Today I attended a talk by Sabeer Bhatia, who is taking on the impressive task of founding an entire city in India. He is a serial entrepreneur here in the Bay Area, with his most notable accomplishment being the founding of Hotmail (which he sold to Microsoft for $400 million in 1998). This pales in comparison to the estimated cost to build Nano City--approximately $5 billion in its currently planned stage.
Bhatia envisions Nano City as the new Silicon Valley--the future breeding ground for scientific dicsovery. He is trying to address many of the problems that currently exist in India that are precluding this type of innovation. They include:
-Lack of proper infrastructure (a seven minute drive in Bangalore at night takes 3 hours during rush hour!)
-Non-reliable sources of energy
-Fragmented and unsustainable growth in urban areas
-Lack of reasonably priced, modest homes for young professionals
Even with these barriers, India has had impressive growth since it became a democracy in the late 80's. Here are a few statistics:
-3rd largest pool of scientists and engineers (trails only U.S. and China)
-2nd fastest growing economy (and will most likely overtake China in the near future)
-Extremely young--50% of the population is under 25
-2nd largest consumer market
-It is a democracy
Bhatia's goals for the city center around an education system that he describes as being "the finest education in the world: kindergarten through PhD. He is working with Berkeley and Stanford to make this possible. He also envisions Nano City as a model to the world in sustainable development (both economic and environmental). His goal is to start by attracting youth (25-40), in hopes that companies will then establish themselves there. He sees this process as something similar to the evolution that has occurred in Austin, TX over the past 25 years--it has grown from a college town to arguably one of the top three producers of IP (intellectual property) in the U.S.
The city itself will be about half the size of San Francisco, with construction beginning at the end of this year. The best guess of when people will first inhabit Nano City is at the end of 2010. Bhatia believes the population of the city eventually will be in the 250.000 - 500,000 range.
For more information on Nano City and Sabeer Bhatia, I suggest reading the following article from forbes: http://www.forbes.com/business/forbes/2006/1030/156.html. A couple of questions I have about the city are: How much development can actually be planned? How do you coordinated development? What political risks exist that may delay and/or stop the construction of the city? How many services should be privatized vs. provided by the Indian government?
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
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More about Nano City from the UC Berkeley Super Studio:
http://www2.arch.ced.berkeley.edu/courses/arch201_nanocity/?page_id=38
Nano City Super Studio
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