Tamil Nadu looking to scale down expansion of Chennai metropolitan area
Plans to expand the Chennai metropolitan area (CMA) seven-fold appear to have been scaled down in the face of opposition from farmers who do not want to give up their fields. A year ago, on January 22, 2018, the state government had published a draft notification of its plans to annex 1,710 villages in three districts — Kancheepuram, Tiruvallur and Vellore — and increase the CMA from 1,189 square km to 8,878 square km. Now, housing and urban development department sources said, the government is thinking about shrinking the proposed expansion. "Farmers in Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts have objected to conversion of agricultural lands for urbanisation. Moreover, expanding the metropolis would mean a huge cost as infrastructure needs to be built up in farflung areas to facilitate mobility to the core city," a senior official told. So, the official said, the government was looking at maximum utlisation of available space in the core city and urbanised pockets in the suburbs for residential development in the light of the substantial hike in floor space index (FSI) announced recently.
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