The following ToI report says that the Plan is to be made public in March,
presumably meaning the draft notification for inviting objections and
suggestions. It also quotes DDA Commissioner Planner on the overall idea,
quite confident that we are on course to becoming 'another Tokyo or
Singapore'.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=36897582
Times of India, 09.02.03
DELHI HEADING FOR PLANNED DISASTER
RASHME SEHGAL
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 08, 2003 11:12:24 PM ]
NEW DELHI: Circa 2021. 23 million Delhites will live cheek-by-jowl as
compared to the current 14 million. 4.5 million vehicles will fight for
road space from the present 2.2 million. Water requirements will jump to
8,349 million litres per day from 3,735 million litres. Urban land area
will swell from 60,000 hectares to 110,000.
Welcome to India's fastest growing city.
By the next decade, Delhites can say goodbye to open stretches, including
Safdarjung Airport. Thinly-built areas such as RK Puram, Pusa Institute
and large chunks of Delhi Cantonment are also likely to come under the
axe: just some of the drastic steps envisaged in Delhi's revised Master
Plan likely to be implemented from next year.
"The city must expand vertically. Parts of the old walled city, and DDA
MIG and LIG flats built 30-40 years ago need to be demolished to give way
for higher buildings," says DDA Commissioner Vijay Rizbud.
The way out of this urban nightmare: expansion and more expansion. Put
together by DDA's Planning and Architecture Department comprising over 100
professionals, the Master Plan highlights the need for a 'New New Delhi'
in the National Capital Region.
Such an expansion is a "recipe for disaster", warn planners, but Rizbud
claims confidently: "Delhi is on the way to becoming another Tokyo or
Singapore". "Cities cannot be stopped from growing," agrees road expert
Prof Dinesh Mohan.
The Plan is to be placed before Union urban minister Ananth Kumar next
week and made public by March.
DDA's delay in circulating copies of the draft amongst architects and
planners has raised hackles. "If they go public after having finalised
everything, where is the scope for public discourse?" asks Probir
Purkaya-stha of Delhi Science Forum.
"The plan will be successful only if it gives due importance to creating a
mixed landscape comprising industries, hawkers, people from low-income
groups and the middle class. Providing facilities exclusively for the rich
and middle class will prove the death knell for this city," he says.
Town planner Gita Dewan Verma is equally indignant. "The Master Plan is a
statutory document of a citizen's entitlement. The DDA has to explain why
provisions made in the earlier plan, providing 5,000 hectares for
industries, hawkers and low-income groups has not been implemented."
Warns Sunita Narain, director, Centre for Science and Environment: "With
population pressure rising and ground water levels dropping, we will not
be able to survive till 2010."