 OK, let's get started. We have only an hour and a half. And this is a topic which has been in the news for a variety of reasons in the last several weeks, if not months. And in the center of this exercise has been talked to with the other part. He's not a stranger to the community, IIT community, or the Mumbai community. He's been a member of many of our committees on campus. He was a keynote speaker at the inaugural of CUs about an year and a half ago. So he's familiar to most of us. And yesterday, when I called him up to ask if we should go ahead with the program, thinking that he might be away from the phone for obvious reasons and all that, he very quickly said, I want to be there. So that shows what his passion is for this topic. And he had three topics to talk about, open spaces, array and FSI. So he's going to take FSI and array milk colony problems or planning. And depending on how much time there is, we'll do the others. I think you want to take questions along the way or you want to wait until you finish. OK, so we'll see how it goes. And we'll take after, unless there's a burning question which needs his answer right away, we'll wait for each presentation to be over and then take questions. So without further ado, Dr. Patak. And thank you all for coming. I think if you had the DP going, we may have had more people, but now people probably have gone back to thinking that it's not going to happen. So we'll do another talk a little later. Closer to the deadline. Thank you, Professor Ramamritha. He called me doctor, but I'm not a doctor. But I'm always ready to accept honorary PhDs. So what I'm going to do is to first describe what the DP is, because a lot of anxiety and criticism comes out of not appreciating what the DP is all about. So I think that is the first thing I intend to do. And then I have three presentations. But depending upon the time and the interest, probably we'll be able to do two of them. The three presentations are one is about RA. What is the proposal about RA in the DP? What is the FSI issue? And the third is what is the issue of open spaces in Mumbai? Of course, there are many other issues, but all of them cannot be covered in a short period of time. The first question is what is development? Now as we would understand, development is a much bigger concept. It might include economic growth that is inclusive. It might include human development, which then encompasses education, health, and such other facilities. It also includes the notion of environmentally sustainable development. And then you can add many more things to that whole concept of development. This development is not about that development. That should be first understood. The development is defined in the Town Learning Act. And that development is in a way a physical manifestation of all these activities, which is essentially in terms of land use, in terms of building and engineering activities, and a variety of other things. Demolition is also called development in the definition. Because it's one of the engineering operations which has those things. Demolition of land is development. And all these developments are supposed to be planned and monitored through the process of development plan. That is that development plan. Only in Maharashtra and Gujarat it is called development plan, borrowing the British connotation. But all other states in India purely call it a master plan. So they are better understood. Delhi is a master plan. So it is understood as a land use and physical plan. You are not including the. Yes. I'll come to that. What is the content of that? So it is essentially a spatial plan or a physical land use plan. And what does it include? It includes the planning for land use. It includes planning for intensity of development, which is essentially the FSI densities, et cetera, et cetera. It also includes the development control regulations. It also includes the way in which land has to be procured for public portfolio, be that roads, other infrastructures, schools, hospitals, whatever. And then whatever is remaining in terms of land, how that should be controlled in terms of development. So those are those DCRs in development control. So in a way, DP divides the city land into two realms, the public realm and the private realm. And then it has a set of regulations to manage what happens in the private realm. DP is not a comprehensive holistic integrated plan. And these three words are very popular. Every planner wants to have his plans to be this. But these are the hollow words. They don't mean anything. And DP is not a holistic integrated comprehensive plan. So it is essentially a land use, physical, et cetera, et cetera, as described. Interestingly, I think that is the notion, because I think I'm trying to sort of wear both caps, practitioner as well as some academic interests. This is an academic issue that whether we can really attempt holistic integrated comprehensive planning. Our education is not attuned to doing this. A land use planner and a transportation planner cannot talk to each other. They have different languages. They have different processes. They have different theories. And though they always call land use transport integrated plan, it's very difficult to achieve it. Leave aside all other considerations. The governing structure is not suited for this kind of thing. Within the