Townships the future

Townships the future
The Times of India

Bangalore: Just about everything in the city is linked like an umbilical cord to the explosive IT boom. In the latest masterplan, the strongest respite suggested to the city’s infrastructure woes is development of satellite towns around Bangalore.

Civic authorities, urban planners and implementers have been harping on the need for developing satellite townships, pronto. On Wednesday, deputy CM Siddaramaiah iterated: “The only way to decongest Bangalore was by focussing on lesser developed areas like satellite townships.’’ For long, growth zooming out of the Central Business District is touted as the ultimate panacea for the city’s ‘global status’ birth pangs including traffic and drains.

Time was when a city’s commercial pulse was Mount Road for Chennai, Nariman Point for Mumbai, Park Street for Kolkata, Safdarjung for Delhi and M.G. Road, CMH Road, Majestic for Bangalore. In Chennai, the growth has moved to Tidel Park, Noida and Gurgaon in Delhi, Navi Mumbai, Amby Valley, in Mumbai. Whither a bursting-at-seams Bangalore?

Says an economist: “The city has an estimated 50 lakh population, in addition there is about 15 lakh of a floating population, all of whom use 4,200 km of road. The city will crumble under pressure if not decongested.’’ The de-stress activities started with a plethora of IT firms setting shop on the outskirts of the city, with the attendant causalties like acquisition of farmland, industrialisation in semi-rural areas.

For instance: A hitherto obscure village like Bellandur which would find the limelight forced on it thanks to the annual iceberg formation, is now the epicentre of the bustling IT hub. The village, located on the Sarjapur Outer Ring Road is one of the satellite townships that the state government has proposed. Like Bellandur, there are townships like Bommasandra, Bidadi, Jigani, a slowly developing Anekal.

Now, a township in the pipeline that is being talked about is the Hi-tech city which the BDA is harping on. To be laid out near Electronic City for IT and BT professionals where a self-contained township is on the anvil, the BDA has mooted a 8.5 km express corridor connecting Bellandur to Electronic City.

However, BDA commissioner M.N. Vidyashankar says the feasibility of setting up satellite township as put forth by the masterplan has to be looked into as one township would take about 25,000-30,000 acres.