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Life between buildings: The use and abuse of FSI

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SPECIAL ARTICLE
Life between Buildings
The Use and Abuse of FSI
Shirish B Patel
The World Bank has been complaining that Indian cities
are not making optimal use of their land and has been
pressing for upward revisions of the floor space index,
particularly in Mumbai and Bangalore. However, the
bald comparison of FSI across cities that the WB presents is
seriously misleading. This paper proposes a new metric,
crowding, defined as the number of persons per hectare
for a particular urban use. Thus we have indoor
crowding, park crowding, and amenity crowding. How
the new metric of crowding might be used in planning
or replanning urban areas in general and the major
policy changes that need to be made if Mumbai’s
housing shortage is to be seriously addressed is
also discussed.
Shirish B Patel (shirish@spacpl.com) is a civil engineer and urban
planner. He was one of the three original authors of the idea of
New Bombay, and for its first five years was in charge of planning,
design and execution.
68
B
uilding regulations vary considerably across cities, and
often widely within the same city. Apart from ensuring
that your neighbour will have adequate light and venti-
lation, and that there is a sufficient gap between buildings to
ensure that fire cannot spread from one building to the next,
building regulations also generally make sure that the number
of residents in a locality is not in excess of the capacity of that
locality’s infrastructure. Water and sewage lines must be
adequate to sustain the expected load; and street widths suffi-
cient to support travel demands of the local population. The
minimum building setback lines from plot boundaries are
usually specified (to manage light and ventilation and the fire
hazard), as well as building heights (to limit the volume of
construction on a plot), with the indirect objective of thus
limiting the number of occupants to what the locality’s infra-
structure can bear.
A post-second world war innovation from America1,2,3 intro-
duced a new form of building control. This is called floor space
index (FSI) in India, floor space ratio (FSR) in a few countries,
and floor area ratio (FAR) everywhere else in the world. It is
the ratio of built-up area of all floors on a plot to the area of the
plot itself. Regulating it in effect regulates the total extent of
floor space that can be built in a locality, to ensure that this
results in a headcount of people that is consistent with the
locality’s infrastructure capacity. The FSI is usually different in
different parts of a city, depending on each locality’s street lay-
out, and depending also on how well the locality is served by
public transport. In general, the more capacious the arterial
transport systems serving a locality, the denser it can be in
regard to the numbers of people living or working there. Note
that a layout is hard to change, in regard to streets and plot
boundaries, once it has been initially set and construction has
taken place.
Undoubtedly, the more compact a city is, the more efficiently
it will function. The networks of services will be smaller, travel
distances will be reduced and of course a certain minimum
amount of FSI is needed to produce enough presence to make
life on the streets interesting and stimulating. No one wants
large derelict areas within the city and it is clear that the FSI
(and consequently densities) in a locality should not be too low.
The World Bank (WB) however is at the other extreme. It has
been relentlessly complaining that Indian cities do not make
optimal use of their land. The WB particularly picks on Mumbai
and points out that the city’s irrational building rules impede
good economic use of real estate. Alain Bertaud in particular,
february 9, 2013 vol xlviii no 6 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE

