CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government is planning the vertical growth of Chennai as it plans to increase the floor space index, the ratio of land area to built-up space, along with the Chennai Metro Rail corridor. This was disclosed by Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam after inaugurating Statecon-2018 organised by Confederation of Real estate Developers Association of India (CREDAI) on Friday.
His statement comes as the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) is set to notify national transit-oriented development (TOD) policy and make it part of the master plan.TOD promotes densification in the influence area by providing higher floor area ratio (FAR)/ floor space index (FSI) and higher population and job density as compared to the area around and beyond the influence areas. To ensure sustainable development, the minimum FAR should be 300-500 pc and can be higher, depending on the city size. This will promote the higher concentration of people within the walking distances of a transit station, thereby increasing the ridership of the public transport and resulting in increased fare revenue, pollution and congestion reduction.
It is learnt that the Chennai Metro Rail Ltd (CMRL) has been battling with the CMDA for years to increase the floor space index (FSI) where the Metro Rail would ply. The current FSI stands at 1.5.
As per the national TOD policy, the cities should fix a minimum percentage (30% or higher) of allowed FSI for affordable housing (for example, up to 60 sq.mt. area) in all development/redevelopment in the influence zones.
New GO
The Deputy CM released a GO wherein developers who want to resize apartments don’t have to place the revised plans before the government. They can now be directly approved by the CMDA.
CREDAI represented that the changing dynamics and market conditions are forcing developers to re-size the apartments and also certain changes in respect of plot coverage, other minor modifications and corrections.