Peter Calthorpe first codified the concept of Transit Oriented Development (TOD) in the USA during the late ’80s as a solution to urban sprawl caused by car-centric American cities. According to Calthorpe, TODs are: Mixed-use communities within an average of 2,000-feet (600 mts.) walking distance between a transit stop and a core commercial area. In the American context, TOD emerged from the need to contain urban sprawl.
In recent years, TOD has become a buzz-word in the development of Indian cities. The saleability of the concept in projects has been in the form of high Floor Space Index (FSI). TOD makes for a financially feasible development model, accepted by politicians, bureaucrats and policy makers. On ground implementation of TOD has seen limited success due to several variables. These variables include understanding site context, market demand, land-use mix, accessibility to transit, appetite for development, affordability of transit and the right institutional mix enabling integrated development.
The Brundtland Commission report titled Our Common Future (1991) was the first to coin the term ‘Sustainable Development’ and cautioned governments to focus on conserving the environment for future generations rather than destroying it. In India, the Post-Neo-Liberal state is deeply entrenched in the Climate Change agenda, in order to resolve the conflict between development and protection of the environment. This article will attempt to address the eternal question of ‘How much Development is too much Development?’ set against the present context to address the lack of understanding of local as well as global contexts, to appreciate the real ‘carrying capacities’ of cities before applying blanket policies like TOD. ‘Carrying capacities’ are not related to availability of amenities, infrastructure or type of urban fabric but the terrain or geography and the communities that inhabit the city. This underlines a need for an ecological and inclusive approach to re-imaging cities.
Learnings from TOD cities in the global south
The case studies show that cities face several roadblocks in their path to implementing TOD. Curitiba (Brazil), was conceived as a transit city through the structuring of higher densities along its NE-SW corridor. Studies have shown that structural corridors are not consistently supported by densities in all parts of the city. A study in the Journal for Urban Planning and Development shows up to 80% of the commuters using the Bus Rapid Transport System (BRTS) are thought to have origin points far off from the transit routes. Similarly, the development plan in the city of Bogota (Colombia), focusses on combining transit and public housing. A study done by Roberto Cervero at the Society for Transport in 2011, found that lower income households lived near transit routes. Over the years, the subsequent administrations have removed policy restrictions on developers. This has incentivised high income housing closer to transit in order to capitalise on increased market value of land. Do transit triggered land markets, which are pushing the poor to the periphery, justify the claims of an inclusive city?
Among the Asian cities, Tokyo in Japan is the quintessential rail-transit city, says Taras Grescoe in his book The Straphangers. The railway system in Japan is largely privatised. The private companies not only developed the railways, but also built satellite towns around them. The fact that there are a handful of private companies that fund, construct and manage this entire complex system raises questions of the lack of equity and choice for citizens. Large mega-sized, mono-use urban areas connected efficiently with railway networks, work well only when the economy is upbeat, but what happens during a crisis?
Hong Kong and Singapore have created transit cities by implementing very strict policy regimes. While the efficacy of the policies has been proven from a transit perspective, do these policies help in creating an equitable and affordable housing scenario? Hong Kong has about 21.3% of its total land allocated for urban use. As a result, there is a huge demand for developable land, which is bought at auctions by developers and rail transit companies. There is a high level of inequity in terms of affordability of living space. The Hong-Kong TOD policy, which is hailed as a success, is part of this larger bouquet of policies that restrict use of land for urban development. So, while such a policy protects the fragile forests and slopes on the islands of Hong Kong, the residents must pay a heavy price through high rents and high costs of real estate.
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Low Rise-High Density: What should India’s TOD approach be?
In the Indian context, where master plans themselves have an implementation ratio of 10%-12% due to weak monitoring and enforcement frameworks, the efficacy of complex TOD related guidelines is yet to
be established.
The most prolific adaptation of TOD is through inclusion in Statutory Master Plan Documents. Delhi, Ahmedabad and Naya Raipur do this by including it within their Master Plans. The second approach to implementing TOD is through central level programmes, such as ‘Smart City’. Such an approach has been adopted in Bhubaneshwar, Jaipur and Kochi. The third approach is that of a Public Private Partnership (PPP) agreement. It was implemented by Hyderabad, which entered into a PPP agreement with a private entity, which in this case was the Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited (HMRL). The last approach is using TOD through state level investment programmes, or responding to a metro rail policy, something the city of Bengaluru is following.
