Bhanu Joshi
The
city and region of Bangalore has passed through many stages of planned
development. Up to 1949 there were two independent cities: the City proper and
Civil & Military Station. The Civil and Military Station was developed for
providing the primary needs of the Cantonment, with public offices and housing
and accommodation for the British settlers. Bangalore Municipality was
established in 1862 with separate Municipal Boards for the City and the
Cantonment.
READ MORE IN THIS INTERESTING TIME LINE
In
1889 a Committee was constituted for the development of City ‘extensions’ to
meet the demands of a growing population. During the first quarter of the 20th
century a number of newly planned development 'extensions' were developed with
regular roads, open spaces and provisions for civic amenities (e.g. Fraser
Town, Richmond Town, Sankarapuram and Viveswarapuram). However, there was no
comprehensive approach for guiding the growth of the City in an integrated
manner. As a result irregular developments occurred in between these extension
areas. To deal with this situation, the City Improvement Trust was constituted in 1945 under special
statute (Bangalore City Improvement Trust Board Act, 1945).
In 1949 the two cities were merged and
the establishment of a number of key industries stimulated growth that resulted
in an unprecedented 5.10 lakhs to 9.91 lakhs population increase during the
1941-51 inter-censal period. In an attempt to cope with this rapid growth, a
Committee was set up by the Government of Karnataka in 1952 to draw up a
Development Plan, including broad land use proposals. But, in the main, the
proposals were not implemented as there was no legal backing to enforce the
Plan.
To address this Government constituted
the Bangalore Metropolitan Planning Board to prepare a Master Plan
for the metropolitan region with the assistance of the State Town Planning
Department. The result was the Outline Development Plan (ODP) for the Bangalore
Metropolitan Region. This
Plan was adopted by the Planning Authority constituted under the Karnataka Town
and Country Planning Act , 1961 and was finally approved by the Government in
1972.
This
Plan represented the first step towards a Development Plan for Bangalore. It was
prepared for a period of 15 years (1961-76) and covered an area of 500 sq. kilometre s. of which 220
sq. kilometres, was proposed for 'compact development' and designated as the
Conurbation Area. The remaining 280 sq. kilometres outside the Conurbation
Area, was earmarked as a green belt. The ODP remained in force until 1984. Well beyond
its plan period. By this time it outlived its utility and the City had grown
beyond the Conurbation Area and encroached the green belt. The delay in
preparing a Comprehensive Development Plan to timely supersede the OOP resulted
n large scale unauthorised development.
To counter multiplicity of authority
Government constituted the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), in 1976 under
the statute of The Bangalore Development Authority Act, 1976
to amalgamate the duties of the Bangalore City Planning Authority and the City Improvement
Trust Board and thereby combining the functions relating to plan preparation,
enforcement and implementation under one agency. Thu s, the BOA became not only
the Planning Authority for the Bangalore Metropolitan Area but also a
development agency.
An
early task of the BOA was to prepare the Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP), to supplant the outdated GOP.
But, it took nearly eight years to prepare this Plan and have it approved by
the State Government. The CDP
had a planning time horizon of 15 years (1986-2001) and a target population of
7.0 million. The designated planning area "vas extended from 500 sq.
Kilometres to 1,279 sq. kilometres.
In
an attempt to deal with these new but burgeoning urban problems, the Government
in 1985 constituted the Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority
(BMRDA) by an Act of Legislature. This endowed it with, amongst others, the
following powers and functions:
BBMP
was formed in 2007, by amalgamating the erstwhile Bangalore Mahanagara Palike
(BMP), surrounding eight smaller urban local bodies and 110 villages. BBMP now
spans over an area of 800 sq km.
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