The Hard look: Skewed policy, high density have Mumbai creaking

FSI versus density

With its origins in the United States in the early twentieth century, where it is known by its international acronym FAR (Floor Area Ratio), FSI is the ratio of the built-up area of the total number of floors to the plot area on which the building stands. Cityscapes that are dotted with characteristically sky-piercing towers such as Shanghai, Tokyo, Vancouver, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Denver have come up on a high FSI of 8 to 20 while the lofty skyscrapers of Singapore are allowed an FSI in the range of 12 to 25.
European cities such as Paris, Amsterdam and Venice have retained much of their old-world charm by restricting their FSI in the range of 2 to 3, whereby the built-up area of buildings cannot be more than two to three times the plot area.

The high FSI across global cities has been bandied about to justify a similarly high FSI for Mumbai without making any correlation with population density levels. Mumbai already ranks third in the list of densest cities in the world, as per a recent report by the United States-based Demographia, which points out that an average 32,300 people are crammed in a space of 1 sq km in the city.

As low-rise slums and old buildings make way for soaring towers, the myopic FSI policy has created population densities in Mumbai that are 10 to 15 times higher than the ideal density level of 600 people per hectare.

Cities with high FSI levels don’t have to grapple with population densities as cataclysmic as that of Mumbai. On the density scale of cities, Singapore comes 181, Shanghai ranks only 410, Tokyo is 588, Vancouver is 823, San Francisco is 808, Chicago is 848, Los Angeles ranks 794, New York is at 830 and Denver at 843. The European cities of Amsterdam with a low density of 3,200 people per sq km and Paris with 3,900 people per sq km rank 724 and 663 on the scale while Venice doesn’t even figure in the list of 1,000 most dense cities.

It was through the Development Control Rules (DCR) of the 1960s that FSI first made its appearance in Mumbai. The intent was to have uniformity in heights of buildings and accordingly DCR 32 conferred the island city with a FSI of 1.33 and the suburbs with 1 FSI. The devil, however, lies in DCR 33, the exception clause that follows it. Over the years, this amorphous clause has seen 25 categories added and altered from time to time, depending on the lobbying strength of disparate real estate interests, allowing them to construct twice to 10 times the plot area. As FSI was de-linked from the carrying capacity of the neighbourhoods, the cost was borne by Mumbai, which grapples with failed policies that compounds its housing conundrum and increased densities bearing down on its already frail infrastructure.

Outcomes of lopsided FSI policies

Abutting the narrow road that winds down the Currey road station in central Mumbai is the six-acre New Islam Mill Compound, the only plot in Mumbai where the five-year old cluster redevelopment scheme has taken off. Around 800 families living in the erstwhile low-rise mill workers’ housing quarters have been given new homes in high-rises on one corner of the plot free of cost. In exchange, the developer is using the remaining freed-up plot to construct 64-storey super-luxury twin towers with sky villas and sky mansions. The project, in bureaucratic jargon, is hailed as a “win-win situation”. Except that planners, both within and outside the government machinery, don’t see it that way.

Even when the plans were only on the drawing board, state government’s own chief architect had pointed out in a letter to the municipal corporation that the 23-storey “vertical slums” meant for rehabilitating the existing tenants were bunched together in “congested manner with minimum open spaces” as the green areas were disproportionatey earmarked only for the buildings for sale. “The potential density here would be a disastrous as it would have 8,000 people living in a space of one hectare,” said Pankaj Joshi from the Urban Design research Institute. Joshi calls for a more form-based approach towards building regulations where height, facade and footprints are defined instead of the current system where FSI is used as a revenue earner both officially and unofficially.

The cluster redevelopment policy, also known as the urban renewal scheme, was approved by the Ashok Chavan government just ahead of the 2009 general elections. In September, a month before the 2014 state elections, the Prithviraj Chavan government modified the scheme to allow more incentive area for developers, a move that will densify the island city further. Mumbai’s suburbs and distant suburbs were spared as the Bombay High Court reined in the government, forbidding them from extending urban renewal schemes to these areas without any detailed study on its ramifications.

Outcomes of the various FSI hikes by the previous government show the disconnect of such policies from actual ground situations. Just before the last Assembly elections in October 2009, the government granted high FSI for developers in return of constructing free public parking lots on part of their plots. As on today, 50 per cent of the proposed public parking lots are coming up along the most narrow roads of realty-wise lucrative island city, which accounts for just 15 per cent of the city’s total geographical area. Also, while 46 real estate projects were allowed to go higher vertically using this additional FSI over the last five years, the municipal corporation has been handed over merely two public parking lots to date. Subsequent chief ministers have increased the FSI for the controversial slum redevelopment schemes which allow builders to commercially exploit encroached private, municipal and state government land in return of housing slum-dwellers in one portion. Since its inception 17 years ago, the Slum Redevelopment Authority has delivered on less than a lakh houses for slum residents as against the promise of housing 8 lakh slum-dwellers over a five year period.