consultant to the WB, is insistent that the FSI levels in Mumbai this the plot factor, and it matters because FSI applies only to
are too low and need to be immediately and substantially the area of buildable plots. It is 1.67 in CD-8 and 2.39 in C ward.
increased.4,5 Once this happens, it will become a model for the In other words, C ward’s streets support 43% more buildable
rest of the country. To underline its argument, the WB presents plot area than CD-8’s streets.
a bald comparison of FSI across international cities, which is And finally, what must be factored into any debate on FSI is
both meaningless and misleading. It is like comparing the street crowding. The suggestion here is that we introduce this
weight of individuals without considering their respective as a new and important index to give us an idea of how many
heights or the societies they live in. The policy recommen- occupants live within a given street area, and consequently
dations that emerge can be seriously damaging for the city. how crowded the streets will be. The second part of this paper
Table 1 is a typical one from Table 1: Centre-City FAR Values6 dwells on this in detail. Table 3: Land Use in Manhattan
the WB comparing the FSI for City FAR Table 3 is a comparison of and Mumbai (%)
Sao Paolo 1 Land Use Manhattan Mumbai Island City
several cities around the world: the distribution of land use in (2000) (2005)
Mumbai 1.33
A table like this which does Manhattan and in Mumbai’s Streets 28.6 28.6
Chennai 1.5
not mention that in Mumbai island city. Homes 21.5 24.5
Delhi 1.2-3.5
floor space consumed is five sqm Amsterdam 1.9 Street areas as a propor- Office 11.8 19.4
(square metres)/capita,5 whereas Venice tion of total land area in Industrial 1.8 4.9
2.4
Amenities 9.7 2.9
in Manhattan it is 55 sqm/capita, Paris 3 Mumbai’s island city and
Open space 17.9 3.8
is seriously misleading. If we Shanghai 8 Manhattan are coinciden- Transport 4.9 6.4
were shown these occupancy Vancouver 9 tally the same. Land for Rest 3.9 9.3
figures it would be clear that for San Francisco 9 work areas is roughly 13.6% Total 100.0 100.0
Chicago 12
the same headcount of people in in Manhattan and 24.3% in
Hong Kong 12 Table 4: Crowding in Manhattan
a locality, FSI 1 in Mumbai is Mumbai. The startling dif- and Mumbai
Los Angeles 13
equivalent to FSI 11 in Manhattan, ference is in the land for Manhattan Mumbai Island
New York 15 (2000) City (2005)
and 1.33 in Mumbai gives the Denver 17 amenities and open spaces,
Area ha 6,116 6,882
same headcount on the street as Tokyo 20 which adds up to 27.6% in
Residents 15,29,357 30,86,362
15 in Manhattan. Singapore 12-25 Manhattan and 6.7% in the Jobs 20,85,315 19,74,680
But it is on the strength of bald Source: World Bank (2012). island city. This difference Plot factor 1.52 1.71
comparisons as shown in Table 1 that Mumbai’s FSI has been is more glaring when seen as Total factor 3.79 3.49
portrayed as undesirably low. It has already been pushed up in amenity crowding and open Crowding persons/hectare
many cases to four, which is the current upper limit, except in space crowding (Table 4). Street (residents) 874 1,568
the case of hotels, educational institutions, hospitals and the Amenity crowding in Street (jobs) 1,192 1,003
like where the limit can be much higher; and for redevelop- Mumbai is six times higher, Amenity 2,578 15,464

ment of tenanted properties, where there is no upper limit. and open space crowding is Open space 1,397 11,802

However, there are three major factors that the WB’s com-
parison has not taken into account. The first is that cities are at
different levels of economic development, and are inhabited
by individuals occupying, on average, different extents of floor
space. Living is simply more crowded in some parts of the
world, and less crowded in others. Table 2 shows a comparison
Table 2: Indoor Crowding in CD-8 and C Ward
Locality Persons/Hectare of Built-up Persons/Hectare of Built-up
Floor Area (Residential) Floor Area (Commercial)
Manhattan CD-8
(Upper East Side) 157 (or 64 sqm per person) 235 (or 43 sqm per person)
Mumbai C ward 1,014 (or 10 sqm per person) 1,186 (or 8 sqm per person)
of what we might call indoor crowding in Manhattan’s CD-8,
more commonly known as the Upper East Side, and Mumbai’s
C ward (each reputed to be the most street-crowded residential
district in its city):7,8
It highlights some staggering differences: Manhattan’s CD-8
has more than six times as much residential floor space per
person, and over five times as much floor space per job, as
compared to someone in Mumbai’s C ward. With such extrava-
gant use, no wonder Manhattan needs so much larger FSI.
The second factor is the extent of buildable area: in other
words, the proportion of buildable plots to street area. We call
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 9, 2013 vol xlviii no 6
eight times higher than in Manhattan.
The suggestion here is not that there should be no change in
Mumbai’s FSI regime. Where existing residents would simply
like to have more floor space, with no increase in the number of
families in a locality, there is surely no harm in raising the FSI.
In the older parts of Mumbai the existing, already built-up FSI
levels exceed two and sometimes three, but reconstruction is
permitted only to the more recently set 1.33. This is absurd.
Also, there is no reason why the FSI should not be higher
around new transit nodes, where added population would not
place a higher burden on existing transport capacities. Provided
of course that water supply and sewerage are properly taken
care of, as well as amenity and open space crowding and traffic
is intelligently managed.
But the WB is focusing exclusively on FSI, disregarding all
other aspects of urban life. Its comparison of international FSI
values is simplistic in the extreme and seriously misleading,
because it ignores the other equally relevant parameters of
street crowding, indoor crowding and the plot factor, apart
from amenity crowding and open space crowding. Pressing for
a major upward revision of the FSI without a corresponding
improvement in infrastructure, particularly transport facili-
ties to deal with street crowding, is logically indefensible.
69
SPECIAL ARTICLE

Because it can only aggravate every Figure 1: Localities Seen on the Indoor/Street Crowding Graph
type of public crowding, it promises PF = 1 PF = 0.5 16 FSI = 8 FSI = 4 FSI = 2
5
CD-5
something it cannot deliver – an
improvement in the quality of life. 4

