Bangalore CDP 2031: City grows without a father
From the 1980s to now, Bangalore has grown from innocence to a difficult beast, thanks to its being an orphan for too long. We take a look at CDP 2031 as we look at the past.
The year was 1976. A delegation of four urban planning officials from Singapore were visiting Bangalore. The delegation had picked up four cities in the world which they thought were models for sustainable, and livable, development for Singapore 2010. They spent 4 days, met the then Chief Minister, too, and a posse of urban officials, architects and industry leaders. They returned pretty impressed and took their lessons to craft their 25-year plan for their island-state.
Bangalore was at the time under 2 million with about 200 square kilometer as geographic spread. Its lakes within the city and the two large reservoirs of Thippagondanahalli (T G Halli Dam) and Hessaraghatta, which had served the city from 1937, were the only water supply sources. There was in the air the development of the first long-distance line from the Cauvery but that had not been implemented. The two large lungs of Cubbon Park and Lal Bagh had made the city enviable. The climate [which newcomers seem to think is holding to be as salubrious] was far superior with no home sporting even a fan. The city nestles on a plateau at an altitude of nearly a km above the sea level—which accounts for the rarefied air.
CDP 2031 wrestling with the challenge of growth
The Comprehensive Development Plan 2031 is now wrestling with the challenge of growth of a kind that very few cities in the world have witnessed. A staggering CAGR of 3.25 per cent has carried the city’s population from that 1976 number of about 1.8 million to 10 million today. The floating population is at about 1.5 million. Any cursory reading of the city-wise GDP of India will show that Bangalore contributes for a little over $100 billion against NCR’s USD 180 billion and Mumbai’s USD 160 billion.
In the same year, 1976, the Bangalore Development Authority was formed. In 1984 came the first CDP. The draft master plan for 2015 was put out in 2005 and envisaged a local planning area of 1300 square kilometers with 387 villages, 7 city municipal corporations and one town municipal corporation. This number has gone up even further by the CDP 2015 draft plan.
Whether it was 2015 CDP or the 2031 CDP, the foundation for developing strategic plans and designing neighbourhoods has been an objective that they both have outlined pretty strongly.
The principles of the plan are of course not in doubt:
- Respect the natural environment,
- promote economic efficiency and social equity,
- protect historical heritage,
- evolve strategic transport network with a combination of public transportation that is road-based and rail-based,
- efficient and affordable transportation systems.
This is a city that did not see a mayor for nearly 9 years until we got our elections in 2009. This is a city that has seen a collapse of administration and governance for at least the last 15 years. Reported The Hindu in a feature some time ago, “The Garden City gradually has slipped into a state where the administration is unable to come to grips with its ever-expanding exponential growth pattern … the authorities are unable to handle basic hygiene factors that are so vital for an ‘investment destination’ even as we have to put up with open piles of garbage, overflowing drains on roads that invite stray dogs and cattle; roads, subways, overbridges, flyovers and underpasses cry for attention…. What just is the city in need of?”
The one elephant that is always missing in every conference and workshop and seminar hall is the government. There are pompous politicians who make ceremonial visits to such conferences, don’t pay attention to what the content is, and make perorations that only serve their own egos. There is really no one from any govt agency who sits through patiently when we have experts offering clarity on such urban plan challenges. There is only the brutality of big public expenditure that is forked out with hardly any debate, and with graft written all over every such contract. There are only expenditure budgets, with no accountability for the output achieved. The govt doles out contracts, that’s all. The result and outcome cannot be subject to any scrutiny for there is really no one accountable. Even officials at key levels are not sure of their tenure, and have no clear mandate. Any one wanting to actually accomplish any thing is squelched, quietly. Protect the status quo, is the cardinal rule.
The City Cries for Sanity
This second part of this series on CDP 2031 presents what our city fathers can do to steer the city toward managing the city’s resources.
If you step away from it, what does the city cry for as we get to the middle of this defining decade of the 20s for India? Being continental, Bangalore has spread in a circular fashion. There are five concentric belts with the core area consisting of the historic petta, the administrative centre, and the central business district. The second belt, which is the peri-central area, has older, planned residential areas surrounding the core area. The third belt hosts the recent extensions to the city flanking both sides of the Outer Ring Road, most of which lack services and infrastructure facilities. This is a sort of shadow area. There are now layouts that are coming up on the fourth belt with many vacant plots and agricultural lands that are now being rushed into conversion in order to feed the builder’s greed and the consumer’s stamped for buying plots and homes.
That leaves us with the fifth belt, the green belt and the agricultural area in the city’s outskirts and include many small villages. There is then the development that is coming beyond the fifth belt which is now becoming a larger concentric strip of over 5 kilometers with the girdle around the city running a sizeable 150 kilometers. The radial roads emerging from within the city are the ones that move traffic, while the Ring Roads are getting to be clogged.
The vision 2031 defines a framework and directions that will delineate areas where there will be satellite towns which will enable less commuting, with work and home spaces evolved in a way that there would be little need for those residents to want to come into the first or the second belts at the city’s core.
The charm of Bangalore has lain in the number of invisible infrastructure that no other Indian city offers. Pubs, cinema hall, malls and supermalls, bowling allies, and laid-back bars have combined to draw young graduates from across India for jobs in numberless companies that are doing things big and small. Hotels, service apartments, and hospitals are full of young recruits who are thronging in from the Northeast or from Kerala, Jharkhand and Bihar.
Just the next seven years of this decade is going to see an increase in Bangalore’s population of nearly 2 million. The numbers are staggering. The governance is nonexistent.
