[ad_1]
Mumbai – Even though India is in the grip of the next election, the largest in the world, the country is reaching another milestone: it must surpbad the United Kingdom to become the fifth largest economy in the world.
By 2030, India's GDP could reach $ 10 trillion. Yet, exceptionally for a country as vast and economically dynamic, India has no state to compare with California in the United States, China's Guangdong Province or Kanto Prefecture in Japan, all regions with a billion savings. Nor does it have a comparable city in New York or Tokyo, two countries that have larger economies than countries such as Canada and Indonesia, accounting for over one-tenth of the national GDP.
The next leader of India will have a unique chance in a lifetime to change that by transforming the country's commercial capital, Mumbai. A better could never come. Mumbai is the engine of the prosperous state of Maharashtra, India's largest regional economy, with a GDP of $ 350 to $ 400 billion; the city contributes for more than half of the total.
For Maharashtra to become a $ 1 trillion economy, Mumbai would need to double or triple the size of its economy, because of its leading role in service industries, especially finance. This means that we have to compete with Singapore and Shanghai to attract global banks and other world-clbad financial institutions to this city, which is wet and congested with traffic.
This poses obvious challenges. This will require regulatory changes, in particular the removal of the uncertainty and complexity of financial services companies' taxation, which has displaced most of the local fund management sector in Singapore. . Maharashtra will also need to put in place a first-rate system for resolving commercial disputes, ranging from fast-track courts to international arbitration.
Just as importantly, the chaotic city must create an efficient core – a business district that is attractive enough for large global corporations to enter the city. The dense urban clusters create advantages in terms of agglomeration, one of the few means available to permanently improve productivity. It's hard to imagine.
So many that its people love the cosmopolitan and unbridled spirit of Mumbai, the city is a mess in infrastructure. Rapid growth has aggravated congestion, air pollution and quality of life in general. Urban planning is mostly an afterthought. The risky development and the explosion of car ownership have made some parts of the city cramped practically inaccessible at rush hour, while the journey from the airport to the city center may take more than an hour and a half.
However, Mumbai has a unique opportunity to transform its fortune. The city's harbor, which occupies approximately 900 ha along the eastern seafront, is slowly leaving the area as transportation and related activities have been transferred elsewhere. Redevelopment plans have so far focused on infrastructure, including a cruise terminal.
The region could be much larger: a way to transform Mumbai into a financial power comparable to that of Shanghai and Hong Kong. Do not forget that the city of London occupies only 290 ha. Canary Wharf, London's new financial district, home to most major banks, is just over 40 hectares in size. This small region is home to financial services companies that provide 160,000 jobs with an average salary greater than £ 100,000, while serving as an attraction pole for other businesses. these 40 ha generate an economic output of more than 50 billion dollars a year.
Ed Glaeser of Harvard shows that the area of downtown Manhattan, between 41st and 59th streets, is home to 600,000 workers and earns $ 100,000 on average. In Asia, the central business district of Singapore is built on 184 ha and the international financial center of Dubai on 45 ha.
In collaboration with municipal and national authorities, the next Indian government should aim to redevelop the port area into an efficient, dense and walkable group with quality of life and green spaces that are lacking in the rest. from the city.
The experience of revitalizing the London Docklands shows what is possible. Like Mumbai, the port of London was also affected by container traffic in the 1960s. Soon, the entire port was closed, leaving nearly 2,000 hectares of abandoned land. The redevelopment of the area and the construction of Canary Wharf as a global financial center required a coordinated effort by the government, transportation authorities and the developer.
A dedicated development authority, the London Docklands Development Corporation, has put the emphasis. Priority has been given to creating buildings with large trading surfaces, a critical need for financial services and, in particular, strong transit links. The latter has provided Greater London with a density and access to the labor market, without aggravating congestion. Indeed, there are only 5,000 parking spaces in Canary Wharf and they are rarely full.
Strategic communication efforts have been designed to withstand changing political and economic cycles. The challenge in Mumbai will be bigger. Federal structures, overlapping jurisdictions, and limited state capacity make change more difficult. The ghosts of past planning mistakes are of great importance, while the mechanisms for funding infrastructure through the promise of future growth are less mature.
The new zone must work with a plan that focuses on jobs and economic dynamism, flexibility and mixed use, rather than a static and highly zoned plan. Closer coordination between government agencies will also be needed to fully integrate the region with the rest of the city, with dense transportation networks being essential.
Nevertheless, a great idea such as the transformation of the waterfront into the region of the national financial capital could spark the imagination of bureaucrats, bankers and citizens. In addition, the port of Mumbai is just one of many public sites that are either unused or underutilized. India's railways, ports, defense services and state-owned enterprises control hundreds of thousands of hectares, many of which are unproductive compared to their location in the heart of major cities.
The success in Mumbai could potentially liberate much larger tracts of the country, revive the economy and dramatically improve the quality of life in Indian cities. Anyone who triumphs at the polls in May should not miss this opportunity.
Bloomberg
[ad_2]
Source link
