Indian Real Estate Forum - www.indianrealestateforum.com - View Single Post - Ditching laissez-faire, India plans a city

Rashmi · 17-05-07

A year ago, this relatively small, forgettable city in the heart of India did not have an air conditioned cinema. In the sweltering heat of May, the rich here were known to fly one hour to Mumbai, the financial hub of India, to see a movie. There they stocked up on Levi’s jeans and Domino’s pizza and other big-city treats that Nagpur failed to provide.

But in a social experiment highly unusual for this most unplanned of countries, the Indian government has handpicked Nagpur to be fattened and primped into an international metropolis. Lush parks and smooth roads have been laid, and malls and multiplex cinemas have sprouted. A drastically renovated airport is to become the cargo hub of India, with a terminal that is 100 times larger than the existing one and is to handle at least 100 jets at a time instead of the current five. An eco-friendly mass-transit system is being planned to absorb an expected surge in road traffic.

The government is building a special economic zone with tax breaks and ready to-use water, electricity and fiber optic cable, in the hope of attracting 100,000 technology jobs to a city long dominated by coal mining.

One hundred million people are moving to cities in the next 10 years, and it’s important that these 100 million are absorbed into second-tier cities instead of showing up in Delhi or Mumbai according to the Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

Since its independence in 1947, the city-building philosophy of India has been, to put it tenderly, laissez-faire.

Except for the recently developed technology hubs of Bangalore and Hyderabad, India has not added cosmopolitan, globally connected, metropolises to its old ones: Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai. As the Indian population tripled, the 1.1 billion people living on about 3 million square kilometres were left to scramble for space and opportunity in the few thousand square kilometers that contained well-paid jobs, 24-hour electricity and air conditioned cinemas.

The existing metropolises will reach saturation points before long, or have already reached such points, and re-engineering their capacities for further growth is not easy. New metropolises could erode poverty, easing the load on cramped, Dickensian cities and creating more hubs where rural migrants can go for jobs in textile mills or the retail sector. More international airports could help raise incomes for the 700 million rural Indians by making it easier for their produce to reach export markets.

The Indian metropolis building might also be an environmental boon. Upstart cities like Nagpur, on which millions have yet to descend, can grow on an eco-friendly model, with green spaces, mass transit and rainwater harvesting, in a way that old cities, with entrenched infrastructure, cannot.

17-05-07	#1
Rashmi Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 90 Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts	Ditching laissez-faire, India plans a city A year ago, this relatively small, forgettable city in the heart of India did not have an air conditioned cinema. In the sweltering heat of May, the rich here were known to fly one hour to Mumbai, the financial hub of India, to see a movie. There they stocked up on Levi’s jeans and Domino’s pizza and other big-city treats that Nagpur failed to provide. But in a social experiment highly unusual for this most unplanned of countries, the Indian government has handpicked Nagpur to be fattened and primped into an international metropolis. Lush parks and smooth roads have been laid, and malls and multiplex cinemas have sprouted. A drastically renovated airport is to become the cargo hub of India, with a terminal that is 100 times larger than the existing one and is to handle at least 100 jets at a time instead of the current five. An eco-friendly mass-transit system is being planned to absorb an expected surge in road traffic. The government is building a special economic zone with tax breaks and ready to-use water, electricity and fiber optic cable, in the hope of attracting 100,000 technology jobs to a city long dominated by coal mining. One hundred million people are moving to cities in the next 10 years, and it’s important that these 100 million are absorbed into second-tier cities instead of showing up in Delhi or Mumbai according to the Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Since its independence in 1947, the city-building philosophy of India has been, to put it tenderly, laissez-faire. Except for the recently developed technology hubs of Bangalore and Hyderabad, India has not added cosmopolitan, globally connected, metropolises to its old ones: Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai. As the Indian population tripled, the 1.1 billion people living on about 3 million square kilometres were left to scramble for space and opportunity in the few thousand square kilometers that contained well-paid jobs, 24-hour electricity and air conditioned cinemas. The existing metropolises will reach saturation points before long, or have already reached such points, and re-engineering their capacities for further growth is not easy. New metropolises could erode poverty, easing the load on cramped, Dickensian cities and creating more hubs where rural migrants can go for jobs in textile mills or the retail sector. More international airports could help raise incomes for the 700 million rural Indians by making it easier for their produce to reach export markets. The Indian metropolis building might also be an environmental boon. Upstart cities like Nagpur, on which millions have yet to descend, can grow on an eco-friendly model, with green spaces, mass transit and rainwater harvesting, in a way that old cities, with entrenched infrastructure, cannot.