Runwal Town Place is an upscale mixed-use destination that brings Mumbai’s urban energy and conveniences into the suburban community of Ghatkopar.

With an economy growing steadily at eight percent or better, a burgeoning middle class and expanding consumer market, commercial real estate development in all sectors in India is robust. Indeed, India by the numbers is a staggering proposition. Consider just a few: Roughly a third the area of the United States, it is home to 1.1 billion people, and is expected to have more urban dwellers than any country in the world except China by 2016. India’s National Housing Board reported a 19.8-million-unit shortfall in 2005 - a number expected to grow before it falls. In a comprehensive report on the Indian consumer market published in May 2007, The McKinsey Global Institute predicts that Indian incomes will triple over the next 20 years.

Arguably second only to China in economic growth, India continues to offer remarkable opportunities in design and development, despite predictions that growth may slow marginally in 2008. Callison’s work in India in the last decade has included hotels, residential, corporate campuses and retail mixed-use projects. Many projects have been focused on housing – not surprising when you learn that residential projects comprise some 80 percent of all development according to a 2006 Jones Lang LaSalle report.

These projects stretch the imagination. It is not unusual for a developer to take down a huge parcel of land (often purchased at auction from the government at a premium) and build dozens of towers.

As a result of business-process outsourcing (BPO) and growth in the IT and financial sectors, commercial office space demand also continues to grow. In the top seven markets, 22 million square feet came on line in 2005; 50 million new square feet are predicted by 2009 according to Cushman Wakefield Asia. Meanwhile, retail is growing at 25 percent annually, tourism by almost nine percent. India’s Ministry of Tourism reports that the 90,000 guestrooms available in 2004 will have to reach 2.9 million by 2010 to meet demand — a 30-fold increase.

Numbers like these explain today’s immense volume of design and construction. To explain what it’s like to be part of the process is a far more qualitative exercise. It is simultaneously different and familiar, fast and slow, exciting and exhausting. Development tends to be single- or multi-use, despite the trend seen elsewhere toward highly integrated mixed-use projects. The pace can feel frenzied but the remarkable growth could be even more so, if it were not stymied by a significant lack of infrastructure.

The “Return on Ego” Factor
In designing projects for clients in developing economies like China and the Middle East, one must consider the “ROE” factor. In the United States, ROE refers to “Return on Equity,” but for some developing countries it is more often a measure of “Return on Ego” -- a phenomenon that is clearly reflected in the skylines of their urban centers, studded with iconic buildings and towers ever jostling for superlative status: tallest, biggest, greenest, etc. Not so in India. Like the United States, development is driven by pro forma. That is not to say that design is not important, but simply that the professional culture is more similar to the West in that development is privately pursued, framed in legal relationships, bound by laws and codes and characterized by direct communication - in English as a first language. That makes much of the work process more familiar than in many other developing economies, where a centrally controlled economy may have the government involved in commercial pursuits — and where traditional professional processes are short-circuited or extended by other influences. That being said, there are still differences in India that offer both challenges and opportunities when it comes to property development.

A Race to the Finish

With more than 5,000 residential units, the 350-acre Unitech Grande residential development responds to India’s growing need for urban housing.

Design and construction tends to be on a much shorter schedule than in the United States. The opportunities are so immediate that the desire is to get in the ground as quickly as possible, often without the necessary time to provide full professional due diligence. Without a strong relationship with the local architect of record and the commitment on the owner’s part to require oversight of design intent through construction by the international lead architect, the design intent and quality seldom survives intact. This in turn, has long-term effects on operating expenses and image that are costly to correct. The more process-driven development is being done by a handful of established companies such as Reliance, Tata, DLF, MGF and Oberoi. However, there are plenty of new companies in the field that now have comparable resources, and can move more nimbly than the empire companies.

Infrastructure Lags Development

The Village at Maula Ali features morethan 1,800 residential units and a design inspired by Hyderabad’s unique geological characteristics.

While India is a developing nation with ready capital and strong entrepreneurial spirit, it is also hamstrung by a nearly impenetrable bureaucracy and strong democratic processes representing the interests of more than a billion people. These amplify the biggest hurdle to development: a short supply of reliable water, power and transportation systems relative to demand.

There’s little in the way of comprehensive urban planning or infrastructure development going on in India that can keep up with the current pace of development. As a result, there’s no telling what might surround a project in the future. The consequence is a visual landscape that is often referred to as chaotic or cacophonous — visually stimulating, but hardly serene and rarely predictable. In contrast, Callison, like others in the West, is accustomed to reaching out to the neighborhood in order to create and support a more integrated and vital human experience.

Creating a Blank Slate

Capitalizing on India’s growing technology market, Unitech added a second world-class IT and Technology Park to its portfolio.

The situation in India is equal parts challenge and opportunity. Almost every project in India needs to be designed in its own context - in some ways a blank slate - and thus provides very few cues as to the best way to proceed. As a result, one can often defy conventional thinking and create wholly self-contained oases. In the context of self-contained, it can often mean that owners need to keep in mind such practicalities as sewage treatment, generators and rainwater collection on site, as well as a need for amenities like lush gardens, courtyards or other interior features that provide pleasant views and experiences.

India is perhaps the richest, most diverse and intense culture on Earth. Everything about India is fabulously dense; it is packed with people, ideas, religions, architecture, color, history, bureaucracy, technology, sights, sounds and smells that are an endless source of fascination.

Even without an immediate context, a developer can find much inspiration here — inspiration to create meaningful places that can celebrate the culture and help shape its growing integration into the developed world.