MUMBAI: Under the new blueprint for Mumbai, BMC has tagged 12,853 hectares of land in the city as ‘natural areas’, on which it will not allow any kind of development, said municipal commissioner Ajoy
Mehta on Wednesday. This is about 29% of the total land area in the city.
Areas marked out as ‘natural areas’ include mangroves, hilly areas, hillocks, marshy lands, creeks, rivers, and coastal stretches under CRZ-I.
Apart from providing protection to ecologically sensitive areas, Mehta said the development plan (DP) puts emphasis on maintaining and preserving open spaces, which comprise playgrounds, recreation spaces, gardens, etc. These have been categorically marked out as ‘non construction’ zones.
Apart from the ones already identified earlier, 124 such open spaces that were missed out in the draft DP were tagged on the final plan. “This has given the city (an extra) 42.36 hectares of open space,” said Mehta. In all, 4,820 hectares of land have been tagged as open spaces, roughly 10% of Mumbai's total area of 45,829 hectares.
Mehta said that during the process of drafting the DP, nearly 75 suggestions were received from various committees seeking revoking of protection for numerous open spaces. “Not a single deletion proposal has been cleared. The state government has outrightly rejected all the deletion proposals,” said Mehta.
Mehta said the government has also marked out a reservation for 300 acres of land in Cuffe Parade—part of it will be reclaimed land--to develop a green belt on the lines of
Central Park in New York. Another 130 acres of land has also been identified along the eastern water front for developing a park.
As per the 1991 DP, 13,706 hectares of land was demarcated as ‘No Development Zones’, of which BMC has carved out 12,853 hectares of land as ‘natural areas’ this time. The remaining 853 hectares have been shifted into other categories, which may include special development zones or CRZ areas where government facilities are per mitted.
Nayana Kathpalia, founder trustee of NAGAR, who has been fighting to save Mumbai's open spaces, said she hoped these announcements would not remain on paper. “Open spaces marked in the DP should be accessible and free of encroachment. All this looks very good on paper, but implementation is the key,” she said. She said she and her team will study the DP in detail when it is made available to the public to see what has been marked out as open spaces. “Last time traffic islands were also marked as open spaces, but that doesn’t help,” said Kathpalia.
