Urban Development Plan For PCMC Will Undergo Changes

The Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) in Pune is one of the best residential real estate markets in the city, and one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Maharashtra. In 2015, real estate price appreciation in PCMC was higher than in most other neighbourhoods in Pune. Recently, the Maharashtra state government decided to choose 10 of the 22 proposals submitted by the PCMC to revise the development plan for the area.

The PCMC has emphasised three major policies:

1) Making changes in the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor.

2) Revising the construction norms for flood-prone areas.

3) Raising the floor area ratio to 2.5 for projects intended to house the urban poor. FAR is the ratio of the maximum floor area permissible on a plot to the size of the plot. 

PCMC is known for urban planning practices that are better than that of its neighbouring areas. It grew faster than most other parts of Maharashtra because its urban planning practices are better. PCMC already has good infrastructure and transportation networks relative to other parts of Maharashtra. This is one of the major reasons why real estate prices in PCMC rose in 2015. Urban-local authorities in PCMC had conscious avoided many of the mistakes that similar bodies have made throughout India.

Allowing urban development to happen in PCMC is important because it has many IT and IT-enabled firms. PCMC also has many automobile companies, manufacturing companies and auto-ancillary firms. The number of companies in PCMC have been growing every year. So the demand for housing has also risen proportionately.

Raising the FAR to 2.5 is important to house the urban poor because when land is expensive, the cost of housing will fall proportionate to the rise in the FAR. This is because when urban local bodies raise FAR, developers will be able to build much taller buildings on the same land. This brings down the cost of floor space because buildings need not occupy large tracts of land.

This ie especially true in the case of reviving the BRTS corridor. Earlier, PCMC wanted developers to build along the corridor at an FAR of 1, and pay the municipal corporation for the privilege to build. Developers were not too interested in the plan because this was not a good deal for them. An FAR of 1 was too low for real estate developers to make profits. PCMC wants to raise the FAR so that developers are more interested in the BRTS project. But there are other benefits from doing this. When a higher FAR is allowed along the BRTS corridor, more people will live along the BRTS corridor. This will raise the population density, and make the BRTS viable.