The city’s skyline is beginning to look different, but it’s not all smooth sailing on the ground.

The real estate sector in Calcutta is going through a purple patch and big players like DLF, Ascendas and Unitech are keen on investing in both commercial and residential projects. So space is what developers crave. But quite a few of them say the antiquated building by-laws of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation are coming in the way.

“By-laws are usually formulated for healthy living in the city. Unfortunately, that is not the case with Calcutta,” says city-based architect and urban planner Partha Ranjan Das.

Among the issues that have cropped up are restrictions on the height of buildings and lack of floor area ratio. FAR refers to a limit on how much total space may be consumed by the floor or floors of a building coming up on a particular plot.

Developers say the height restrictions should be scrapped. “The cap on the height of buildings should be done away with at once. Only when you go up can you create more space and, hence, ensure less congestion. With this constriction in place, Calcutta is ceasing to be an open city. It will suffocate under these restrictions,” says Pradip Chopra, secretary of the Bengal chapter of Credai, the apex body of developers in the country.

The building by-laws have been in force for more than 20 years. But with the urban landscape changing rapidly, they have lost their relevance, feels the developers’ forum. So changes should be brought in soon.

Both builders and planners say the growing urban population needs to be accommodated. “With more and more people coming and settling down in Calcutta everyday, the only choice for the city is to rise vertically to address the increasing load,” says Chopra.

But just doing away with restrictions on height will not help. The time taken to sanction projects has to be reduced significantly, real estate players feel. While the Pune Municipal Corporation has a fast-track system in place that can clear projects within 24 hours, permission from CMC could take up to a year or more in coming.

Parking is another problem, now more so because of the residential and commercial projects coming up in the city and its fringes. Basement parking has not been a popular option for the city’s developers and urban planners. More economically viable, according to Chopra, is parking space above the ground.

“Calcutta has always had a problem with water-logging and flooding. Basement parking only exacerbates this problem. The provision for multi-level parking has to be allowed in all building projects,” says city-based developer and Credai vice-president Santosh Rungta.

The floor area ratio (FAR) is another issue industry insiders say need resolving. As land is not elastic, its potential has to be exploited to the hilt. While other contemporary urban development centres like Shanghai and Guangzhou in China have an FAR of 8, 10 or even 12, Calcutta’s FAR is an abysmal 2.

A permitted FAR of 2 would allow construction of 80,000 sq ft of floor space on 40,000 sq ft of land. In Shanghai or Guangzhou, therefore, the permitted floor space would be at least 320,000 sq ft on land measuring 40,000 sq ft.

Urban planners feel the municipal corporation’s FAR calculation is faulty. They feel it should be calculated ward-wise or area-wise, rather than on the width of the road, which is a key factor in Calcutta. “City infrastructure has to be governed by urban design principles, rather than by antiquated civic by-laws,” says architect Das.

Unmesh Kirtikar, a member of the think tank Centre for Built Environment, has another suggestion ? transfer of development right (TDR).

With this right, Kirtikar says, anyone with a house in a locality declared a heritage zone can transfer a part of his floor area ratio to a developer, who can utilise that FAR in another locality. This would help a developer add more square foot to a property he is developing at an alternative site.

The owner of the heritage building would also be compensated for the financial burden due to the heritage law, which forbids demolition or alteration of such a structure.

“The TDR concept has been used to good effect in Mumbai and Chennai, and the money accruing would help those who have residences in heritage areas maintain their premises better,” Kirtikar says.

Credai’s Bengal chapter also supports this concept.

The developers’ body, which has put forward a number of proposals to the CMC for modification or abolition of some of the existing by-laws, is happy with the civic body’s response. “The CMC has agreed in principle to a number of changes we proposed. The mayor’s feedback has been quite positive,” says Chopra.