Is Bengaluru Really Dying In Five Years?

Every year, sometime between April and May, citizens all over urban India get to read ‘expert’ opinions in newspapers as well as online news portals proclaiming that their city is dying. This year, during the aforementioned period, I happened to be in Bengaluru.

Prof. Ramachandra blaming ‘unplanned urbanisation’ surprised me. The reason is the same study says that ‘BDA housing policies and other industrial housing colonies are responsible for the compactness in the center and sprawl in the outskirts’ and explains why sprawl is the reason Bengaluru has seen huge reduction in vegetation and water bodies. It was too much ‘planning’ by BDA and BBMP that that has contributed to this mess.

Prof Ramachandra goes on to say that ‘the government must take necessary steps to decongest Bengaluru. Besides banning new industries in the city, the government should make sure other districts get these economic benefits’.

The policy of state and local governments which aim at ‘decongesting’ the city centre is implemented by tight control of land use. Other restrictive constraints on land availability has lead to an urban sprawl as seen below-

One such instrument of control (or planning) is Floor Space Index i.e FSI (also called FAR). An FSI of 1 would mean 1000 Sq. feet of floor space is allowed to be built on a 1000 Sq. feet piece of land. It is effectively a restriction on the height of buildings and thus prevent land from being efficiently used. Nobody is allowed to build 1,00,000 Sq feet of floor space over 10,000 Square feet of land even if such a structure is financially and technically feasible. What it causes is higher rents and sale prices for Low FSI areas which as you shall see is usually in the city centre. It also causes people to move homes and businesses to higher FSI areas which as you shall see lie in the suburbs.

The development of the suburbs i.e. sprawling instead of dense development in the city centres has a prominent side-effect : slow death of the forests and wetlands surrounding the cities. Now, you may be thinking, why was such a policy instituted in the first place ? The culprit is the ‘remedy’ Prof. Ramachandra has given for keeping our cities ‘healthy’ -State policy directed at the decongestion of the city centre.

To be continued.