International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE) ISSN: 2277-3878, Volume-2, Issue-5, November 2013 Land Use Planning for Social Infrastructure in Bangalore Metropolitan Area: Issues and Policies S. Gopi Prasad, B. Shankar Abstract 1 - Spatial planning focuses on the balanced development of the urban areas. The balanced development necessitates physical, land use planning along with the provision of both physical and social infrastructure. The important services such as health and education are single most important services that determine the social development. The current system of master planning has attempted to provide for reservations of land use through designating it as Public and Semi-public land uses. This includes the category of “civic amenities” as stipulated by the development plan prepared by the Urban Development Authority. Provision of social infrastructure is important from the perspective of the Millennium Decade Goals for achieve the social sector goal. Further, the metholodological problems of arriving spatial equivalent of population per unit area as a mere provision of land use for social infrastructure may not fulfil the actual demands. The development of the land by providing a facility in consistent manner is a necessity. The paper discusses the effectiveness of land use reservations for civic amenities while implementing schemes of Master Plan for social infrastructure in the city of Bangalore. The paper attempts to define civic amenities within the planning framework, the regulations in support of the provision in the new areas and finally the implementation review of the earlier spatial documents. of physical infrastructure is not a sufficient goal. There is a need for a system enabling (a) a socio-economic environment that fosters innovation and investment, (b) effective delivery of public services of specified standards is assured for all including the poor, and (c) affordable housing for the poor is also assured2 (HPEC, 2011). Though, the Government of India’s policy emphasized for creation and management of social infrastructure on its own. In the 10th five year plan, there is a shift to include the role of private sector in these key social sectors. The majority in the delivery of social services is offered by specific government departments with the necessary specialisation. The creation of infrastructure for such delivery of services is guided by the respective plans. The services include electricity, water supply, sewage and drainage roads, public transportation, waste management from the most “physical infrastructure” side and education, health, security, postal services, community facilities from the “social infrastructure side”. The Master plans have designation of land uses such as Public and Semi Public land uses that comprises of various uses such as education, health, etc. Public facilities to include Central and State government offices, jail, Police stations, Post offices, Fire stations, cemetery, Semi public facilities to include Higher Educational and Medical institutions, Banks, LPG Godowns, Religious and Cultural Institutions, Community halls. The reservation of land and the space standards for such uses is based on population per unit. Some guidelines given by report 3 (2004) authored for recommending the amendments to the Town planning act in Karnataka’s proposes norms according to levels of population. Index of Terms- Civic Amenities, Public and Semi-Public, Land Use, Policy. I. BACKGROUND Spatial planning aims at creating sustainable planned communities being self sufficient, serving all the needs within the neighbourhoods and zones. To achieve this, various norms and standards have been drawn up, for the provision of social and physical infrastructure on the basis of population. The land use planning assists the provision by designating the specific land uses for the purposes. The geographical disposition of the amenities and social infrastructure contributes to the local urban structure and enhances the liveability of the areas. They often impact the land values and economic aspects of the area. At the city level, therefore the shaping of the city character is determined by the degree of provision of infrastructure and the delivery aspects, along with several other important aspects. This has also significant implications on the ranking of cities /benchmarking of the global cities. Table I: Space Standards for Educational Facilities Educational facilities Pre primary school Primary school, 500 pupils Secondary school, 1000 pupils School for handicapped, 400 pupils College, 1000-1500 students University campus Technical education centre, 500 students Engineering college, 1500 students Rapid growth and economic expansion in the country requires urban areas in India to play a supporting role in creating “inclusive societies”. The development must be balanced and equitable offering opportunities to the diverse population. The mere provision Medical college 2 Population per unit Area (incl. play ground) in hectare 2,500 7,500 0.45 1 to 1,25 Lakh - 0.08 0.4 1.6 0.5 4 10 10 lakh 4 - 60 30 including General hospital - HPEC Committee Report(2011), Ministry of Urban Development , Government of India, Pg 18 3 “Urbanisation Policy, Amendments to Town and Country Planning Act, Town Planning Manual and Urban Development Authorities” Report (2002), Director of Town Planning, Government of Karnataka. Manuscript received November, 2013. S. Gopi Prasad: Director, IDES Consulting Private Limited, Bangalore, Karnataka, India. Dr. B. Shankar: Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, Institute of Development Studies, University of Mysore, Mysore. 