Original article here.

Slums have been in perpetual state of persistence in political parlance and policy promises. From slum removal in seventies to slum-networking in 2000, there has been a paradigm shift in addressing slums in urban Indian context. By 2000, it was a realisation that formal systems – government or private, has failed in addressing affordable housing to nearly half of urban population. On the other end, individual initiatives by slum-dwellers have managed to find them basic shelters if not decent housing without any external help. What they have not been able to provide are collective infrastructure and what they do not have is legal tenure of land. The first deficiency makes them defined as slum with squalid conditions while the latter condition describe them as squatments through illegal ownership of land.

The UN defines slums as a building, a group of buildings or area characterised by overcrowding, deterioration, unhygienic conditions or any one of them endangering health, safety, or morals of its inhabitants or the community. This refers to squalid conditions of living and not the legality of land ownership. By this definition even sizeable part of old cities in India, like Shahjahanabad in Delhi or pols in Ahmedabad will get included in it, which are well-known holistic living environments.

What then is the hue and cry about slums in current times? How much of the debate today revolves around improving quality of housing versus freeing up of priceless land on which they locate? Slums of India, unlike those in Latin American cities, do not concentrate in suburbs. They often occupy pristine lands of the cities. Real estate appreciation due to city’s growth becomes their enemy. Gulbai Tekra, which started of as camp for construction workers, and domestic help living by the riverfront are such examples in our city. These settlements applied themselves on unwanted, innocent and perhaps inhabitable lands of the city. But as city developed, they became a part of urban agglomeration and caught attention of real estate hawks.

Housing shortages amounting to 24.7 million corresponds with about 40% of urban households. Almost 42.6 million or 15% of urban population live in slums. Ahmedabad has little below quarter (23%) of its population as slum-dwellers. In Mumbai, over 55% population live in slums. The irony is that this populace occupies only 8% of Mumbai’s total land. If half of the Mumbaikars manages to live in such a small area of land and solve their housing troubles themselves, do we still need to eye these lands for further economic equations? How about we grant these spaces to these dwellers? Security of tenure alone is good enough for people to invest their own resources and improve quality of housing. Studies indicate that even simply notifying slums receives defacto authorisation and that itself has encouraged very noticeable improvements. For example, compared to non-notified slums having two-third houses without toilets, notified ones are less than a third. Underground drainage, road and electricity are nearly double in notified slums, thereby improved quality of life and so on.

Authorising illegal constructions through penalty clause, condoning land grabs for parking spaces, building schools on open grounds or even putting up buildings on reclaimed natural resources are not a form of legalising and granting of city lands? Uprooting slums from their locale and rehabilitating them in far off, isolated places is unsuccessful as loss of social network, deprival of employment and economic base, mismatch between lifestyles and vertical building typologies, as well as severed transport links. Yet we continue to approach the same models over and over again. It is obvious that interest deep within is in freeing urban land for open market development rather than upgrading the slums. If we improve conditions of the slum in situ with infrastructure and amenities, these settlements would seize to be the squalid neighbourhoods as slums. They would emerge as affordable housing stock for millions through private sharing. They will not be a burden but rather a resource. Not a problem but a solution.

However Indian cities have a clear demarcation in terms of the urban aesthetics when looked at within the time frame of the last century.

The big four metros, all cities in existence for at least 400 years have an evolved sense of architecture and urban aesthetic that spans from the Mughal times to the British Raj. Each city got its own distinct version of style and look. However this sense of aesthetic took a nosedive post-Independence.

All of a sudden, for every great piece of architecture, there were 100 examples of very banal, characterless buildings. Entire sections of cities, or even entire small cities grew up with no sense of architectural character and style.

This anomaly, compounded with a complete lack of urban planning and vision, created a mish-mash of architectural style that is in most cases a visual nightmare. Things took a turn for the better in the early 90’s when the opening up of the markets brought transformation into India in all sectors. IT Parks, Techology campuses and the supporting housing, retail and commercial needs brought about an architectural boom that has been on a continuous steady rise over the last two decades.

However a total lack of a masterplan and vision for the entire city has created a new jigsaw of competing styles, materials, designs, that somehow don’t fit in all together.

