Urban Economic Development in India

Urban economic development is an area which has not received the due attention for want of resources. If economic development does generate sufficient resources to take care of urban economic development and if urban economic development is not considered as an inalienable part of economic development, urban levels of income, living and quality of life will deteriorate, urban productive efficiency which is much more than the productive efficiency of sectors like agriculture will be retarded and this may, in turn, lead to retardation of economic development. This book is a modest effort to make available the relevant economic concepts that can be usefully applied to the various constituents of the structure of the urban areas such as economic infrastructure components, their planning, especially investment, the returns, the projectisation of development of urban areas, their management and related topics. The authors are both inspired as well as implelled by the rather urgent need to fill a lacuna to enable deeper understanding of the interlinked working of the economic and physical aspects in the functioning of the cities and urban areas. Throughout the book only those economic concepts have been analysed with suitable modification which have relevance to India’s urbanisation and urban planning. The analysis is simplistic but can be perfected. At the same time, it emphasises that a greater understanding of the concepts will be useful and helpful in changing the urban economic development process and the physical, economic, social and management relations it entails.