Plot density
GN
For the poor, and the vast majority FSI = 1
of citizens, it will result in a wors- PF = 2 3

ening of living conditions, parti- PF = 3 DE 2

cularly travelling conditions. But PF = 4 CD-8 FSI = 0.5
worst of all, it is a red herring. It
DW
distracts us from the central prob-
lem which is that adding to the 6 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 3
Street crowding Indoor Crowding
city’s land area by establishing new
transport arteries is being invaria-
bly and unaccountably delayed. 1
The high cost transport projects TF = 5 All axes are 1,000

Gross density
persons/hectare
being given the highest priority, TF = 4 PD
like the Western Coastal Road, TF = 3

}
2 ID x FSI x PF = SD
or the Virar-Churchgate railway,
offer to open up no new land for TF = 2
the city. There is also a deliberate
companion policy of withholding land from the market on localities we should no doubt apply an appropriate multiplier,
one pretext or another. How to keep land in short supply is or attenuator, to particular countries’ values before making
thus the name of the game, by which windfall fortunes can comparisons internationally. And we should not forget the
be made in short order, and never mind what happens to value of transition open spaces, which are between those
Mumbai or its citizens. spaces that are entirely private and those spaces that are en-
tirely public. Transition space crowding deserves to be a valu-
Street Crowding and Indoor Crowding able and separate metric from street crowding, if for no other
In any locality, if we adopt the following definitions: reason than to recognise the value of transition spaces.11
• SC = street crowding = occupants/hectare of street area. To arrive at gross densities, we introduce a new parameter,
• IC = indoor crowding = occupants/hectare of built-up area. Total Factor (TF) defined as follows:
• FSI = built-up area/buildable plot area. TF = total area/street area.
• PF = plot factor = buildable plot area/street area. And we notice that gross density (GD) is a function of street
The following is their relationship: crowding (SC) and TF:
SC = IC × FSI × PF9 GD = SC/TF
Street crowding is thus the product of indoor crowding When we convert the foregoing formulae into a graph we
(the number of occupants per hectare of floor area), the FSI get some interesting new insights (Figure 1).12
and the plot factor. The product of the first two terms, IC × FSI Indoor crowding is represented as persons/hectare on the
is what urban planners call net density: we might just as well positive X-axis. Street crowding is on the negative X-axis. The
call it plot density, a more easily understood term, since it diagonal radial lines in the first quadrant are the multiplier
means occupants/hectare of plot area. lines for FSI. If we start with any given level of indoor crowding
As regards street crowding, we are not saying that every (IC), and move up to the relevant FSI, then turning left at that
resident will be out on the streets at the same time, or that all point and extending the horizontal line leftwards brings us to
job holders will be out on the streets simultaneously during the product of IC and FSI on the positive Y-axis. This is plot
the day. But some fraction of each set will be out on the streets density (number of persons per hectare of plot area), also
at any given time (with a maximum reached perhaps during called net density.
the evening rush hour). And the point of our exercise is not so The second quadrant contains the diagonal radial lines for
much to determine that precise number, as to assess the impact plot factor (PF). These are again multiplier lines. Once our hori-
on street crowding of changes in FSI. zontal line reaches our locality’s PF value, we turn left again
In calculating the street area it is important that we exclude and move downwards, where on the negative X-axis we read
the areas devoted to parking and the areas devoted to arterial off street crowding, the product of IC, FSI and PF.
traffic. Just as we exclude surface railway areas when comput- In the third quadrant we introduce diagonal lines represent-
ing street areas, we should also exclude that part of each street ing various values of the total factor. Continuing our vertical
that is occupied by arterial traffic, or taken up by a particular line downwards from the street crowding value, until it
function like parking. reaches our locality’s value of total factor, we turn again and
Moreover, it is a fact that different societies use their streets move horizontally rightwards to read off the value of gross
in different ways.10 When looking at street crowding in different density on the negative Y-axis.
70 february 9, 2013 vol xlviii no 6 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE
Figure 2: Varying FSI and PF With no change foreseen
in the layout of streets,

Density
and therefore no change in

Plot
FSI=3

Density

Density
PF = 1 3,000 the plot factor, we end up

Plot
Plot
with street crowding of
PF = 1.5 2,000 FSI=2
about 13,000 persons/hec-
PF-3 1,000 FSI=1 tare, two and a half times
Street Indoor street Indoor street Indoor
worse than anything seen
Crowding 3,000 0 1,000 Crowding 3,000 0 1,000 3,000 0 1,000 Crowding
on our diagram so far; and
Crowding
probably far beyond any-
T=5 600
TF-3.5 857 thing seen so far anywhere
TF-3 1,000
in the world.
Density

