URBAN PLANNING LAVASA-

LOCATION-
Lavasa is a private, planned city built near Pune. District: Pune State: Maharashtra Country: India.

Lavasa is in the province of WESTERN GHATS of INDIA which is among World’s 20 most ecologically sensitive
HOT SPOTS. Also, the UNESCO (united, scientific and cultural organization) is considering declaring Western
Ghats region as the World Heritage Site according to media reports. Western Ghat is a crucial factor for
Monsoon of India and other meteorologically important parameters. The committee has recorded that Lavasa
has caused massive destruction of the ecology of the area, especially causing grave damages to hills, flora-
fauna, water body, etc.

CLIMATE-
The Lavasa lies on 650m above sea level The climate is tropical in Lavasa. There is significant rainfall in most
months of the year. The short dry season has little effect on the overall climate. This location is classified as Am
by Köppen and Geiger. The average annual temperature is 24.0 °C | 75.2 °F in Lavasa. The rainfall here is
around 2858 mm | 112.5 inch per year.

ABOUT SITE-
Land-

Land belong to Adivasi (Tribal) Land which can’t be sold or bought without the permission of the District
administration to a Non Tribal entity, in fact that Mulshi and Velhe talukas, where Lavasa is based, is not
designated as a tribal district. In 1976, the Govt. of Maharashtra implemented land reforms in the area. The
project is spread over 18 villages consisting of various Gaothans (villages). Land has been either by cheating or
using muscule power, A poor farmer Dnyaneshwar Shedge has filed a complaint against Lavasa in one such
matter. Many of those that Lavasa purchased land from are not “local farmers” but people who were living in
Pune, Mumbai, Dubai or even London. A good chunk of land was originally bought by a real estate firm called
Expat Limited before Lavasa Corporation came into existence. Even today some of the investors of Expat have
not sold their lands to Lavasa. Consequently, this district became very sparsely populated with a total population
of 3117 as per the 2001 census.

Township-

Objection to the cutting of hills for making roads, on the other hand it says that the roads were not wide enough
for the expected traffic. A “world Class” huge convention centre does not go with the concept of a hill station
with only 9 meters access road, without adequate parking provisions.’

Quite a few residential buildings are without adequate open spaces, set back distances, parking spaces etc.
Height of buildings was increased from G+2 to G+5, which was illegal in the original hill station policy. No
proper plans to rehabilitate the farmers affected.

Water resources-

The back water of the dams were filled with stone crushing material and also that the villagers expressed that
the project has adversely impacted their life and they are not willing to part with their land for any of the project
activities.

ABOUT PROJECT-
Lavasa Corporation Limited (LCL) is developing a hill station township project located 65 km from Pune in
the Mose Valley and the backwaters of the calm Warasgaon dam area, set amidst 7 hills and 60 kms of
lakefront. It is touted as independent India’s first planned hill city and is one of the largest Infrastructure
Projects in the country. A total of 10,000 hectares (= 25,000 acres) land will be used for the project which
includes mostly the farm land and private forests or forest like land.

The development plan is spread over 20 years and would complete by 2025. It involves dynamic planning in
phases.

Phase I: Dasve, Mugaon, Bhoni – To establish Lavasa Brand .Development will be mostly mixed use with focus
on front-loaded economic drivers.

Phase II: Focus on meeting residential demand driven through development of economic activities and scaling
up of tourism, hospitality, and leisure activities

Phase III: Sakhari, Wadaval – In addition to residential development, focus on developing a commercial
business district

Phase IV: Bhode, Mose, Saiv – Development of the second commercial business district

URBAN PLANNINH INTRODUCTION-

The field of urban design was traditionally considered to be a bridge between urban planning and
architecture.

However, now urban design is considered to be critical domain knowledge for high quality public realm.
Understanding the pattern is one of the key analysis which help urban designers to evolve design strategies for a
given place. The pattern may be of activities in public realm, land use, façade styles, value of property or even
just movement pattern. All these patterns must be understood spatially since the solution is governed by spatial
designs. This study of patterns is where GIS comes handy to urban designers. GIS can map various such
patterns on same spatial reference and can overlay these patterns to draw critical inferences which become a
guide for urban designer to take informed decisions.

PLANNING OF LAVASA CITY-

In Lavasa urban designers have extensively used the analytical capabilities of GIS (Geographic Information
System) to solve urban design tasks. GIS provides critical mapping and overlay analysis to master planners at
the very inception stage of master plan.

Even after that the various layer resulting from master plan are fed to urban designers in required format to
understand the patterns better. GIS also helps designers to map the design decision to understand the pattern
anticipated to evolve as a result of those decisions. GIS also helps designers to get feedback from various
stakeholders on the design decision by posting it on the intranet GIS portal. Some examples of the synergy
between GIS and urban design are described in the following sections

Process Flow-

During the process of master planning, the footprint simulations were drawn as polygons in CAD plans. The
elevation and proposed building heights were assigned to these polygons using attribute transfer based on
spatial overlay. The sloping roof was the architectural element prescribed as common thread amongst all
buildings. The building footprints were extruded by building height in Arc Scene and the sloping roof was added
on top. Along with the road and plantation elements the image gave the designer a complete volumetric
understanding of built mass. Several iterations were run with different building heights to conclude on best
volumetric configuration .

Fig:- Process flow for quick 3D visualization

Drawing CAD plans with discipline –

The basic plan defining urban form is drawn in CAD. The CAD drawing needs to follow layer discipline and
color discipline. This helps in defining various attributes in GIS environment. Thus the CAD standard template
is prescribed to designers before the CAD work begins.

Transfer of CAD data in GIS environment –

The standard compliant CAD drawing consisting footprints was exported as shape file and then converted into
polygon feature class in spatial database. This process may be made efficient and quick by using AutoCAD
Map 3D. The building height information is represented by the color of the entity in CAD. The use of the
building is represented by the layer of the entity. Color and layer information is also transferred along with the
polygons to shape file.

Draping the footprint on TIN

-

The Triangulated Irregular Network representing the terrain of area of study is prepared with the help of
terrain information from 2m resolution stereo pair satellite image. The footprints are draped on the TIN by giving
base height of TIN.

Extrusion of building footprints-

Based on the building height attributes assigned to building footprint polygons, they were extruded. The sloping
roof is a 3D multipatch entity from CAD and the height of roof is calculated by adding the average elevation of
the buildings and the height of the building. Similarly the other massing elements are also given appropriate
elevation and heights. Since this all was draped on the terrain, it created realistic visualization of built mass in
context of terrain.

Fig:- Completed simulation of built form

Strengthening Walk to Work –

 The basic concept of Lavasa master plan was based on the principles of new urbanism. It configured the land
use distribution in such a way that the concepts like “Walk to Work”, “Walk to School” and “Walk to Park”
becomes reality. The town centre is the hub of all work places, education, leisure and socio-cultural activities.
Care has been taken that maximum permanent residents stay within walking distance of their workplaces. In
July 2009, Lavasa management took a decision to strengthen “Walk to Work” by building pedestrian walkways
in Dasve town in Lavasa.

Mapping the density-

With the help of GIS, the pattern of population density and work place resultant of land use was mapped . It
was overlaid on the slope map, natural ravine pattern and proposed parks. Due to the hilly terrain the streets were
on different altitudes. The overlay analysis showed the need to connect these streets. The projected population
density mapping also determined the number of people who are anticipated to use the pedestrian walks and
thus the frequency and width of such connections was determined.

Fig:- Density of resident and employment population

ELEMENTS-
Building-

Fig:- Buildings In Lavasa

Public spaces-
 Fig:- Public Spaces In Lavasa

Streets-

Fig:-Streets Spaces In Lavasa

Transport-

It was understood that it is not possible to determine the location of bus stop by doing rule based network
analysis since many factors e.g. land ownership, land use and scenic views etc were determinant factors for bus
stop locations. Thus iterative method of locating the bus stops was adopted.
 Fig:- Map showing location of bus stop and walking distance from them

Landscape-

Fig:-landscape in lavasa
CONCLUSION-
Lavasa has there limited population of 3lakh so thats, they have tha advantage for planning. While the planning
they also consider the truisms for the city profit. They mainly focus on the walk to work because of that the
people don’t need any bus or auto to go to work. Post design GIS analysis showed that with the help of
pedestrian walkways and road sidewalks 85% to 90% of population was within 5 minutes walk and 90% to
100% of population within 8-10 minutes’ walk.

They use the footprint concept for planning in cad because the elevation and proposed building heights were
assigned to these polygons using attribute transfer based on spatial. Building has the limited height according
to building elements and floors. Software like City Engine gives much better visualization and simulation
capabilities but only if the addition of procurement cost and specific skill is done. Thus utilizing GIS 3D
visualizing capability is quick and cost effective option for the organizations where GIS is already implemented.