Floor space index precious than gold |
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Posted on 7/3/2012 |
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In the city’s lucrative construction industry, floor space index (FLI) has become perhaps, more precious than gold. What was once meant as a crucial tool for town planning when it was introduced over four decades ago, has today been turned into a commodity.
On the other hand, the powerful builders’ lobby has been rooting for a substantially higher FSI as a panacea for solving the city’s housing problem. FSI is the ratio of the permissible built up area vis-a-vis the plot size. Although the FSI is still restricted to the standard 1.33 for the island city and 2 (with TDR) for the suburbs, the government over the past decade hiked it manifold for a slew of schemes including redevelopment of slums, housing authority colonies and cessed properties.
Among the most controversial decision of the government recently has been to offer a huge FSI bonanza to builders if they construct multi-storey public car parks on a portion of their land and hand them over to the BMC free of cost. The FSI could go up to as high as 4 in this scheme. Experts have pointed out that while the cost of constructing a car park for the builder is barely Rs 1,000 a sq ft, his selling price of a flat in an area like central Mumbai could be Rs 25,000 a sq ft.
Some of Mumbai’s leading developers announced ultra-luxury skyscrapers after the state urban development department (UDD) liberally sanctioned their public car parking proposals. In the Parel-Sewri-Worli belt itself, the UDD has cleared over 25,000 car parks. This has raised eyebrows that it was done more to benefit builders get higher FSI. Last year, chief minister Prithviraj Chavan reviewed the policy following a slew of complaints. In 1998, the then Shiv Sena-BJP offered builders virtually unlimited FSI to builders for redeveloping old cessed properties in the island city. This resulted in skyscrapers sprouting up on narrow plots in congested and traditionally low-rise localities.
For instance, in areas like Nana Chowk and Girgaum, 40-storeyed towers have proliferated with barely any open spaces around them. The city has thus been left with an uneven skyline with all norms of town planning thrown out of the window. Till the mid-1970s, the city had different FSI for different areas. For instance, Tardeo had 1.66, Grant Road had 1.33, Ballard Estate had over 2 while builders who had cornered plots in Backbay Reclamation were given FSI of over 3 by the then political dispensation.
It was only in 1977 that FSI was rationalised to 1.33 in the island city and one for the suburbs. Even this was found to be too high by some experts who pointed out that the city’s infrastructure would not be able to bear the load. But in the subsequent decades, with the clamour for higher FSI growing, the state government started hiking it under the guise of social housing. Unfortunately, changes in FSI norms were mainly done to derive political advantage It was meant to be a simple town planner’s physical instrument of defining how construction should be done. What we are seeing today is the most weird use of FSI as if its a panacea for every thing. As one architect put it, “arbitrary increase of FSI will convert this metropolis into a necropolis.’ |
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Report: The Times of India
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