Below is an article by an architect elaborating on the missed opportunity of enhanced infrastructure that would have brought about a disciplined design aesthetic in Indian cities.

What are your thoughts?

Making sense of aesthetics in Indian cities

Srinivas Murthy G, | Times of India, Hyderabad Edition

About three years ago I decided to make Hyderabad my home. I was living in Delhi, city of my birth and education, before moving to this city.

I have been designing projects in and around Hyderabad for the last decade and have been part of its growth story in many ways. It was a strange realisation that only after relocating myself here I started thinking about its existing as a living organism and not just as another destination for business purpose.

Two things that struck me most (or rather absence of them) and probably affect me in many ways are the so called cultural scene that one is so used to in Delhi and secondly, how the architectural sensibilities of people of this historic city changed due to the fast paced development. While the first one is more specific to this city given its strong historical and cultural background that it once boasted of, the second one is about the built environment of Hyderabad, though nothing unusual as many other cities have gone though the same fate during the same timeline. I will reserve the first one for another time and write about the second one first, as being an architect by profession, this moves me both in personal and professional spectrums.

During the last decade or two, many Indian cities have witnessed stupendous growth due to the IT boom abroad and also due to the new era of liberalised economy. Hyderabad’s growth has been watched very keenly and closely by other neighbouring big cities. The city is in many ways like Delhi, more particularly on architectural front. It has an equally important architectural heritage and does not stay too behind in display of wealth and affluence. It has its own South Delhi charms that you can feel while moving around in Banjara Hills and Jubilee Hills with large villas and bungalows dotting the landscape.

Importance is given more to the size and grandeur than the aesthetics of architectural design. To borrow from Gautam Bhatia’s comments on architectural scene in Delhi, the Punjabi Baroque is replaced by a hugely Greek, Corinthian and Roman Renaissance styles and if this was not enough, completed it with riot of coloured facades and glass facades to add to fetish to show off.

This is so much different from how Bangalore and Pune responded during their growth years. While Bangalore is known for its small and well built designer homes, Pune has some of the earliest and finest examples of housing in multi-storied apartment type buildings. Architectural professional gained respectability very soon in these cities much to surprise of many even in Delhi and Mumbai. And now the so called newer parts of the city, which incidentally are not more than a decade and half old, still lack some of the basic facilities. No pedestrian safety and footpaths, no decent greenery and plantation, overcrowded and congested roads, no streetlights, and signage is something which one can only dream of, are regular features of these supposedly happening places.

Public utilities like bus shelter and drinking water for commuters, underpasses for pedestrians, drainage channels and communication and electrical services ducts, and the list of requirements appears to be never ending. And on the architectural front, there is a complete sense of chaos and absurdness of design elements. There is no architecture at all. They are all covered with huge and brightly coloured hoardings that make the skyline of the city and glaringly tell you that nobody cares for the aesthetical composition of the street.

It is the rich of the world, who with their huge budgets for advertising are responsible for such ghastly act of taking pleasantness out of our cities. I for one will be very eagerly waiting to see a hoarding on top of one of their spacious high rise villas designed by probably one of the best imported architects of the world.

I always wondered if we needed huge amounts of money or technological knowhow or just simple willingness to provide for some of the basic amenities that make many other cities world over, truly world class. Just one look at any of the cities in the US or Europe, for that matter nearer home, Putrajaya City on the outskirts of KL, Malaysia, or Chinese Cities, we will learn that it is a matter of simple attitude. When will our planning and urban development bodies understand the real meaning of development? When will we, the citizens of our country, get some of the basic facilities? Secondly most of us are not even aware of what we should have and deserve, not only in terms of list of amenities but even the required or desired standards for it, in order to demand these from our system. I for one believe that everything has a demand and supply equation.

As the demand for more features and facility increases, the suppliers will make those things available and at a very affordable price. Isn’t this true in real estate sector? Compared to the demands two decade ago, look at the facilities that every developer is offering today. More aware and educated buyers are at the core of ever improving supply chain system.

