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Bombay First and Infrastructure Finance Development Corporation (IDFC) jointly organized an interactive meeting with the Word Bank team comprising Mr. Bob Buckley, Mr. Alain Bertaud and Dr. Jan Brueckner at the Rendezvous, Taj Mahal Hotel on Monday, 7th April 2003 at 4.00 p.m.
Mr. Buckley is an urban economist at the World Bank, and is familiar with the problems of Indian cities in the backdrop of regulatory hurdles. Mr. Bertaud is now retired as an Urban Economist at the World Bank and has worked on the various aspects of urban land markets like land value patterns and influence of restrictive regulatory policies on land and housing markets. Dr. Brueckner is a renowned urban economist who has extensively worked on variety of problems of the cities for many years is the Editor of Journal of Urban Economics. Both Dr. Brueckner and Mr. Bertaud have done some excellent work on problems of the cities across the world.
The presentation made by the three guests essentially focused on the importance of brining-in reforms in urban sector in India and Mumbai, in particular. Both emphasized that Mumbai lost the momentum for growth by placing emphasis on wrong policies and continuing with outdated laws. As a result, the city has lost the opportunity to grow on one hand and began to expand northwards, which was not necessary. The restrictive laws like ULCRA, Rent Control Act, FSI restrictions and zoning all have led to some pervert effects on real estate markets. They presented their exclusive research work that focused on welfare costs and implications of FSI restriction policies in the case study of Bangalore, the finding of which were equally applicable to Mumbai’s case as well.
Followed by their presentation, there was a good floor participation in the discussion that took place on the appropriate urban policies for Mumbai. At the end of the discussion, Mr. Nasser Munjee, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of IDFC made a presentation on developing ‘Urban Growth Triangle’ of Mumbai-Pune-Nasik. His presentation focused on the need for providing an enabling environment for the development of such growth triangle, which can give a boost to the economic development of the Mumbai.
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