Navi Mumbai

Navi Mumbai is a planned township of Mumbai. It was developed in 1972 as a new urban township of Mumbai. The population of Navi Mumbai has reached more than 1 million inhabitants. It is one of the world’s largest planned new cities that was conceived as a satellite city to relief the strain on Mumbai[1]. The City and Industrial Planning Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO) is responsible for both its planning and implementation. To minimise travel distances the city is developed on nodal patterns, similar to the suburbs of Mumbai.

The development plan of Navi Mumbai provides for an integrated transportation system consisting of roads, railways, metro rail, water transport and an airport to be fully integrated with overall transport system of Mumbai Metropolitan Region. The city boasts a reliable supply of electricity from various sources, and excellent motoring conditions, with numerous flyovers, broad roads, and parking lots. The main problem which the residents face is poor connectivity with Mumbai, with only two road links between the two cities and a single rail line.

However, the planning authority of Navi Mumbai initiated already at the late 1990s private participation in the developmental activity. Since then, investments have focused on implementing the plan for an integrated suburban railway network, consisting of six main corridors with a total lengths of 160km (only one of them with a length of 27 km is already under construction).

Navi Mumbai enjoys the status of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), including tax exemptions and lower regulation than in other Indian cities[2]. The SEZ facilitates access to Mumbai, a regional and national trading centre for many products as well as to skilled manpower. The city’s administration has developed the residential areas in Navi Mumbai and Belapur region with large infrastructure of public services. Due to its proximity to Mumbai, the commercial centre and financial capital of the country, Navi Mumbai enjoys good access to finance. The city has the largest modern state-of-the-art Software Park of India (Millennium Business Park). Further industrial and IT parks are mainly located in the areas of Vashi, Airoli and Belapur.