Mumbai development blueprint gets govt nod
The plan’s most significant feature is infusion of new developable land for the city. The plan’s most significant feature is infusion of new developable land for the city.
THE MAHARASHTRA government on Tuesday approved Mumbai’s long-pending Development Plan (DP), paving the way for the city to have more land available to build homes and commercial spaces. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis sanctioned the new 20-year development blueprint on Tuesday, said sources. An official announcement is set to follow on Wednesday.
Officials said the plan’s most significant feature is infusion of new developable land for the space-constrained city. It proposes to unlock 3,734 hectares of public and privately owned land — currently tagged as no development zones (NDZ) — to push low-cost housing and augment social amenities. This is the largest addition to the city’s developable land bank in recent history. Statistically, the area to be added to the city’s developable land bank accounts for over eight per cent of Mumbai’s total area of 45,829 hectares.
In 2017, the World Economic Forum, citing a UN-Habitat report, had ranked Mumbai as the second most overcrowded city after Dhaka, with an average population density of 31,700 people per square kilometre. Despite this, Mumbai’s new development control (DC) regulations, which will kick in with the new DP, will further raise construction rights for various special projects in the commerce, hospitality and redevelopment sectors.
In a shift from prevalent regulations where permissible floor space index (FSI) levels in the island city were lower than those in the suburbs, Fadnavis has lifted this curb, raising FSI levels in the island city up to 3, while that in the suburbs has been retained at 2.5.
FSI, also known internationally as floor area ratio, is a tool that defines the extent of construction permissible on a plot; the ratio of total built-up area to the total plot area. Enhancing the construction area on a plot, the new rules say FSI will be calculated on the gross plot area, excluding land under reservations, and won’t involve deduction of amenity open spaces and recreational open spaces.
On Tuesday, Fadnavis also sanctioned a proposal to publish a list of modifications that the government wants to carry out in the new DP, most of which deal with increasing FSI and modification of public reservations. Sources said these would be published as the ‘excluded part’ of DP-2034. Public suggestions and objections will be invited for the excluded part.
Government and private town planners, however, agreed that the infusion of the new developable land is the most prominent feature of the DP. While Mumbai’s existing development plan had focussed on creation of ‘affordable’ housing through redevelopment, the DP-2034 has targetted construction of 10 lakh ‘affordable’ homes through unlocking of NDZ areas, including salt pan lands.
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