ABSTRACT
'Kada veedi’ or 'Street of shops' is the traditional middle-class Tamil market-place. Ranganathan Street, Mambalam; Shanmugam Road, Tambaram; Main Road, Pallavaram; Main Road, Chromepet are just some examples that epitomize this concept, not to mention the Pondi Bazaars, Luz Corners and other such commercial centers in the city of Chennai, India.
Small shops lined up along un-motorable roads, providing economic opportunities and goods at low cost mark the making of these markets. At best, these markets can be described as disorganized, underachieving and an obsolete form of business operation. The efficiency of such economies is very low, and, does not help the cause of a city and a nation knocking on the door of development. Significantly, these markets are linked by the metro rail network and occupy prime real estate in close proximity to these metro lines.
The density of the built form is high, which in turn causes a high density of pedestrian traffic, thereby creating the illusion of saturated development. However, the actual built-up area is very low and does not utilize the full potential of the location. Most importantly, the illusion of saturation and the resultant premium price tag has caused new development to move outside the city.
Unfortunately, this new development represents the IT economy and employs a large number of urban dwellers. Companies operate buses from and to the city, and apart from straining the narrow roads and gasoline based fuel resources, the time spent in traveling between home and work directly affects the productivity of the economy and the quality of domestic life for future generations.
This paper studies the development pattern of Chennai, the resultant pattern of land-use, current trends in development and how these effect the environment, the built-environment and quality of life in the city. The paper also proposes a different development pattern based on mass-transit for sustainable development of the city, and the feasibility of such a solution in the context of Chennai. The hope for this solution is that it reduces redundancy in economic investment, development footprint and fossil fuel dependency while increasing quality of life, economic efficiency and addressing a host of issues currently faced by the city.
Keywords: transit based development; urban sprawl; mixed-use community; Chennai;
INTRODUCTION
A low-rise built-form, unplanned organic morphosis of the built-form and a few misplaced development decisions in the middle of excellent infrastructure (in the form of an ideal road structure, metro network, first class bus network, abundant power supply, highly educated inhabitants and international connectivity) is creating an interesting phenomenon in the city of Chennai. This excellent infrastructure is driving many new investment opportunities into the city, but due to the above mentioned phenomenon caused by the current built form, it is increasingly finding its way out into distant suburban locations.
As a result of the suburbanization of economic investment, the city has been subjected to a splurge in the ownership and use of automobiles and an unhealthy real estate bubble. Development of satellite towns in now imminent and widespread sprawl powered by the expanding Indian economy is almost inevitable. This paper takes a close look at the master plans developed for Chennai, the implementation of the goals identified by it (which have led to this pattern of development), the land-use pattern around one major metro rail station in the city of Chennai - Mambalam, which illustrates the above phenomenon in its full bloom with fragmented, unplanned land use and organic built-form causing the illusion of congestion. Finally, this paper discusses an image of transit based development in the city, the road blocks to achieving that vision and a possible solution to the problem.
City of
Chennai
Infrastructure in Chennai is considered world-class, except for its water supply and drainage systems. Abundant power supply, without much interruption, comes from the Kalpakkam Atomic Power Plant and Neyveli Lignite Power Plant. The main roads form a radial structure with three major arterial roads (
Dubbed the 'Detroit of India' for the prevalence of the automobile and automobile spare parts industry, it is home to auto manufacturers Ford, Hyundai, GM and BMW. Other major industries in Chennai include IT, hardware manufacturing, biotechnology, petrochemicals, garments and financial services. The Madras Export Processing Zone, Ambattur Industrial Estate,
DEVELOPMENT PATTERN OF CHENNAI
Fig 1 illustrates the metropolitan agglomeration of Chennai. The city and the surrounding areas are the 34th largest agglomeration in the world, and the 4th largest in
Apart from the city, population in the metropolitan areas is distributed among the areas shown shaded in cyan. The rest of the region is either sparsely populated or uninhabited. A closer look at the areas shaded in cyan shows the metro network running through them. The clue to this pattern of growth can be found in the first master plan developed for Chennai in 1976.