Density
Seeing these localities on
Gross

Gross

Density
a diagram throws up two

Gross
interesting questions. The
The graph shows the diagram for each locality. The values first arises from the observation that on a greenfield site, or a
for various parameters are given in the Annex (p 74).13 brownfield site undergoing major redevelopment, we can
Mumbai’s D-East ward is a mixed residential and com- have any particular level of indoor crowding, and any partic-
mercial district, properly laid out and earlier occupied by ular level of street crowding, and still have a choice of how
a mixture of British and native inhabitants. The D-West high or low the horizontal connecting line (plot density)
ward is the most pricey and upmarket residential district in should be. In other words, with indoor crowding and street
all of Mumbai, with large vacant tracts occupied by the crowding determined, we can still juggle the FSI and plot
governor’s establishment and a wooded area that holds the factor, as long as their product remains unchanged. Figure 2
Parsi Towers of Silence (the area for disposal of their dead). illustrates the possibilities:
The G-North (south-east) is partly properly laid out, and In the diagrams we have assumed indoor crowding at
partly Dharavi. 1,000 persons/hectare, and street crowding at 3,000 persons/
All these localities, and Manhattan’s CD-5 and CD-8, are over hectare. For three possible values of FSI, at 1, 2 and 3, we
200 hectares in area. We have chosen this size so that each get plot factor values of 3, 1.5 and 1 respectively (the product,
such locality can be expected to have within it amenities and at 3, is the same in all three cases). Let us assume that in each
open spaces sufficient at the very least for its own needs, if not case the area for amenities + open spaces is equal to the
additionally offering facilities for the rest of the city. street area: in this way the amenity + open spaces crowding
Notice the following: will remain unchanged in all three situations, and will be
• Values used are for the sum total of residents and jobs in a the same as the value for street crowding. With plot factors at
locality. This is not quite correct and needs to be refined.14 3, 1.5 and 1 we have streets taking up 20%, 29% and 33% of
• Values for indoor crowding in Manhattan are remarkably the total land area, and amenities + open spaces doing the
low, both for CD-5 and CD-8; and are generally much lower same. Plot areas will be 60%, 43% and 33% of the land area
than for localities in Mumbai. respectively. So we get corresponding total factors of 5, 3.5
• Street crowding in CD-8 is also lower than for any locality in and 3 for each of the three cases. Thus we see that in these
Mumbai; CD-5 values are high because of very high daytime three cases, as the horizontal line ascends, the plot density
street crowding. But we must remember that Manhattan has increases from 1,000 to 2,000 and 3,000 per hectare; and
an underground railway, which takes much of the load off the gross density increases more slowly, from 600 to 857 to
its streets. 1,000 per hectare.
• In Mumbai, the horizontal line seems to rise with diminishing We should note that what changes in these cases, with gross
prosperity – the poorer the locality the larger its plot density. density rising from 600 to 857 to 1,000, is the character of the
• The gross density for residents is nowhere higher than development: with a plot factor of three and an FSI of one we
1,700 persons/hectare in Mumbai. This is despite not having will have low-rise buildings, probably no higher than two or
enough land set aside for amenities and open spaces. A three floors; with FSI two the number of floors will go up to
figure of 750 appears more realistic as an absolute upper limit four or five; and with FSI three the buildings will be eight to 10
for global planning. And gross density should be calculated floors high (assuming footprints are about a third of the plot).
on the residual area after deducting what is needed for The texture of the locality changes, and so does the quality of
arterial transport. life on the street, despite the indoor and street crowding num-
• Finally, and most importantly, let us see what the graph bers remaining identical.
reveals if the FSI in G-North is suddenly increased to In a city we probably need a mix of all three intensities of
four. This is exactly what has been sanctioned for Dharavi. development: the denser developments near the major transit
With no change in indoor crowding, the vertical line goes nodes, and the lower density with its shallower-rise buildings
off the chart, to a plot density of about 12,500 persons/hectare. further away.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 9, 2013 vol xlviii no 6 71
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Figure 3: Effect of a Sudden Increase in FSI
PF=2 C 4,000
Plot density
2,000
A, B
Street
8,000 4,000 2,000
Crowding
A, B
Gross density
C 2,000
TF-4
The second interesting question that can be studied on the
diagram (Figure 3) is the effect of a sudden rise in the FSI in
any locality. Let us imagine that we have a locality with indoor
crowding of 1,000 persons/built hectare, street crowding of
2,000 per street hectare, a plot factor of two and FSI of one.
The FSI is suddenly raised to four.
We have an initial situation “A”, represented on the diagram
by the four points labelled “A”. The plot factor is fixed, with
