16,000 old buildings on digitised map

In a move expected to help in relief operations during building collapses and for better planning during reconstruction,the Mumbai Transformation Support Unit is preparing a digitised map of the 16,000-odd old buildings in the city.

In a move expected to help in relief operations during building collapses and for better planning during reconstruction,the Mumbai Transformation Support Unit (MTSU) is preparing a digitised map of the 16,000-odd old buildings in the city.

The advisory body will trace the location of all pre-1960 buildings,mostly in the heavily-populated areas of South Mumbai,on the map. They will then be layered with information like plot area,number of floors and tenants and details about the landlord,said MTSU project director UPS Madan. Any database available in a systematic manner always helps in planning. Right now,in the event of a building collapsing,it takes a while to locate it in the congested lanes, said Madan.

These buildings now pay a minimal repair cess to the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) for maintaining them.

He said the maps would also be useful when developers come forward with proposals to redevelop a particular building. Before allowing individual redevelopment,the MHADA can use the maps to locate similar dilapidated buildings nearby and then ask the builder to take up a cluster of buildings for redevelopment.

The MTSU has already prepared such maps for A ward (Colaba-Fort) and B ward (Sandhurst Road,Masjid Bunder),which have a huge number of creaky old buildings on narrow plots. The buildings have been plotted depending on their years as grade A (before 1940),B (1940-50) and C (1950-60). As of now,we have only located the buildings on the base map. Through geographic information system (GIS),the database for each building will be added, said Sulakshana Mahajan,urban planner and a consultant with the MTSU.

Above all,the digitised maps are expected to offset some of the haphazard redevelopment in the wake of last years Supreme Court ruling on cessed buildings. The ruling had allowed individual redevelopment of old buildings on small plots without any vertical restriction.

Over the past one year,the MHADA has approved over 100 proposals for mowing down two to three-storeyed structures and constructing buildings six times as high on dangerously small plots.

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