As part of our new Urban Workshop Series, the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), Delhi are delighted to invite you to a Workshop on Urbanization beyond Municipalities by Somik Lall ( joint with Tara Vishwanath, Nancy Lozano, Siddharth Sharma and Hyoung Wang). This presentation will report on spatial and economic patterns related to India’s urbanization and highlight challenges for managing key economic efficiency and spatial equity tradeoffs. Economic liberalization in the 1990s has encouraged clustering of businesses in the seven largest metropolitan areas – with considerable spillovers beyond municipal cores of the largest cities into their immediate hinterland – including smaller cities and even rural areas. However, with over 75 percent of the country’s urban population and 95 percent rural population living beyond these metropolitan areas, it becomes important to identify options for enhancing living conditions in places that have not yet been picked by market forces while not undermining efficiency of India’s metropolitan engines. This work is part of a series of prototypes being piloted under the Urbanization Reviews, which seek to build a body of knowledge on urbanization challenges and public policy implications in a variety of country settings. Somik V. Lall is Senior Economic Counselor to the National Transport Policy Development Committee and is currently on external service from the World Bank. Somik has been a core team member of the World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography and has been leading the World Bank’s analytic work on the Urbanization Reviews, designed to identify policy priorities at different stages of urbanization. Somik’s policy advisory and analytic work has spanned a range of countries including Brazil, Russia India, China and South Africa, focusing on identifying priorities for public investment across places and sectors. His research has been published in leading academic and policy journals. Somik holds a B.S. in Engineering, Masters in City and Regional Planning, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ This is the eighteenth in a series of Urban Workshops planned by the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), New Delhi and Centre for Policy Research (CPR). These workshops seek to provoke public discussion on issues relating to the development of the city and try to address all its facets including its administration, culture, economy, society, and politics. For further information, please contact: Marie-Hélène Zerah at marie-helene.zerah@ird.fr or Partha Mukhopadhyay at partha@cprindia.org
