How green is your building? BMC will tell you
May 9, 2006
Soon, prospective home-owners may be able to ask builders if their constructions will attract the chirruping of local birds.
For, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), in partnership with USAID and Pune’s Science and Technology Park, is to bring into the city’s housing sector the principles of eco-housing—environmentally-friendly architecture and energy-saving measures.
Over the next four months, a team from USAID and Science and Technology Park will develop design criteria to rate new buildings on how eco-friendly their construction is.
A list of several dozen green interventions—solar water heaters, rain water harvesting, ground water recharging, ecologically sensitive building materials, for example—will be drawn out after a consultation with builders, architects and consumers.
Developers applying all interventions will be top scorers—1,000 points, plus a five-star rating—while those scoring below 500 can’t be called eco-houses.
‘‘There will be benefits to consumers in the form of incentives in property tax and water charges and to developers through lower development charges,’’ said Additional Municipal Commissioner Manu Kumar Srivastava.
While Rajendra Jagdale of Science and Technology Park claimed Mumbai would be the first metropolis in the world to apply eco-housing to the housing sector, Srivastava said the rapid redevelopment about to start in Mumbai’s cessed buildings and continuing slum rehabilitation projects—both state-regulated developments—offers immense opportunity for the concept to be especially successful in the city.
‘‘We plan to involve builders in the planning stages,’’ said Srivastava, ‘‘so they see the benefits too—the certification will help market their projects as well as reduce the adverse effects of big skyrises on infrastructure.’’
Jagdale’s team will also study the Development Control regulations and the process of granting approvals to building proposals. An eco-housing cell will be set up in the BMC, to scrutinise aspiring eco-builders’ plans and certify them.
For citizens looking to grab the sops that eco-house owners will get, there’s good news: The team will also study how many of the green interventions can be ‘‘retrofitted’’, and applied to existing buildings.
Tuesday fiasco
Tuesday’s press conference to present the Eco Housing project was among the first assignments for Sampark, the public relations agency appointed by the civic body at an annual cost of Rs 36 lakh. And they would surely have hoped for a better start: A delay caused the assembled reporters to leave. Later, office bearers of the BMC’s press group dashed off an irked missive to Municipal Commissioner Johny Joseph—the agency was appointed for effective liaising with the media, it pointed out.
URL: http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=181764