And that is where the solution lies. We need initiatives that help people understand the need and importance to improved and aesthetically sensitive built environment through the collaboration of professionals, designers, leaders and local communities. It should strive to promote and encourage the best in contemporary urban planning and development and bring modern architecture, traditional craft and design closer to people. And with such initiatives, the day may not be far, when we will start rejecting a city the way we do our films or music albums if they are not good.

(Author is a practising architect based in Hyderabad and writes on design and architecture in India

The Amtek Office Building proposal for New Delhi at first glance looks like an Archigram-esque living organism sited on a street

Introducing traditional Indian science of construction, the “Vaastu Shastra,” to modern architecture, the Amtek Office Building with its entrance facing the East seems to bring the flow of energy in building designs. [design.fr]

From their website:

Located on the popular commercial strip in New Delhi, Tolstoy Marg, Amtek is distinctively outstanding even from afar. The concept of Amtek Office Building came about upon client’s request of wanting an iconic building with flexible space. This resulted in Amtek’s oval-shaped, glass-cladded facade and it is built in contrast to New Delhi’s traditional urban setting.

The external façade is fully cladded with glass to allow for maximum exposure and clarity from inside. Alumininum shading devices in the form of “armours” are cleverly constructed on the exterior to shield against its extreme climate. There is a separate lift for the sky restaurant which creates a vertical silhouette against an otherwise annular shape.

Infrastructure has not kept pace with this development in the way we would want it. A two hour commute from Gurgaon to NOIDA or Goregaon to Churchgate are the classic examples. However there seems to be a sense of urgency that is now creeping up….maybe a decade too late, to get things in order. Case in point, the new airport terminals in Bangalore, Hyderabad and New Delhi all opening in the span of 12 months.

Gautam Bhatia, a very well know architect and writer talks about this event in his recent article in the Times of India and touches upon a very “touchy” topic. Why does India invite foreign architects, planners, and designers to conceptualize things for them. Where is the homegrown talent and the pride in the same.

His reasoning for the most part follows a very predictable arguement that has been tossed around for a few years. However from whatever I have gathered, there is a dearth of the technical expertise to somehow figure out the logistical and programming challenges that come with mega projects. And with the need to get them built as of yesterday; there is a very small margin of error for experimentation and a trial  error exercise.

It is only a matter of time, if not already in place; that Indian firms will have the expertise that they have picked up working side by side with these foreign firms to have the confidence to deal with megastructures and projects. Till then there is no shortcut out. Or at least one without risks.

Continue reading Gautam Bhatia’s article

Pride of India ?

By Gautam Bhatia / Times of India

When questioned about the cultural and technological stagnation that came with socialism, a bureaucrat in Nehru’s time once remarked that all the best work had already been done in the West, and we merely had to pick ideas for our own use. At a time when Indian inventiveness and productivity were state-controlled and highly suspect, borrowing made a lot of sense.

Sadly, even in today’s era of open economic borders, we still remain unconvinced that the Indian mind is capable of producing anything of real value. The new Terminal 3 at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International airport is cited as the eighth-largest in the world, and comes loaded with other enthralling statistics: a floor area of over six million square feet, the equivalent of 20 malls, 92 automatic walkways, 78 aerobridges and 168 check-in counters. In every respect, the building showcases all the high-tech skills of construction and automation, and all the customer satisfying conveniences that say that the building belongs to the new century.

Certainly, the successful completion of a large and complex structure like an airport is to be commended. But is the satisfaction of statistical demands the only way to go?

What makes London’s Heathrow airport a traveller’s nightmare is the unfortunate mile after mile of mind-numbing anonymity that goes with the experience of moving 40 million people annually. Jakarta airport may not be in the same league, but its thoughtful, extremely Indonesian layout provides precisely the opposite experience. You move past courtyards of plantations that induce a quiet intimacy and a background of such calm that the trials of long distance travel are subdued and annulled.

But Jakarta and London are specific to the identities of the two very different places. Unfortunately the grand design of infrastructure in India is still based on the bureaucrat’s belief that the best work has already happened in the West. Terminal 3, though built in Delhi, was designed by American architects, and managed by MGF, a Dubai-based construction consortium. It uses tempered glass, a steel frame, and aluminum cladding all shipped from abroad. However, as a concession to India, Indian labour was employed in its erection. World class it is, because it’s conceived and built by the world.

