[Jai]

Dharavi getting crowded with makeover plans

An alternative plan has been proposed because experts fear the first one could overcongest the area

DNA Mumbai Epaper 14 March 2007
Gurbir Singh
Mumbai



THE STATE seems to have decided on a relook at the makeover plan for Dharavi, home to 6 lakh people and the largest slum pocket in the city, following fears that the previously proposed plan may overcongest the 216-hectare central Mumbai district.

Additional Chief Secretary in Charge of Urban Development Ramanand Tiwari said that besides the new plan that they were thinking of, there was also the possibility of a third alternative, which would be a combination of the old and new proposals.

One of the new proposals under consideration is to get developers to build more commercial and office space instead of resi dential structures.

This will also give higher returns to builders, Tiwari said.

The plan now under consideration proposes low-density rehabilitation for slumdwellers in groundplus-three or plus-four buildings. According to the plan, developers in Dharavi will be given development rights equivalent to 40 per cent of the floor space index (FSI) of the rehabilitation construction from which they will earn their profits. The first proposal spoke of 130 per cent development rights.

FSI is the ratio of total space on all floors of a building to the land area of the plot on which construction is undertaken. The government has cleared an FSI of 4 as a special case for Dharavi, and has invited objections and suggestions as per town planning norms before it is integrated into the Development Control Rules (DCR). The prevailing FSI in the island city is 1.33.

The new plan, recently presented before a high-power committee of secretaries, was developed by the Kamala Raheja School of Architecture and Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT), Ahmedabad.

It proposes just 14 per cent of Dharavi's land be put up for commercial sale, with ground-plus-15 structures housing the saleable component.

“If the state adopts the original plan, the density will go beyond that of Hong Kong. This is not sustainable,” said Uppal Sharma, Dean of CEPT’s School of Planning, the students of which came up with the alternative model.

Dharavi has a density of 600-700 housing units per hectare. Town planners peg the tolerance ceiling at 500. “The old proposal would have pushed density to 1,700 units per hectare,” Sharma added.

Tiwari said they were also considering the proposal made by the two schools of architecture.

“We could finally also have a mix of both the old plan developed by Mukesh Mehta and the new,” Tiwari said.