In the February 2010 issue of Pragati I argue why India needs new livable, sustainable and well-managed cities. The text of the article appears below, for the record.

Cities are the engines of growth. Therefore, a policy that promotes urbanization of the population is an indispensible instrument for economic growth and development. In the following TED Talk, Paul Romer, a world-class growth economist at Stanford, makes the case.

Urbanization of the population implies greater demand for housing in cities. There has to be a portfolio of housing options available for the diversity of people which constitute a city. I am familiar with the property prices in the San Francisco Bay area, one of the highest in the US. Even I get a sticker shock when I see the prices of housing in Mumbai. I cannot imagine how the poor manage to survive. Which partly explains why about half of Mumbai’s 11 million people live in slums.
Last week Saturday …

In a short article in SEED magazine, theoretical physicist and president of the Santa Fe Institute, Geoffrey West explains “why the future of humanity and the long-term sustainability of the planet are inextricably linked to the fate of our cities.”
A few excerpts below the fold.

One of the consistent themes of this blog has been that India should think big. My favorite quote in this context is from Daniel Burnham, the fabled Chicago architect who said that we should think big:
Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing …

Navi Radjou’s blog post titled, “India’s Rural Innovations: Can They Scale?” in harvardbusiness.org concludes with:
I strongly believe that the only way India can sustain its long-term economic growth is by unleashing and harnessing the creativity of its grassroots entrepreneurs, especially in rural areas. But here is the challenge: these grassroots inventions don’t scale up. Indeed, most rural innovation initiatives such as DesiCrew and grassroots inventions like Mitti Cool, however impressive they may be, are sadly limited in their impact to a local or regional market of a few hundred …

Nicolai Ouroussoff writes that “We long for a bold urban vision” in his NY Times piece “Reinventing America’s Cities: The Time Is Now.” Below the fold are some selected excerpts.
India too needs a bold urban vision, as I have been arguing for a while. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) for India, most of India does not live in cities. India does not have to reinvent its cities — it has to build new ones. Fortunately though, the world has learned a lot about building livable …

That’s the title of the course I am conducting at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. It is a small class of about 15 students. It’s a half-credit elective in the final term of the year.
We have had two lectures so far. I am having fun — which is another way of saying that I am learning quite a bit. I think I will share some of what I have learned on this blog in the next few weeks.

“The Economics of Urbanization” is the title of a course that I plan to teach at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, starting next week. I am looking forward to being at the ISB for the next five weeks.
The course is an exploration of the idea (related to the theme on cities and urbanization explored on this blog) that economic growth and urbanization are bidirectionally linked. I hope to argue the case for urbanization of India based on simple economics.

I have been promoting that idea — that the solution to rural development lies in urban planning — for a few years. The RISC model (Rural Infrastructure & Services Commons) is about planting the seeds of in situ urbanization in rural India. Glad to see that the idea that urbanization is essential for development and growth is gaining momentum. One of these centuries, the government of India may even wake up. Although by then, I will be with yesterday’s seven thousand year.

One in every ten people lived in urban areas a century ago. Now, for the first time ever, most people live in cities. By 2050, the United Nations projects, almost three-quarters of the world’s population will call urban areas home. The majority of this growth is centered in struggling, developing countries of the Global South, but cities in developed (or Global North) countries face increasingly complex challenges as well.
Around the world, unplanned urban expansion is multiplying slums, overburdening housing, transportation and infrastructure systems, stifling economic growth, and leaving millions vulnerable …

Nandan Nilekani on his Imagining India blog makes an excellent case why Indian cities need to have local control rather than being controlled by state or central government agencies.

If you needed more convincing on the matter of why India needs to build cities (and not futz around in villages), here’s a video of a TED presentation by Jaime Lerner. A video made more delightful by the way he wanders all over the place.

Thanks to Sudipta Chatterjee for the link.

The following is an article by me that appeared in ISB’s in-house magazine insight June 2008 issue.
There is a definite positive relationship between the size of the habitation and the productivity of the population.”
The full article is below.

The April 12th, 2008 Wall Street Journal has an article, “The Rise of the Mega Region” (Hat tip Pankaj Kumar) which argues that rather than entire countries, the proper unit of analysis in the context of economic growth and competitiveness should be the mega-regions.

19 cities of the world with
20 million people in the
21st century
See 19.20.21 for a quick overview of the defining megatrend of the 21st century: the rise of supercities.
In the year 1800, less than 3% of the world lived in cities. Most people lived their entire lives without ever seeing one.
In 1900, 150 million people live in the world’s cities. That number has now surged past 3 billion and last year crossed another tipping point: more than half the people on earth now live in cities. By 2050 – …

Golf, not Chess
Economic growth in a sense, and to a much larger extent economic development, is more akin to a game of golf than a game of chess. In golf, the opponent’s moves matter very little; you may as well play by yourself and later compare scores if needed. In chess, your move depends on how your opponent has moved and how he is likely to respond to your move. In other words, chess is a strategic game while golf is not. All this is very broadly speaking, naturally. I …

“Can India Afford its Villages?” is the title of an opinion piece in today’s livemint.com (a joint HT and WSJ newspaper). The subtext says, “The answer to the problems of our rural economy paradoxically lies in urban development.” If you have been reading this blog for a bit, you would immediately suspect that I wrote that piece. Partly so. I co-authored the piece with Reuben Abraham.

Well, well, what do you know! Just as I had finished a series on why India needs to have cities for its economic growth and therefore development (see the last post in the series, Make No Little Plans), my friend Alok pointed me to a Scientific American report dated 17th April by Nikhil Swaminathan titled “If You Can Make it There… Cities Are the Greatest Generators of Innovation and Wealth.” He writes of a study that “finds increased social interaction of urban life fuels leads to a more productive populace.”
I …

Think Big
There is something in the nature of the world that it is sometimes paradoxically more difficult to make small changes than to make big ones. Logically consistent big changes are more likely to succeed because of the interconnectedness of the world.