Future of urban India is compact and sustainable cities: NAREDCO

“In the coming years 75 per cent of our GDP will come from cities and hence our focus has to be on creating compact cities and in place of sprawling cities focus more on high rise buildings which cover a smaller area but accommodate a large number of people. The future of the country lies in sustainable and planned urbanisation,” said Navin Raheja, President of National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO) while speaking at a national conference on ‘compact cities: the need for futuristic and sustainable habitats’ recently organised in New Delhi.
NAREDCO organised the conference in association with the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA).
Anil Baijal ,Chairman IDFC Foundation and President, NIUA, added, “Need of the hour is proper planning and execution, we have to upgrade the existing cities and utilise them completely and even though we need newer cities to come up we should learn from China and not repeat their mistakes which was to create massive urban cities with all world-class infrastructure and amenities but poor planning which has resulted in 64 million vacant apartments which today are known as Ghost Towns and Phantom Malls.”
He added, “We need to work on social and physical infrastructure and work on integrated housing but first and foremost there has to be a vision to the planning.”

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