City Form India

City Form India: Peer Review Meeting

16 February, 2010

NIUA, New Delhi

The "Making Cities Work for Growth" project of the Bookings Institute in collaboration with the India habitat Centre, National Housing Bank, and National Institute of Urban Affairs organized a public lecture by Ms. Kate Barker, UK Government Reviewer and member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England Entitled: 'Housing Supply, Affordability and Land Use Regulation: Lessons from the U.K. In 2003 and 2005, Ms. Kate Barker was asked by the Government of the United Kingdom to prepare two reports on:

(i) factors contributing to rigidities in housing supply and their effects on the macro-economy and housing affordability; and

(ii) how urban planning and development regulation in the UK could be reformed to improve performance of the housing sector and deliver better for business and infrastructure.

For thirty years, real housing price in the UK increased at 2.4%, three times the rate of France.

The treasury Commissioned the Report because it was concerned that housing supply responded little to these price increases. The review found that it was problematic to run a land use planning syste that controls all urban real estate expansion without any reference to market indicators that would show where affordability problems where emerging. The Barker report found that regulation that create Inflexible housing and land supply had obvious benefits to local homeowners whose housing values were enhanced by tight regulation. However, the costs were far less clear. They found that an increasing share of population could no longer afford decent housing ,although the UK had already completed the urban transition, and faced much less demographic pressure than in India's cities. The discussants agreed that India and the UK share the same planning tradition and many of these issues are relevant for India.

The session was chaired by Dr. Rakesh Mohan, Vice Chairperson, Indian Institute for Human Settlement and former Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India. In his closing remarks, he suggested that perhaps India should consider its own Barker report. The lecture was very well received by the audience.