LIFE BETWEEN BUILDINGS : THE USE AND ABUSE OF FSI Shirish B Patel To be published shortly in Economic and Political Weekly and in the April 2013 issue of Environment and Urbanization 27 / 403 Abstract: Many Indian cities have evolved over centuries, through the Middle Ages. In The World Bank has been general our cities do not have the grand relentlessly complaining that Indian layouts and leafy avenues of many of cities are not optimally using their land. their more recent Western counterparts. They have been continuously pressing New Delhi is an exception. So are for upward revisions of FSI, particularly the cantonment areas that are an in Mumbai and Bengaluru. extension of many of our older towns. But then these layouts are a Western However, the bald comparison imposition and have nothing to do with of FSI (Floor Space Index) across cities the way old Delhi or other older cities that the Bank presents is seriously developed. Bengaluru was laid out misleading. This paper is about the more or less like a cantonment town. other factors that affect the way a Mumbai is a mixture of very different city functions. The author proposes layouts, from some parts that are the a new metric, Crowding, defined as native old town and others like the Fort the number of persons per hectare for area and Dadar that are differently and a particular urban use. Thus we have more spaciously planned. What should Indoor Crowding, Park Crowding, be obvious, but apparently is not to the Amenity Crowding, and crowding city’s administrators, is that you cannot of any other activity we consider have the same single set of uniform significant. But the most useful of all building and development rules applied these is Street Crowding, and a most to every part of the city, without regard intriguing relationship emerges between to the differentiation called for by such Indoor Crowding, Street Crowding, varying urban layouts. the Plot Factor which characterises the urban layout, and FSI. The choice of In every city buildings conform to a set of appropriate FSI thus has to be in the building codes—informal earlier, now context of these other three parameters. formalized. These codes are complex, It cannot, as the Bank suggests, be and usually vary from one locality to independently and arbitrarily set. another: buildings have to observe a minimum required front open space, In the second part of the paper possibly side and rear open spaces the author indicates how the new as well, with plinths often mandated to metrics of Crowding might be used in cover no more than a specified fraction planning or re-planning urban areas of the plot area. The maximum number in general. of floors is also often specified. These older, stronger regulations of urban form give us precincts like Marine Drive, where all buildings have a 404 / 27 LIFE BETWEEN BUILDINGS : THE USE AND ABUSE OF FSI common front line, and an identical more importantly in regard to transport footprint; or Ballard Estate, where front and the crowding on the streets. The FSI lines are similarly required to be rigidly also should be allowed to be different adhered to. The most extreme example in different parts of the city, depending of rigorous building control is perhaps on each locality’s layout. Note that a Paris, where buildings touch each other layout is hard to change, in regard to on either side, but in many localities all streets and plot boundaries, once it has owners on a particular street front have been initially set and construction has to adhere to a common façade line and taken place. identical floor levels, and quite possibly the material of façade construction. There can be no doubt that the more compact a city the more efficiently A post-World War II innovation from it will function. Networks of services Americaii,iii,iv introduced a new form will be smaller. Travel distances will of building control. This is called FSI be reduced. And of course a certain (Floor Space Index) in India, FSR (Floor minimum amount of FSI is needed to Space Ratio) in a few countries, and produce enough presence to make life FAR (Floor Area Ratio) everywhere else on the streets interesting and stimulating. in the world. It is the ratio of built-up Nobody can want large derelict areas area of all floors on a plot to the area within the city. So it is clear that FSI in a of the plot itself. The FSI regulation is locality should not be too low. generally welcomed by architects. They like the freedom to reduce the footprint But the World Bank is at the other of the building, shape it or distort it as extreme. It has