municipal corporation, the department don't talk to each other. That inaugural speech I mentioned three. And they really function as three, because the last end of the branches can't talk to each other. They have to go through the branches and the main trunk. Then only they can communicate with each other. That is how our structures are. So they don't lean to comprehensive planning. What we have there for, I think those of you have seen the report, that report is in three parts. Part one talks about what is the existing situation. Part two talks about what the vision and the goals could be. And the part three really talks about what the proposals are. And the part three begins by saying that this is a broad framework, plan in the nature of a framework, within which many pursuits could be possible. So it's not attempting to do everything, but it is trying to say that you can still pursue many of those goals within the broad framework of the plan. And therefore, it mentions what are the various types of sectoral plans that need to be prepared in a more or less continuous fashion, and not as a 20-year plan. This is essentially a 20-year plan. But those sectoral plans can be more in terms of five to 10-year plans backed up by investment programs. This plan has no investment. It has a broad estimation of cost, but it's not like a project where you know exactly how much of money during what period you must spend. This is not this plan. So there you need those kind of other plans. And those also need to be done as a part of a more continuing exercise. So that has been emphasized. May I have some water? So what are the contents of this DP then? I indicated the structure in three parts. There is a land use zoning, which is commonly understood. What kind of activities are possible in which part of the area? Here we have tried to deviate from the conventional ways of doing zoning. In the previous plan, within residential, there were two types, R1, R2. Within commercial, there were C1, C2. There were I1, I2, I3 in industries. There was no development zone. And then there were real no development. There was no development and real no development. National park was probably real no development. We can have a look at that, what that was. So what we have done is, because Mumbai is essentially a mixed zone city. Unlike Delhi, Delhi has a very strict, or had a very strict land use zoning. You might have read the cases where the courts came down heavily on the shops in residential areas and sealed those shops. Because they were not permitted in residential areas according to the plan. And then the government had to bring in an ordinance to allow those shops to continue in the residential zone. Now, Mumbai never attempted that kind of land use zoning. And nor is it very desirable. So in the new plan, we have essentially three zones. One is called RC, which is residential dominant, but commercial also possible. And there is CR, which is commercial dominant, but residential is also possible. And the third one is industrial. Now, these industrial are really big industrial areas like BRCE and those kind of refineries. Those kind of really large areas are called as industrial zone. And the existing industrial areas, but they are permitted to be converted. If an industry wants to close down and convert itself into some residential or commercial activity, that is also permissible. And the fourth is the natural areas. In these natural areas, no development is permissible. That includes the national park and the mangroves or what are called CRZ1. So those are essentially the natural areas. So there are only four land use zones. Much more simplified if you compare to the previous plan. I think a lot of the emphasis in the new plan is simplification and not creating complex regulatory framework. Because complex regularity framework has been one of the problems in Mumbai for the development. And what kind of that we will come to when we have the presentation. The other major issue is how to procure land for public property. In the previous plan, a large number of activities were identified as activities for public property. And the implication of showing them as for public purposes is that once you have done that, you have to acquire those compulsory. And if you don't want to pay monetary compensation, there was an option of providing a transferable development rights. So either you pay money or you pay the transferable development rights. And many such lands were put under reservation which have never been used, never been acquired. In fact, there is a case of IIT. There is at the other end, there is a 10-hectare piece of land which was never acquired. And now that person has served a notice on IIT that either you release it from designation as land for IIT or pay me the compensation for that. Now IIT is saying we have no money to pay for compensation. Naturally, I think he is going to get that land released because you can't endlessly keep somebody's land under public purpose reservation without paying compensation and not allowing him to develop. So in this plan, what we have done, we have tried to, first of all, rationalize the list of activities for which we really designate land as public portfolio. And that is a very minimum and flexible list. For example, in the past, for the BEST, there were three or four types of designations for