plots and streets already defined. Now we allow the sudden in-
crease in FSI from one to four, as is currently proposed for the
suburbs. The first possibility is that the number of families living
in the area does not change: they simply move into the larger
accommodation provided by the increased FSI. The top right
corner of the initial diagram “A” moves horizontally to a new
location “B” which reflects the now improved level of reduced
indoor crowding. Converted to flat sizes, it means that a family
of five living in a 50 sq mt flat now moves into a 200 sq mt flat
(that is, from occupying a 500 sq ft flat to occupying a 2,000 sq
ft flat). Plot densities remain unchanged, and street crowding
remains unchanged. This is the argument put forward by Alain
Bertaud, who sees increased FSI only as something that bene-
fits existing families, with no negative consequences.
The second possibility is that existing families cannot afford
the extra accommodation provided by the additional FSI, and
that new families move into the extra floor area. In the worst
case these new families will occupy accommodation no larger
than what is occupied by the earlier families. The vertical line
“C” will then extend upwards till it reaches the new FSI, and at
this point move across to a quadrupled plot density. Continu-
ing further to the plot factor, unchanged at two, the line turns
and descends to a new and quadrupled level of street crowd-
ing, and then further to a quadrupled gross density.
The reality will most likely be somewhere between these two
extremes. It certainly cannot be the case that all the new floor
space will be taken up only by existing families and that despite
a sudden change in FSI there will be no worsening of street
crowding or amenity crowding or open space crowding.
To summarise, what has been presented above is a proposal
for a new metric we could call “crowding”. This should be useful
in measuring the characteristics of existing localities in regard
to a variety of aspects of urban life. Thus we can consider
72
home crowding, job crowding, amenity crowding, open space
FSI = 4 crowding, transition space crowding and street crowding. After
C
comparing a number of localities around the world hopefully
we can develop norms that set out the desirable range of values for
each of these aspects of urban crowding. We do not want values
that are too high, nor should we want values that are too low. Too
B A FSI = 1
high would imply uncomfortable living; too low would imply
B A, C Indoor derelict or lifeless areas that are uncomfortable in a different
1,000 Crowding
0 way, apart from probably placing heavier demands on resources,
500 particularly urban transport. But above all, the FSI decisions
1,000 should be taken not randomly but in the context of each particular
layout and the desired levels of indoor and outdoor crowding.
Recasting Damaging Policies
“Going vertical” – in other words, raising the FSI blindly, without
understanding the complexities and limitations discussed above –
seems to be the “solution” currently on offer to address Mumbai’s
steadily worsening housing situation. As explained, raising the
FSI, especially for the poor, will only make matters worse, and
life in the city will become more and more intolerable. Instead,
the way forward is to recast three sets of current policies that
are currently being pursued and that are particularly damaging.
The Rent Act
The most important policy change we need is in regard to the
Rent Act. No other city in the world has this kind of legislation
which keeps two million people in homes for which they pay
more or less pre-second world war rentals – which are currently
about 1,000 of the market rentals. The first and most direct con-
sequence of the Rent Act has been that all construction for rental
has stopped dead in its tracks. At the time of independence the
thumb rule with moneyed people was that you put one-third of
your wealth in gold, one-third in stocks, and one-third in prop-
erty, usually property for rental. Property prices would go on
rising, keeping pace with inflation, and rental income from
property would also similarly keep on rising. Once the Rent Act
was in place, investment for rental naturally ceased. So today,
the only place where someone with a middle or low income can
find rented accommodation in Mumbai is inside a slum. It is
self-policing. The writ of government does not run there and the
Rent Act does not apply. Slum rentals are at market prices.
In Mumbai, where leave-and-licence arrangements are
being increasingly adopted, the fear persists that if the num-
bers become large enough, government will once again do
what it did in 1973. If at any point in time it is sufficiently
tempted by the number of votes to be won it will once again
bring the Rent Act into force on all these leave-and-licence
properties. So unless the Rent Act is firmly abandoned once
and for all, there is going to be no widespread formal invest-
ment in middle- or low-income housing for rental.
We must remember that it is not only the very wealthy cor-
porations or high net-worth individuals who would invest in
rental housing for the poor. In France for example much of the
rental housing is owned by single families that own two
houses, one for self-occupation and the other for rental. The
problem of how to amend the Rent Act is not intractable. A
february 9, 2013 vol xlviii no 6 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