79 Land Use Planning for Social Infrastructure in Bangalore Metropolitan Area: Issues and Policies Table II: Space Standards for Health Facilities Health facilities Population per unit General hospital (500 beds) 2.5 lakh Intermediate hospital (200 beds) 1 lakh Intermediate hospital and maternity (50 beds) Policlinic with observation beds Nursing home, child welfare (25beds) Dispensary specific models either government /private or mix of Govt and private initiatives. The challenge of spatial plan is to enable delivery of services in both areas of planned and unplanned parts of the city. Area in hectare 6 (hospital building:4) 3.7 (hospital building:2.7) 2 (hospital building:0.6 ) 0.2-0.3 0.2-0.3 0.08-0.12 1 lakh 1 lakh 0.45 to 1 lakh 15,000 II. MOBILISATION OF LAND FOR PUBLIC AND SEMI-PUBLIC PURPOSE IN BANGALORE The geographical location of the facility becomes significant- the issues related to the provision of land at the right location become important. Conventionally the land demarcated for public and semi public uses need may either belong to the government or to the private sector. In case of Government, the transfer of land is matter of Governmental interdepartmental transfer. In case of land privately owned, the land for the amenities may be acquired through the eminent domain or as a part of the scheme. The acquisition may be taken up only on the land being demarcated for the public and semi public land use. The Private sector may be allowed for the development of the land use as per the stipulations of the regulations of development Plan. The reservation of land for the public use is in form of provisions of “civic amenities “under the provisions of the relevant Act. The master plans (earlier CDP) for Bangalore has focused on the physical infrastructure and land uses along with reservations leaving the aspects of education, health, others to the respective stakeholders for implementation. Table III: Space Standards for Other Facilities Other facilities Population per unit Area in hectare Community room Community all and library Recreational club Music dance and drama centre Meditation and spiritual centre Socio-cultural centre Fire-station Police station Police Post 5,000 15,000 1 lakh 1 lakh 1 lakh 1 lakh 2 lakh 0.9 lakh 0.3 to 0.5 lakh 0.06 0.2 1 0.1 0.05 15 1 1.5 0.16 On the other hand, the earlier Comprehensive Development Plan 2011 prepared by the BDA sets norms which are applicable for the development that taken up by both private and public sector. Table IV: Space Standards for Educational Facilities Educational facilities Nursery schools Basic and higher primary schools Population per unit Area in ha 1,000 0.2 3,500 to 4,500 1 Higher secondary schools 0,15 lakh 2 College 0,5 lakh 3 to 4 Medical facilities Dispensary 5,000 0.1 Health centre 0,2 lakh 0.4 Other facilities Post and telegraph 0,1 lakh 0.15 Police station 0,1 lakh 0.2 III. COMPREHENSIVE DEVELOPMENT PLAN The Comprehensive Development Plan(CDP) 1995 is an important starting point for the study on the realization of the social infrastructure. It must be remembered that the provision and facilitation of the social infrastructure through the CDP is highly limited as it covers only government provided facilities within the ambit of the civic amenities and designation of land use by public and semi public category. Further the plan has no bearing on the respective departmental plan for realization of the Civic amenity, in terms of size, land availability, cost, or time schedule. The sectoral approach is solely managed by the sectoral plans of the respective department. Within the land use plan, there are no further categories to designate the mandatory functions that need to be realized to service a specific urban area. The above services and their provision are carried out by both public and private sector players. Increasingly, the services of health and education are pre-dominantly by private sectors. Amongst the public players and their implementation and delivery of services are dictated by their respective plans and capacities. The mechanism for dovetailing the individual sector plans (health, education, etc.) and their implementation needs to be spelt out along with the spatial configuration of where the social infrastructure occurs. The designation of land use is the first step in achieving the necessary co-ordination and implementation. There are a number of stakeholders with their sectoral plans that needs to be tied together by the act of spatial planning with focus on the locating the facility suitably-by spatial logic, correspond to the population needs/demands, suitable business model for delivery with greater access and affordability. In the current context, private sectors as well as Non Government Organisations (NGOs) play an important role in provision and management of social infrastructure for which spatial plans need to be blended to accommodate these two sectors IV. PUBLIC AND SEMI-PUBLIC USES The larger social infrastructure creation, synergizing both private and public sector are covered in these category of the public and semi public uses. In this category, land use is designated without enabling the implementation of the same. For example a parcel of land in commercial area has been designated as public and semi public use. Either this land needs to be acquired by the designated authority or allow the private sector to realize the same. In a number of cases, the designation of the land to specific use dampens the marketable value of the site. A five year period is awaited without action, & thereby forcing a change of land use. The land use classification dampens the value and the potential of development of land unattractive to the private sector. The services and facilities that come under the public and semi public are marked on the Land use maps. These include the Government owned, Public sector established social infrastructure such as education, health, etc. Public 80 International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE) ISSN: 