The Times of India              19.12.2013

44 illegal colonies to get amenities

Gurgaon: With elections round the corner, the Haryana cabinet on Wednesday slashed development charges to be paid by occupants and owners of unauthorized colonies to get civic amenities provided by the municipality.

With this, without authorizing any illegal colony, the government will provide residents with all basic services. On the one hand, this will help the government in wooing lakhs of people living in such colonies, while on the other hand, the government will be able to save itself from being labelled populist.

According to the revised fee structure, those in the unauthorized colonies of Gurgaon will have to pay Rs 150 per square yard as development charge. According to estimates, more than 30% of the city's population lives in as many as 44 illegal colonies spread across 1,217 acres in different parts of the city.

The Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon ( MCG) is gearing up to provide amenities like water, electricity, roads, streetlights and sewage disposal to the residents living in these areas.

However, around 2 lakh people living in 22 colonies within the 900-metre restricted zone around the Air Force ammunition depot, will not benefit from the scheme.

There are a total of 542 illegal colonies in Haryana. Residents of such colonies have time and again held protests demanding civic amenities.

In the same cabinet meeting, the government hiked pension for old, widows and disabled from Rs 750 per month to Rs 1,000 from January 1, while pension for destitutes was increased from Rs 200 per month to Rs 500 per month.

The cabinet has also given the nod for special survey for roadside vendors operating within the jurisdiction of civic bodies. 

The Hindu               18.12.2013

Urban Arts Commission model may solve housing, parking issues

Smriti Kak Ramachandran

The Delhi Urban Arts Commission (DUAC) has come up with a template for urban planning for the national Capital which, it asserts, addresses the issues of housing and infrastructure deficit, unauthorised constructions, in situ rehabilitation of slums, creating more green and open spaces and transit oriented development.

The template based on a dozen studies carried out across various urban scenarios was presented to the Union Urban Development Ministry on Monday and the DUAC says can be replicated in town and cities across the country.

“These three dimensional studies are a way forward; the Master Plan only stipulates, these studies are based on ground realities, they are an example of what can be done to solve the housing and infrastructure problems, cleaning and beautifying the city and laying out a plan for allowing more floor area ration in some areas where expansion can be vertical,” said Commission chairperson Raj Rewal.

Carried out over six months using a special fund released by the Ministry, the studies examine site-specific design for wards, rehabilitation of unauthorised and slums clusters, potential for high rise development along Metro corridors, rejuvenation of gardens and greens, and a unified building by-laws for the city.

A study on the slum cluster of Mohammadpur Village in Delhi where houses stand cheek by jowl with little or no provisions for sewage removal, open areas or even streetlights shows how with a turn-around can be achieved by in situ rehabilitation.

“In Kalkaji vegetable mandi for instance, a three-level parking can take 700 haphazardly parked cars off the road. There is enough space to build a parking and once that gets ready problems like traffic congestion, road bottlenecks will be solved and the area can be aesthetically developed,” Mr. Rewal said.

Proposals for pedestrian and cycling tracks, interconnecting parks and gardens and providing recreational facilities and food courts have also been made.

“Land pooling is an answer to freeing up spaces that can be used for community development and reorganising urban spaces. There is paucity of land and there has been talk of going vertical, so we have suggested that high-rises can be built along transit corridors where floor area ratio can be higher and developers can be incentivised,” he said.