number of solutions exist which would be politically accepta-
ble. Some of these have been implemented by other countries,
which have moved from what are called first-generation rent
controls (what Mumbai has) to policies of rent stabilisation or
what are called second-generation rent controls, by which
rents rise gradually till they are almost at market levels.
What is important to understand is that the Rent Act in effect
takes money out of the pockets of landlords and puts it in the
pockets of tenants. It is a direct subsidy paid by landlords to ten-
ants. Government, paying nothing out of its own funds, is sim-
ply standing by as a kind of cheerleader. If the protection were
to be taken away from the premises and extended instead to the
tenants, it might well emerge that many tenants are wealthier
than their landlords, a situation that hardly calls for tenants to
be further subsidised by their landlords through rent control.
Inclusionary Housing
The second fundamental change Mumbai requires is in regard
to mandating housing for the poor. During the British rule, if
you wanted to build a bungalow you were expected also to
build servants’ quarters in the same compound, to house your
bearer, your cook, your driver, and your dhobi. When the tex-
tile mills were built the workers were provided with chawls to
live in. Admittedly, the living conditions offered were dread-
ful, not only by today’s standards but by the standards of that
time; but there was no question that if you created employ-
ment you simultaneously concerned yourself with how and
where your employees would live.
With Independence all that changed. Now you can hire as
many people as you like, and you do not have to bother about
where they will live. So in 2005, a Right to Information (RTI)
inquiry revealed that in Mumbai we had 4,413 police const-
ables and 81 police inspectors living in slums. These are officers
of the law who are illegal residents of the city. The govern-
ment will give a policeman a job, but not a place where he
can pitch his tent. The numbers have probably increased
since 2005, but responses to RTI enquiries are now cagier and
craftier than they used to be.
There is a way out of this, and it is called inclusionary hous-
ing. Policies addressing the problem of housing those below the
median income exist in many countries – England, France, Italy,
Spain, Canada, the US and many others. They simply mandate
that whenever you build floor space for any purpose, be it an
office or a mall or a cinema or a high-value residential block,
you are bound to set aside some predefined proportion of the
total built space for inclusionary housing. In most countries it is
around 25%. In Spain it is 50%. Most often the requirement is
that the inclusionary housing must be provided on the same
site. The cost of construction is reimbursed to the developer to
ensure that he does not cut corners on specifications. But the
land for the inclusionary housing is provided by him without
charge, as a condition for the permission he gets to develop the
rest of the property. It goes without saying that no developer in
the world likes his country’s policy of inclusionary housing.
It is important to understand how schemes of inclusionary
housing are administered. It is not left to the developer to manage
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 9, 2013 vol xlviii no 6
SPECIAL ARTICLE
everything. There are three distinct aspects of such schemes,
and each is placed in the hands of the agency best equipped to
deal with it. The developer constructs the housing. A separate
agency administers it – in the UK it is typically a not-for-profit-
distribution non-governmental organisation (NGO). It collects
rents and maintains and manages the property. It also owns
the property, so it is able to raise finance against mortgages.
And the third aspect is that of subsidy, which is provided by
the government on a family-by-family basis, separately admin-
istered from both the construction and the maintenance and
management of the property.
Notice that no one gets his or her housing free. The family
may get a subsidy. But they pay rent (or buy outright) a flat
from the housing agency administering the project. That
agency is very carefully and strongly regulated by the govern-
ment in regard to the rates it can charge.
Free Housing
Finally, let us turn to the third policy that is distorting Mumbai,
and that is the policy of free housing. Having seen what it has
done to Mumbai in the last 10 years it seems obvious that it is
completely unsustainable, and completely unworkable on a
city-wide scale. Since it has worked in a few locations, like that
of Shapoorji Pallonji’s towers at Tardeo it looks successful. But
the question is, is it replicable on a grand scale? It requires that
at each location you must fulfil two essential conditions: first,
that there are in that locality enough up-market buyers to
finance free construction for several times their number of
families; and second, that the original settlement is sufficiently
thinly populated to keep the crowding in the finished develop-
ment within acceptable limits. For most of Mumbai neither of
these conditions holds, and such sites at which both hold
simultaneously have by now been exhausted.
Here too, where the Maharashtra government seems to have
painted itself into a corner, a number of solutions are possible,
the best in each case depending on the particularities of that
situation. Fundamentally, no one in their heart of hearts beli-
eves that he or she is entitled to free housing. But people do
understand their voting power, and their bargaining power.
Conclusions
Set out above are suggestions for four major policy changes, the
first in regard to discarding FSI as the fountainhead of all good
things for Mumbai; and three others, all in regard to housing.
Unless all four are changed, either coterminously or in short order,
there is unlikely to be any significant improvement in Mumbai’s
housing situation. But there is also a fifth important change
the city needs, and that is in regard to opening up more land for
the city’s growth. Mumbai needs the Trans-Harbour Link urgently,
to give it access to more land area on the mainland. Schemes
like the Bandra-Worli Sea Link (or for that matter the Western
Coastal Road) are useless in this regard, because they provide
the city with no new land. There can be no doubt that for the
foreseeable future Mumbai will continue to grow. So if we want a
less congested and better performing city we have no option
but to add more land to it, well connected by public transport.
73
 SPECIAL ARTICLE