public purpose, bus depot, bus depot plus housing, and bus depot plus bus station plus housing, something like that. So if it is only bus depot, no housing could be built. Unless you go to government, make the whole process of this thing, now we have tried to simplify this thing. Plus there were things like public purpose reservations put on the existing developed properties. For example, the four cotton textile markets, Muji Jeta, Swadeshi, Mangaldas, et cetera, et cetera. On those markets, a open space reservation was put, which was never going to be really possible. So we have removed those kinds of things. On the Juhu airport, there was a reservation of a park. That park was never going to be realized. So that has also been removed. It is recognized as a airport or transport infrastructure airport. So those kind of rationalization has been done in case of deciding what is really required for public purpose. In that process, the previous planet aspired to provide six square meters per person in the suburbs and two square meters per person in the island city. And after so many years of implementation or non-implementation of the plan, the real open space is only one square meter per person. So in this plan, what we have said that it's not possible to attain that six square meter, et cetera. So we will attain only about two square meters per person. So that's a very realistic possible way of doing things. Now this has become a big controversy. And if you have time, I'll show you what the implications of those are. The third is how do you monitor and measure the intensity of development. And that is FSI. And FSI has also become a very controversial issue. And I think I'll rely more on the presentation which is devoted to FSI. What we have been practicing in the past and also in Maharashtra particularly is to do a very detailed development plan for the next 20 years. First of all, assuming that the planner knows what is going to happen 20 years hereafter, which nobody really knows. But unless you assume that, you know, planner assumes that I know what is going to happen in 20 years, he can't do a detailed plan where the school should be, where a maternity home should be, where a library should be. In 10 years, what library is, the whole notion of library will change. And that is not really known. So what we have attempted to do here is that this DP is essentially a very broad brush DP for the entire city. But it will be followed by what we have called as second tier plans or local area plan. So Delhi does it that way. Delhi has a master plan followed by Zonal plan. Or Ahmedabad has a DP followed by town planning scheme. So we have also recommended in this, though there is no such practice in Vogue in Maharashtra, that the DP should be followed by local area plan or tier 2 plans. And what we have, we have done some kind of costing in today's prices for implementation of this development plan. And also indicated what are the measures for raising finances to do this. Even though the measures are so strong that they can do many times the cost of development plan. But that could be used for other infrastructure as well. Very distinguishing feature of the plan, which has not been noticed by most people, is the monitoring and evaluation. The most city plans or the development plan are characterized by total absence of monitoring and evaluation. Nobody watches how the city is growing. If you go to BMC and ask them in Word X, how much of floor space was built last year and for what purpose you won't get an answer. You are not asking how many slums. You are asking what is the building activity permitted, formally permitted by the BMC. Because the notion of converting basic data into information for decision making is absent. And it's absent particularly for plan purposes because these plans are done for the plan set. Plan is there. There are no protocols for how to implement those plans. Therefore, there is no monitoring, how much. So that is why now people are asking as suggestions and objections. First tell us how the previous plan was implemented, though it is already covered in the report. But then you have to do that exercise 20 years after the plan is prepared. How much of that was implemented? So we have strongly recommended whether that will be implemented. One has to see is the requirement of monitoring and evaluation. And we have essentially recommended that four things should be monitored because we have also put in one of the goals that Mumbai will have to become a competitive city. It has to continue to prosper because other cities will begin to compete with Mumbai, whether it's Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, or even other cities. So Mumbai will have to reinvent itself in terms of new activities, new economic growth, et cetera. And its competitive index has to be monitored. And there are many agencies which are doing this intercity comparison in terms of quality of life index, in terms of real estate, market prices, in terms of ease of doing business. But all those things have to be compiled and brought to notice for the decision-making with respect to development of Mumbai. The remaining three are what is the economy and real estate of Mumbai. Mumbai's economy in terms of GDP is measured for its GDP as a growth. The composition of GDP is not at least in public domain. So you do not know