BW Communities

Boulevards Of Dreams

BW Online Bureau Nov 08, 2014

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><root available-locales="en_US," default-locale="en_US"><static-content language-id="en_US"><![CDATA[<div align="justify">Frank Lloyd Wright, the American architect, once said that to look at the cross-section of any plan of a big city is to look at something like the section of fibrous tumour. It is probably an apt description of how India's cities have been growing through the current economic boom. In many cases, cities have been termed safest or most unsafe, dirtiest or biggest (they can often go together!) and other complimentary and not-so-complimentary superlatives. But measuring city competitiveness is about the economic strength of one city relative to others. And this idea has over the past three decades been absorbed into the objectives of urban management. City managements try to maximise urban contribution to national economic growth. As the world expresses greater eagerness to invest in India, understanding the nation's economic landscape and making investment choices based on credible information is a daunting task not only for international investors, but for domestic organisations as well. Information on cities, particularly in terms of their relative competitiveness, is scarce. Using performance indicators to rank cities becomes an instrument for reform, standardising best practices and making managers of cities more aware of the projects they undertake. The City Competitiveness Report (CCR) 2010 is an attempt to look beyond the rankings to provide insights on how Indian cities can use competitiveness to tap their latent potential. So, What's New? This year's CCR throws up no major surprise in its top rankings, merely confirming that India's metropolitan regions continue to be the drivers of growth and productivity. Chennai's rise to the second place while Mumbai's drop to the third slot merely reinforces the importance of physical infrastructure, human talent and good governance. Mumbai's dismal showing in the physical conditions sub-index reflect a deteriorating housing scenario (the city's slum population will be 8.68 million next year, according to the expert panel appointed recently by the Ministry for Housing and Poverty Alleviation), inadequate transportation for its growing number of commuters and increasing pollution. <table border="0" cellspacing="5" cellpadding="5" align="right"><tbody><tr align="center"><td>THE WINNERS </td></tr><tr><td>The five best cities for business in India Rank 2010: 1 City: DELHI Overall score: 82.55 Rank 2010: 2 City: CHENNAI Overall score: 77.87 Rank 2010: 3 City: MUMBAI Overall score: 77.58 Rank 2010: 4 City: BANGALORE Overall score: 69.35 Rank 2010: 5 City: KOLKATA Overall score: 64.94 Source: Institute of Competitiveness</td></tr></tbody></table>Clearly, this means that Mumbai needs to urgently address its crumbling infrastructure and work towards providing a place in its economy for the growing numbers of poor. What it also means is that large metropolitan areas are unsustainable, and will require innovative models if they are to continue to survive, let alone grow. Today's mid-sized cities will grow to mega cities such as Mumbai over the next decade. The rankings in the CCR 2010 throw light on the competitive direction of India's tier-2 and tier-3 cities, which are being closely monitored by investors as the next bastions to conquer in their quest for new markets. The Second Rung Ahmedabad and Pune follow the metros closely in the rankings and have been able to move up the development Diamond (a model proposed by Michael Porter to study competitiveness and widely used by research institutions globally, including the World Economic Forum). Ahmedabad ranks first in the administrative sub-index, indicating better municipal efficiency, good governance and low crime rates. The city also fares well in terms of human capacity, physical infrastructure and income distribution, offering a healthy business environment. Pune's positives are its physical infrastructure and a high quality workforce. These insights offer some direction on what kind of businesses would benefit from the business climate of these cities. Nagpur and Indore are cities that have noticeably increased their competitiveness over last year (by four and three ranks, respectively). Nagpur fares well in its physical infrastructure and, surprisingly, offers strong institutional support for industry. Indore, unusually for its size, has the advantages of being a market with strong demand backed by healthy demographics as well as a healthy availability of suppliers and supporting industries. Jaipur, Chandigarh, Gurgaon, Kochi, Coimbatore, Noida, Goa and Shimla are other cities in the Top 20 that emerge as viable business locations, each with their specific strengths. </div> <script type="text/javascript"> var intro = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#commenth4').text()) var page = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#storyPage').text()) if (page.indexOf(intro) < 0) { jQuery('#commenth4').attr('style', 'display:block;') } </script> <div align="justify">Even some cities that are ranked lower