2277-3878, Volume-2, Issue-5, November 2013 facilities – Central and State government offices, jail, Police stations, Post offices, Fire stations, cemetery, Semi public facilities – Higher Educational and Medical institutions, Banks, LPG Godowns, Religious and Cultural Institutions, Community halls. The private sector social infrastructure ventures are completely left out of this category. As designated land will not enable to develop an alternate development on the same land. relinquished by the private developer to the BDA by land development. VI. LAND FOR CIVIC AMENITIES There are two operations that allow for creation of CA sites i.e; (a) While land is developed by the BDA in form of layouts. Currently a proportion of about 10 % of the total land developable is set aside for CA; while the sites are allotted immediately the CA sites remain with the authority to their discretion; (b) Private developers in formation of layouts or group housing projects above the specified size of land development have to reserve CA sites and relinquish the same to the authority before commencing work. These sites are under the Authority and their discretion; (c) As development rules specify the land component reserved for CA and as the legal development suffers from poor commercial exploitation, most developers tend to shy from the process. With the costs being passed on the end users and being land locked for number of years, the CA sites rarely service the actual needs of the end users; (d) As revenue layouts and other forms of non approved layouts form a majority of the development, rarely does one see any Civic Amenity site being reserved or handed over to the BDA. The actual realization of the civic amenities site can be very high compared to the present situation and together they present a lost opportunity for realizing revenues coupled with social objectives. Table V: Land Use of Bangalore Land Use Existing Land Use 2003 ( sq.km.) Percent Proposed Land Use 2011 ( sq.km.) Percent Residential Commercial Industrial Open Spaces Public and SemiPublic Uses Public Utilities Offices and Services Transport and Communication Unclassified Total Agriculture Land Lake and Tank Quarry Vacant Total 159.76 12.83 58.83 13.10 46.56 37.9 3.04 13.96 3.11 11.05 243.69 16.43 38.44 77.88 49.08 43.16 2.91 6.81 13.79 8.69 2.49 4.27 0.59 1.01 - 0.00 0.00 88.31 20.96 116.97 20.72 35.26 421.41 649.24 39.02 9.61 187.72 1307 8.37 100 22.14 564.63 3.92 100.00 The revised Master Plan 2015 stipulates the size of land area for development to 4000 sq. for the payment of fees to the authority in lieu of provision of civic amenity or open spaces. Where the land parcel is larger, the 5 % of the land area is to be reserved within the residential development plan 5 . For the civic amenities relinquished to BDA, the authority may handover the amenity site for the purpose of use to a resident’s association for maintenance. Source: Bangalore Development Authority, Bangalore In comparison to the CDP 1995, the Revised Master Plan digresses from the normal route of making reservations on private lands. The Public and semi public category restricts only to the government/ public facilities. It goes further to say that if the ownership of land is established to be that of the private, then the authority may allow for the land use that the plot as its neighbour. The total allocation of land use for public and semi-public land use in the revised master plan 2015 4 is about 3765.27 ha or 37.65 sq.km (forming 3.08 % of the total area.) This also marks the shift in thinking that reservations are effective, when there are proper implementation mechanisms supporting it. VII. PROCESS OF ALLOTMENT The civic amenities sites that were developed BDA are allotted by the BDA to those institutions which are recognized by the society for public development work. Usually they include institutions that are registered as societies that are charitable or philanthropic. In the absence of application from the these institutions certain reserved sites will be allotted by the BDA to second specified category of institutions on lease bases for the purpose of providing the civic amenities in that particular area. V. CIVIC AMENITIES The civic amenities as defined by the Bangalore Development Authority Act (BDA) 1976 has elaborate procedures on what constitutes a suitable purpose for realization and eligibility on the Civic Amenities (CA) site. Historically, these sites are allocated to institutions that meet the criteria of allotment and this is limited as they do not follow the larger logic of servicing the urban area. A very small percentage of the land has been utilized by the other governmental departments through CA sites. Transition of developed areas into the hands of the urban local bodies has not witnessed any utilization of civic amenities sites for urban management purposes. The definition of the civic amenities within the CDP is restricted to the land component that is reserved/created by BDA’s layout development process or by the land that is VII. HOW LAND FOR THE SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE IS PROVIDED FOR? The Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) is restricted to the CA sites and allotment to the “institutions” namely (a) Government departments such as Karnataka Housing board, Karnataka slum clearance board, Urban local bodies, KIADB (b) Private sector planned developments both approved and un approved (c) Private land that is converted land being put to use for commercial viable social infrastructure and (d) Transformation of Building use – from residential to commercial ventures 5 The residential development Plan is defined by the size of plot over 20000 sq.m of area and 12,000 sq.m for the non-residential development plan. 4 The data for proposed P&SP is not given in any public document of the RMP 2015. The value is computed from the land use maps by the author . 