Bengal to bring policy allowing residential use in business hubs

The West Bengal urban development department is planning to introduce a policy which would permit buzzing business hubs of the city incorporate residential and mixed use, an official said.

"We are bringing in a policy where even in central business districts, we are going to allow residential and other mixed use," said Debasish Sen, principal secretary of the state urban development department.

He was speaking on Monday at a dissemination workshop of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's fifth assessment report on climate change mitigation, organised by the Kolkata-based Jadavpur University-affiliated Global Change Programme in collaboration with the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, and West Bengal government.

Sen said there was needless moving around due to the demarcation of specific zones as residential and commercial.

"We are going away from the segregation of urban design. Traditionally, Indian planners have made residential, commercial and industrial zones and there is needless moving around."

"We can see that Dalhousie (a business hub in central Kolkata) area is buzzing with activity during the day time but it is completely dormant at night. On the other hand, the Salt Lake satellite township, for example, is vibrant by night and gloomy by day," he added.

Sen, the chairman of the West Bengal Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited, also spoke of decentralising the pumped water storage system of generating hydroelectricity at night.

"We have already done a very great job with Japanese assistance in the Purulia pumped water storage experiment, whereby we store water pumped up to the roof during the day and at night use the hydel energy to light our houses. We are now thinking of doing it in a decentralised manner," he said.