Scrap FSI restrictions, says CREDAI President

MUMBAI, July 21, 2011: CREDAI (Confederation of Real Estate Developers Associations of India) has called for scrapping the FSI (or FAR) restrictions instead of imposing conditions on development.

“It is sad that planners and policy makers are wasting their time in petty things instead of tackling the larger issue,” said Mr Lalit Kumar Jain, national President of CREDAI.

Mr Jain, who is also the Chairman and Managing Director of Kumar Urban development Limited (KUL), said the entire issue of FSI has to viewed in the larger context of making housing stock available in the market, and more so the affordable housing.
The impression created is that someone is enjoying the so-called crusade against the developer community instead of tackling the serious issues of urban planning and development.
While Hyderabad today stands as a shining example of doing away with FSI or FAR restrictions but better planning norms, Bangalore has the system of calculating total built area allowing FAR of 2.75 to 3.25..
Even the global trend is towards encouraging vertical growth of cities to reduce gobbling up of agricultural land for urban development. Dwindling of forest area and farm lands is the real environmental issue and not the myopic view on urban FSI, Mr Jain pointed out.
He lamented the fact that the urban and policy planners ignored the key aspects like travel time, increasing burden on infrastructure and so on while putting restrictions on FSI.
“Affordable housing will remain a far cry if such policies continue,” he said and called for a “serious rethinking” on the whole issue.