Mumbai’s experiments with affordable homes

Mumbai has just unveiled its Development Plan (DP) for the period 2014-2034 recognising the need for reservation and town-planning for affordable housing.

Image for representational purpose only.

Mumbai has just unveiled its Development Plan (DP) for the period 2014-2034 recognising the need for reservation and town-planning for affordable housing.

This is important for a city that has the dubious distinction of housing the largest slum population in the country. It also has important takeaways for other creaking cities.

For the first time in town-planning history, Mumbai’s new plan DP-2034 includes a vision statement for creating 10 lakh housing units through a new category of land reservation — Affordable Housing (AH). To create this new housing stock, the plan suggests opening up 3,300 hectares (ha) earlier designated as No-Development Zones (NDZ).

These include 130 ha of salt pans, 1,100 ha of tourism zones and 2,100 ha of privately owned lands in the hands of various trusts and individuals.

The recognition of affordable housing in the town-planning process is a tribute to the persistent demands by citizens groups for finding a solution to the housing problem, and not leaving it to market forces alone.That said Mumbai still has a long way to go before ‘affordable housing’ becomes a genuine alternative for the masses living in hovels today.

On the ground, the Mumbai plan has identified only a few small pockets of land in the city clearly demarcated as ‘affordable housing’ reservations. These will yield just 25,000 housing units.

UNLOCKING NDZ LANDS

For the main chunk of 3,300 ha of NDZ land there is no clear reservation for the ‘affordable’ category. What the government hopes to do is to use a ‘market’ tool to entice the largely private landholders with additional development rights. Instead of the normal 0.2 FSI (floor space index) available for NDZ land, those offering their land for affordable housing will be given 3.0 FSI (FSI or FAR is the ratio of the built up area allowed in proportion to the size of the plot, that is, an FSI of 2.0 on a plot of 1,000 metres means a builder can construct 2,000 metres of sellable space.

The incentive: if the landholder surrenders 66 per cent of his NDZ plot for affordable housing, he will be allowed free development for any other use for the remaining 34 per cent and given 3.0 FSI for the whole plot. If he doesn’t, the old NDZ norm of 0.2 FSI will apply. History has shown such incentives rarely work.

Sadly, the government has ignored the vast potential for developing affordable housing through redevelopment projects on slum lands and under-utilised, decrepit government colonies. In these lands and colonies that would have been reserved for ‘affordable housing’, focused development by government agencies will not only rehabilitate the original inhabitants, but will generate housing for other poor and middle class families too.

Plans submitted by citizens groups to the government show that if redevelopment of the 3,000 ha slum land and the 2,000 ha of government land is earmarked for affordable housing, it is possible to construct 9 lakh affordable units (in the range of 300-700 sq ft per unit). This will wipe out the entire housing deficit in the city.

PLAYING WITH FSI

It is a deeply entrenched myth that for crowded cities where land is scarce, the solution is to go vertical. The town-planning tool thereby adopted is to indiscriminately hike FSI and allow more built up area on each plot as a solution for growth. The danger is if infrastructure and transport facilities don’t match, the result is urban anarchy and vertical slums.

Unfortunately, the Mumbai DP is treading the same road having hiked the FSI for the island city to 3.0 from the earlier 1.33 and for the suburbs to 2.5 from the previous norm of 1.0.Transit Oriented Development with higher FSI of up to 5.0 for the dense transport corridors, which was rejected by independent town planners and citizens groups in the earlier draft development plan, has been re-introduced in the new DP 2034. This is another step towards irrational densification of Mumbai.

Areas around existing railway stations are already bursting at its seams. Arriving and exiting from stations is a currently a nightmare for the city’s seven million daily commuters. In areas, where traffic movement and dispersal is poor, can we imagine the devastating impact of new, soaring buildings coming up in these dense zones?There is a lot to learn for other cities from Mumbai’s experiments with affordable housing; but, many of the measures adopted are a surrender to the builders lobby and should be rolled back.