NDA government seeks citizen participation in urban planning

"Town planners across the country will discuss the model building by-laws and make suitable recommendations," he said.

The new urban planning guidelines seek to promote local area level planning, investment planning, special purpose planning like in the case of city sanitation and mobility plans.

Naidu urged the states to modify building bye-laws to enable effective use of diminishing land resource, promote ease of doing business, encourage green construction practices, use of solar power, rainwater harvesting, zero waste discharge and enable cities to mitigate and effectively face natural disasters.

Noting that out of 7983 urban areas in the country only 2500 have Master Plans, he said, "I urge upon the states to ensure time-bound preparation and implementation of Master Plans through extensive use of GIS and remote sensing techniques."

The Minister stressed that 'top-down' approach so far adopted for urban development schemes have not yielded desired results and hence, his Ministry has undertaken extensive stakeholder consultations with states, urban local bodies and others to promote a 'bottom-up' approach through their involvement in designing of urban development schemes right from conceptualisation onwards.

Referring to the guidelines, Naidu urged the states to set up City Infrastructure Funds exclusively for promotion of infrastructure.

Expressing concern over low ranking of India regarding ease of doing construction business in urban areas, Naidu has urged the states to enable approvals for construction projects in a maximum period of 30 days.

Observing that it takes 90 to 600 days for obtaining such approvals, Naidu said, "It has been agreed in an Inter-ministerial meeting held recently, to simplify and rationalise the number of clearances required to sanction approvals in a maximum period of 30 days."