India's Cities: Crowded but Not Dynamic

In urban economics, "agglomeration" is the stuff of dreams.

- AMIT KAPOOR

When firms, workers, and ideas cluster in dense, dynamic cities, they reap the rewards of shared infrastructure, pooled labor, and innovation. Economists from Alfred Marshall to Edward Glaeser have lauded these "agglomeration economies" as engines of productivity and growth. For some time now, several Tier-I cities in India have followed this agglomeration logic. Bengaluru drew in tech firms and engineers, Mumbai concentrated finance, media, and ambition in a few square kilometers, and Delhi pulled together politics, bureaucracy, and everything in between.

In theory, this clustering should have supercharged productivity—and perhaps for a while, it did. Now, as Bengaluru stalls in traffic, Mumbai strains under a housing crunch, and Delhi suffocates under smog, it raises the question: Is this still the logic of agglomeration at work?