The various venues for the upcoming Commonwealth Games reveal a similar story. Peddle Thorp, an Australian architecture firm, has designed the indoor stadium for badminton and squash; the new, aquatic centre is the brainchild of a foreign company that specialises in water sports facilities; the refurbishment of Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, which now looks like a space ship, was carried out by the German engineering firm of Schlaich Bergermann and Partners. The food concessions at the Games Village are being handled by another Australian company. In almost all facilities, the foreign hand can be felt from conception to realisation, catering to management. Enthralled by the scale of the endeavours, the shine and sparkle of steel and glass, as Indians we have stood by proudly to watch from the sidelines.

Foreign technology and inventiveness on Indian soil is certainly not new, especially in a country that has had a long history of direct imitation and mimicry. In the 1970s, it was a matter of Punjabi pride that the world’s most successful innovations could be copied in Ludhiana. Grimy workshops filled with labour were kept busy producing German machine parts, American denim, and other sundry items picked up in European markets. Indian businessmen travelled abroad to European industrial fairs and American specialty stores merely to buy items that could be duplicated in India at a fifth of the cost. Today, things remain much the same, only the scale of the borrowing has changed; as an open society we need no longer secretly copy and produce, but invite the original inventors to participate in a global bid.

By comparison, the 1982 Asian Games were a wholly indigenous effort. Local architects and construction firms built modestly, with brick and plaster, whitewashing the buildings before the foreigners arrived. The athletes were garlanded at an airport where the fused tube lights were quickly changed and the staff instructed to smile and take fewer tea breaks. Everyone stayed at a games village constructed by the PWD and travelled around in a bus service quite similar to the ordinary commuter’s. By all counts, the city and its services put up an entirely Indian and reasonably successful show.

While many of the new projects for the Commonwealth Games airports, stadiums and metro stations provide sparkle to the ramshackle grime of the Indian city, they remain foreign implants, silent spaceships sent by self-absorbed cultures. Faced with situations and conditions that are uniquely Indian, none among the new buildings seek Indian resolutions. Designed neither for the unforgiving landscape nor the general misuse of public facilities expected in India, their long-term usefulness is suspect.

Hard-pressed though we are to find symbols of the new India, the new terminal, with its import of foreign designs, foreign materials and construction technology, does little to promote India and Indian ideas. If the prime minister is proud of the airport as the gateway to a new global India, as he said at its inauguration, he is only crediting the many international companies now working in the country, thanking them for making India appear more efficient, more competent, more capable…more, well, like everyone else.

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Corbusier was not the only architectural giant to leave his stamp on India. Louis Kahn, his contemporary also worked in India around the same time and would design and influence future generations of architects in India.

While Corbusier got the opportunity to design the masterplan and the important architectural pieces of Chandigarh, Kahn, did not get to do it in India. He did design the capital complex of Bangladesh, which then was a new country taking birth.

Paul John writes a very interesting article “With Kahn magic Gandhinagar would have  rivalled Chandigarh” that speaks about the missed opportunity for India and Kahn to design Gandhinagar, the new capital of the new state of Guarat.

If Chandigarh is Le Corbusier’s city, Bhubaneswar bears the German Otto Koenigsberger’s signature, Gujarat’s capital Gandhinagar could have had American yogi Louis Kahn’s imprint — a strong rival to Corbusier’s Chandigarh — had the Indian and Gujarat governments allowed Kahn to design the capitol buildings.

Kahn wanted Gandhinagar to be vibrant, symbolising the integration of village and industry, unlike the dull status it suffers today. The stage was all set in August 1964, when Kahn agreed to the honorarium fees to be paid in rupees after being persuaded by architect BV Doshi and industrialist Kasturbhai Lalbhai. Kahn had principally accepted the proposal to design the master plan for Gandhinagar. But he got a rude shock when the chief engineer for roads and buildings KM Kantawala wrote to Kahn that he would not be allowed to design the secretariat, the legislative assembly, the governor’s palace, high court and other related buildings.

There was tremendous political pressure to make Gandhinagar a stoic symbol of Gandhi’s principles of ‘India’s enterprise’. This would have been defeated if the city was designed by a foreign hand.