which sectors of Mumbai are growing faster. Manufacturing is lagging, whether it's retail that is growing faster, whether it is IT is growing faster, or financial services are growing faster. That kind of things are not available. So one can attempt that that is also brought into the monitoring process. And the real estate. How is real estate operating? Whether the total quantum of flow space that is built in Mumbai has a secular trend of growth, or whether it keeps on fluctuating with market cycles. It's by common reading and observing in newspapers, one gets a feeling that Mumbai's real estate is becoming cyclical. It's not a continuous growth. And what these cycles are, and how do they operate? That kind of information is not available. Then the last two ones are, of course, mundane in the sense continuously measuring how much of development plan is getting implemented every year. And what are the financial resources that are deployed to do this implementation? So you have a track going on in terms of what's happening. And then we are saying that every five years you should take a stock of those things and if you require change the plan. Because plan is not based on complete knowledge of future. Of course, nobody can have that complete knowledge. And it is also not a prescriptive plan. I'll come to that, what I mean by prescriptive plan. So that needs monitoring and adjustment more frequently because things are changing faster than they used to. So therefore, you can't have a fixed 20 year plan and hope that everything will follow in the same lines. What I mentioned in terms of prescriptive, I think I must caution that this plan, Town Plan, is not a design. It's not an architectural engineering design. Once architect designs a building and he tells the contractor this is how it should be done then that is how it shall be done. So it's more in the nature as thou shalt. Plan is not like that. Plan is creating a framework which allows many things to operate and go ahead. So unfortunately or fortunately most planners come from architectural and engineering background. And therefore, they again there is a mismatch in terms of conception that in the plan or the master plan or development plan, you are not creating a design which has to be implemented. You are creating a framework in which many forces, many activities, many sectors have to contribute and develop the city. So that understanding again is important. Okay, that is in terms of background of what the development plan is. If there are questions, I can take them, few of them and then move to presentation. And therefore, how much crucial information is actually expected to be over? I'll describe that. The first exercise was to carry out an existing land use plan. And this existing land use plan was placed on the DMC website, displayed on the walls, et cetera. So many people had to look at that and many of them brought up inaccuracies in the plan honestly. In Mumbai, there are something like 1,27,000 land parcels. People pointed out inaccuracies in case of 5,000 land parcels. And out of that, the real inaccuracies were in 500 land parcels. So those have been corrected. So that is the first step in terms of dealing with people, what is being done. The second was what was called preparatory studies. And this document was also released in public domain. And on the basis of this document, many schematic workshops were there. It was presented in large gallery and then many NGOs offered to conduct schematic workshops on each of those. So a number of such workshops were conducted. And many recommendations or suggestions came in. Again, the expectation was that everything that was recommended must find a place in Delhi. Now that is not possible, I'll give you a simple example. That the slum dwellers said that on our slum, there is a reservation of a garden. And we live in that area. And the redevelopment is not possible because that garden cannot be removed. You know, the imposition of a garden cannot be removed. The friends of trees, open space enthusiasts, they said, no, nothing of this should be done. All garden and open space reservations must be maintained. Now the planners have to choose one of them. You can't have both. And that happens in many cases. Plus, of course, there are many things which are not within the scope of development plan. So those also have to remain peripheral. So they have not been important. And once the plan was done, the plan partly has to be a little bit of secret because you are affecting individual property. You can't be very participate away at the last end of the planning process. Because we were going to say, this open land is going to be for open space, garden and so on. Now if you start telling that, can I put the garden on your place or you do a good something else, you know? That's not going to be helpful. So it has to be done in one shot. And now it is open for people that it's a report. This is 500 page document. It's a development control regulation that another 200 page document. And there are two sets of plan. Each set has 168 or 65 sheets. And one set is about the proposed land use which gives you the land use zoning and the areas designated for reserve for public property. And the second set tells you what the FSI is going on. For each parcel. Now even the parcel numbers, it goes down to the parcel number. You can