Master plan for Tamil Nadu coming soon

[Mad Indian]

Master plan for Tamil Nadu coming soon - The Times of India

CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government has decided to roll out a master plan soon for the state with a view to reining in haphazard development.

The massive exercise, covering 1.24 lakh sqkm, will adhere to the norms prescribed by the Urban Development Plans Formulation and Implementation (UDPFI) and will be designed to cater to the needs of the state over the next 30 years, sources said. The plan will, however, exclude the Chennai Metropolitan Area and regions where master plans were released in the last 10 years. The Directorate of Town and Country Planning (DTCP) is the nodal agency for implementing the project.

As it is a complex task, the DTCP will outsource some work to universities, notably Anna University, which has a department specializing in town planning. Spread over three years, the project, in the first year, will cover about 8,000sqkm of urban areas like corporations, municipalities, and town panchayats, and the adjoining village panchayats.



Another 17,000 sq km will be covered in the second year, by which time, it is expected that more than 3,000 sq km area - about three times the size of CMA - will be earmarked for residential use alone. The forest cover and agricultural fields will be covered in the final phase.

It will be a blueprint for not only distribution of land use, but also creation of physical infrastructure like roads, water supply, sewerage, drainage, power and solid waste management; social infrastructure like educational facilities, health care, socio-cultural centres, police stations and fire service; and recreational and traffic and transportation facilities. It is expected to put an end to large-scale conversion of agricultural fields into residential lay-outs by realty firms to cash in on an engineered real estate boom and the government's tolerance to such mediocrity.

Unscientific planning had led to flooding of many residential areas in the past."The master plan will facilitate greenfield development in virgin lands without ravaging the rural landscape. It will provide solutions to the developmental logjam witnessed in most cities in Tamil Nadu and will also prevent misuse of land," said a planner.

"Planned development prevents scattering of infrastructure and fragmentation of agricultural land and habitats. It improves connectivity and allays disparity in support systems and infrastructure. More important, it also reduces the cost of infrastructure like roads, water supply and sanitation," opined G Dattatri, a leading retired urban planner.

However, he cautioned such a complex task should not be carried out in a hurry. "The first master plan for Chennai was mooted in the general town planning scheme way back in 1920. But it could be released only in 1975. Apart from universities, the DTCP should engage internationally renowned planners also in the exercise," he noted.