Semi-urban areas planned around Bengaluru: Tushar Girinath
BENGALURU: Tushar Girinath, Chief Commissioner, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagar Palike (BBMP), said on Wednesday that semi-urban areas are being planned in the surrounding areas of the city with an aim to address the growing challenges of administration, transport and solid waste management, among others.Participating in a webinar titled ‘ESG Imaginaries to Make Cities Work - Day 4: Making Cities Of The 21st Century Inclusive’, Girinath said that unlike in the past, it is not possible to set up huge industries now.
The commissioner said that solid waste management and managing sewage treatment plants will be decentralised. He also said that another challenge for the government in the future will be to address people’s growing demand for taxation to be reinvested in their areas.
Girinath said that if more people take part in democratic functioning, the assets (government’s property) will be owned and managed by people.“Like we have ward committees now, the democratic participation will work in the same way,”he said.He also mentioned the threshold levels of Bengaluru and said no city can be managed if it grows beyond a certain point.
Carol Upadhya, Head, Urban and Mobility Studies Programme, NIAS, Naresh Narasimhan, Principal Architect, V A Group, among others took part in the discussion and expressed their views on making the city sustainable in the future.
Carol Upadhya mentioned the importance of urban activism in terms of stalling some projects that may clash with the environment and recalled Bengaluru’s agitation which resulted in the government dropping the steel bridge project. Naresh Narasimhan pointed out that most of the time discussions are held only after a project is executed. The webinar was organised by Environment Support Group (ESG) and Habitat Forun (INHAF).