http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/world/asia/chinas-great-uprooting-moving-250-million-into-cities.html?hp&_r=0

See related articles on urbanization on this blog:

http://thesouthasianidea.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/the-economics-of-urbanization/
http://thesouthasianidea.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/the-politics-of-urbanization/

And on the relationship of growth to the happiness of citizens:

http://thesouthasianidea.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/is-singapore-a-successful-city/
http://thesouthasianidea.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/singapore-the-voice-of-citizens/

Your observations from Badaami Bagh can be unpacked into its constituent phenomena, both positive and negative:

1. Ghettoization – when communities are segregated by force or do so voluntarily out of fear and the need to protect themselves. For an elaboration refer to the case of Ahmedabad discussed earlier on this blog: http://thesouthasianidea.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/ahmedabad-life-in-the-city/
2. Labor market segmentation – when particular groups of people specialize in specific occupations. There is a self-selectioon process that can explain why, for example, so much of the motel industry in the US is dominated by Patels from Gujarat.
3. Industrial/Commercial clustering – when particular markets are dominated by one or related activities. There are certain types of economies that lead to such clustering, e.g., Silicon Valley in Calfornia or the footwear cluster in Agra. This can happen at the level of cities or parts of cities, e.g., Landa Bazaar in Lahore. There is now quite a lot on interest in moving away from such a pattern to what is called mixed-land-use development.

The main point you made was the lack of community identification in cities, what you termed social atomization. My own recommendation is that we should stress the neighborhood as the unit of community in cities and build social cohesion at that level – what used to be the function of Mohallas. For example, we could have neighborhood sports teams competing with each other. Examples in Lahore would be Model Town, Gulberg, Dharampura, Gowalmandi, etc.

See on this blog: http://thesouthasianidea.wordpress.com/2011/01/02/our-neighborhood/

Also, browse through the work of Jeb Bruggman who has stressed this community aspect of urban development: http://jebbrugmann.com/strategy-consulting/urban/the-practice

In the US, downtown areas are divided into Business Improvement Districts for similar reasons – they become small enough units for the traders to take a personal interest in management and welfare. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Improvement_Districts_in_the_United_States

Whilst reading your article though I was wondering that perhaps one major difference within urban localities and villages is the lack of community initiatives to turn this rejection of the public-sector into community-based self-sufficiency. The absence of organization at the communal level in urban areas, means the residents do not pool together resources and collectively decide to service their needs through initiatives which do not need to depend on the public sector e.g. microgeneration. I have seen villagers get together through their local councils and decide to build a pipe themselves, or in cases reject the government’s desire to build one. But urban areas, for basic infrastructure and community decisions continue to depend on the public sector, even if they individually do not use these services.

Thus, social atomization in cities has also lead to this atomization of service delivery.

In fact it is interesting to see how far such atomization has spread. For instance, whilst doing research in Badaami Bagh it was fascinating for me to see how naturally evolving spatial demarcations had concentrated particular economic functions and social groups in different areas. The result were isolated urban pockets, like a colony exclusively for Christians abutted by one only for Muslims; a stretch of road with only scrap metal warehouses leading into a market which used this scrap metal to produce steel but where no one but the steel producers could could set up shop. These areas whilst economically dependent on each other hardly had any social interaction.

Perhaps one step towards changing around atomization is to redesign cities to make them more inclusive and open.

“India is a caste-based society with deeply rooted social hierarchies. However, universal adult franchise proved to be a game-changer, for each vote carries equal value. Democratic elections have enabled the traditionally marginalised groups to take the democratic route towards empowerment… The age-old inequalities were, at one stroke, sought to be eliminated or at least substantially diminished by conferring political equality.”

“Anticipating that the caste based social hierarchy would play a restricting role in ensuring the equality of citizenship rights in the elections, the lawmakers made specific provisions in law… Notwithstanding these legal provisions, almost every election after Independence witnessed violence, threats and intimidation of SC voters.”

“Reporting on the Indian elections a journalist of Associated Press was to write: ‘Armies formed by local politicians have intimidated villages during every election in the underdeveloped farmland of northern India … on election day, hired thugs prevent many voters from reaching polling stations. Other voters arrive to find their ballots have already been cast’”.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/an-innovation-that-changed-the-poll-landscape/article4807770.ece

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/p9816.pdf

In particular: “That means that of the roughly five-thousand-year history of states, only in the last two centuries or so has even the possibility arisen that states might occasionally enlarge the realm of human freedom. The conditions under which such possibilities are occasionally realized, I believe, occur only when massive extra-institutional disruption from below threatens the whole political edifice.”

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/lobbying-for-the-greater-good/