A new paper in the Journal of Development Economics by Liming Chen, Rana Hasan, Yi Jiang, and Andrii Parkhomenko estimates the welfare gains of Transit Oriented Development in Bengaluru. The Bengaluru metro or the Namma metro is around 170Km long including the planned sections.The evolution of … [Read more...]
Retrospective: Sites & Services
The World Bank's "sites and services" generated many projects on which I spent several years of my professional life. Here's a description:Sites and services projects are government-sponsored packages of shelter related services, which range from a minimal level of "surveyed plot" to an … [Read more...]
Mumbai upzoning
Geetika Nagpal's job market paper, written with Sahil Gandhi, shows that a 2017 increase in allowed floor area ratio in Mumbai had a tremendous impact on affordability by accidentally improving the economics of smaller apartments.(Note that the authors are updating the paper, so some of the … [Read more...]
The Human Cost of Zoning in Indian Cities
by Shanu AthiparambathYears ago, I worked for a magazine in Delhi. I wanted to live near the magazine office, but the rent was too damn high. In a low-rent area nearby, I rented a dingy room my girlfriend named “The Black Hole.” In buildings sitting across the street from mine, rents were many … [Read more...]
Market Urbanism MUsings March 25, 2016
1. This week at Market Urbanism: Emily Washington described The Need For Low-Quality Housing in America's most desirable cities.People of very little means could afford to live in cities with the highest housing demand because they lived in boarding houses, residential hotels, and low-quality … [Read more...]
Market Urbanism MUsings: February 19, 2016
1. This week at Market Urbanism:Shanu Athiparambath has his first post on the blog via Scott Beyer: Economist David Friedman Says India Must Go Taller to Make Homes Affordable I remember my father saying that when he visited India in the 1950s and 1960s, bureaucrats in Delhi made arguments for … [Read more...]
Some notes on slums and free markets
Recently I've been seeing a lot of articles about slums (the NYT on Gurgaon, India, and the Guardian on Cairo), and inevitably the phrase "free market" gets thrown around. And as it should – so-called "slums" often have very minimal active governance, and as a result they often have very dynamic … [Read more...]
Prince Charles on urbanism: the good and the bad
Prince Charles, perhaps the world's most famous urbanist, on Dharavi, which he's planning to replicate in either Calcutta or Bangalore: Unlike the ‘fragmented, deconstructed housing estates’ built in the West, the slum has ‘order and harmony’ he claimed, adding: ‘We have a great deal to learn about … [Read more...]