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CREDAI’s position is that Indian cities should provide core infrastructure before large-scale housing and commercial development. The recommendation, attributed to CREDAI National President Shekhar G. Patel at NATCON 2026 in Kolkata, calls for roads, drainage, transport and civic services to lead—not trail—urban expansion. It is industry advocacy, not an adopted government policy or a binding implementation plan.
What CREDAI means by “infrastructure first”
The reported recommendation is about sequencing: plan and provide the essential systems that support a city before approving or building large-scale real-estate growth. Patel was quoted as saying, “Infrastructure first should be the first rule,” in ETRealty’s October 2, 2026 event report.
In practical terms, the named systems are roads, drainage, transport and civic services. Under this approach, infrastructure would be treated as a precondition for growth rather than something added after housing and commercial construction has already increased demand. The report does not set out a formal standard for what infrastructure must be in place, how capacity would be measured, or which authority would coordinate it.
Why the sequencing question matters
When development precedes supporting systems, those systems may have to catch up with the resulting growth. CREDAI’s argument is that planning infrastructure in advance can better align urban expansion with the roads, drainage, transport and civic services residents and businesses rely on. That is the logic of the recommendation; the event report does not provide project-level evidence quantifying its effects.
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Patel also argued that cities can accommodate projected urban growth by planning land already notified as urban, rather than seeking more land for urban areas. ETRealty reproduced his statement: “We don’t need more land for urban areas. We just have to plan the land which we have already notified as urban land.” The report does not specify the land-use changes, infrastructure investments or planning tools that would be needed to put that view into practice.
What the reported market figures say—and what they do not
ETRealty attributed a series of market estimates and projections to a CREDAI–ANAROCK report discussed at NATCON 2026. The underlying report was not available in the cited coverage, so these figures should be read as reported estimates and projections, not as independently verified measurements.
| Measure | Figures attributed to the CREDAI–ANAROCK report | Qualification |
|---|---|---|
| Indian real-estate market | About $120 billion in 2017; nearly $600 billion in 2025; projected $1 trillion by 2030 and around $5.8 trillion by 2047 | Historical estimates and future projections reported by ETRealty on October 2, 2026 |
| Real estate under construction | About $94 billion in 2009 and $503 billion in 2025 | Figures reported by ETRealty; the coverage does not specify a measurement method |
| Sector contribution to GDP | 6% in 2017; approximately 13% projected by 2030 | The 2030 figure is a projection, not a reported outcome |
| Sector employment | Expected to reach 30 million by 2030 | Projection reported by ETRealty |
| Residential sales value in the top seven cities | ₹2.35 lakh crore in FY22 and ₹6.10 lakh crore in FY26 | Fiscal-year figures reported by ETRealty; not a measure of all Indian housing activity |
| Quarterly residential sales value in the top seven cities | Above ₹1.3 lakh crore for seven consecutive quarters | As reported by ETRealty; the coverage does not identify the quarters in the cited summary |
These figures describe the scale and expected growth of real estate; they do not establish that infrastructure-first planning has been adopted or demonstrate that it would deliver a particular economic result.
Urban-growth projections have different horizons
At NATCON 2026, Patel was reported to have put India’s urban population at about 55 crore and projected it to approach 100 crore by 2047, with urbanisation reaching roughly 60%. These are speaker-attributed figures in ETRealty’s event report, not a separately verified population series.
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A distinct CREDAI–Colliers report released in September 2025 projected that nearly 900 million people—53% of India’s population—would live in urban areas by 2050, compared with 37% at the time. That is a different publisher attribution and projection horizon from Patel’s 2047 figures, so the numbers should not be treated as interchangeable.
CREDAI’s 2025 sector outlook identified urban expansion and infrastructure development among five structural forces shaping real estate, alongside demographic shifts, digital transformation and sustainability. The outlook shows that infrastructure is part of the industry body’s broader sector framing; it does not make the 2026 recommendation a public policy.
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Redevelopment is part of the wider challenge
Patel also said redevelopment frameworks will become more important as older buildings age. ETRealty reported his claim that Ahmedabad had more than 50 redevelopment projects and that Chennai and Hyderabad would also face pressures from aging housing stock. Those are event-report details attributed to speakers, not a basis for generalizing about every city’s redevelopment activity.
The same coverage reported Boman Irani’s view that Mumbai’s redevelopment experience could offer lessons, provided approaches are adapted to local conditions. Redevelopment and new growth raise related planning questions, but the report does not prescribe a single framework or say how existing infrastructure should be assessed before a redevelopment project proceeds.
Recommendation, not an implementation plan
ETRealty’s account establishes that CREDAI advocated an infrastructure-first approach at NATCON 2026. It does not establish that governments or cities have adopted the recommendation, set a delivery timeline or committed budgets. Nor does the coverage provide a complete operating framework for coordinating infrastructure provision, land planning, new development and redevelopment.
For construction and city-planning decisions, the central proposal is clear but its application remains unspecified: connect growth to the prior provision of roads, drainage, transport and civic services. Turning that principle into a project or public programme would require details the report does not provide, including infrastructure standards, responsible agencies and funding arrangements.
Sources: ETRealty’s October 2, 2026 NATCON report; CREDAI’s September 2025 release on its Colliers report; CREDAI’s reports index.
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