The Union Minister for Urban Development M. Venkaiah Naidu has called on State governments to set up special City Infrastructure Funds to cater exclusively to urban infrastructure and to promote local-level planning, investment planning, and special purpose planning for specific areas such as city sanitation and mobility.
The Minister also told States to evolve master plans for all urban areas within a year and to incorporate geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing technologies in drawing up the plans. He urged States to modify building by-laws to enable optimum use of land resources, promote ease of doing business, encourage green construction practices, and to encourage solar power, rain harvesting, and zero waste discharge, apart from equipping cities to face natural disasters.
The Minister was speaking at the release of the new guidelines on urban and regional development plans formulation and implementation by the Union Ministry.
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People’s participation in identifying urban development priorities and their involvement in decision-making are the thrust areas of the new guidelines and the government is looking for a paradigm shift in urban development planning through these guidelines, said a statement by the Press Information Bureau.
The Minister was cited in the statement as saying that the top-down approach followed so far in urban planning and development had “not yielded desired results” and so the Ministry undertook extensive stakeholder consultations with States and urban local bodies to promote a “bottom-up approach through their involvement” in designing urban development schemes right from conceptualisation.
The new guidelines on urban development and planning were finalised after six months of deliberations with States and other stakeholders by the Ministry and the Town and Country Planning Organisation.
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Mr. Naidu said that promoting citizens’ participation was a priority as emphasised by the Prime Minister and that new urban initiatives such as Smart Cities, New Mission for 500 Cities, and Housing for All would be taken forward ensuring people’s participation. The Minister reiterated his concern at India’s low ranking among countries with regard to the ease of doing business in urban areas. He called on States to evolve a system under which construction clearances could be issued in 30 days. It took between 90 and 600 days for obtaining approvals now.