As a result of the economic liberalization policy of the Indian Government in 1991, the public sector started to contract and the private sector then gathered momentum. With this shift, and with the arrival of IT as a major player in the Indian economy, the focus of the economy shifted from being predominantly based in the secondary manufacturing sector to increasingly being one based in the tertiary services sector. Consequently, land-use and growth patterns have shifted to new areas that were hitherto not developed. The new IT economy needed contiguous office space, abundant power supply and easy accessibility, and of course cheap land to build vast IT complexes on. The current focus is on new developments along
The main goals of the first master plan were to restrict density and population growth in the city, restrict industrial and commercial developments within the metropolitan area, encouragement of growth along the metro rail transportation corridors and creation of urban nodes at the termini, dispersal of certain activities from the CBD and development of the satellite towns of MM Nagar, Gummidipoondi and Thiruvallur. [CMDA] Of these goals, only the growth along the metro rail corridors, with a predominant growth along the south-west corridor [CMDA] and dispersal of the bus terminus and central market from Kothvalchavadi to Koyambedu, completed in the 90's, were successfully implemented. The concept of satellite towns failed miserably from the start, and if it had not been for Ford and the
The major criticism of the first master plan is that the implementation was so slow that the issues were very different by the time the projects were completed. For example, Koyambedu bus terminus and central market are so far away from the radial network of roads and completely out of sync with the metro rail network that reaching the area is an ordeal, given the traffic conditions of today. The Inner Ring Road that connects to Koyambedu is only 100' wide, and with all the encroachments and break in continuity in Ashok Nagar, the road is not suited to take in additional truck and bus traffic. The construction of the Chennai By-pass to serve the developments in Koyambedu seems an ad-hoc decision to alleviate modern day traffic issues for an obsolete solution. There is no reference of such a road in the first master plan, while the decision to develop Koyambedu was a direct result of a goal set during the first master plan. [CMDA]
Recent development projects in the city have included the construction of flyovers, the Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS), construction of the Chennai by-pass, developing the IT Corridor, development of the various technology and industrial parks in MM Nagar, Siruseri, Poonamalle and Sriperumbudur and passing a proposal for an Outer Ring Road. There is also a proposal to construct an underground metro line network to supplement the existing metro rail network.
The MRTS was constructed as an overhead metro rail system, and the 3rd phase of development is currently in progress. The MRTS rail network was constructed along the banks of the
Development of residential areas in close proximity to these new technology parks is currently in full swing, which, when populated will create satellite towns around Chennai. [CMDA] Though this is a development which aims to alleviate the traffic issues of people living in the city and working in the suburbs, it shows an eerie similarity to the development of single-use American suburbs in the latter half of the last century. This is urban sprawl at its worst, and as Albert Einstein put it so aptly, "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is nothing but insanity."
The environmental impact of creating this residential development close to the technology parks could affect the ecological balance as far away as 
The perils of suburbanization and ‘
What is referred to in the Master Plans of Chennai as ‘
Developing industrial estates and technology parks in Chennai mimics the single-use suburban developments in
The built-environment and underutilized resources in the city
As previously stated, Chennai's population density within the city is 24,418 people per sq km. Per the Development Control Rules (rules) for Chennai, building heights were restricted to 20 stories. Up until 2000, the
The area shown in Fig 4 is Mambalam, and as can be clearly seen, the common thread in all of the images shown is organic, unplanned and unregulated growth. One tell-tale image is that of the electric transformer adjacent to a residential building with its window opening into the transformer! The lack of regulation, lack of a localized planning body and failure to enforce development control rules, mainly due to widespread corruption in building plan approvals, has created a built-environment that is haphazard, hazardous, dense and lacking in basic civic amenities, apart from creating increased stress on the city's water supply and drainage lines due to the larger than planned for demand.
The land on which the multi-family dwelling units shown in Fig 4 and Fig 5 below (Fig 5 shows the relatively less developed area of Tambaram Sanatorium) are built on, were previously used to house single family residences with front and back yards. Increased equity, providing for retirement capital (especially with the increase in non-pension paying private sector jobs) coupled with the sociological peculiarity of property inheritance divided ‘equally’ between all children have in turn caused the development of multi-family dwelling units on such plots, which causes further fragmentation in ownership of property in the city.
At the time of the first master plan,
Street hawkers, like the ones shown in Fig 5, are still a significant part of the 'kada veedi' or 'street of shops'. This informal economy has been essential for the development of the country, as identified by the Planning Commission of India. Such economies tend to thrive in pedestrian dominated neighborhoods, and with the increased density of pedestrian traffic, the success of these markets improved as well. As is seen in the images shown in Fig 4 and Fig 5, the organic growth of the economic status of the small vendors mirrors the organic growth of the built-form in the city. This stands testimony to the need for more walkable urbanity and less automobile based sprawl. The concept of 'kada veedi' still holds good, and was recognized in the First Master Plan as the '
Also, at the time of the First Master Plan due to India’s socialistic past, Urban Land Ceiling Act meant that land ownership was limited; marking the origins of widespread fragmented land ownership. Information Technology was unheard of and the current open-market, technology-driven development was a political impossibility. However, despite the vast change in development drivers, the pattern of growth continues, and land-use surrounding the metro rail networks continues to be predominantly residential and increasingly fragmented in ownership.
