Smart planning & redevelopment can revitalise our cities

Vickash Chowdhary

Founder, Alpine Primo

Most Indian cities have expanded sans any planning, and often the planning, when it happens, follows the expansion and not vice versa. This means as a city develops and spreads beyond its original borders, the surge in population places extraordinary strain on its resources. Lack of transformative planning and redevelopment leads to either a stop-gap arrangement to address these challenges or a solution that worsens the problem, resulting in the slow deterioration of a once vibrant city.

Innovative planning and redevelopment can be a game changer for both the city and its civic body providing the latter with much-needed funds to improve the quality of life of its residents. For cities like Mumbai, where space is a major constraint, it is the only way out.

Redevelopment does not mean demolishing an old building and coming up with a swanky new structure. Urban redevelopment looks at revitalising an entire area through town planning and stresses the overall quality of life. This could mean providing better and efficient means of public transport, provisioning for more open and green spaces and turning a city into a walkable one. In fact, this need not be a government-only initiative and can be a public-private partnership. However, it requires the government to be proactive and that means ending the bureaucratic red tape and mystery surrounding town planning and master plans of a city.

It is advisable if urban redevelopment and town planning are preceded by an active effort to seek the feedback, opinion and demand of the city's residents. If anyone bothered to ask a Mumbaikar, I am sure he/she would often bat for more expansive open spaces and parks close to their homes.

At present, redevelopment is restricted to builders or Resident Welfare Associations redeveloping individual buildings. Instead, the government could bring in several properties in need of redevelopment under its wing, improve the infrastructure in the area and bid out the redevelopment to developers to build mixed-use spaces with better FSI. This means a place where one building accommodated 10 families could now accommodate more people and several businesses thus freeing up space on the ground to create more amenities. The state can then return to the original property owners a share in the new development equivalent to the size of their original property and retain all the extra space to create more parks, playgrounds and cultural centres. It can even sell out some of the space to recover the cost of infrastructure development and can charge a fee for use of the amenities, thus helping shore up the finances of civic bodies. Such planning and redevelopment are beneficial to all stakeholders.

The Sabarmati Riverfront Development in Ahmedabad is one such example of planning and redevelopment that has encouraged social interaction by giving citizens ample open and walkable space.

At a time when the government is looking to create smart cities, it will take some 'smart' planning and redevelopment to overcome the enormous challenges that our cities face.

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