see your server number on the map and understand how much energy. Or what can be done. If the plot is small, you can't see that. So you have to do magnifying class. So that is how it will be done. Is this data going to be given in digital form? No, it is double-column on the website. No, it is double-column. Well, it's not the right one. What I'm saying is PDF files. No, CDs are also available. No, PDF files are images. It's not something that I can clearly do in questioning. Why can't we have some shape? That is coming up. I think they have announced. But it's not yet in full form. So you can go to that and put your suggestion on the site of the website. So you have that. But what you are saying, wave-enabled GIS should be used. I think that's the best way to do it. It's not very, very good with that. But best way to do it, if all voice could be shared, then it becomes far more open. See, that risk is there. If somebody tampers your file, that's what you do. That is where they have gone more cautiously with PDF files. But if we have to add it with sort of protection and stuff like that, somebody can produce your files. There are already those kinds of problems. You have mentioned about competitiveness of cities. Along with that, I think the doctor talks about inclusiveness and sustainability. I think before we get to the details, could you elaborate on this? See, actually, these three goals are underlying goals for almost all of them. The entire development process is underpinning of these three. It's a competitive economic growth, inclusive growth, and the environmental system. Now, what the development plan could do about this is that you create a framework where the real estate also starts operating competitively, which has, therefore, some price advantage in terms of competitiveness, which today Mumbai doesn't have. Mumbai, in fact, has priced itself out. And at one stage, in the last couple of years, of course, the real estate prices in terms of office rentals have gone down. But at one stage, Mumbai's real estate office rentals were almost competing with those of New York. Only London and Tokyo were higher than Mumbai. So Mumbai was virtually pricing in terms of prices. And also in terms of, so Mumbai was trying to save very low-quality urban at a very high price. And that is not being very complicated. So the development plan is right to address those in a limited sense, that you have a development permission process which reduces transaction time and cost. It allows FSI regime, which allows market to operate more competitively. And therefore, the prices could become competitive. There is a great provision for inclusionary housing in the provision. So every private development will have to provide for inclusionary housing provision. So that is towards inclusiveness. And it has also included in the development control regulation a separate section on regulations for helping the physically challenged in the building. So that is one element of the inclusiveness toward the physically challenged. And then with a set of environmental regulations which are also separately done, which are not very great or very innovation. But whatever has been there has been put together, like the rainwater harvesting, use of solar energy for water heating, green water harvesting, the water recycling, those sort of things have been put together as a part of the development control regulation. So those are the more modest efforts towards those three goals that shall be put in. Sir, in the beginning, you mentioned that the development plan is more about land use and building construction, mainly. But in the EP, it also covers infrastructure issues like water supply, drainage, waste management, and so on. One thing I found missing was the energy component. Is there any reason why the energy, especially looking at the environmental sustainably point of view, the energy was sort of missing, the component was missing in that? Part of the reason is that even water, the storage, sanitation have been mentioned by way of information. They have not been directly addressed by the development plan. Whatever is currently being done by the municipal corporation has been summarized and mentioned there. Mainly to say that enough is lined up for water so that the 14 million projected population can be provided with water. But it's not a plan that does the water. And energy is not covered because even if you cover that, the decision making is not within the realm of who implement the development plan. It neither will be ensign nor with the Arbore Development Department of the State. So, I think my personal experience is that you can write anything in the plan. But if it is not within the government structure, then it gets done. In the regional plan which we did in 1996, we had put in that the free housing for slum dwellers and the free being made by loading the cost from the new home buyers is not a financially sustainable model and that should not be the case. Arbore Development Department approved the report. But the housing department didn't care to look at that. So, I think there are limitations in terms of what we do given the governance to be moved to presentation. I'll do the RA first, which is a short one, and then we can... Thing that has to be done. But if you're looking at future, then there lies one opportunity. That is how it