JOIN US'Town planning should not make grocery distant for public'
Designing and building a town without ensuring space for easy public access are useless, said retired professor of Manipal Institute of Engineering, D V S Iyer, here on Friday.
Delivering a talk on the topic ‘Towns and cities- Our heritage and the present scenario’ at The Institution of Engineers (India), Mysore chapter, Iyer said ‘a visionary and effective town planning encapsulated in the ‘Sector Principle’ ensures that a woman need not walk more than 250 metres to buy her grocery or drop her children to school’. That apart, emphasis should be given to provide lung spaces, such as parks and playgrounds in every city. “High density construction in any city is not advisable”, he opined.
“Post independence, India witnessed rapid urbanisation. Five year plans triggered construction activity. But providing lung spaces in the cities took a backseat,” he said.
Areas with population of 12,000 to 15,000 should be divided as zones. “Cities are for people.
When 70 per cent of land in a city is residential area, we should ensure in the stages of planning itself that the city is safe for its residents and amicable for the tourists,” he said.
Planned cities are of benefit to the inhabitants of the city. Town planning in ancient cities of the Indus Valley Civilization was excellent. Even in the modern day, cities of India lack a sewer system that Harappa and Mohenjo-daro flaunted in the past. Books such as ‘Manasara’ and ‘Mayamatha’ written in the period of Gupta, laid down guidelines for proper town planning. They stipulated stringent qualifications for a town planner, which resulted in the emergence of great cities in ancient India, he said.
He suggested that exhaustive surveys for roads and traffic patterns, water supply, drainage,electricity and others should be done to improve facilities to the residents of the city.