The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : `New Chennai' project, a planning solution?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Nov 09, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

`New Chennai' project, a planning solution?

By K. Ramachandran

CHENNAI, NOV. 8. Should specialised fields such as information technology be concentrated in a single corridor or spread across the entire metropolis?

Those favouring dispersed development offer good reasons. M. G. Devasahayam, managing trustee of SUSTAIN, a non-government organisation which takes up urban development issues, says the development of the IT corridor (Old Mamallapuram Road) is driven by real estate rather than city planning concerns.

"The water table there is getting threatened with the development of new highrise structures. Government intervention to regulate the development is little — except a few concessions in development control rules or in expediting planning permission."

Various concerns

With a dense growth of IT-based structures, traffic, pollution, congestion and the quantity of human and other waste are the other concerns SUSTAIN seeks to raise.

A former administrator of Chandigarh city, Mr. Devasahayam says Chapter III of the Town and Country Planning Act, particularly Section 10, provided for declaring certain areas regulated areas and their separation from or inclusion in local areas.

Chennai's growth, urban planners, builders and architects say has been along busy corridors such as GST Road, the Chennai-Bangalore Road, the Chennai-Tiruvallur High Road, the Grand National Trunk Road (leading to Kolkata) and, more recently East Coast Road and Old Mamallapuram Road.

Growth in the first two corridors is saturated. The concern is over the last two corridors along the southern coastline. "There is scope for development along the GNT Road to the north initially developed as a major industrial belt. Now it has turned desolate due to wrong policies. But it has potential because of the availability of land and water. It is accessible by road and rail and is near the Ennore port," he argues.

However, other planners feel that the GNT corridor growth too can face problems. The corridor cuts right across the catchment areas of the city reservoirs.

The solution could lie with the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA). Less than a year ago, the Government asked the CMDA to revive the project to create a "New Chennai", originally conceptualised in the mid-1990s. It was to come up as a planned urban node on a 25,000- acre stretch (the old ayacut areas of the Chembarampakkam lake), taking advantage of the development of the proposed Outer Ring Road (from Maraimalai Nagar in the south to the Ennore port in the north). The node was to accommodate 2 million residents, and commercial and industrial complexes.

R. Ramaraju, State chairman, Indian Institute of Architects-Tamil Nadu, says the IT sector does not need the elaborate infrastructure of an industrial estate.

"East Coast Road and the OMR need not be exploited so much. Once we fully take out water and other resources, there will be automatic seawater intrusion in the aquifer. Then the burden of managing water will have to borne by the entire city.

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