The rental housing scheme, which gave developers high FSI with the aim of generating 5 lakh rental units in five years starting 2008, has so far generated only 2,143 units on the ground. The scheme was meant to stem slum proliferation by providing homes to working-class migrants on affordable rents in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. However, political wrangling by the Shiv Sena led to the government making domicile proof a mandatory eligibility criterion, defeating the very purpose of the scheme.

Similarly, FSI was increased for the already dense gaothan settlements while reducing the the setback area (land that is to be left for public roads during redevelopment). It was increased for commercial buildings that will house IT parks but once the buildings came up, mostly in the defunct yet plum mill land plots in central Mumbai, rules were amended to allow such buildings to be leased out to the more rent-yielding financial services sector.

The previous government also approved a high FSI of 3 to 5 corresponding to the star rating of luxury residential hotels citing the “acute shortage of hotel rooms in Mumbai” at a time when a sector report by  Jones Lang LaSalle  (JLLM) predicted that an excess 3,019 rooms would soon be added in Mumbai in the five-star category alone, which will lead to stable occupancy levels of 75 per cent.

Similar FSI hikes were sanctioned for private hospitals and educations institutions, the 600-odd cattle shed plots in Mumbai, social housing colonies constructed by the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority, redevelopment of individual cessed buildings among several others.

Demystifying FSI

It is due to its very inherent scope for manipulations that FSI has become a much maligned acronym in Mumbai. Private builders and urban planners are unified in their demand for eliminating the element of discretion in the granting of FSI. Where they diverge is on how it should be determined, with developers demanding a standard increase in FSI or scrapping FSI entirely while experts advising for a variable FSI that is linked to other locational factors.

“Instead of waiting until election time to approve a case-to-case increase in FSI limits, the government should increase it for the entire city. It can have a pre-condition that a percentage of the homes generated through the high FSI would be reserved for affordable housing,” says developer Sunil Mantri, president of National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO).

Several American and European cities require developers to adhere to inclusive housing norms where they have to reserve a certain percentage of their housing for those whose average incomes are way lower than the median income. Inclusive housing is as high as 50 per cent in countries such as Spain. However, recent attempts to introduce similar norms in Mumbai went the way of all policies. While the initial intent was to make inclusive housing mandatory for all residential projects that are coming up in an plot area of over 2000 sqm, when the policy was passed, the area limit was increased to 4000 sqm.

Moreover, earlier this month, the state government exempted all redevelopment projects in Mumbai from having to construct smaller-sized homes for those from the economically weaker sections and low-income groups while arguing that the existing residents already fell in the category.

Urban experts stress the need to correlate the FSI to the local physical and social infrastructure such as the road width, schools, parks, hospitals and accessibility to public transport. To control densities, it can be higher in commercial zones and lower in residential areas. Within the residential category, affluent areas, where the average home size is large, can have a higher FSI while settlements for the poor, where more families are crammed in smaller houses, should have low FSI.

“Policies such as the ones that give more FSI for creating parking lots are backfiring and only lead to more private cars on the streets. FSI should be determined by the carrying capacity of a road. It should not be blanket but differential based on area-wise study and multiple factors,” says Sulakshana, an urban expert with the state government think-tank Mumbai Transformation Support Unit.

Urban planner Shirish Patel argues that FSI should be just one of the many factors in deciding a building’s height and any policy should also ensure that the number of residents in a locality does not exceed its infrastructure capacity. “Increased densities created by existing arbitrary FSI increases would mean more people sharing less of the same amenities such as water and sewage lines as well as increased vehicular traffic on the roads,” he says, adding that one of the most important factors is street-crowding.

Through a comparison of Mumbai’s C ward and Manhattan’s Upper East side, the most dense settlements in the two cities respectively, Patel shows how Manhattan, despite having an FSI thrice that of Mumbai’s C ward, has a street-crowding of only 2,190 persons per hectare while Mumbai’s C ward is bustling with 4,690 people per hectare. This is the same ward which will soon be the crucible for redevelopment of 16.5-acre crowded Bhendi Bazaar area under the cluster policy that allows a high FSI of 4.

shalini.nair@expressindia.com