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BY INVITATION -
Why you should download the Mumbai Development Plan today
SHEKHAR KRISHNAN
@BOMBAYOLOGIST
You can write to Shekhar Krishnan
at [email protected]
The publication of the pro
posed Greater Mumbai Development Plan for 2034
over the past month has seen a rare coalition emerge to
condemn it, from NGOs and political parties, to celebrities and
artists, and in the past week even the BMC's own Heritage Conservation
Committee. Aggrieved residents and alert activists are seeing dark
conspiracies in the details of road alignments, land use reservations,
and hikes in Floor Space Index (FSI) across the city.
While high FSI
has become central to the debate on DP 2034, what matters most for
Mumbaikars is how policies like FSI, Transferable Development Rights
(TDR) and other Development Control Rules (DCR) can be harnessed to
create greater public goods and a better urban environment in the next
20 years.
Portrayed from Left to Right as a sell-out to the
construction industry, DP 2034 is in fact a paper template, referred to
when permissions are sought for development or redevelopment. Together
with the DCR, they define the guidelines and recipe book of policies by
which land use, building, zoning, amenities and infrastructure are
regulated.
DP 2034 will only be the third for Greater Mumbai.
The first was proposed in 1964 and sanctioned in 1967 for a decade until
1977. It was a broad land use plan, a response by engineers and
planners who were horrified by the Island City's runaway population
growth and industrial concentration, even after the annexation of the
suburbs to Greater Bombay in the 50s, and the statehood of Maharashtra
in the 60s.
The second DP still in effect was published in
1984, submitted to government in 1989, and finally sanctioned between
1991 and 1994.Whereas 30 years ago planners dreamed of dispersing
population and relocating industry to the mainland, today large cities
are seen as “engines of growth“. DP 2034 calls for densification, not
decongestion.But the chief tool by which planners then and now sought to
manage and direct urbanisation, and generate surpluses for public
amenities, was through FSI and TDR.
Over time, these went from
being bureaucrats' preferred policy instruments to the builders'
tradeable commodities, entrenching the wellknown nexus on which much of
Mumbai's and Maharashtra's finances increasingly depend.
DP 2034
attempts to rebalance the use of FSI, TDR across the city as a whole, and
adopts a more practical approach to FSI as an “outer envelope“ of
development rather than as the “panacea“ and “incentive“ for everything
from slum rehabilitation to developing public spaces.
One of the
most widely-debated aspects of DP 2034 is the high FSI in areas close
to transport nodes, called Transit-Oriented Development (ToD) in
planning lingo. In Mumbai, sta
tion areas are already jam-packed, but often under-built and poorly
managed, and thus unable to profit from their density and “network
effects“. Higher FSI in these corridors make sense, but only if
regulated strictly and designed well. Rather than a chaotic jam of
commuters, vehicles, vendors and shops, our station areas could be
pleasurable public spaces mixing hawker plazas, civic amenities, office
parks, and urban greenery above and below ground.
Builders and
their lobbyists are often fond of claiming that Manhattan or Singapore
have even higher FSI than proposed in DP 2034, but what they don't
mention (or know) is that in other global cities, often other planning
norms override basic FSI and that rich people travel by public
transport.
The problem is not with FSI per se, but how it is
regulated, and in whose interest. The same goes for public spaces. The
DP classifies broader land uses across the city, and specifies areas to
be acquired for any number of purposes parks, schools, amenities,
housing, or to make way for new infrastructure or wider roads.But in
many cases the BMC has historically failed to acquire lands earmarked in
the DP, which became frozen in time, and often encroached.Chances are
that a nearby slum colony especially if it has come up in the past 3-4
decades was first settled on DP-reserved land. Ironically, many of
these slums are now being redeveloped by the Slum Rehabilitation
Authority (SRA), cheating the city of amenities promised and reserved
decades ago.
While criticism has been high decibel since plans
for FSI and Proposed Land Use (PLU) were published online in February
with the draft DCR, the BMC has shown unprecedented transparency in
formulating DP 2034.
Last year it published both its Existing
Land Use (ELU) studies for download online, and held extensive public
workshops in every ward, and with special interest groups on issues
ranging from water to education, urban design to public health. Until
recently, most citizens had little awareness of their local plan, as
copies of earlier DPs were always difficult to procure, and the 1991 DC
Rules were frequently amended and litigated.
Now there is no
excuse for not knowing how your city will develop in 20 years every
Mumbaikar should download and study DP 2034 for their locality.
The period for public comment on DP 2034 expires on 26 April. What
remains to be seen are the measurable commitments the BMC makes to
developing public goods for Mumbai in DP 2034, and whether these can be
quantified by citizens and the public as easily as planners and builders
calculate FSI and TDR.Shekhar Krishnan is an anthropologist with the
Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental
Research, Mumbai
