Is transport infrastructure the catalyst for real estate growth in India?

Transport Infrastructure and Real Estate are conjoined twins. One completes the other. As cities becomes more geared around the concept of PPPs for creating world class infrastructure, real estate is now inexplicably linked with such planning to enable financial closure. Given the classic dampeners of their large size, long gestation and regulated tariffs, projects in urban infrastructure projects often fail to attract private capital on their own steam. Across the world, Real estate concessions have provided that secret sauce of visible cash flows and upfront equity across nearly all successful PPP partnerships across major global cities.

The increasing need for mass transportation coupled with the millennial urgency towards cleaner environments is leading to a densification approach of urban master planning. Such an approach calls for creating high density, multi-user, integrated land use in areas that are well served by transportation hubs instead of trying to ‘equally’ serve all parts of a city.

What constitutes a friendly concession framework that encourages participation from developers? What changes do we need, if any in our master planning forms for creating integrated and well-designed PPP real estate projects? What role with REITs play in financing large public use real estate assets at a city level? Can we imagine that one day, our children will go to a school facility next to a metro station that is built on a PPP land concession, owned by an education REIT and operated by a listed company? That our cities can have more hospitals, more public libraries, more of literally everything in lieu of profitable real estate concessions?