Cities of the future have to take the citizen, the entrepreneur, the leader from that locality at the core; human-centric design or enterprise-centric design must be key. This stems from the fact that cities grow around businesses, trading and enterprise. We need to pay full service to citizens. Specific to India, we are a country of ‘and’, not ‘or’ – so while large cities and metros will grow, smaller towns will continue to remain relevant, and are entirely plausible now (they may not have been, 20 years earlier). Also job are being created in a very different way from in the past.

I believe, for India, we should focus on the towns/smaller cities, which are connected to the megapolises, by digital and physical nodes. We need to reimagine urbanisation for India – it can’t be the same way it has been done for the US/Brazil. We must have an ‘India model’ of urbanisation. In fact, Tier 2 towns are probably the large cities of tomorrow and can help break the flow of mass migration to large metropolitan cities of today.

Also, the India of tomorrow is likely to be built by women looking for change. We need, therefore to make out urban areas safe for women, so that they can go out and earn their livelihood.