Thursday, May 07, 2015

Modi's model for development

I suspect that Modi's model for development is China and hence the idea of smart cities. Some new cities have been built for different purposes and there have been failures. Shenzhen seems to be one of the most successful. The connection between cities and growth is not too clear and since India is undertaking a massive undertaking, it may be good to get some information on the topic. Yesterday I browsed through this survey article 'Urbanization without growth in historical perspective' and am going to read it again. 

See also the blog post 'The connection of urbanization with growth' by Dietrich Vollrath. 
But as far as I can see, there is not much discussion about the role of specially constructing new cities for development which seems to be the concern pf Paul Romer, mentioned in an earlier post. A crucial example seems to be ShenZhen. about which he says
 "To an overwhelming degree, the measures implemented in Shenzhen pass my two tests for reform: they have been adopted as permanent policies and they have spread to the rest of China."

The propsed changes in the land acquisition act seem to be for the purpose of constructing smart cities. But Scroll.in article says that only 8 percent are affected.

No comments: