Abstract:
Many Indian cities have older and historic inner-city areas that are
considered city cores and have significant historical and cultural value. These city
cores are not only valuable historical assets, but also a national cultural identity.
Every City Core has its own unique features like, residential core, religious
core, commercial core etc. An inquiry into residential & mixed use core in detail is
required as around maximum percent of the cores are of same nature. Rapid
urbanization has led to issues like congestion, lack of infrastructure, loss of
traditional character, increase in density and real estate prices, etc. in the core
areas of Indian cities.
Transit Oriented Development is a sustainable approach, which can be
adopted and implemented along the transit corridors of BRT, LRT and MRT.
Incentives like higher FAR, mixed land use are given around the transit corridor by
municipal bodies, to reduce dependency on private vehicles and promote
walkability. The issue in today’s scenario is that the new developments around the
metro stations in core area of the cities are not controlled/guided. Also, while TOD
promotes high density, high-rise buildings, on the other hand, in the core areas of
cities/heritage sites the development is restricted around the protected
monuments.
Mandai Metro station (proposed) and its influence zone has been
considered for the investigation of the thesis as it lies in the centre of the city. The
Pune city has gone through three layers of transformation i.e., Culture hub to
Educational hub and now transforming into an IT hub. But in spite of all these, the
area has retained its character and culture. But a new insert of BRTS and proposed
Metro through main spine of the core has given a strong purpose for impulsive
transformation. During transformation, the existing fabric and the Socio-culture of
the area will transform, which need to be strategized. These interventions will also
help in retaining the character of the core area of the city. It will fulfil the objectives
of understanding the deficiencies to overcome and sensitive restructuring of the
areas through enhancement of public transport with amalgamation of roads and
urban form in the precinct along the transit hub/corridor through a hierarchical
development
