The New Indian Express 14.12.2010
Marred by flaws
The Kochi City Region (KCR) is a welcome concept. However, KCR needs to be made into a legally legible entity. It is pertinent to set this up similar to the Metropolitan Planning Committee or the Spatial Integration Committee. As per Section 51(3) of the Kerala Municipal Act 1994, it is up to the Municipal Corporation to prepare the master plan for its region and submit the same to the District Planning Committee for integration into the District Development Plan. Here, we have an agglomeration of various local self-governing bodies put together under the nomenclature, KCR, by the Town Planning Department. The plan itself pervades across the jurisdiction of various LSGs and, hence, it is imperative that this issue be taken care of diligently.
The notification of the Canal and Backwater Network Heritage Zone, and the Kochi Estuary Natural Heritage Zone as Heritage Districts is a significant attempt at understanding and prioritising the city from an ecological perspective. A detailed study of the land document shows that this basic premise has not further been processed in the plan preparation. This single idea has the power to restructure the entire city giving adequate importance to the local ecology. This aspect is crucial to the creation of a sustainable urban development pattern for the city. The least that can be done is to mark them as a ‘heritage zone’ in the land-use plan. Further, a Heritage (Urban Ecology) Commission must be created and entrusted with the task of managing this asset and it shall have statutory and over-riding powers over development issues within its marked boundaries.
The Town Planning Department needs to initiate the process for preparation of cadastral maps for the Planning Sub-Division (PSD) areas on a war footing. Detailed urban renewal issues can be done on Global Information System (GIS) platforms for effective implementation. This is vital for the generation of open space systems, protection of heritage assets, implementation of Transfer of Development Rights (TDR), allocation of floor area ratio (FAR), maintaining revenue records, taxation claims, assessing betterment etc in a legible manner.
TDR needs to be deployed carefully. The plan mentions that development rights can be transferred within the jurisdiction of the Urban Local Body. This is a vast area in the context of TDR and could lead to chaos. The sending and receiving districts of TDR need to be identified in detail.
Most of the roads are being widened from 12 m to 45 m and are recommended for mass rapid transport systems, too. Road sections may be published illustrating the same and some standards like Unified Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure (Planning and Engineering) Centre (UTTIPEC) street design standards could be recommended.
Certain land uses like public and semi-public land use and most of the city-level open space requirement are concentrated within the confines of Thrikkakara panchayat and Cheranelloor panchayat, respectively. The mechanism for delivery of this is not clear. If ‘Accommodation Reservation’ and TDR are intended to be applied, then the process for the same will have to be expressed more legibly. If these aspects get lost due to procedural inadequacy, the Urban Development Plan Formulation and Implementations (UDPFI) standards will be diluted for the land uses. The city is desperately in need of open spaces like parks and playgrounds for active recreation.
