DH Bengaluru 2040 Summit | 8 houses on 30x40 plots: This verity of city’s vertical growth will floor you

Bengaluru: As many as eight houses coming up on 30x40 plots, the missing updated master plan for the city, implications of premium floor area ratio (FAR) and unregulated growth in the city’s peripheral areas – these are some of the issues which were discussed at the DH Bengaluru 2040 summit.

While BDA chairman N A Haris promised to start the work of preparing the master plan once the drone survey is complete, developers requested the authorities to promote integrated development at the planning stage itself.

Among the panelists who were part of the session on ‘Building Bengaluru: Governance, Urban Planning and Role of Real Estate Developers,’ included Abhishek Kapoor, Group CEO Puravankara, Mallanna Sasalu, CEO Provident Housing, and Anjali Mohan, urban planner.

During the conversation, Anjali brought to light the growing menace of constructing illegal floors without the fear of authorities.

“Eight floors are being built on 30x40 sites. The 40x60 sites are seeing as many as 10 floors. The authorities must turn their eyes on how to stop such construction. In places such as Jayanagar, Basavanagudi, where one or two families lived in 30x40 sites, we are seeing 8-10 families. There must be a regulatory framework to stop this from happening. This is needed to improve the quality of life for everyone,” she said.

Mallanna said developers are unduly blamed for everything that has gone wrong in the city. “Before a real estate project is launched, it passes through eight regulatory approvals. We cannot build one extra floor even on a 20-acre property. The industry is working under many constraints,” he said.

Anjali clarified that she referred to builders constructing illegal floors on small plots and not large developers.

She requested the authorities “to carefully contextualise the use of premium FAR, before putting it out in the market.”

Haris said premium FAR was needed to promote vertical development and promised that the master plan would be prepared very shortly.

Green belt areas

“We have already taken up drone surveys. Once that happens, we will finalise green belt areas. There is a pressure to reduce it, but we will not do it,” he said.

He said BDA was planning to acquire land for new layouts and announced that work on the peripheral ring road would be taken up by raising loans of Rs 27,000 crore. “”We are taking a big risk to better Bengaluru,” he said.

He dismissed the idea of imposing congestion tax on vehicles, saying it would not work in a city like Bengaluru, as in Singapore.

At the time of preparing the master plan, Abhishek Kapoor requested the government to focus on rejuvenating or redeveloping the city’s core area where public infrastructure is already present.

He stressed the need to promote integrated development, which includes social infrastructure.

Anjali noted that the lack of a master plan for Bengaluru was having a devastating effect on the city.

“The last master plan was prepared based on data from 2006. This is a mega city which is growing fast. We cannot rely on something that was analysed several years ago. We need a new master plan,” she said.