has been. So, it can cater basically to emerging new economic activities and particularly where the economy is going to move from manufacturing to services to knowledge. That seems to be the path of growth. So, therefore, we need to have some institutions of excellence and other things. What can we do for that? If we look at the history that in the pre-independence era, you had Ballard State and Fort area developing for financial services of that era as well as some professional services, et cetera. And the land was essentially publicly owned. Ballard State is owned by Fort and the Fort was owned in a way through the improvement trust. In the 60s and 70s, you had Wagner Reclamation, which was essentially catering to the new corporate sector activities coming up in the middle. Then in the 90s and 2000, you moved the focus to Bandra Kurla complex, where it was essentially for the new emerging financial services. And what is interesting about Bandra Kurla is it was initially conceived in 1973 for the purposes of decongesting Fort area. And the first idea was that the textile markets, Mujizetha, et cetera, should be moved to Bandra Kurla complex. And in fact, the plans were done. Some civil work was also started, but nothing happened. And in post-91 period, when it was realized that the financial services are going to have spurred, it was changed to cater to the growing financial services. Again, the importance is that Bandra Kurla was essentially a government-owned land. So in these kind of cycles of economic growth and change, the experience shows that the publicly owned land becomes very critical, because privately owned land is looking at quick things which are easily done. Malls can be done on private land. But if you want to develop a new financial district, then you have to plan and use public land for those kinds of purposes. Therefore, in future, if Mumbai is hoping to capture the new opportunities for economic growth, the opportunity lies only in our area because that is a large publicly owned land. There are many examples how opportunities have been lost in the past. This Indian School of Business went to Hyderabad, Indian School of IIHS, Indian Institute of Human Settlement went to Bangalore. There is no urban planning. I mean, CUs is there, but there is no sort of institute of urban studies in Mumbai. You know, Mumbai is one of the most complex cities in the world, and there is no dedicated institution which devotes to looking at urban issues. So, there is a problem in terms of providing for institutional growth in Mumbai, and whether city wants to use RA for that purpose. You know, those are the questions and the directions to opportunity. Similarly, what has been planned here is that major cultural and open space facilities having area more than eight hectares and how are they distributed? Most of them are in the island city. As compared to that, these suburbs don't have, and now suburbs have something like three times the island city's population. So, if you look at RA's context, then it is well located. There are roads and other connectivity between east and the west, and RA is situated right in the middle. JVLR is there, and there is a planned Goregaum-Moulon-Ling Road also. There's dotted line there. There is a, this road exists, but that could be also used that passes to RA colony, and the metro is going to terminate in RA. Now, that itself has become very controversial, but if that metro has to terminate there, that is one more opportunity because you have a metro station making the area accessible to entire south boundary. So, area that is currently available is about 1000 hectares. Out of that, industrial use is 1.5 percent, and the rest of the area is largely vacant. There is 4 percent residential development as well. This is, of course, the terrain and other characteristics of the area. Now, people are saying that this is a no-development zone. Now, one has to look at what is permissible in the no-development zone as of now. This is the list of activities which are permissible in the no-development zone. So, it's not a real no-development zone. So, you can have amusement park and golf courses there, if that is what you want. So, retaining is a no-development zone is not a solution if you really want to preserve it as biodiversity sensitive area. And because of this, there are a lot of small pockets which have been diverted for a variety of reasons, without being noticed in the way. So, all these areas now, this is the area which is already used, the lower blue corner. Royal palms are located within originally RA area. Pin cities within original RA area. IGDIR is also in the RA area. And on the periphery, you are also having a lot of slums coming there. So, all these orange pockets are these slums. So, in a way, RA needs to be what the commissioner used the word, needs to be hard-coded in terms of land use. And not just call it as no-development zone and leave it to future in terms of what happens there. So, what has been proposed? Roads will take away about 10% of that 1,000 hectare area. Open spaces will 61%, all these green areas which are shown here. 9% is an institutional, that red area. 4% for rehabilitation of slums, et cetera, which are within RA. And these pockets, there are two of these pockets, one near the terminal and one near the Western Expressway. Together accounting for 9%.