4. Learning from Contextual Diversity: Urban Sprawls of Greater Melbourne (West) and Chandigarh (Periphery) and Approaches to Their Sustainable Growth

The relationships of the expression and phenomenon of ‘urban sprawl’ with suburban and regional urban growths in spatio-temporal, socio-cultural, socio-economic and global contexts are rejigged here. Different contexts under which varied urban sprawls originate and perform interest this chapter. Pursuing traditional ‘Emic’ (insiders centred) and ‘Etic’ (cross-cultural, detached) approaches, we read the changing trends in cross-cultural suburbanisation(s). Further, the two independent constructs are corelated through an ‘emic-etic’ synthesis when the author engages in auto-ethnography (use of prior personal observations and experiences) and reinforces statistical and literature studies. With the background of living in the western part of Greater Melbourne (Australia) and Chandigarh (India) for 19 and 30 years, respectively, the author pairs the two locations and studies the former’s suburban growth (urban sprawls) and the latter’s periphery, notwithstanding their developmental and urbanisation levels, historical, cultural and political differences. Both inform the phenomena underlying their growth in different lights. We learn from their illuminating comparisons. Melbourne relates to the farsighted policies of visionaries like administrator Captain Arthur Phillip, the founder of the Australian urban and suburbanscape. Chandigarh, India's modern and Nehru's idealistic capital city, boosted the country's post-independence urbanism—a layered amalgamation of indigenous, Mughal and colonial settlements that manifest in transforming midsized Indian cities, towns and villages. In the following observations, we realise how shortcomings, even maladies of both the ‘ideas-inspired’ (Melbourne) and ‘circumstantially hybrid’ (Chandigarh) growths are being rectified via urban consolidation, conservation (sustainably justified densities), and promotion of smart-sustainable infrastructure including transportation.