PLANNING, CONNECTING, AND FINANCING CITIES—NOW
Raj.” Getting urban planning right is essential for economic prosperity. Urban planning systems across the country limit urban expansion, redevelopment, modernization, and the repurposing of older, inefficient areas. In setting out to relax these constraints, Indian policy makers could embark on “big bang” reforms such as those in Hong Kong SAR, China; the Republic of Korea, and Singapore—which followed a big push model of “managed urbanization” led by a strong and often intrusive state. But this approach could face high political and social risks. Another option—which may be more conducive to India’s democratic and federal system—is to pursue an incremental model of experimentation focusing on a few areas (such as infrastructure corridors and neighborhoods) and then scaling up based on community-level consensus building. This will also allow for learning from alternative approaches and lead to capacity building at the local level. Responsibility for urban reforms
Who is responsible for implementing urban reforms in a federal country where national, state, and municipal jurisdictions overlap? Some very local- or neighborhood-level decisions on densification and infrastructure planning are often decided at the state level; and the guidelines on land valuation are concurrently handled by national and state governments with some inputs from the districts (not the municipalities). Similarly, urban basic services such as water supply are often provided by state-level public health and engineering departments, often missing out on economies of scale and scope that could come from differentiating service options across settlements with varying densities. Metropolitan-wide horizontal coordination
Beyond the implementation challenges of vertical coordination, the rapidly increasing spatial footprint or suburbanization of India’s urban areas is creating a disconnect between what is “urban” and what is “municipal,” calling for metropolitanwide horizontal coordination. International experience points to several criteria for designing metropolitan
F R A M E W O R K I N A C T I O N
governance structures, including efficiency in exploiting economies of scale and ability to reduce negative spillovers across municipal boundaries, equity in sharing costs and benefits of services across the metropolitan area, accountability for decision making, and local responsiveness. Agencies such as the Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority have been instituted to facilitate metropolitanwide functional and investment coordination. But the jury is still out on the effectiveness of these institutions in performing their intended roles and of their ability to manage efficiency, equity, and accountability across metropolitan areas.
Notes 1. Of the 1,108 new towns “born” between 1991 and 2001, 35 percent were in urban fringe areas within 50 kilometers of medium and large cities of more than 1 million people. 2. For Brazil, see Townroe (1981) and Hansen (1983). For the Republic of Korea, see Chun and Lee (1985) and Henderson, Lee, and Lee (1999). Gregory Ingram (1998) highlights that the general trend of urban development included dispersal from the center to the periphery of both population and employment, with the largest metropolitan areas converging to decentralized and multiple subcentered areas.
References Chun, Dong Hoon, and Kyu Sik Lee. 1985. “Changing Location Patterns of Population and Employment in the Seoul Region.” Discussion paper UDD65, World Bank, Washington, DC. Hansen, Eric R. 1983. “Why Do Firms Locate Where They Do?” Discussion paper UDD25, World Bank, Washington, DC. Henderson, J. Vernon, T. Lee, and J-Y Lee. 1999. “Externalities and Industrial Deconcentration under Rapid Growth.” Brown University, Providence, RI. Ingram, Gregory K. 1998. “Patterns of Metropolitan Development: What Have We Learned?” Urban Studies 35 (7): 1019–35.
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