Understanding Indian regs & reforms

Two useful resources came across my desk this week. From Sargun Kaur and Bhuvana Anand, an analysis of recent building reforms in eight Indian states – not all of which succeeded in expanding the practically buildable space. They use a prototypical hotel to exemplify what can and can’t be built based on recent liberalizations.

In a new video, Aevy TV presents CEPT University research with an impressive mastery of the technicalities. A key point – and this connects to Kaur & Anand’s work – is that the large setback rules imposed by Indian regulations make land use extremely inefficient. Instead of public unbuilt space (for roads, parks, and plazas), Indian cities have shocking amounts of private unbuilt space, which by all accounts is poorly used.

The content bounces around a bit (the rent control and government management tangents seem out of place), but it’s a great place to start if you want a deeper understanding of Indian cities than you’d get from movies or tourism.