Kahn declined the offer instantly by writing back an emotionally charged letter stating, “City planning and building planning are one unified art. A city of good buildings reflecting design principles that are understood and followed in subsequent construction grows in beauty and importance.”

For Gandhinagar, Kahn had ambitious plans, something he had not tried elsewhere in the world. Kahn desired that Gandhinagar symbolise integration of land, civic services and buildings as one architecture. Finally in January 1965, the Cornell-educated HK Mewada who worked as a trainee under Le Corbusier on the Chandigarh project and a staunch Gandhian clinched the job.

The mill owners in Ahmedabad led by Kasturbhai Lalbhai and supported by architects like BV Doshi, Anant Raje, Achyut Kanvinde, Charles Correa and AR Prabhawalker wanted Kahn to build Gandhinagar to rival Chandigarh. This episode in history is vividly mentioned in Ravi Kalia’s book ‘Gandhinagar-building national identity in post colonial India.’

All that went for a toss as Asian countries caught on to this craze. The Petronas became the tallest building for a few years, only to be eclipsed by Taipei 101 in Taiwan. And then came the big kahuna of tall buildings, the Burj Khalifa.

And this is just the race for the top position. Change it to the top ten and there are dozens of buildings all across Asia, North America, and Russia that try to reach for the skies.

In all this, India is prominently absent.

Monika Halan writes a very well-laid out article titled: Reaching for the Sky: How Tall is my country.

She concludes

… it does not look as if India or Indians are unduly worried about failing on another parameter of global ranking. The lack of interest or even public debate on getting India on the tall building map could mean several things. One, we are not at the stage of economic growth where having the tallest building becomes something to think about. Two, there is no massive speculative real estate bubble in the country and cheap money is certainly not an issue. Three, the argumentative Indian does not need the prop of an icon of American culture to define India’s identity or its place in the world. Or it could just be that we are so sure that a fire in the tallest building will end in disaster with the fire engines (that can reach all of 10 storeys) stuck in a traffic jam caused by a broken-down cycle on the main road. Nope, we don’t even want to go that way.

Tall buildings serve their purpose in urban areas. Contrary to popular thinking they can be more sustainable in all aspects than their height challenged counterparts. And if India takes that road and goes tall, all power to the builders. But if its just to get bragging rights, then its a waste of time, money and opportunity.

Countries have come out with their best architectural foot forward and some of the national pavilions are stunning examples of the contemporary architectural vocabulary of those countries. However all attempts to get a better look at the Indian Pavilion at the Expo has been a disappointing task.

The above picture is one of the few official ones that have been released by the Chinese Expo Authority. And the Director of the Indian Pavilion Rajesh Kumar, can be seen here talking about the design.

Ganesh Ramachandran at UrbanSlate critiques the pavilion:

The pavilion designs for India …for the oncoming Shanghai Expo is a multi million dollar incongruity at the expense of  the countries’ tax payers. The theme of expo is “Better city, Better life”, a very timely theme indeed  when more than half the world’s population live in cities. To which……… the Indian design team answers the call with a design that resembles a  burial mound for Buddhist relics from 3rd century BC – the Sanchi Stupa. [link]

However the Indian media is either ignorant of this event and the pavilion, or in the case where they do talk about it, they completely miss the point.

In this self-congratulatory story The Hindu writes

Sandwiched between the two most expensive pavilions is India’s, which, perhaps, is the structure that most represents the Expo’s now almost-forgotten theme — “better city, better life,” a call for sustainable urban development.

Last week, Indian designers and Chinese engineers were working to put finishing touches to the $9-million pavilion, which will be unveiled next month.

The design is inspired by the Sanchi Stupa. It’s defining feature is a 35 metre-wide dome which will be the world’s biggest bamboo structure.

The design, conceived by D.R. Naidu of Design C, seeks to make a green statement, “expounding harmonious living as a way of life.”

“What we want to convey through this pavilion is [not only] a message for sustainable development, but also India’s own sense of harmony, through the ages,” said Arindam Ryan Roy Chowdhury, a project manager for Design C at the Expo site. [link]

Joe Drury at China Briefing has an interesting account of the pavilion design.

