Pro-forma for city form

Abstract

This thesis aims to examine impact of financial decisions on the city morphology, specifically on the current crop of new city projects undertaken in India. While there has been some existing research on impact of capital market, institutional framework, on the existing cities and their struggles, there is littl that tis spoken about the motivations of development agencies, their manifestos and aspirations, for the new cities that are being planned. My research explores green field projects in an attempt to distill, through comparison and contrast, cities developed as a private or public goods. The physical design of the urban fabric of a city is a result of many forces. These could be the economic, social, cultural, political or the aspiration aspects that dictate the physical form of the city With the inflow of capital in the developing world new cities are being built from scratch in many parts of the developing world. Visualized as products in the real estate industry as investments and assured long term returns, these regions are conceived as places of enhanced productivity Cities are now considered the drivers of consumption and accelerateors of economic growth. India, with an increasingly open economy and history of social ideals, poses a unique dichotomy of resultant new city building processes. As the state edges towards more open markets pro-urbanization policies, disparate methods of developing and financing new city projects wIl emerge. The unique presence of two polar development strategies within the same macro context shall enrich this study and let me draw parallels to distill the parameters. The thesis shall explore the cases thorgh the lens of finance specifically and the implications of financial strategies on the resultant urban form. A narrative format weaves in the socio political and cultural aspects along with specific market conditions, of the two cases -Naya Raipur and Jaypee Sports City, and provides detailed accounts of the policies and agency practices, what landlords and realtors are responding to, and how ultimately these plans in place today evole into future cities. Ultimately, these findings indicate how deeply embedded both social and fianncial scenarios are in the development of cities and the need to question the adequacy of just one model instead of the other.