Once known as the ‘Garden City’ of India, Bengaluru’s shrinking green cover has forced regulatory body, the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) to consider making it compulsory for high-rises in the city to build terrace gardens.
Arpita Raj for The Times of India reported that the BDA has initiated consultations with various stakeholders for drafting these regulations.
"We are considering several options to address the city's concerns over pollution and rising temperatures. One of these is making green covers for roofs of large buildings, say with a built-up area exceeding 1,000 or 2,000 sqft, compulsory. It's still in the nascent stage and we are also planning to fix what percentage of the rooftop area could be dedicated to a garden and whether it could go alongside solar panels," MN Kumar, additional director, town and country planning, BDA told TOI.
Terrace garden is not an alien concept but a law to make it mandatory is perhaps a first.
A similar idea was proposed by the Pune Municipal Corporation in May 2016 in order to expand the city’s green cover and allocated Rs 1 crore for housing societies interested in setting up gardens on roofs.
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A report by Pune Mirror report quoted an expert saying the move was contradictory to the city’s mandatory rainwater harvesting measure.
"The corporation has made rainwater harvesting mandatory. How can we develop a garden on the terrace then? It is exactly an opposite move. On the other hand, there is the lurking danger of water leakage and structural changes that will have to be considered if one were to put up a garden on the terrace," Satish Magar, managing director of Magarpatta Township Development and Construction Company had told the newspaper.
Incidentally, rainwater harvesting is also mandatory in Bengaluru.
