Single model for urban expansion won’t work in India, say experts

NEW DELHI: A single method like increasing the floor-area ratio (FAR) will never work in isolation to solve problems related to housing and urban development in the long run, former DDA planning commissioner AK Jain said on Thursday.

“It did not work in Shanghai and Singapore. Instead it makes the city dysfunctional unless you relate it with the facilities, transport infrastructure, greens. They are the lifelines of a city,” Jain said at a panel discussion on land use in the context of urban expansion, as part of the ‘WRI Connect Karo’ event on Thursday.

His views come at a time when the ongoing sealing drive in the city has sparked widespread protests from traders and bitter criticism of the city administration by the Supreme Court.

Rejeet Mathews, head (urban development), Sustainable Cities, WRI India, who presented a paper on different state-led mechanisms to acquire land for acqui- sition, stressed on the need to address four aspects for the integrated development of land and the introduction of public purposes. These include the acquisition of land, its planning, servicing and capture of its value after development. “No single model can be applied uniformly or could be accepted by stakeholders across varied contexts. The use and interest in alternative mechanisms is relatively new and is currently only regionally applied,” she said.

Jain said he feels the new land acquisition policy, which has made acquisition “cumbersome and costly”, is a blessing in disguise. “At least it will force us to focus on ‘brown field development (upgrading existing projects)’ and densification of already built up area,” he said.

He said that the current policy tends to focus on ‘green field development (starting projects from scratch)’.

Noted urban sector expert Dr V K Phatak chaired a session on planned and serviced land for urban expansion.