The story goes on and on, every year, year after year, without end. Every winter, Indian cities move up the ladder of the world’s most polluted, every year increasing levels of pollutants causing respiratory illness, sickness in children, lung disease in the elderly, along with school closures and loss of work revenue, are recorded as a matter of routine. This year takes the cake. From the previous 13 of the 20 most polluted cities we are now at 195 of the 200 most polluted, an altogether new world record of civic neglect and declining quality of urban life.Leave aside polluted rivers, urban areas besieged by garbage and overrun by cars; forget the increasing homelessness and rising slums, or the water crisis and traffic snarls, the inordinately high decibel levels of noise, or even the overcrowding and stampedes in public places. Forget all that, and just see how easily and shamelessly we adapt to the most damning, the most basic of requirements: air quality. The daily breath of air.The signs are there all around us. Big cars, polluting SUVs and motorcycles are added daily to city roads, garbage heaps and waste fires continue to burn, industrial units operate illegally, coal powered thermal plants emit pollutants without catalytic converters, fireworks, once banned, are allowed for religious custom. Factory emissions, vehicle exhaust, brick kilns, waste burning, construction dust, traffic congestion, it is already known that these multiple sources are the causes of pollution throughout India.And now the gray cloud has spread evenly throughout the country: Delhi, neighbouring Haryana and UP with AQI records upwards of 500, Chennai at 180, Dehradun at 200, Navi Mumbai at 160, even the pristine, green coastal Goa is ranging between 150 and 200. India has taken its rightful place as the largest single land mass of pollution in the world. So extreme are conditions in the country that not a single district now meets World Health Organisation (WHO) standards for acceptable air quality. Even when more than 1.5 lakh people are expected to die in Delhi every year of air pollution, do we take any action against the city government? Do we sue for criminal negligence? Do we file a public litigation case for culpable homicide?India’s big cities are formed out of problems unique to their size, population densities and civic flaws. It makes little sense to compare Delhi to Copenhagen, or Bengaluru to Singapore, when numbers, demographics and cultural customs tell an entirely different story. It is time also to forget the Beijing model, or the Mexico City or Bogota model, and create an altogether new Indian model. Our current civic conditions have far surpassed any comparable situations of blight anywhere in the world. Extreme conditions require extreme solutions.Reducing car numbers and their useAlmost 70% of urban air pollution is caused by vehicles, yet more than 54,000 vehicles continue to be registered in India daily. In the long term, in order to reduce numbers, registration of new vehicles should be allowed only when the owner provides proof of private parking space. Moreover, movement of cars in the city must follow a short period of odd and even, before eventually moving to an even more Draconian system where private vehicles ply only once a week, i.e. car numbers that end with 1 and 2 on Mondays, 3 and 4 on Tuesdays, and so on. A situation of inconvenience is critical to creating effective alternatives. Combined with No Car Zones in the city, pedestrianisation and cycling initiatives can finally help relieve the city of motorised transport altogether.Asking all vehicle owners to register on Environmental Footprint AppIn tune with car restrictions should be the development of an app that restricts peoples commuting distances. An office worker taking a daily train, say from Meerut to Delhi makes a less degrading impact on the environment than another covering the same distance by car or motorcycle, and so should be adequately compensated. Increased taxation for a higher carbon footprint should in the long term force people to take jobs closer to home.Reduction in dust pollution related to constructionMost big cities around the world do not allow new buildings to come up in neighbourhoods already developed and occupied, without strict construction enclosures, pollution controls and heavy compensatory taxes. Similar regulations need to be considered for our cities, such that older established neighbourhoods are made out of bounds for new buildings altogether. Eventually all building construction must be pre-fabricated and treated like a manufacturing process rather than an on-site cottage industry. This way, walls, floors and roofs can come off a factory production line and be quickly assembled on site.Creating a Green Map of every districtIn keeping with the idea of a Bio City, where the number of trees matches the number of people, a mapping of the green area of each city district needs to be undertaken, so as to establish the proportion of green cover to size of district population, thus increasing plantations where required. The maintenance of a minimal tree cover would be an essential requirement to the population density in each district.The case for urban innovationMore than ever now, our cities need to innovate new urban approaches. Can Delhi for instance combine public parking towers, air purification, night shelters for the homeless, public toilets, etc. into a single structure? Could strategically placed multi-use towers integrate all these functions? Can carbon capturing underground dust collection bins be created throughout the city? Should flagpoles already planted all across the town also support monumental fans that can mechanically blow away local pollutants? However outrageous or ridiculous these may be, new ideas need to be tested so as to create experimental approaches to the needs of individual cities.Who knows, maybe then sometime in the future, walking on tree-lined streets, under blue smokeless skies, and remembering the old SUV rusting in the junkyard, we will look back and laugh at how foolish we once were.Gautam Bhatia is a Delhi-based architect.