Open Communities

Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) is a Government body, in charge of aesthetic planning and design of the city of Bangalore. From time to time it has made residential lay outs with enough green area and other amenities like electricity, water and sanitation. Private developers and Industries also approach BDA for their requirements. The BDA has been allotting huge chunks of land normally at the outskirts of the city, at the time of allotting. Provision of amenities like green areas, are integral part of the BDA planning. The demands for schools colleges and hospitals are also accommodated at the time of layout formation. However demands for businesses like Hotels, Restaurants, and shops with moderate land requirements come up only as and when the communities grow up. BDA also reserves enough land for zonal government offices, commonly known as BDA complex of the open community.

The layouts known as Indiranagar, Defense colony, for example, were planned and executed by the BDA in 1967. In these lay outs one can observe wide roads (80,100 feet) are planned as extensions of the then existing arteries connecting them. The naming of these layouts and allotment of the sites for residential purposes suggests that they were classified as and deemed communities. The zone planning was limited to making the biggest residential sites along the widest roads. After 40 years these bigger plots are getting transformed to commercial use. Thanks BDA’s forethought of putting the biggest sites along widest of roads for this very possible future Transformation. This can be credited as Futuristic Zoning Concept.


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At this juncture there is an urgent need to have a re look at these open communities, for the purpose of organizing the increased city traffic efficiently. These wide roads which are supposed to be continuation of older arterial roads could be made one ways with lot of benefits. It would also be beneficial to consider closing too many road entries on to these arterial roads. The closure of these redundant entries would be welcome real estate addition for better civic use.