Approach towards water supply infrastructure based density distribution: case study of Bhopal

Abstract

The urban population in India is growing very rapidly which is resulting into limitless expansion of the cities. The outgrowth which is generally uncontrolled and unregulated in India is resulting into continuous conversion of fringe areas into low rise low density urban areas in a sprawled manner. Providing infrastructure and services in these areas is the prime challenge faced by the Municipalities as these areas are usually seen expanding continuously at a very high pace. As a result of this sprawled development, coping irregular densities with efficient infrastructure services becomes very challenging. Water Supply being a merit good must be provided to everyone irrespective of its development or operation and maintenance costs. In peri-urban areas where substantial number of population is spread unorganized over a large area, the cost of development and operation and maintenance of Water Supply shoots up but the cost recovery is very less which makes the whole system very inefficient and unsatisfactory. Even after infrastructure being a major issue, none of the Master Plans ever talk about infrastructure oriented density distributions to address the issue at its root. The study focuses on developing a framework for balanced and complementary infrastructure development and density distribution by taking the case study of Bhopal. The methodology adopted for the study follows a city level assessment of Water Supply infrastructure and density distribution of the city. After assessing the density and infrastructure, an administrative zone in the city has been identified with low population density and lacking infrastructure facilities in the peri-urban areas of the city. The zone, then, has been further assessed in terms of its existing infrastructure and population density trends and the mismatch is identified. The study mainly identifies the issues with the conventional system of planning, that is, development preceding infrastructure and aims to provide an alternative way of development by proposing infrastructure first, followed by density distribution to increase the efficiency of the Water Supply infrastructure.