important issues like housing and urban policy? A major reason is that human beings are prone to romanticise the past. Human beings tend to hate capitalism and modernity, especially when they do not know the facts. As narrative non-fiction usually does not rely on broad, empirical facts, it is easy to fall into the trap of seeing the past through rose-tinted glasses. When you do not really understand reality, it is hard not to wonder why old, decaying buildings cannot be retained. When you do not know hard facts about the world, it is easy to think that developers who build tall buildings are greedy.