The Goan: The recently released draft regulation says that the outline development plans (ODPs) should have a special residential zone with 200% FAR (floor-area-ratio) and a special commercial zone with 300% FAR. What do you make of this?
Edgar Ribeiro: Changing from low rise residential buildings to high rise residential buildings is an age old problem. If that is how the state government wants it, they ought to have looked at the services. It needs to be asked: Have you catered for extra load of population, which will come due to higher FAR? Have you catered of extra water and power load? Have you catered for extra traffic load? I presume the state government must have done these studies, which should be published in the public domain.
TG: The census numbers indicate that the population of Panaji, Taleigao and Durgawadi combined went up from 59,066 in 2001 to 65,828 in 2011, which is an 11.4% increase. Does this increase warrant giving more FAR to buildings?
ER: This is a very minor population increase. Basically, Goa is a small state. Commerce is taking over residential areas in Panaji because the city’s area is fixed. Porvorim is largely a dormitory of Panaji. People living in Porvorim go to Panaji to work and for shopping. Has the government figured out how many people come in and go out at the entry and exit points of Panaji? To understand even vehicular capacity, it has to be analysed how many vehicles are coming in and going out of Panaji on a daily basis. These are very crucial questions.
TG: North Goa Planning and Development Authority (NGPDA) has said on multiple occasions that old buildings would get redeveloped, thanks to higher FAR, and there would be two floors reserved for parking in the redeveloped buildings to sort out the parking problem…
ER: In Connaught Place in Delhi, this idea of reserving floors for parking works very well because plot size is as huge as 4,000 square meters. In Panaji, plot size can be 200 square meters. How will I manoeuvre a car to park it in a redeveloped building of such a small size, which has floors for parking?
Besides, Goan cities have really narrow roads, which further makes it impossible to keep on adding more floors. We have 6 meter roads, which allow one car to go, turn ahead and come back. Such narrow roads don’t allow for increasing the height of building by going more vertical. Therefore, special residential zone & special commercial zone should be thrown out.
My other objection to these two new zones is this that by adding them the government has made the ODP more complex, while the law says it has to be simplified. You already have four commercial zones and four residential zones. Why has the government added a special residential zone and a special commercial zone to it?
