In a bid to regulate high-rise buildings in the city, the government
is planning to bring in new set of guidelines after builders violated
the guidelines prescribed under the Second Master Plan, according to
Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) sources.

Sources
told Express that high-rise buildings were evolving in the city, which
came under Seismic Zone III and was vulnerable to quakes, without
following the guidelines prescribed under the Second Master Plan. The
height of the building, which was stipulated to be one and a half times
the width of the road during the First Master Plan, had been reviewed
during the Second Master Plan, they added.

 The guidelines linking
height of the buildings to the width of the road by planners was to
boost infrastructure facilities to sustain high-density development.

Currently,
Chennai was one of the  high-density cities in the world with a
population density of 247 persons per hectare.  Under the revised
regulation framed during the Second Master Plan, it was stipulated that a
12-metre-wide road should have a 24 metre high building. Similarly, a
15-metre-wide road should have a building of 30-metre height, an
18-metre-wide road should have a building with a height of 60 metres and
a road having a width of 60 metre could have a building with the height
of more than 60 meters.

Interestingly, the height of building
allowed in Chennai Metropolitan Area was higher than the guidelines
prescribed under the Second Master Plan, sources said.

Meanwhile,
the CMDA was also working on plan to make it mandatory for the builder
to get no objection certificate from the state disaster management
authority as Chennai happened to be in the seismic Zone-III and was
vulnerable to quakes. Sources said this could cut down the risk of threat and control the development of high-rise building.