BENGALURU: The budgets for the Bengaluru East City Corporation (BECC) and Bengaluru Central City Corporation (BCCC) individually announced the setting up of an Urban Design Cell, comprising an urban planner, a transport expert and an urban designer, with BECC setting aside Rs 50 lakh towards it. While the Corporations claimed that this marks a paradigm shift in how we design, upgrade, and build roads, public spaces, and traffic systems in Bengaluru, urban experts opined that they should be functioning independently without any political interference.
Mobility expert from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Prof Ashish Verma, welcoming the urban design cell, said, “The cells must be free and fair in functioning. If the focus of the cell is on road infrastructure like tunnel road, double-decker flyover and flyovers, then the very purpose of the cell is defeated. If it is influenced by political bosses, we will just be going back to square one and achieving nothing”.
He said that Bengaluru has enough data-driven projects and scientific evidence in urban planning and they were just ignored because of political interference.
Joining him, civic activist and convener, Citizens’ Agenda for Bengaluru, Sandeep Anirudhan said, “Bengaluru’s greatest crisis is unplanned development, which has steadily eroded its liveability. This stems from a lack of institutional planning capacity.
There is no functional Metropolitan Planning Committee (MPC), and the city lacks adequate urban planners, transport planners, and regional planners, as well as urban designers. A city of this scale requires hundreds of such professionals, not just to plan, but also to oversee implementation. Yet, beyond a token mention of an Urban Design Cell, there is no serious vision or commitment to building this capacity.”
He said, “Technology initiatives to make services transparent and interconnected are a welcome step forward. However, the budget fails to address the city’s most fundamental challenges.”