Tech Shout!

Have you ever dreamt of living in a place, which is very much like a mini city exclusively populated by like-minded people? Well, loads of people have tried to turn the concept of utopia into a reality, but in vain. Now, Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia will take a shot at building a high-tech community. He has plans to build an 11,000-acre development called Nano City in the north India state of Haryana, with the hope of attracting nanotechnology, biochemical and pharmaceutical companies that have been put off by infrastructure problems faced by India. Such problems include contaminated water, inadequate sewage and poor Internet access.

Sabeer Bhatia’s Nano City will consist of both residential and commercial buildings, with high-rise buildings occupying most of the residential space. However, there will also be single-family dwellings.

According to Bhatia, the goal is to reduce auto travel and to avoid imposing rigid zone regulations that separate business from family, in order to have less impact on the environment. “Given the mass migration of populations in China and India from rural to urban areas, this is probably the only time in history that someone can build a city from scratch and hope to become successful at populating it,” says Bhatia. “Once we build the core infrastructure—power, Internet, roads—we believe that Indian residents will start moving in.”

The project of building Nano City will be a joint venture between Bhatia and the state government of Haryana, who approved the project last September. Bhatia ¬already has undisclosed real-estate developers on board for the project. In January, a team of professors and students from the University of California-Berkeley helped him survey the land and plan building strategies on location. Construction is scheduled to begin at the end of this year, with infrastructure in place by 2010.

“For me, it is a great opportunity to do this right so that it becomes a model for the urbanization and modernization of India,” Bhatia says.