India is home to over 2,000 ethnic groups, speaking over 1,600 languages and dialects and worshipping every major religion. At the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, India’s 4,000 square meter pavilion stands as a monument to its ability to forge a sense of harmony and national unity from this disparate society despite the contradictions and sometimes violent differences that naturally arise in such an environment.

With the theme “Cities of Harmony,” the pavilion by extension also projects an international message of global unity, especially relevant to India as the country experiences the natural growing pains of greater influence in Asia and abroad. [link]

Many would today question the very idea of a World Expo. It started in the late 19th Century as a way of bringing the world as a microcosm to a distant place. However in today’s day and age of instant imagery and media, a lot of the original purpose of the mega events is somehow lost. Countries spend millions of dollars to one-up each other and these pavilions may land up being giant billboards of a country.

In this scenario, where do you think India’s pavilion stands? If you have had a chance to visit the Pavilion, please express your thoughts.

Jayashree Bhosale at Economic Times writes about this need for an “Indianised” design and by extension the Indian designers.

In the whole post-secondary education boom, pure design schools have not been at the forefront. And that is a niche waiting to be filled. The article below discusses the pros and cons of that.

India is now a potential design pool

There’s a whole new talent dimension that India has yet to cash in on: design. The demand for professionals in this field is going up by the day, as international brands call in on one of the world’s key manufacturing and consumption centres. But with just a handful design schools in the country, it’s an opportunity waiting to be tapped.

“There are only five to six good design schools in the country. Had the supply of experienced designers been enough, some of the top manufacturing companies of India would not need to hire design heads from abroad,” says Forbes Marshall director, Naushad Forbes, who is also a visiting faculty at Stanford. The Indian industry can meet just an estimated 10% of the demand for design professionals, as design schools take in only about 500 students annually.

“A lot of design companies from abroad are looking to collaborate with Indian design companies. There is lot of cross-cultural design taking place. In areas of clean technologies and eco-friendly design, Indian designers can contribute a lot as we are used to the concept of recycling and reusing,” says Falguni Gokhale, director, Design Directions, the company that designed the water purifier, Tata Swach.

The product design teams of multinational companies usually consist of people of various nationalities, and there is a place on these teams for Indians. “As India is a huge market, it is necessary for an MNC to have Indian designers to understand the needs of the Indian consumers,” says Florence Rohart, footwear designer with Adidas, Germany.

Institutes like DSK Supinfocom in Pune are looking to tap this opportunity, and recently held a week-long master class with a four-member team of footwear designers from brands like Puma, Camper and Newfeel participating. “We are looking for possible internships and placements for our students with big brands in different products,” says vice chairman Shirish Kulkarni.

India Inc is filling in some of the supply gap, but we still have a long way to go. Indian automotive companies like Tata Motors, Mahindra and Mahindra and Bajaj Auto have good design talent and studios that match the best in the world. The demand for professionals in emerging markets is particularly encouraging as design as a career in western countries has become saturated and fiercely competitive, says Sudhir Sharma, CEO, Indi Designs and erstwhile founder director of Elephant Design.

Further, he says, most developed countries have developed expensive design practices, which are not viable in today’s economy.”

Though there is a large number of vacancies, designers eventually start their own business. “Only 20% designers stick to a job,” Mr Satish Gokhale.

The competition to get admission to the National Institute of Design is tough while fees at the private design schools are high. The annual fee at private schools is Rs 4 lakh- Rs 5 lakh per student and some of these are five year courses, after Class XII.

Since the 90’s we have had proclamations from politicians wanting to make Mumbai the next  Shanghai, Singapore or Dubai; depending on the flavor of the month.

What most people dont realize is that Nariman Point is over 40 years old in the present form. And its buildings are crumbling or in poor shape. And the rents are double that of Midtown Manhattan.

Infrastructure wise, its not as bad as other parts of Mumbai. However it would serve some owners well to demolish and build more efficient buildings, in terms of space, design and sustainability. Then the sky-high rents are justified.

Inevitably it may happen. As more and more businesses move away, owners might do just that. I’d rather they be proctive about it, than doing it as a reaction to market forces alone.

