Bengaluru's densification dilemma: When transit corridors turn unaffordable

While the policy promotes high-density vertical development, it also says it should be affordable and inclusive. What are the practical hurdles to achieving this objective?

A luxury apartment complex next to the Mantri Square-Sampige Road metro station lies half occupied. Two other buildings with more than two dozen floors here have been under construction for many years now. The area teems with road traffic for the most part of the day, while the metro station gets low footfall. People who visit the mall use metro, but the mall closes its gates at 10 pm forcing commuters to walk to the metro station on the footpathless road. The last-mile connectivity to the station from other blocks of Malleshwaram, Palace Guttahalli and Sadashivanagar areas just does not exist.

This is an example of development without a plan around metro stations. To avoid such situations, Bengaluru now has a Transit Oriented Development (TOD) policy, notified in November 2022. However, the implementation of the policy is in its early stages. Stakeholders have not been consulted yet in most areas.

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TOD involves creating medium-to-high-density developments supporting a balanced mix of land use around the station area along the corridor. TOD is where all residents/employees are within a 6-minute distance from efficient public transportation — and can ‘live, learn, work, play and shop’ in a walkable environment — where car ownership is an option, not a necessity. Implementing mixed land use (where housing and commercial development co-exist) in TOD zones can lead to shorter commutes and reduced travel demand.

TOD basically involves improving the accessibility to the stations and densifying the surrounding areas by adding more floor area ratio (FAR) and allowing the area to develop vertically for commercial and residential purposes.

‘Notify zonal plans soon’

Satya Arikutharam, an independent consultant who has worked in the past on TOD policy with the Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT), says that the zonal plans must be prepared for each of the stations and notified.

“It will be a special overlay on BDA’s master plan approved by Bengaluru Metropolitan Land Transport Authority (BMLTA), binding on all local authorities like BDA, BBMP and other municipal bodies and builders. It overrides the conditions laid by BDA’s master plan. Any new buildings should be built in such a way that accessibility to the metro station is established right from the day of planning, so that metro becomes the primary mode of commute for people living in TOD zones,” he explains the next steps in implementing of the newly notified policy.

“It’s a guiding document for all the local authorities to follow. The already developed areas around metro stations must get better accessibility and redevelopments should align with zone plans for the particular station,” he says.

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“The policy says if you live within a km of the metro station, you will have the infrastructure to walk, cycle or use public transport to the station and don’t have to rely on private vehicles. BMLTA should prepare the zone plans and notify them quickly, especially because suburban train and metro networks are expanding,” he adds.

“If people start building and if the notification is too late it becomes difficult to undo what they have done, as they are physical assets,” says Arikutharam.

“While the TOD policy is conceptually in the right direction and allows for affordable housing for lower and middle-income groups and economically weaker sections, and encourages economic housing mix, achieving such inclusivity on the ground is a challenging task. This is because the high land prices around metro stations essentially disincentivise such inclusive development,” says Gayathri Muraleedharan, a senior urban planner who works with Integrated Design, a research-based planning and design practice.

“Preparing DCRs that can promote inclusive development is challenging since a lot of high-end development has already come up in proposed TOD zones in the city core,” she adds.

Lessons from other cities

Rajeev Vijay, Executive Director, Government and Infrastructure, Knight Frank India, says that areas that are already developed where there is no land available can be a problem. However, newer areas have a better scope, he says, giving the example of Delhi and Noida.

“Most of the transit lines that are being done now, whether in Delhi or Noida, including the regional rapid lines, are going into suburbs, up to 100 kilometres away from the city centre. Here undeveloped land is available,” he says.

“In the suburbs of Delhi, dilapidated structures were demolished and new structures with higher FSI were built,” he adds. When there is redevelopment required, like in the case of Mumbai where there’s hardly any land available, rehabilitation of slums and development of smaller lands can happen. If land can be identified in the early stages and higher FSI is ensured, it is better for the implementation of TOD.

In the case of Delhi, big TOD projects are taken up by the government itself. In areas like Nauroji Nagar and Kidwai Nagar, the government revamped the area by building big townships and a large number of dwellings. “National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC) itself has been given large tracts of land for TOD implementation, called special development areas, each measuring more than 500 acres. The government itself developed proper TOD townships with higher FSI and infrastructure, with mixed land use townships and helped create the centrality,” he explains.

Affordability in question

The policy says affordable housing should accommodate ‘key frontline workers’, like nurses, police etc. “The provision of mixed land use generates building footprints of varying character that can support businesses of different scales. Economic inclusivity aims at continuous service and enhanced growth of all economic groups including the informal sector. Affordable housing for economically weaker Section (EWS), Low-Income Groups (LIG), informal sector, migrant workers, key frontline workers etc. encourages inclusivity and is transit-supportive,” it explains.

However, the metro corridor in the core areas of the city has had no such plans so far, as there was no policy that aimed at densification and footfall. This can be a problem in the theoretical approach of making the TOD areas affordable and inclusive, outlined in the TOD policy.

“Currently, real estate developers are selling the proximity to the metro stations at a premium. These flats are high-end and are occupied by people who travel in cars, and may hardly use the metro. The whole point of public investment in the metro is lost if the government does not orient the development around transit,” says Arikutharam, highlighting a problem.

“The policy aims to create a better blend of society. It will create harmony, you will not be having gentrification. This is a catalyst for BBMP to create walking and cycling infrastructure, such as imposing conditions on builders to create footpaths and cycling paths to stations,” he adds.

‘Poor never accounted for’

Isaac Arul Selva, a researcher who has worked on low-income housing and edits Slum Jagattu, says public transport is un-inclusive and unaffordable for the labour class. The metro does not allow the labour class to travel with their equipment.

He gives the example of a slum in the Koodlu area, which houses 2500 families. People from here, even today, have to come to Hosur Road or Sarjapur Road by paying Rs 20 for shared autos to catch public transport. Another such settlement formed in Laggere in 1982 had no public transport connectivity until seven-eight years ago.

“The policies are never made keeping the low-income group in mind though they form the largest part of the population. The policies are investment-friendly and profit-oriented,” he says. Even the new government low-income housing projects like Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana do not take into account the accessibility to public transportation for the poor, he adds.

Balancing real estate interests

Kaustuban Rajagopal, founder and CEO of Clutterfree, a real estate advisory firm, says that Mumbai is a city developed around train routes. “A large number of retail stores and small offices are developed around it. If it’s a walkable distance from the station, normally rentals are high. The density is huge. Similarly, in Bengaluru, these are not going to be very high-end localities, but rental values will certainly go up if the property is near metro stations, and density will also go up. It’s a repeat of what happened in other cities,” he adds.

Property prices will go up because the market would already have sensed it. Announcing new routes of metro or suburban trains without planning and notifying TOD zones can also be problematic.

“People who have insider information would have already brought properties in future metro corridors. They’ll be developing and selling them by the time metro is ready,” says Kaustuban.

How will this affect the affordability of housing?

“There is an opportunity for a higher FAR and transferable development rights in the corridor notified under TOD. It is possible to extract the best value from the land, and owners will benefit from this. The aim of the policy is to help improve mobility which will benefit investors as well,” says Suresh Hari, chairman of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India, Bengaluru. He says affordable housing is possible in the area if the rules are notified accordingly.

Arikutharam says that in Hong Kong, properties developed in TOD zones earn them more profit than transit operations. Hong Kong developers profited by following the TOD policy rather than their own plans. “Builder community has to understand that whatever they build impacts the city. They have to co-exist with the system,” he adds.