IMPROVING CONNECTIVITY BETWEEN SUBURBS

URBAN AREAS have been epicentres of economic activity since the dawn of humanity. Closest to us, San Francisco is the home of OpenAI, X (formerly Twitter), Salesforce, and Uber to name a few. The city remains synonymous with innovation and entrepreneurial dynamism. However, the tech industry is not limited to the city – Google, Meta, and Apple are all headquartered in the city’s suburbs.

- Devansh Sharma & Amit Kapoor

The creaky infrastructure and rampant homelessness of San Francisco, and the availability of more land, housing, and better amenities in its immediate vicinity, have led to major tech giants developing their headquarters in the suburbs of San Francisco but not the city itself. We see this in the Seattle area too – Microsoft chose to establish their headquarters in Redmond, not the main city itself. The key observation here is that while cities remain the anchors of this ecosystem of innovation, significant economic activity has been offloaded to their suburbs.

Focus on New Suburbs in India Too

We are seeing a similar situation emerge in India. Our old city cores are woefully neglected and underserved, while the focus of all development is towards new suburbs (Kapoor and Debroy). As the suburbs of our major cities grow into important centres of innovation in their own right, it is imperative that our urban development planners work on improving the connectivity between suburbs, not just between suburbs and the city centres.