been relentlessly they please, and increase the number complaining that Indian cities are not of floors, while still observing the FSI optimally using their land. The Bank rule which sets the total built-up area particularly picks Mumbai to make allowable on each particular plot. From this case and points out that the city’s the authorities’ point of view, setting irrational building rules impede good up building regulations is now greatly economic use of real estate. Alain simplified. Setbacks can be made Bertaud in particular, consultant to the a function of the proposed building World Bank, is insistent that the Floor heights, façade lines or floor levels no Space Index (FSI) levels in Mumbai are longer need to be worried about. Only too low and need to be immediately the FSI specified has to be carefully and substantially increased.v,vi Once managed to ensure that the extent this happens, it will become a model of built-up floor space permitted in a for the rest of the country. To underline locality does not exceed that locality’s its argument, the World Bank presents infrastructure capacity, in regard to a bald comparison of FSI across water supply and sewerage of course but international cities, which is both 27 / 405 meaningless and misleading. It is Showing a table like this, without like comparing individuals’ weights mentioning in an adjoining column that without considering their heights or in Mumbai floor space consumed is 5 the societies they live in. The policy sqm (square metres) /capita, whereas recommendations that emerge can be in Manhattan it is 55 sqm/capita, is both dangerous and damaging for seriously misleading. If we were shown the city. these occupancy figures it would be clear that for the same head count of The following is a typical table from the people in a locality, FSI 1 in Mumbai is World Bank comparing FSI for several equivalent to FSI 11 in Manhattan. cities around the world: But it is on the strength of bald Table 1: Centre-City FAR values iii comparisons as shown in the Table above that Mumbai’s FSI has been portrayed as undesirably low. It has City FAR already been pushed up in many cases Sao Paolo 1 to 4, which is the current upper limit, Mumbai 1.33 except in the case of hotels, educational institutions, hospitals and the like where Chennai 1.5 the limit can be much higher; and for Delhi 1.2-3.5 redevelopment of tenanted properties, where there is no upper limit. Amsterdam 1.9 Venice 2.4 However, there are three major Paris 3 factors missing in this World Bank’s comparison of FSI. The first is that cities Shanghai 8 are at different levels of economic Vancouver 9 development, inhabited by individuals San Francisco 9 occupying, on average, different extents of floor space. Living is simply Chicago 12 more crowded in some parts of the Hong Kong 12 world, and less crowded in others. Here is a comparison of what we might Los Angeles 13 call Indoor Crowding in Manhattan’s New York 15 CD-8, more commonly known as the Denver 17 Upper East Side, and Mumbai’s C Ward (each reputed to be the most Tokyo 20 street-crowded residential district in Singapore 12-25 its city):viii, ix Source : World Bank (2012) 406 / 27 LIFE BETWEEN BUILDINGS : THE USE AND ABUSE OF FSI Table 2: Indoor Crowding in CD-8 and C Ward Persons / hectare of built-up Persons / hectare of built-up floor area Locality floor area (commercial) (residential) Manhattan CD-8 (Upper 157 (or 64 sqm per person) 235 (or 43 sqm per person) East Side) Mumbai C Ward 1,014 (or 10 sqm per person) 1,186 (or 8 sqm per person) The table highlights staggering • SC = Street Crowding = Occupants / differences: Manhattan’s CD-8 has hectare of Street Area more than 6 times as much residential floor space per person, and over 5 • IC = Indoor Crowding = Occupants / times as much floor space per job, as hectare of Built-up Area compared to someone in Mumbai’s C Ward. With such extravagant use, no • PF = Plot Factor = Buildable Plot Area wonder Manhattan needs a so much / Street Area larger FSI. • FSI = Built-up Area / Buildable The second factor that is missing in Plot Area comparing localities is the extent of buildable area: in other words, the The following is their relationship: proportion of buildable plots to street area. We call this the Plot Factor, and it SC = IC x PF x FSI X matters because FSI applies only to the area of buildable plots. Street Crowding is thus the product of Indoor Crowding (the number of And finally, what must be factored into occupants per hectare of floor area), any debate on FSI is Street Crowding. the Plot Factor and FSI.