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Coimbatore City Development Plan with public participation

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The Hindu              15.05.2013

Coimbatore City Development Plan with public participation

Karthik Madhavan

Questionnaire being prepared to seek inputs from various groups of people

The Coimbatore Corporation will soon prepare and issue a questionnaire for seeking inputs from members of the public, non government organisations, trade and industry bodies, councillors and others for drafting the City Development Plan (CDP).

Even focus groups like architects’ association would be part of the exercise.

According to sources in the Corporation, the civic body had sometime ago asked the agency preparing the CDP to come out with the questionnaire.

It did so but the civic body wanted the questionnaire to be concise so that it was easy on those providing information. The questionnaire would be related to mass transportation, urban governance and public-private partnership, because those would be the focus areas in the next urban development scheme. It would be ready in the next few days.

Thereafter, the Corporation would post the details on its website for inviting inputs.

The sources said that once the exercise was complete, the Corporation would incorporate the inputs to prepare the final City Development Plan.

The Corporation last prepared the CDP in 2006 as mandated by the Central Government under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission scheme.

The current CDP preparation exercise comes after the Corporation annexed 11 local bodies and the city area expanded from around 105 sq.km. to 250 sq.km.

The sources said that current CDP would take into account the city’s needs for the next 20 to 30 years by studying needs in transport, infrastructure, health, governance and other areas.

S. Baskar, Coordinator, City Technical Advisory Group, said that the CDP must have a vision statement for the city.

The Mayor S.M. Velusamy had already said that the CDP for the city should reflect aspiration of the city to be a hub for engineering and textile industry, a leading place for health care and a sought-after destination for education.

The CDP must also talk about ways to realise the vision, the schemes that would take the city to be where it would want to be in the next 20 — 30 years and the expected outcomes from the scheme.

Aside from this exercise, the Corporation had also formed seven sub groups to provide inputs for the CDP.

The groups had meet on a couple of occasions to discuss what schemes the city would want to go to the next level.