<p>Between 2022 and 2047, India will transit from a lower-middle to an upper-middle urban economy. What strategic policy shifts will be necessary to ensure that this transition plays out productively is a major question that the author addresses in the opening paper.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>This book—a collection of 20 papers authored by Om Prakash Mathur, a leading urban scholar, serves as a repository of insights into global and Indian urbanisation. It explores how it unfolds and establishes linkages with macroeconomic parameters. The author deliberates on questions such as: are these linkages in line with the tenets of the growing economy that India is? Has the 74th Constitutional amendment, aimed at restructuring urban governance and finance, yielded the expected results? Furthermore, the author explores the challenges of uneven spatial development in major Asian economies. He advocates market-driven approaches to counter inequities, in place of the conventional methods of developing counter-magnets, growth centres, and small cities. Simultaneously, he delves into the paradox of poverty and informality in the world’s mega economic hubs.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Supported by rigorous research and analytical frameworks, the book is an indispensable resource for academics, policy-makers and researchers.</p>

<p><strong>Om Prakash Mathur</strong> is Visiting Senior Fellow at the CSEP Research Foundation and Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Global Cities Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto. He has served as Director (1984-1992) and Distinguished Professor (2011-14) at the National Institute of Urban Affairs; IDFC Chair Professor, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (1992-2011); and Chair, Urban Studies, Institute of Social Sciences (2014-2020).&nbsp;</p> <p><br /> Mr Mathur has worked with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for about a decade, initially as Senior Regional Planning Advisor and Project Director of the Decentralization Mission of the Imperial Government of Iran (1975-78), and later as Senior Faculty at the United Nations Centre for Regional Development, Nagoya, Japan (1978-84). He has served as a Member of the UNDP’s Advisory Panel on Urban Management Programme, a Member of the UN- Habitat Advisory Group of Experts on Decentralization, and a Member of the ADB-CDIA Advisory Panel of Cities Development Initiative for Asia (CDIA). He was Editor, Environment and Urbanization Asia (2010-14): Sage, India; and a member of the Editorial Board, Review of the Urban and Regional Studies (2009-12): Hitotsubashi University, Japan.&nbsp; He is currently a member of the Editorial Board of Urbanisation, a biannual, peer-reviewed journal of the IIHS: Sage, India.</p> <p><br /> Om Prakash Mathur has a Master’s in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics and has attended graduate courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, Cambridge.</p>