Japan model inspires India's spatial policy for urban planning

New Delhi: Taking a leaf out of Japan's urban planning and governance playbook, India has framed a National Spatial Policy (NSP) to plan new cities, redevelop older cities, and align state and city planning with economic growth and liveability.

The ministry of housing and urban affairs has framed the policy, which will develop 20-year vision documents for city planning and create structures from regional to national level for implementation of the framework in a cohesive manner.

The need for the NSP stems from projections of urban population living in cities - which is likely to grow from 30% to about 52-53% in 20 years. A senior official, who did not wish to be identified, told ET, "This growth will require a proper policy framework and the need to address the challenge of haphazard growth of our cities."


The NSP proposes a three-tier system - creation of a National Spatial Coordination Council (which will have representatives of line ministries, PMO and Niti Aayog), a State Spatial Strategy which will have a state-level group and a regional planning block which will be governed by a regional planning body. The three tiers will have proper policy frameworks.

According to sources, the NSP has proposed around 50 regional planning blocks, anchored in million-plus city regions. The NSP will set 20-year goals, a national structure, corridor maps, climate risk principles, and investment priorities. Every regional plan will include economic vision and growth drivers, infrastructure plan, natural resource and environment plan and climate action plan. Every city will also have a mandatory plan.

Two major thrust areas are land use and the transport system. The policy proposes that all states should employ a transit-first and rail-led growth at the core. This means making public transport like mass transit corridors, Metro, RRTS and railway the primary arteries of urbanisation while highways are regulated as freight and logistics corridors.

The policy also proposes employing the Japanese concept of 'Kukaku Seiri', a principle of reallocation of land. This is used for transformation of unplanned urbanised areas on the fringe of cities. In this, land is exchanged among the owners and is consolidated for each owner, whilst some of the land is reserved for public facilities. So overall, a landowner may lose small portions of land but the net worth increases as the government develops facilities and the cost of land rises. "For the government it means a more planned city rather than growth of urban slums," said the official.

The NSP also proposes redeveloping existing cities through comprehensive upgrades of legacy infrastructure (water, sewerage, housing, power and transport systems).