The fragmented land ownership pattern causes resultant growth to be organic in nature. Individual owners expand their property based on their specific needs, and the result is what is seen in the photographs in Fig 4 and 5. This pattern is typical in all of the residential areas surrounding the metro network. Mambalam happens to be the busiest and 'most-developed' of all such areas in the city that surround the metro rail station.
In this scenario, it is very difficult for the new generation of IT empires like Infosys to accumulate the space necessary for basing their operation within the urban fabric, and is forced to move out to the greener pastures of the suburbs where they can build the required space without the hassles of going through the political red-tapes. That the increasing automobile based sprawl is causing the metro rail system to be underutilized is reflected by the trend in respective percentage of trips by bus to that by trains, 41.5 to 11.5 in 1970 changing to 45.5 to 9.0 in 1984 and finally 37.9 to 4.1 in 1992. [CMDA] With the ten-fold increase in automobile population mentioned earlier, this trend is set to continue causing the redundancy in public infrastructure.
TRANSIT BASED DEVELOPMENT IN CHENNAI - A RENEWED IMAGE OF MAMBALAM
The answer to this conundrum lies in transit based development. Chennai has the structure and the infrastructure in place to make this transformation in development pattern at a relatively low up-front cost. The time has come for a major overhaul of the mediocre built environment in the city. It is time to do away with all of the unplanned and unhygienic organic growth and make better use of the metro rail network. A mixed-use mid to high rise development with plenty of opportunity for cultural interaction, a cargo processing and garbage recycling unit well connected by the rail network, rain water harvesting and plenty of green space would foster the seeds of sustainable development in the city. Such a model can be implemented through the city in a number of locations.
The idea presented by this concept is not to cannibalize the street hawkers or the 'kada veedi' concept, and even less a crude attempt to alter the social patterns of the area, but is instead a plan which will maximize organized space for the street hawkers and small businesses to thrive in and an honest attempt at making provision for an environment that enhances social exchange. Hence, it becomes an exercise of consolidating and organizing the space and built-form in a manner that capitalizes on the sustainable development potential presented by the existing infrastructure.
"What got you here will not get you there," is a famous book that illustrates why a different approach is needed to climb higher on the ladder to success, and
The image presented above is similar to development plans already undertaken in
Road blocks in achieving transit based development and the role of Indian Railways as a catalytic developer
Consideration of any major development project is not possible without significant roadblocks, especially a radical change such as this one. The principal stumbling block is the ability to accumulate the required land for the development of such a concept. Convincing businesses and politicians to think in terms of a long-term strategy with potential for short-term losses goes against current business principles, and this is especially true in the current political climate of coalition governments. Politicians playing for survival and businesses more worried about their profitability than the sustainable development of the community as a whole are not congenial team players in realizing this vision. The profitability of such a plan would need to be proved before this vision could become a reality. Frequently, in similar projects, this is the role of a catalytic developer. The catalytic developer invests slow capital in the project with the aim of absorbing short-term losses for long-term gains. They typically carry the project until a critical mass is reached, after which the development effort can only move forward.
The Indian Railways own vast tracts of land in close proximity to the railway stations. The railway colonies that are under the scanner in this discussion were developed more than thirty years ago as single family residences, with standard material specifications and are badly in need of redevelopment. By undertaking the redevelopment of the railway colonies as model transit towns, the Indian Railways are in the best position, either as a single entity or through public-private partnerships, to absorb a short-term loss in order to create the ubiquitous benefit sought in the long-term. If transit towns were to become the predominant development pattern, the railways could recuperate the small losses easily. Currently, the operational model of Indian Railways needs a revised strategy due to its financial crunch. Being part of the Central Government, the Railways are forced to subsidize popular passenger services by increasing the price on its freight services. This practice has meant that the trucks are the predominant freight handlers in the country. Such a business model is unsustainable, and it is in the best interests of the country that its railway system functions in good health. If transit towns were to become the predominant development pattern, the Railways benefit the most from it as the trains would be the life-line of the economy. The Railways have identified this approach to be beneficial to them, and are in the process of identifying ways to serve the Special Economic Zones in the country. [Indian Railways]
CONCLUSION
Transit based development provides the city of
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