Notes
[Life Between Buildings is the title of a wonderful
book written in the 1970s by Jan Gehl, architect
and Professor of Urban Design in Copenhagen. He
distinguishes between essential activities, option-
al activities and social activities that take place in
the public space between buildings. His focus is
on the design of public spaces to maximise social
activities. Ours in this paper is rather on how in-
discriminate increases in FSI can make even es-
sential activities unacceptably difficult.]
1 David A Gaspers, “Form-Based Code as a Regu-
latory Tool for Mixed Use Urban Infill Develop-
ment in Lincoln, Nebraska”, 2006.
2 Stephen Sussna, “Bulk Control and Zoning:
The New York City Experience”, Land Economics,
Vol 43, No 2, May 1967, pp 158-71 (http://www.
jstor.org/stable/3145239).
3 Arthur B Gallion and Simon Eisner, “Urban
Pattern”, D van Nostrand, 1965.
4 Alain Bertaud, “Mumbai FAR/FSI Conundrum.
The Perfect Storm: The Four Factors Restrict-
ing the Construction of New Floor Space in
Mumbai”, available at http://alainbertaud.com,
2011, mentions Mumbai’s estimated average of
about 4.5 m2 per person in 2009.
5 Alain Bertaud and Jan K Brueckner, “Analysing
Building Height Restrictions: Predicted Impacts,
Welfare Costs and a Case Study of Bangalore,
India”, World Bank Policy Research Working
Paper 3290, April 2004.
6 Jan K Brueckner and Kala Seetharam Shridhar,
“Measuring Welfare Gains from Relaxation of
Land-Use Restrictions: The Case of India’s Build-
ing-Height Limits”, available at http://www.soc-
sci.uci. edu/~ jkbrueck/india.pdf, 2012.
7 The author first came across the term “Crowd-
ing” recently, in a paper by Rémy Prud’homme,
“Seven Notes on Mumbai’s Growth and How to
Finance It”, May 2007. But Prud’homme uses it
only to express Indoor Crowding, and does not
extend it, as proposed in this paper, to other
aspects of urban life.
8 The author gratefully acknowledges the value
of fruitful discussions and research support
from Professor Abhay Pethe and his post-
graduate students Sahil Gandhi and Vaidehi
Tandel at the Department of Economics, Uni-
versity of Mumbai; and of comments from
Vidyadhar K Phatak and Dr Bimal H Patel.
9 The right hand side of the equation when
expanded reads: (Occupants/Built-up area) ×
(Built-up area/Buildable Plot area) × (Buildable
Plot area/Street Area). The Built-up area and
Buildable Plot area terms cancel out, and we
are left with Occupants/Street Area, which is
the definition of Street Crowding.
10 A friend to whom this paper was sent for com-
ments and suggestions, says: “Perhaps you need
also to draw attention to what crowds our
streets: people, motorised and non motorised
vehicles of all sorts (two-wheelers, three-wheel-
ers, four-wheelers from cars of different sizes
to vans, trucks, buses, coaches), lack of disci-
pline and road manners on the part of drivers,
street parking, handcarts, bullock carts, hawk-
ers, shops spilling over onto the street, rubbish
dumps, utility installations (e g, transformers),
street furniture, trees, shacks of the homeless,
stray animals, community dogs, protest groups,
badly paved pedestrian pavements, ratio of
vehicular road to pedestrian road, etc. There is
one hell of a difference between a New York or
Washington Road and a Bombay Road based on
the uses to which it is put”.
The implicit suggestion that street functions
would benefit by being segregated is some-
thing that Jan Gehl for one would strongly re-
sist. When pedestrians and traffic are com-
pletely separated he thinks it becomes duller to
drive and duller to walk and duller to live along
these streets. But he likes the idea of stopping
traffic at the perimeter of a locality, with a pe-
destrians-only area in between, and a short
walk to your particular door or gate. Hermann
Knoflacher, an Austrian transportation engi-
neer, echoes this when he suggests that the dis-
tance from where you live, or work, to where
your car is parked should be at least as much as
the distance to the nearest bus stop.
11 Between the private indoor space and the public
street there often is – and it is certainly desirable
– a transition open space, which is neither
entirely private nor entirely public. These are
common spaces not closed to the public but nor
are they casually wandered into by the public.
The size and configuration of these spaces
matters and affects the experience of moving
from indoors to street. Courtyards work well.
And courtyard crowding, like other types of
crowding, needs to be taken into account.
12 The term “Crowding” could equally be re-
placed by the word “Density”. Thus we might
talk of Indoor Density, and Street Density,
Amenity Density and Open Space Density. This
would be consistent with planners’ traditional
terms of Net Density (same as Plot Density) and
Gross Density. Each of these measures, whether
you call it Crowding or call it Density, is ex-
pressed in persons/hectare for a particular use
and a specifically defined area. The measures
are in any case all related, through a variety of
dimensionless parameters such as FSI, Plot
Factor, Amenity Factor and so on. And we might
note that the neutrality of “Density” could be
qualified by adding a variety of descriptors,
starting with excessively sparse, through com-
fortable, vibrant, crowded, difficult, to hope-
lessly congested. In this paper, because it is
written in the context of Mumbai, I have
preferred “Crowding” as a more accurate term
than “Density” when speaking of indoor spaces,
streets, amenities and open spaces. In Mumbai
all these are definitely crowded, if not worse.
However, we do need to note that some
measures of density, such as parking spaces per
hectare of street area, whether on-street or
off-street, and whether free or paid, are not
amenable to description in the vocabulary of
sparse to crowded and beyond.
13 The analysis of crowding in a locality can and
should be further refined. For example, if we say:
HC = Home Crowding = Residents/hectare of
home built-up area.
JC = Job Crowding = Job holders/hectare of
jobs built-up area.
SC = Street Crowding = Occupants/hectare of
street area.
PC = Park Crowding = Occupants/hectare of
park area.
PFH = Plot Factor (homes) = Home plot area/
street area.
PFJ = Plot Factor (jobs) = Jobsplot area/street
area.
FSIH = Floor Space Index (homes) = Built-up
area (homes)/plot area (Residential).
FSI J = Floor Space Index (jobs) = built-up
area (jobs)/plot area (commercial).
Then we have: SCH = HC × PFH × FSIH (for
homes only).
SCJ = JC × PFJ × FSIJ (for jobs only).
Street Crowding at night would be the same as
SCH. But Street Crowding during the day
would be SH J + (1 – er) * SCH, where er is the
employment rate, and the formula accounts for
workers among the residents of the locality
who will be away during the day (or in employ-
ment in the locality, which comes to the same
thing when determining the daytime head-
count in the locality).
14 As above.
15 Data for Manhattan kindly provided by Shampa
Chanda, Director of Citywide Planning, De-
partment of Housing Preservation and Devel-
opment’s (HPD) Planning and Pipeline Devel-
opment Division.
16 Data for Mumbai from Biond, a Mumbai-based
GIS company.