In Indian cities, communities tend to share expensive real estate to bear the cost of rentals. Across the country, communities are also culturally pre-disposed to a strong relationship with the earth. Due to higher household sizes, which translate to higher people densities, Indian cities can achieve comparable density through low rise-high density as high-rise-high density development.
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Case of 5 FSI and Suburban Rail in Bengaluru
The historic settlement of Yelahanka dates to the 12th century AD. Janaki Nair in her book The Promise of a Metropolis identifies the settlement of Yelahanka as a precursor to Kempe Gowda’s Pete (an area in the city with roads laid out in cardinal directions) in Bengaluru in 1537. The settlement of Yelahanka was home to communities involved in many livelihoods. Weaving was one of the most important, due to its proximity to major silk markets like Doddaballapur and Devanahalli to the north and Ramnagaram to the west. Even today, one can see these weavers in Yelahanka Old Town preserving this traditional livelihood.
Yelahanka is also the origin point of the Hebbal Valley and lake system, a site of rich biodiversity. The Yelahanka Lake – at a size of 22 ha. – is one of the largest lakes in north Bengaluru. Upstream, it is linked to the Puttenahalli Lake and the Herohalli Lake, while downstream it flows into the Jakkur Lake before finding its way to the Hebbal Lake System further south. Historically, the natural water systems not only provided access to fresh water and fertile topsoil for agriculture, but also provide a strategic defense mechanism for the settlements in the region including that of Yelahanka.
With the coming of the British, railway lines were laid, which led to splintering of the settlements. The British also used techniques like growing Eucalyptus to drain the marshy land and make it suitable for development. At the end of the 19th century, Bengaluru experienced the bubonic plague. This resulted in far-reaching changes in the evolution of the city. The City Improvement Trust Board (CITB) was formed and new areas were developed like Malleshwaram to the north and Basavangudi to the south of the Pete. Post this period, the degradation of the water systems and lakes were accelerated. The value of the water bodies changed from life-giving and sustenance to that of recreation and aesthetics. The city started receiving piped water for drinking. The inter-dependency between the settlement and its water bodies was disrupted. Today, Yelahanka is strategically located close to the Bengaluru International Airport Limited (BIAL) at Devanahalli. During the last decade, Yelahanka has developed as an institutional area with several schools, colleges and a burgeoning residential apartment market.
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In 2018, responding to a crisis of excessive traffic congestion, the Karnataka government announced a package of INR 1600 Crores to develop a suburban rail network in Bengaluru to support the metro and bus networks that are already in place. One of the key objectives was to connect the BIAL to the main railway station at the centre of the city. This connection would pass through Yelahanka. In order to finance this massive investment, it was also proposed that all railway lands within Bengaluru would be allowed a premium FSI of 5.0 and value would be captured from developers using this FSI. Yelahanka has large tracts of railway land and is a beneficiary of this policy. The total area of land available under the railways at Yelahanka is more than 100 ha.
The envisaged development, if realised, would be up to twice that of Manyata Tech Park, which is a large job centre in North Bengaluru that employs more than 500,000 people and has contributed to the traffic congestion problem in the surrounding area. The question of allowing high FSI onto the site and consequently impacting the ecology and communities residing there begs to be asked. Development of this magnitude is not only a threat to the biodiversity and demography of the area; it could be catastrophic from the perspective of limited water resources. A study was conducted by students of M. Arch (Urban Design) at the BMS School of Architecture, Yelahanka, Bengaluru, to understand the impact of such a development on the area of Yelahanka. The drawings and data collected by students help to illustrate this argument in detail.
Do transit triggered land markets, which are pushing the poor to the periphery, justify the claims of an inclusive city?
When places with a delicate balance of ecology and community are bombarded with the onslaught of infrastructure, native or local processes and practices get impacted and replaced by an exploitative model. This causes perpetuation of unsustainable practices resulting in irreversible damage to the ecosystem. In order to counter the flow of such practices, an assessment of carrying capacity needs to be undertaken. The assessment can be categorised under the following triad of parameters; namely: Nature, Culture and People.
