The Master Plan simplified for you

The Master Plan simplified for you

Swathi Shivanand

Will Bangalore take its place among the legion of liveable cities, leave alone great cities?

Norms on height of buildings have been relaxed

10,000 acres of land to be used for layouts


BANGALORE: As Bangalore marches forward to claim its place among the legion of great cities, the skylines and ground realities are set to dramatically change. High-rise buildings will dominate the landscape, safe houses will replace congested slums and wide roads with regulated traffic will become the order of the day.

The Master Plan 2015 packs all these promises and more in its revised version, prepared and released recently by the Bangalore Development Authority. But four voluminous documents — that will cost you Rs. 5,000 — ensure that these dreams held out for every one of us is couched in abstruse officialese. So how does it intend to change your life in the years to come? We have simplified it for you.
Higher FAR

Stringent rules that keep buildings to a certain height have been relaxed. Till now you could build up to 2,000 sq. ft. on a 1,000 sq. ft. plot in a commercial or residential area (this is expressed as Floor Area Ratio (FAR) being 2). Now you can go up to 3,250 sq. ft. on that same plot (i.e. FAR of 3.25). And if the plot is located along the proposed Metro Rail, you could go up to 4,000 sq. ft. (FAR 4).

FAR is linked to the width of the road. A FAR of 3.25 is allowed for roads of 30 m wide — approximately as big as 100 feet road in Indiranagar. Development around areas surrounding Metro Rail is allowed only after the stations are built.

The phrase “purely residential” is out and in is the concept of mixed land use. So in areas such as Malleswaram, Richmond Town and Jayanagar, designated as mainly residential, you can have computer training institutes, small repair shops, multi-level car parking among other facilities. If the road is more than 18 m wide, then the whole area could be used for commercial purposes.

About 55 sq. km. (which is the size of Malleswaram, Indiranagar, Koramangala, Jayanagar and Vijayanagar put together) has been earmarked as mixed residential areas to address the demand for employment, shopping and residential areas.

If you were despairing of ever owning a piece of land in the city for your dream house, then your chances got slightly better. About 10,000 acres of land in the western and eastern areas of the city will be used to build residential layouts, of which 4,000 acres of land will be used to build houses. Plans are on to form about 28,000 sites and about 1.5 lakh budget houses in these two sectors.

New layouts that are less than 4,000 sq. m can dispense with parks and civic amenity sites.

The land owner just has to pay a certain sum of money to the BDA and he could go ahead and construct more.

More software professionals could soon be living in integrated townships. The Master Plan says that areas measuring 40 hectares and more with an access to 18 m wide road can be converted into townships, where 40 per cent of the land will be reserved for residences, 55 per cent for IT and BT activities and 5 per cent for commercial activities to support the townships.

Allowing this legal, unprecedented growth will obviously take its toll on infrastructure services, namely, water supply, sanitation, transport and power. The Master Plan states that annual growth rate of built-up area has been 5.4 per cent over the last 30 years calling for more investment in public infrastructure.

The city is poised at a crucial juncture. Will these promises take us to a glorious future or will the city crumble under the burden of its own growth?