Megacity project soon

Megacity project soon
The City Development Strategy Plan is on the anvil.
The Times of India


After all the noise over the Comprehensive Development Plan, urban planners are marking out the blueprint for the City Development Strategy Plan. To this end, the Bangalore City Corporation (BCC) has identified an agency called Urban First.

A global megapolis a la Paris and New York will soon come home to roost right here. The tripartite agreement as envisaged by the National Urban Renewal Mission (NURM) between the Central Government, State Government and urban local bodies, is likely to be signed in a fortnight's time. Once this is inked, seven identified mega-cities - Bangalore, Ahmedabad, New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkota and Chennai - would get that promised face-lift with a primary accent on infrastructure overhaul. However, the urban local bodies are still in the dark about certain mandatory guidelines that the Centre should issue for them to frame a draft on major projects in the city. For any city eligible under the NURM, it has to enter into a tripartite agreement with the Central and State Governments, and urban local bodies.

The Rs 5,500 crores NURM project has an allocation of Rs 3,500 crores towards National Mission Urban Infrastructure Development under which the Mega-city programme falls. For State Governments the mission translates to mandatory reforms like decentralisation (implementing 74th Constitutional Amendment), land reforms (repeal Urban Land Ceiling Reform Act, rationalise stamp duties to five percent over five years), public disclosure law on medium-term fiscal plan et al. For urban local bodies the reforms read: accrual accounting, transfer of special agencies, property tax administration, MIS, and GIS.

In this overhaul exercise, Bangalore is in an advantage. Explains P K Srihari, Additional Commissioner (Finance) at the BCC, "the reform parameters that NURM envisages are based on Bangalore’s best practices. The entrusted agency has a lot of academic work - planning reforms according to what the city would be like 10 years from now. They map the gap between what's now and the future". The vantage position is because Bangalore has many optional reforms in place. Like the computerisation of land title system, byelaws for rainwater harvesting, and GIS (Geographical Information System). Just like the BDA's Comprehensive Development Plan, the City Development Strategy Plan seeks to identify the status quo and civic growth of the city.

For Bangalore, as for the other identified mega-cities, inking that tripartite deal or a memorandum of agreement matters where it's needed most. Think well-asphalted roads, flyovers, sewage and drainage system, single planning authority, and traffic management, among others.