UBS, JP Morgan lead Nariman Point exodus

By Pooja Thakur, for Bloomberg

MUMBAI: UBS AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are leading an exodus of finance companies from Mumbai’s Nariman Point financial district as they balk at paying double midtown-Manhattan rents for crumbling four-decade-old buildings.

UBS, Switzerland’s biggest bank, moved to a new complex on the site of a drive-in cinema about nine miles north. JPMorgan, the second-biggest US lender, shifted to an adjacent suburb, while private-equity firm KKR & Co. went about three miles north of Nariman Point. Axis Bank and broker Motilal Oswal Financial Services are moving in the next year.

They are departing a district reclaimed from the Arabian Sea in 1940 that is marred by traffic jams and poor sanitation, and constrained by a 46 year old law that limits building height. The city’s shortcomings and fragmentation may hinder Mumbai, with the fourth-most expensive office space in the world, from establishing a financial center to rival Shanghai and Dubai.

"Transforming Mumbai into a world class financial center is very distant," said Sunil Saberwal, chief executive officer of Bombay First, an organization modeled on London First to work towards the regeneration of Mumbai. "We are at least 15 to 20 years away from something like that. Even then, Mumbai will not be as beautiful as Dubai, but it will be functional."

If Mumbai doesn’t get its act together by 2030 by improving transportation, housing and water systems, and reducing costs, the city may lose out to places such as Dubai as Western companies seek a base in the time zone, Saberwal said.

Continue reading at BloombergUTV

India’s urban awakening: Building inclusive cities, sustaining economic growth

India has a young and rapidly growing population—a potential demographic dividend. But India needs thriving cities if that dividend is to pay out. New MGI research estimates that cities could generate 70 percent of net new jobs created to 2030, produce around 70 percent of Indian GDP, and drive a near fourfold increase in per capita incomes across the nation.

Handled well, India can reap significant benefits from urbanization. MGI offers a range of recommendations, the vast majority of which India could implement within five to ten years. If India were to follow the recommendations, it could add 1 to 1.5 percent to annual GDP growth, bringing the economy near to the double-digit growth to which the government aspires.

Surging growth and employment in cities will be a powerful magnet. MGI projections show India’s urban population soaring from 340 million in 2008 to 590 million in 2030. And this urban expansion will happen at a speed quite unlike anything India has seen before. It took India nearly 40 years (between 1971 and 2008) for the urban population to rise by nearly 230 million. It will take only half the time to add the next 250 million.

India has the potential to unlock many new growth markets in its cities, many of them not traditionally associated with India including infrastructure, transportation, health care, education, and recreation. MGI projects that, to meet urban demand, the economy will have to build between 700 million and 900 million square meters of residential and commercial space a year. In transportation, India needs to build 350 to 400 kilometers of metros and subways every year, more than 20 times the capacity building of this type that India has achieved in the past decade. In addition, between 19,000 and 25,000 kilometers of road lanes would need to be built every year (including lanes for bus-based rapid transit systems), nearly equal to the road lanes constructed over the past decade.

Cities can also deliver a higher quality of life. Urban scale benefits means the cost of delivering basic services is 30 to 40 percent cheaper in concentrated population centers than in sparsely populated areas. But to reap such benefits, India needs to meet an unprecedented policy challenge. If it fails to do so, this could seriously jeopardize its growth and risk high unemployment.

Although urban India has attracted investment on the back of strong growth, its cities are still failing to deliver even a basic standard of living for their residents after years of chronic underinvestment. Unless it steps up investment in its cities, India could well lose the productivity dividend of urban living. Today, in per capita terms, India’s annual capital spending of $17 is only 14 percent of China’s $116 and less than 6 percent of New York’s $292.

MGI estimates that India needs to invest $1.2 trillion just in capital expenditure in its cities over the next 20 years, equivalent to $134 per capita per year, almost eight times the level of spending today. If India taps into five sources of funding used in cities around the world—monetized land assets, higher property taxes, user charges that reflect costs, debt and public-private partnerships, and formula-based government funding—its largest cities could generate as much as 80 percent of the funding they require from internal sources.