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.

Impact of gated Communities on Bangalore city Development

Gated communities prevent public access around the clock, to their own private land. Fulbright Scholar Renaud LE GOIX Examines Gated Communities in Southern California in a theses submitted by him in July 2003. These gated communities include their own private utilities like gardens, community centers and even star Hotels behind these gates. He however refers to them as a manifestation of “Urban Pathology”. Pathology a medical term means a study of diseases. He also considers them as public space being privatized.
The point I would like to make right away is, “public place being privatized” thought is a myth. On the other hand it is in the public interest that the honest, capable, and well reputed builders of Bangalore should be nurtured and utilized for a planned growth of the city. Urban pathology is also a misnomer. The pathology part is universally applicable to showing off or is it same as making a “statement”!

“Palm Meadows” currently no 1 address in Bangalore, developed by Adarsh Builders contains Tennis courts, a club house, star hotel with swimming pool etc. It has 500 villas built on plots starting with sizes of 2400 sft to 10000 sft. These are exclusive Villas restricted to two floors. Palm Meadows project one of the earliest started in Bangalore, in the last decade of 20th century. Adarsh has something called signature Villas, which is meant to be life time “statement” one would like to make.

When city fathers of Bangalore gave these big chunks of real estate to builders it was a moot point whether or not it should have been given. In fact they went “head over heals” to provide the developers, water of the river cauveri and electricity. Now the BBMP is not in such an envious situation any more. Hope fully the BBMP will be more frugal in the future about the utilization of these scarce resources.

With the above discussions it is easy to comprehend part of gated communities in the development of a city. The most important point that I would like to make at this point is that the BDA should learn an important lesson from these developers and have a relook at their Open communities

Restricting the right turn for improving traffic flow

The road traffic problems in Bangalore City are increasing day by day. The primary reason for the increase is the increase in Road Vehicles consequent to the increase in City Businesses in turn increasing the Population. This phenomenon is not Unique to Bangalore alone. The population in our country has grown from 0.40 billion in 1940 to 1.17 billion in 2008. The primary reason, for the increasing chaos in the road traffic, is this phenomenal population explosion.

Any road design is based on a given maximum traffic load. The load on roads can be reduced by having alternative mass Transport systems like Metro, Mono and suburban Rail systems. The design of the total system is in turn limited by the design total load.

Thus any city road system design can support a max load to which the road system is originally designed. Adding additional modes of transport can delay the ultimate load on the road system but can not avoid it.

It is important to understand this concept of “maximum permissible limit on total number of vehicles allowed in a city” will finally decide the limit on growth of any city, especially cities like Mumbai

Recently in a meeting with Bangalore City ACP Mr. Praveen Sood attended by a Praja team including me, expressed a view that it is the right turn that complicates the road traffic flow. This view of Mr. Sood sounds similar to that of the DCP of Pune.

A very active Praja in Pune is currently grappling with Banning Right Turns to Improve Traffic Flows proposal of its Deputy Commissioner of Police. The Pune author seems to be in confusion whether this move by the Pune DCP is scientific or other wise.

Any logical thinking conforming to known and proven scientific laws as of the day is scientific. Thus which is scientific to day could well be unscientific tomorrow, as the human knowledge improves by the day if not hours. Hence going by what we have discussed above, we have to consider logically the consequence of banning the Right Turn. The logic to be applied here is whether the gains achieved by banning the right turn are more than the losses due to the banning.

It looks like the Pune Praja is reconciled to the proposal of restricting the right turn made by DCP Pune.