AbstractThe
urban planning is a complex phenomenon, which require enormous amount of data to
support the decision. The local authority requires an information system, which
will be able to monitor, surveillance, the planning regulations and will work as
early warning system. The application of GIS in the planning and management is
very common in the local authorities in developed countries but in developing
countries very few local authorities have invested in GIS. It is mainly due to
the high cost and lack of support from the higher management level. In this
paper an attempt has been made to customise GIS for development monitoring at
the local authority level.
In the state of Maharashtra it is obligatory
for all local authorities to prepare a Development Plan for the entire area
within its jurisdiction. The preparation of this Development Plan goes through
various stages and data are obtained from the field survey as stipulated in the
Maharashtra Regional & Town Planning Act. But unfortunately all these plans
are hand drawn so take lot of time for the modification and retrieval. These
maps are extensively referred in the Development Control Regulation. The process
of Development Control Regulation also become time consuming due to the manual
process adopted in this case. All these Development Plans can be digitised and
GIS can be customised for the for the purpose of controlling and monitoring
development by gathering and updating data, managing database suitable for GIS
application and developing user interface and customised application. This will
help different department to use the database, which has been developed for the
development monitoring which will make the activities of the local authorities
faster and economic.
Introduction The planning is the process of
thinking through and implementing a set of appropriate actions to active some
goal. In the present day, in developed countries planning has moved from the
rigid master-plan style to one where a number of alternatives are put forward
for public debate and are analysed against a set of often conflicting goal and
objectives. This leads in turn to a more flexible, strategic planning framework
with monitoring and feedback enabling changes to be made to the preferred
planning programme. On the other hand in the developing countries where urban
centres are growing in size and measurable complexity, many countries can not or
will not mobilise resources to deal with their problems in time. The local
authorities of most major towns in developing countries faces problems as regard
to development direction thus creating difficulties for decision making process.
Characteristically, the goals pursued in the process of urban development are
extremely varied. Decisions, which are taken with regard to the built
environment, as well as with regard to health, education and welfare of
population, have effects of very long duration. There is a public interest in
amenity, environmental preservation, general health and welfare, and the
interests of future generations, which is not adequately pursued by private
actions, especially as this conflict in their objectives. Plans and planners are
often lacking imaginative or unconventional approaches to these problems, and
the results seem to embody less knowledge than is available for informing
decision-making.
In this juncture it is required to give conceived
information system which can serve as the eyes and ears of planning process. It
provides for the monitoring and surveillance of compliance with planning
regulations and it serves as early warning system with regard to friction and
sources of shortfalls in the process of urban planning and management.
Information is therefore needed at local authority level to facilitate
administrative procedures, policy planning and plan implementation. Also, advent
of corporate planning and continued squeeze on local authority expenditure
required local authorities to examine critically whether rational decisions are
undertaken.
It is clear that development at the local level involve a
lot of policies and implementation decisions, which have to consider the cost
and benefit to every level of urban dwellers. Given the wide range of
activities, over the years, the local authorities have amassed a huge amount of
information. A substantial portion of these information is geographical in
nature such as layout of housing schemes, road and drainage systems, composition
and distribution of population, distribution of land use and so forth.
Unfortunately, these data are often inaccessible even to the local
administrators. The main reason being the database management system, which is,
based on manual filing system which makes retrieval of data difficult and time
consuming. To ease this problem, a number of authorities employ computer
database system in their organisation. While some of these systems help
tremendously in information retrieval and analysis they do not handle data very
well. Thus jobs assigned to the system are quite limited to routine retrieval.
Given the dynamic nature of planning and management carried out at local level,
it is not surprising that local authorities become one of the largest users of
GIS in advanced and developed countries. But in developing countries very few
local authorities have invested in GIS. The reluctance of local authorities to
accept the challenge to embrace the technology is due mainly to lack of support
from the management level, the lack of in-house expertise with which to make use
of the system and the high cost of GIS. On the other hand, the local authorities
particularly of major towns are now faced with increasingly complex urban
problems and inevitably urban planners and managers have to come up with better
solutions.
In this paper an attempt has been made to understand the
procedure of the preparation of the Development Plan by the Local Authorities,
their present use and a suggestion for the computerising them for the better use
mainly in the Development Control procedures.
Development Plans of
Local Authority - Process And ProcedureIn the state of Maharashtra under
the provisions of the Maharashtra Regional & Town Planning Act, 1966, it is
obligatory on every local authority to prepare a Development Plan for the entire
area within its jurisdiction within a stipulated time. The main work includes:
- The preparation of the base map of the town;
- The preparation of the Existing Landuse map:
- To carry out civic survey for the town.
After the preparation of
Proposed Development Plan the local authority published a notification in the
Maharashtra Govt. Gazette (as required under Section 26 of the Act) asking for
the suggestion from the public. The Authority modifies the Plan considering the
suggestions and objections received from the members of public. This process is
time consuming as all the maps are hand drawn and modification of them takes lot
of time. The Proposed Development Plan is then submitted to the Government and
Government then again issues a Public notification. The Approved Development
Plan is prepared only after the changes made as per the modification recommended
by the Government .The Development Plan is required to be sanctioned by the
Government not later than one year from the date of receipt of such plan from
the Planning authority.