Mumbai’s Development Plan 2034 kicks off from Saturday

After being delayed by four years, the city’s Development Plan (DP) 2034 will come into force from Saturday.

The DP is a crucial document that will determine the city’s land use and infrastructure development for the next 20 years.

However, crucial and controversial provisions of the DP including increasing floor space index (FSI) for the city in the range of 2.5 to 5-plus, affordable housing over Mumbai’s salt pan land and no-development zones, transit-oriented development along metro lines have not yet been cleared.

FSI refers to the ratio of the total buildable area to the size of the plot. It typically indicates how high a developer can build.

The Development Plan (DP) along with the Development Control and Promotion Regulations (DCPR) was notified by the state government in May 2018. However, the DP was divided into two parts — sanctioned and excluded part (EP). The EP includes all the provisions where substantial changes have been made to the plan by the government after it was submitted by the civic body. The sanctioned part will come into effect from today, while for the EP, the more stringent norm of the two DPs (1991 and 2034), will be implemented, according to a senior civic official.

There are 2,884 reservations in the EP which were open for another round of suggestions and objections from the citizens. The sanctioned part in the DP includes provisions that were cleared by the BMC’s planning committee after considering citizens’ feedback: a metro car shed at Aarey, a 300-acre park at Cuffe Parade on reclaimed land, and 3.37 square meters of open space per capita besides gender- and disabled-friendly aspects.

While the first version of the DP was released in February 2015, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis ordered a revision after a public outcry over the plan being builder-friendly. The revised DP was then released in four different phases in 2016 with the BMC accepting public observations at every stage.

Urban planners have said that with this, there will be greater clarity among realty stakeholders. Vilas Nagalkar, a city-based architect, said, “There will not be any ambiguity to check which set of rules (DCR 1991 or DCPR 2034) would be applied to projects as at least the sanctioned DP will come into effect. However, since most of the important provisions related to higher FSI are in the EP, most developers will wait for it to get sanctioned.”

“This DP has gone through a good deal of suggestions and objections, most of which were included by the state government and this has been sanctioned. We have similar hopes for the EP,” said Pankaj Joshi, director, Urban Design Research Institute.

First Published: Sep 01, 2018 08:28 IST