There is growing research literature on urban land and housing markets in India. Over the past five years, detailed studies have been carried out on urban land market dynamics in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi. Taken together, these studies provide detailed assessments of urban land development in India, and explore the various effects of urban planning and development control regulation on the spatial development of India’s leading urban regions. This paper adds to this discussion by providing an assessment of the land market from data on land values rather than a focus on policy. In addition, it provides four decades of detailed, spatially disaggregated information on land use, population and land values for the metropolitan area. The research presented in this paper uncovers evidence that Chennai exhibits a unique pattern of spatial development for an Indian city of its size; the population in its already dense city center continues to grow, while simultaneously, the metropolitan expands in a low density pattern on the periphery.

This paper reports on the results of a land market assessment conducted in the Chennai Metropolitan Area in India. It provides detailed spatially disaggregated information on land use, population, and housing and land values for the metropolitan area. The assessment was a joint effort of the World Bank, the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) and the Department of Geography at the University of Madras. The study was initiated in June 2003, and the underlying methodology and approach is provided by Dowall (1995).1 The CMDA was responsible for compiling detailed archival land-use information for the metropolitan area for 1971, 1981, and 1991. In addition, the CMDA interpreted IKONOS satellite images for 2001. The CMDA also built the socio-economic and housing database, linking together information on population, households and dwelling units from Government of India Censuses for 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001. The University of Madras’s Department of Geography was responsible for carrying out the extensive surveys of real estate brokers in the metropolitan area. A total of 688 observations were tallied on various types of residential and industrial land prices.

This paper adds to the growing research literature on urban land and housing markets in India.2 Over the past five years, detailed studies have been carried out on urban land market dynamics in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi. Taken together, these studies provide detailed assessments of urban land development and explore the various effects of urban planning and development control regulation on the spatial development of India’s leading urban regions. Most of these studies have been focused on policy rather than an assessment of the market from data on land values, so this paper presents something new.

This research is a transaction-cost economic analysis of recently completed transportation projects, informing a comparative evaluation of the institutional change in public contracting from design–bid–build to design–build project delivery. Design–build, in which design and construction services are bundled together, is an alternative form of public contract recently adopted by transportation departments in more than 30 states. With this method, timely delivery arises from compact funding allocations and concurrent engineering. Such savings, however, may come at the expense of organized labor and environmental review, and could reflect higher transaction costs than traditional methods. At issue is the question of whether California ’s Department of Transportation should also engage in design–build contracting.