‘Nature’ or ecology includes those aspects that are a function of terrain or geography like water source, fertile topsoil and existence of biodiversity in flora and fauna. These aspects are provided by nature but in limited quantities. The thumb-rule indicators that would help guide us would be availability and health of fresh drinking water (from surface or underground sources), extent and types of vegetation cover in the area, number of native species comprising the vegetation cover and amount and range of food grains that are grown in the area.
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‘Culture’ includes those aspects that are customs, rituals, knowledge-systems and art-forms, which are made from human experience of the place. Culture also includes seasonal variations of crop patterns or human activities, seasonal calendar of rituals and customs, availability of local building materials and mineral resources and development of architecture and the arts.
The thumb-rule indicators that would be critical to consider would be presence of knowledge systems about habitat including forests and settlements, traditional practices of agriculture and building given the type of terrain, the tangible and intangible culture that developed over the years, art-forms that would be a repository of this ancient wisdom, knowledge of managing climate crisis such as droughts or floods that are passed on from oral traditions.
‘People’ includes those aspects that are related to communities that have inhabited the area for generations, or even those who migrated to the area recently. It is about their livelihoods and occupation, change in demography and family structures, ambitions and aspirations.
The thumb-rule indicators that would help us study these facets of communities would be levels of poverty or affluence, the trends of migration of communities and change in their occupations over the years, the resilience of communities to weather through crises be it health related or economic, health status of women, children, elders and other vulnerable stakeholders.
The Yelahanka study gives evidence that it’s vital to have a nuanced approach to development, one that considers the impact on ecology and inclusiveness.
When places with a delicate balance of ecology and community are bombarded with the onslaught of infrastructure, native or local processes and practices get impacted
How much development is too much development?
It is evident from a UN Habitat database that densities in Asian and African contexts are more than double of European cities and almost ten times that of land rich, developed countries such as the United States and Australia. That essentially translates to a higher number of people living in a per square kilometre area.
Within the Asian context, Indian cities experience higher migration from rural areas. This results in further pushing up densities of inhabitants. Planning, more often than not, tends to be about accommodating densities, rather than preparations for the future. In such a context, people densities and not built-up densities, should be linked to provision of affordable housing, provision of adequate social amenities and access to physical infrastructure and open spaces. TOD policies need to be reworked to ensure checks and balances that address these exigencies.
The outbreak of COVID-19 has impacted the entire world, countries are struggling to ensure social distancing norms in densely populated cities. However, in the developing countries there is an additional burden of ensuring the most vulnerable groups survive unemployment and hunger during large-scale lockdowns.
During the pandemic, we have also witnessed nature reclaiming its rightful place in our cities. Examples are seen in the form of the clean Yamuna River water in Delhi or the renewed flow in the Arkavathy in Bengaluru.
This proves that rampant urbanisation has been impacting the terrain and people adversely. We have been largely ignorant of such underlying conflicts because the focus has always been about a fast-growing economy at all costs.
So how do we return to a sustainable balance of economy with ecology and equity?
We have talked far too long about cities as engines of economic growth, but cities also exist because of the terrain or geography they sit on and the people who inhabit them. The conversation needs to shift from the primacy of economy over ecology and equity to a trialogue, which will calibrate the impact of economy on ecology and equity as a pre-condition.
For this, an assessment of carrying capacity needs to be done based on context of geography and its people. This can be done by preparing TOD zone suitability mapping by layering and giving weightages to both ecological and equity parameters (terrain/availability of land, density of vegetation, ground water levels, bio diversity, vulnerable groups, migrations, livelihoods and aspirations of people) and transit parameters (mass transit networks, ridership, jobs around transit etc).
Acknowledgement: This article is an outcome of the work done by 3rd semester, Masters in Urban Design students of BMS School of Architecture, Yelahanka. We acknowledge the hard work and contributions by Shikha, Dhruva, Vanitha, Roja, Sarojini, Mahima, Kusuma, Sunil, Parichita, Madhuri, Lavanya, Hemanth, Sneha and Shilpa from the 2017-2019 batch, M. Arch UD, BMSSA, Yelahanka.
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