Real estate market led land development strategies for regional economic corridors – A tale of two mega projects

• This paper compares Land Readjustment (LR) and Eminent Domain two Indian case studies.
• The planning of roads via eminent domain case included several strategic nodes as theme cities to attract investments.
• The planning of roads via land readjustment case included several neighborhood plans stitched tighter to carve the ROW and service infrastructure.
• The case showcases LR as a self-financing tool, where assets were created without displacing land owners, and projects implemented in a record time.

The rapid population growth has outpaced the planning interventions in most large Indian cities resulting into unplanned, leapfrogged physical development and considerable transport challenges for intra-city and regional traffic. As an afterthought, these concerns have been addressed by formulation of spatial development strategies to guide rapid urban expansion creating planned real estate development opportunities, and to ease regional traffic movements. This paper is based on two unique case studies of regional transportation corridors developed in the fringe areas of rapidly growing mega cities – Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Global Corridor (KMPGC) in the national capital region of Delhi (16 million people and the largest city in India) and Sardar Patel Ring Road (SPRR) in the City of Ahmadabad, India (6 million people and the seventh largest city in India). Both the cases employed unique land development strategies to achieve the larger public purpose while creating planned land and real estate development opportunities. The KMPGC Delhi case employed compulsory purchase for reserving 325-foot wide right-of-way (ROW) and created multiple economic nodes as theme cities, strategically located along its 135 km (84 miles) corridor. While, the case of SPRR Ahmadabad employed land readjustment (LR) technique for reserving 76 km (47 miles) long and 200-foot wide ROW of a regional ring road. Using these two cases, this paper explains both types of land development processes and the financing models involved in these cases, and compares benefits and constraints of compulsory purchase and LR technique, especially in context of regional level real estate and economic development opportunities via new real estate markets as spatial corridors and economic nodes. The paper finally recommends a new hybrid model – a strategy for rapidly growing cities, where both models can be used in a hybrid form to achieve regional level public asset, create real estate market opportunities in fast growing fringe areas and achieve a planned development.