Tuesday, February 27, 2007

The initiatives of Mumbai's Transformation

We have spent the first couple of days learning about the Mumbai Transformation. The goal of the strategy, first set out in a McKinsey report in 2003, is to transform Mumbai into a world-class city. You can download a copy of the report from this page.

There are a wide variety of projects, and the government maintains a web site to provide on-line progress reporting. You can visit the site here.

On Monday, we toured sites for housing improvement. The first site involved the challenge of replacing 16,000+ structures of rent control housing. Most of these buildings, constructed before 1940, have suffered disinvestment under rent controls.

The second major housing challenge involves the slums. A large portion of the metro population lives in squatter housing, located mostly on public lands. The government has determined that all of the residents of Mumbai living in these squatter villages as of 1995 will be given housing. The challenge is to create cross-subsidy schemes to enable developers to build these units.

Within the squatter settlements, a thriving informal economy also operates. The economic development challenge involves moving this informal economy into the mainstream. You can see some pictures from these site visits starting on this page.

We also learned about the impressive cable stay bridge being constructed here in Mumbai. The Bandra Worli Sea Link Project is an ambitius prject to relieve the severe traffic congestion in the oldest section of Mumbai. You can learn more about the project here.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Overview of the project: Mumbai and the global pressures on older industrial regions

For the next week, I'll be working with my brother, Hunter, on a consulting project with the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority. Hunter was the planning director for the City of Cleveland for twenty+ years, and he now heads the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at Youngstown State.

Hunter is also deeply involved in thinking about regions from a physical planning perspective. He has been engaged with Brookings on their recent report on the Great Lakes, The Vital Center: A Federal-State Compact to Renew the Great Lakes Region. He is also engaged in a project with Bob Yaro at the Regional Planning Association in New York, America 2050.

I'm deeply involved with the Purdue Center for Regional Development, where we are working on new models of regional, workforce, economic and rural development. My work at Purdue is geared toward designing new approaches to regional economic development based on "open source" models of collaboration. We are implementing these models in a variety of areas, including the Workforce Innovations in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) initiative North Central Indiana.

Here in Mumbai, Hunter and I are here working with USAID and the International City Managers Association. Mumbai's leaders are interested in learning how older industrial regionas are coping with the challenges of globalization.

Mumbai, located in Maharashtra State in western India, is the commercial and financial capital of the country. Mumbai and its hinterland are growing at a fast pace and contribute substantially to the economy of both the state and the country. Mumbai municipal limits includes 12 million people (about the size of Ohio). About half of those people are urban poor, and that's a big part of the challenge facing Mumbai's leaders. In the region, the population is closer to 19 million.

Since India launched its economic reforms in 1991, Mumbai has been the cash cow. Far more cash has flowed out of the metro to the state than the state has reinvested in the metro. In recent years, Mumbai has experienced a consistent downturn in its economy and the quality of life of its citizens. Just getting this place to work has posed serious problems. These challenges are even more difficult with slower economic growth.

In September 2003, a local civic organization, Bombay First, and McKinsey consultants produced Vision Mumbai, a ten-year agenda to revitalize the city. The report set the goal of transforming Mumbai into a world-class city by 2013. You can download the executive summary of the report here.

We're here to get an update on the progress of their implementation and to give the MMRDA some guidance on implementation. I am particularly interested in the economic development sections of the McKinsey report. These sections are not very detailed, and accelerating growth will require the leaders in Mumbai to implement new models of economic development.

Like other regions, Mumbai has been hit by globalization. The textile industry, which provided the manufacturing backbone of the economy, has been seriously weakened by global pressures. In this way, Mumbai is not that much different from the industrial Midwest, which has seen its manufacturing base erode with global competition.

The challenges are complex, as this article outlines.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Overview

Beginning on Saturday, I will be traveling to Mumbai, India to do some consulting on regional economic development with the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority. I'll be using this space to collect my thoughts and insights.

My brother, Hunter, I will be focusing on issues of how older industrial regions adjust to the challenges of globalization. Between the two of us, we have an interesting collaboration emerging between Youngstown State's Center for Urban and Regional Studies and the Purdue Center for Regional Development. Hunter brings the perspective of the planner (publicly-led, privately supported strategies), while I bring the perspective of economic development (privately-led, publicly supported strategies).

Youngstown, Northeast Ohio, Kokomo, Flint, North Central Indiana, Western Michigan, Milwaukee, the Great Lakes: We are all facing the same sets of pressures.

Surprisingly, Mumbai, once a global textile center, has failed to adjust quickly to the economic reforms launched in India in the early 1990s. Textiles have migrated to lower cost locations in Asia. Unlike Bangalore, Mumbai has failed to execute a clear strategy for the next phase of its regional economic development.

They are looking at higher end services in finance, health services and IT. There are also, interestingly, looking at entertainment and digital media. Adjustments in manufacturing will require them to connect their port facilities with lower cost locations in the hinterland -- not unlike Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta.

Now Mumbai leaders are adjusting. In the process, they are trying to learn what other regions are doing. (There's no textbook, after all.)

They see Shangai and Pudong as models, but there is one problem: India is a democratic state, and reforms cannot be easily dictated. (An effort in 2005 to clear away 300 acres of slums touched off a firestorm of opposition.)

We'll be in Mumbai for a week, and we'll bring back some interesting perspectives from the front lines of global competition.