show surprising progress. Ludhiana (22nd) ranks high for supplier sophistication and institutional support. Dhanbad (21st), which has excellent physical infrastructure and an educated workforce, is at the heart of India's mining belt. Kozhikode (33rd) fares well in communication, indicating that ICT is an area of strength. Running The Steeplechase Cities that have strong focal points can be the growth drivers of tomorrow. For them, improving competitiveness is simpler as long as they address the areas they are weak in. For the cities that are yet to define their competitive edge, the journey is longer, irrespective of their current ranking. So what is to be done? As tier-2 and tier-3 cities become large markets and hubs of trade, business, industry and human talent, a clear strategy for the future is imperative in order to propel their economic growth by becoming increasingly competitive. The involvement of multiple stakeholders, especially civil society, is critical to this process to develop the city's vision and future roadmap focused around an identified competitive edge. <table border="1" cellspacing="5" cellpadding="5" align="center"><tbody><tr align="center"><td>OUR METHOD </td></tr><tr align="justify"><td> The city competitiveness report (ccr) 2010 evaluates a sample of 50 cities (up from 37 last year). A city, according to the definition used by the 2001 Census of India, is a town with over 100,000 people; the 2001 Census counted 422 cities with a population of 1 lakh or more, 25 cities with a population of a million or more, and 37 urban areas with a population of a million or more. The last category — urban agglomerations — is a reflection of the changing nature of our cities, defined as a continuous urban spread constituting a city and its adjoining urban outgrowths, which can also be large. The city can either benefit from or complement the economic progress of the core and the region as a whole. The CCR 2010 uses data published by the government of India disseminated by various central ministries and government-funded research organisations, apart from other credible research institutions. Robust data was available for demographics, basic education, health, the environment and crime, while data on accessibility, housing, infrastructure, technology and business were harder to source. Hard facts have made robustness and standardisation of data across all cities possible. Competitiveness is measured along four pillars or dimensions: infrastructure, demand conditions, competition and institutional infrastructure. Each of these is clarified by a set of sub-indices (6, 2, 2 and 2 respectively); each sub-index is further made up of indicators, about 800 in all. The index is thus a three-fold measure: on-the-ground indicators, aggregated into sub-indices that finally shape a city-level index. Constructing the index was a seven-step process: identifying the parameters; collecting both secondary and current data; analysing infrastructure and amenities; analysing purchasing power and population; identifying economic strengths; related and supporting industries; both external and internal opportunities and threats; and, finally, assessing and grouping indicators to measure the level and direction of influence on competitiveness. Cities were selected by combining both qualitative and quantitative research techniques. </td></tr></tbody></table> Second, these cities need to prepare adequately for the requirements of infrastructure, public services delivery and city management in the face of an increase in population and corresponding increase in demand for infrastructure and urban services. Last but not the least, each city needs to brand itself to appeal to investors and build citizen buy-in for its growth plans. Does City Competitiveness Matter? In an open world economy, city managers in Mumbai not only worry about their economic strength relative to Chennai, but as the nation's financial centre, they care about comparisons to Dubai. Why else would the government appoint a committee to study how Mumbai could be made a global financial centre along the lines of London, New York or Singapore? Three decades ago, cities were emblematic of poor income distribution, and thus bad policy: the differences in per capita income between urban India and rural India where 70 per cent of its population lived were stark. Today, governments see cities as most dynamic, the result of greater productivity, higher capital intensity, greater infrastructure density and much higher human capital. National urban policy is a key part of broader macroeconomic policy. True, cities are not competitive in the way firms are, which has been the biggest part of management research. You can't measure success in profits. But as Hugh Newell Jacobsen, another American architect observed, "When you look to a city, it's like reading the hopes, aspirations and pride of everyone who built it." srikanth(dot)srinivas(at)abp(dot)in </div> <script type="text/javascript"> var intro = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#commenth4').text()) var page = jQuery.trim(jQuery('#storyPage').text()) if (page.indexOf(intro) < 0) { jQuery('#commenth4').attr('style', 'display:block;') } </script>