Annex: Localities in Manhattan and Mumbai Compared 15,16

Locality Area Hector Population Jobs All Users Indoor All Users FSI All Users Plot All Users Street Total Factor = Gross All Users Gross
Crowding Factor Crowding Area/Street Area Density
Manhattan
CD-5 (midtown)* 424 44,028 8,94,290 296 16.04 1.26 5,986* 2.70 2,216
CD-8 (Upper east side)* 513 2,17,063 1,37,645 180 7.29 1.67 2,190* 3.17 692
Mumbai
A-Mid 345 53,735 2,43,681 638 3.66 0.73 1,695 1.97 174
B 279 1,10,415 31,349 692 1.79 0.88 1,086 2.14 508
C 214 2,02,686 1,02,122 1,018 2.05 2.39 4,992 3.50 1,425
D-east 216 1,63,627 1,49,127 1,201 1.75 2.46 5,182 3.58 1,446
D-west 262 83,462 15,836 366 1.34 4.71 2,317 6.11 379
G-N/S-E# 314 2,99,897 2,28,607 3,116 1.13 1.04 3,682 2.19 1,682
Charkop^ 57 39,466 1,058 1,05,81,157 1.02 2.96 3,488 4.89 713
Island city 6,882 30,86,362 19,74,680 1,042 1.12 2.20 2,570 3.49 735
* : Manhattan has an underground railway.
# : Includes Dharavi.
^ : Charkop is a mixed-income development incorporating sites-and-services in north-western Mumbai which is in many ways a model of what urban residential development should be.
Its 57 hectares include schools, playgrounds and parks, which could readily be replicated to the 200 + hectare area needed to make it comparable with the other localities in the table.

74 february 9, 2013 vol xlviii no 6 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

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