81 Land Use Planning for Social Infrastructure in Bangalore Metropolitan Area: Issues and Policies which include social infrastructure in high density areas. The educational institutes have moved away to the far locations of the city. Agricultural land is often taken up for the development as the government supply is few. As to the hospitals, the change of land use to the commercial category is made. IX. DISTRIBUTION OF PUBLIC AND SEMI-PUBLIC LAND IN MASTER PLAN Based on the occurrence of the amenities that come under the civic amenities category located on the designated public and semi public land uses in the Plan, a comparison is made. For this purpose, the existing land use survey map data is superimposed on the designated P&SP land uses. The distribution in the erstwhile CMC 6 areas are shown below: VIII. STAKEHOLDERS The main stakeholders for the provision of education and health are private and public players. While the public players are the various departments, the private players include the following; these have varied business models and objectives though with similar goal to include ( a) Non Profit Organisations and NGOs (b) Individual investors and developers and (c) Corporate bodies involved in the ventures of social infrastructure. A. Non-Profit Organisations and NGOs The NGO sector covers small to large organizations who depend funding from wide variety of sources including that of domestic /foreign and religious donations and who are focused on delivery of services. The smaller ones tend to keep the capital expenditure low as they cannot afford for land costs. The main areas of operation and management include the health and education sector. They tend to be located within high density, poor areas as there is target audience is located there. The CDP civic amenities can cater to the groups. Private land supply needs recognition in form of incentives. Chart 1: Distribution of Land It is observed that about 900 ha of amenities (health and education, etc) are developed independent of the land use zoning for this area. B. Individual Investors and Developers Individuals are interested in commercially viable social infrastructure projects such as petrol pumps, polyclinics, kalyana mantaps, banks, etc. These thrive on low cost of land or opportunities to self develop/joint venture and population in the immediate surroundings. Sizes of the land are not very large (maximum 1 to 2 acres). The delay in development completely in the formal layouts enables these developments to be developed in the private properties mainly on main roads. Though socially relevant, they can cause damage to the liveability of an area, regulations on the size, location, solid waste management, parking needs to be imposed. Typologically, they are located on the fringe of the developments, on the corridors and new developed areas. Transformation within the areas needs to be promoted with careful urban regulation on parking, size, and solid waste management. Amenities Implemented in Proposed P&SP Area in Ha 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 Implemented Vacant Amenities implemented out side the proposed P&SP C. Corporate Bodies Involvement in Ventures of Social Infrastructure. The Corporate Bodies are interested in creation and management of commercially viable social infrastructure facilities and they operating on business model that they are interested land supply with clear titles and locations ideal for serving middle to high class of the society. Since, their operations and expansion require a scale, quantum of land is critical. The two variations in this segment is that of “chaining “and stand alone large campus. As an industry, they are in position to avail the government land or private land. Incentives for moving in first in new extensions can be promoted by providing both /or land availability and enhanced development rights. 350 300 Area in Ha 250 200 150 Amenities implemented out side the proposed P&SP 100 50 0 6 The 6 CMCs and 1 TMC were merged to form the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike in the year 2007. 82 International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE) ISSN: 2277-3878, Volume-2, Issue-5, November 2013 IX. ISSUES b) Facilitating developers to retain the portion of CA or whole CA site to use for their purpose and developing the same to required facility for the areas. c) Flexible arrangement to enable the private sector to put the reserved site to a socially relevant venture. d) To undo the method of relinquishment of the CA site to BDA and realize revenue from the same. In case of large urban projects, BDA can retain a portion of land component rights for development. e) Shift focus from land supply to development rights to facilitate realization of the amenities. f) Setting strategy /zoning strategy for the locating the social infrastructure- according to the scale. g) Three concepts of proximity, accessibility, population and urban structure of the areas can be considered. The urban structure involves the delineation of area such as old (villages), sparsely developed areas and new extensions. Each of these needs to be elaborated for specific social infrastructure. h) Urban regulations are concerned; each of the social infrastructure components has key dependencies on the urban structure and form. The main components are parking, waste management, building byelaws, etc., to be defined further. i) Tax breaks and incentives can be lent to organizations that cater to the 100 % compliance of regulations within the old areas and new areas such solid /biological waste management, parking, building byelaws, etc. j) Those norms are just indicatives and shall not be considered as compulsory. They are just guidelines to be adapted to the urban situation