This Article is From Oct 19, 2010

Reduce pressure on Bangalore to make it a liveable city, say experts

Bangalore: Is Bangalore a liveable city? Yes, but not to the full extent. This was stated by the experts who participated in the lecture 'Building Liveable Cities -- 2010' at the Indian Institute of Science on Monday.

The experts, who presented their ideas on sustainable urbanisation, called for reducing pressure on Bangalore to make it a more liveable city. Improving the rural areas would stop migration to the city, said the speakers at the lecture. Decentralisation was the way forward for the better development of the city, said many experts.

"The city has problems with governance, planning, infrastructure, maintenance and management. This has affected services like water supply, sanitation, power, transport resulting in poor quality of life and urban poverty," said Gopal Naik from the Centre for Public Police, IIM-B.

"The percentage of unaccounted water is about 40%. This increases the revenue loss. The BWSSB is not able to invest due to increasing cost for procuring water. The poor receive only 2/3rd of the basic needs of water," said Naik.

"Instead of wards in the city, the state government should make separate cities like in Yelahanka and Bidadi to ease the pressure on Bangalore. It should provide more power to the mayor of the city to take up development works," added Naik.

India head of the Alliance to Save Energy Pradeep Kumar said the problem with major cities was the lack of technical, managerial and financial capacity to implement projects.

Christopher Kost, technical director, Institute for Transportation Development and Policy, mooted separate lanes for different vehicles to ease traffic congestion.

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