'Wrong findings will lead to flaws in planning'
A flawed survey of the city's existing land use (ELU) might have a serious impact on the city's future growth and developments, believe experts.
A flawed survey of the city's existing land use (ELU) might have a serious impact on the city's future growth and developments, believe experts.
A study conducted by the Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) has found out that there are at least 1,200 instances of mismatches between satellite imagery, the 1991 development plan and the city's ELU survey.
The ELU doesn't mention if these are just errors or sanctioned modifications. Many believe that such ambiguity might lead to suspicions that of these 1,200, the ELU's mistakes might end up regularising the illegalities since the '91 development blueprint. For instance, the loss of a vast amount of mangroves and mudflats has raised questions about the findings.
The survey studying the city's land use simply mentions the current use of plots in the city now. This needs to be correlated with the city's blueprint.
"They should be correlating the ELU data to see if the development plan has been modified and plan ahead," said Pankaj Joshi, executive director, UDRI.
Urban planner Neera Adarkar said, "The ELU survey is one of the most crucial steps in revising the city's development blueprint and planning for the future."
Deepali Mody, a UDRI director who conducted the study along with director Omkar Gupta, said that going ahead with such a flawed survey would be detrimental.
"This survey is the basis for the city's plans for the next 20 years. Taking this survey ahead will mean using flawed information in planning."
For instance, if the civic body's survey wrongly marks a space as an open space, the planning based on such a survey would be flawed.
"Those near the area wrongly marked as an open space will miss out on one they deserve," Mody said.
A senior civic official from the development plan department said that the consultant had not correlated the survey data with the DP.
"It is not possible to correlate the data of every plot with its DP reservations. Hence, we have correlated the data at a zonal level. Hence, there might be so inconsistencies at the micro level."