characterised by density, size of the town or area, importance of day population compared to night population. Have also to be taken into account the implementation in dedicated building or in mix-use buildings or the participation of the community in the management. k) It may be worthwhile to investigate this matter fully to ascertain whether the provision of land or the setting of space standards has relevance to the delivery of services in an affordable manner and the investment made on land does increase the prices of delivery. These are main observations on the social infrastructure: a) New areas are urbanised as extensions, the existing village level facilities do not match with the new requirements. The old facilities are absorbed by the Urban Local Bodies. Up gradation is necessary. b) Due to the need for facilities – new private facilities mushroom around these areas. Apart from demand, there is also the fact that the new urbanized areas do have affordability but lack support infrastructure such as sewerage, solid waste management systems. c) The new private facilities are not found on the public or semi-public designated land use as there are no obvious benefits for the ventures to be sited. A few of the large facilities have followed the direction of the CA which have been purely incidental, such as being non-profit organisation or trust. (most of the NGO’s and others find the cost of land as steep for implementation). This is purely from the land component consideration. d) Existing residential uses which have demand, allow for transformation into the health and educational facilities. Such private facilities rarely have a desired sanitation system, water supply or any basic services for disposal of solid and biological wastes. e) There is a serious mismatch between the planning of one agency to another in terms of co-ordination and implementation. f) Government departments set up their institutions for providing social infrastructure facilities whenever there are funds allocated for capital expenditure. g) The setting up of the hospitals is carried out by the respective department on government land or civic amenity land available within the BDA. h) Government departments with responsibility of setting up the facilities face challenges in obtaining land from the open market as the cost of land at market value is very high. i) Land availability is not restricted to BDA alone, parallel supply from the other government departments and private land dilute the planning efforts of being precise in the development plan. Lack of co-ordination and sequencing leads to the poor utilisation of land designated for social infrastructure. j) Socially relevant commercial ventures such as Kalyana Mantaps are rarely treated within the Comprehensive Development Plan; they are heavy traffic generators and solid waste generators. k) On handing over of the BDA layouts to the urban local bodies, yet continues to hold on to the Civic Amenities sites. The focus of larger public interest is lost. XI. CONCLUSION The Paper highlights the need for widening the scope of the spatial planning and the process of earmarking areas within the land use planning for the realisation of the social infrastructure. It is not only sufficient provide land uses, but also create the linkage between the space standards, the designation of land uses, identification of the stakeholders for implementation and finally consistent implementation mechanism. The options available for the social infrastructure include the active role of private and public players in implementation. The geographic locations, such as the inner city, the periphery needs different policy and implementation interventions. Incentives and friendly tax instruments can be devised to actively promote and facilitate the development of social infrastructure. The space standards can be utilised as a guideline in order to respond to the dynamics of the city development. In the scenario of the Government being the provider, it is possible to envisage a spatial plan which is guided and be able to guide, on the basis of detailed plans of the sectors. Often the sectoral plans are not devised to communicate with the spatial plan and co-ordination problem incapacitate the function of spatial plan. X. POLICY OPTIONS a) To use the reservation of the civic amenities to help interconnectivity of the layouts, developing sustainable neighbourhood social infrastructure. 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Millenium Development goals, UNDP, http://www.beta.undp.org/india/en/home/mdgoverview.html accessed on 20 November 2011, 16:55 hrs [8]. UNECE (2000). UNECE Strategy for Sustainable Quality of Life in Human Settlements in the Twenty-first Century (HBP/1999/4/Rev.1). UNECE, Geneva. [9]. 3iNetwork (2006), “Indian Infrastructure Report 2006- Urban Infrastructure”, Oxford University Press. [10]. 3iNetwork (2009), “Indian Infrastructure Report 2009, Land—A Critical Resource for Infrastructure”, Oxford University Press. S.Gopi Prasad received B.Arch degree in 1995 from MNIT, Jaipur and Master of Urban Design in 1999 from School of Architecture and Planning , N.Delhi. He is currently heading the urban practice in ides consulting private limited. His research interests include decision support, infrastructure development, spatial/land use planning and legislation. B. Shankar received the B.E. degree in Civil Engineering in 1984, M.U.R.P degree in Urban and Regional Planning in 1989 and Ph.D. degree in Urban and Regional Planning in 1997 from the University of Mysore, Mysore. He is working as Associate Professor in Urban and Regional Planning at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Mysore, Mysore. His research interests include Urban Planning, Spatial and Land Use Planning, Community Development, Heritage Conservation, and Planning Legislation. 84