Infrastructure Corridors and Housing Market Polarisation in Delhi NCR: An Analysis of Price Divergence Between Premium and Affordable Segments (2018–2025)

This paper has presented evidence that mega-infrastructure investment in Delhi NCR has produced a structural divergence in residential housing prices between premium corridor-adjacent segments and affordable peripheral zones. Using the Infrastructure Premium Capture (IPC) Index, the study documents polarisation ratios of 3.9 to 6.1 across five major corridors over the 2018–2025 period — ratios that are large, directionally consistent, and, critically, widening over time. Theoretically, the findings advance the spatial polarisation literature into the Global South urban context, demonstrating that the 'winner-take-most' dynamics documented for European housing markets apply with comparable force — and indeed with greater intensity given the compressed pace of urbanisation and the scale of infrastructure investment — in Delhi NCR. The Bid-Rent and Hedonic frameworks remain powerful explanatory tools but require supplementation by a political economy lens that foregrounds who captures infrastructure-generated value and through what mechanisms. The policy implications are urgent. Delhi NCR is simultaneously India's fastest-appreciating residential market and the site of one of the country's most acute affordable housing shortfalls. These two facts are not unrelated: they are two sides of the same infrastructure-led polarisation dynamic. Addressing the second requires confronting the first — through Land Value Capture mechanisms, mandatory inclusionary zoning, and corridor-linked affordable housing nodes that ensure the benefits of public infrastructure investment are not monopolised by premium market actors. The broader implication extends beyond Delhi NCR. As India's other major cities accelerate their infrastructure programmes — Mumbai's coastal road, Bengaluru's metro expansion, Hyderabad's ORR — the polarisation dynamics identified here may replicate across the urban hierarchy. The framework developed in this paper offers a transferable analytical tool for tracking and ultimately intervening in infrastructure-led housing market inequality.

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