Central Vista Avenue Redevelopment: Landscape artists and environmentalists, facing concerns with the redesign program for Central Vista Avenue, have written to the Central Public Works Department (CPWD). As per the program released by the Ministry of Urban Affairs and Housing, there will be many alterations to Central Vista Avenue- with pedestrian underpasses, new parking lots, wide walkways or footpaths, bridges across canals, an irrigation technique, more trees along with more lawn region, and particular vending places. The project’s phase-I was awarded by CPWD to Shapoorji Pallonji Company Private Limited at Rs 477 crore price by way of competitive bidding on January 8 and the work on this project started final Thursday, according to an IE report.
LokPATH, an organization that submitted some objections, mentioned the Central Vista precinct, and not only person buildings, is protected as a Heritage website of grade 1. This contains landscape, plots, boundaries, and streetscape components as properly as organic characteristics like trees and water bodies, and not just the buildings situated in it. The organization additional mentioned that no details has been shared about the Automated People Mover (APM), which physically endangers different heritage components as properly as structures of the Central Vista.
Besides, objection was also raised more than the elimination of pedestrian movement on Rajpath by zebra crossings’ removal, and altering the red murrum into really hard pavements, which can boost the flooding danger as it restricts rainwater run-off as properly as disrupts each the recreational use of the green and its grandeur, the report mentioned. In regard to 16 quantity of bridges proposed across the canals, LokPATH mentioned it is interventionist encroachment on the heritage structure’s leading and is a clear violation of grade 1 heritage protection offered to Central Vista Avenue.
The organization also wrote that really hard paved parking will lead to a drastic reduction in water table replenishment, endangering Central Vista’s complete plantation as properly as unmitigated flooding in the area. So far, there has been no submission of the water drainage program. Moreover, beneath the law, demolition and reduction of the historic water bodies’ length at Man Singh Marg is a clear violation of grade 1 heritage protection, it additional mentioned.
Meanwhile, objections have been also submitted by the Indian Society of Landscape Architects (ISOLA), stating that there are concerns of upkeep and the lack thereof has rendered the space undesirable in components. Within the bigger spatial style, these elements are simply remedied by way of a upkeep and management regimen and do not demand the redesigning of the complete precinct, it mentioned. Apart from this, the problem of walkways was also raised by ISOLA saying that extra footpaths, bridges, and so on., contribute to a disjointed, incohesive space, and the building and operational effect on the current trees and landscape is not regarded as by the APM.
ISOLA also mentioned that putting vendors at the ends can lead to their marginalization. It also raised ecological issues, saying that depletion of groundwater recharge due to the added basement as properly as underground structures, toilet blocks, amphitheatres and really hard paving need urgent interest.