THE ISLAND’S Town Planning Department has drafted a plan whereby land developers would be allowed to build 20-storey buildings in exchange for providing public parking space.
The scheme, which is yet to be approved by the Cabinet, is designed to alleviate traffic congestion that has traditionally plagued city centres and has become an almost acceptable way of life.
The areas in each city have already been designated. Essentially, the plan increases the building coefficient – the maximum allowable buildable area on a piece of land, expressed as a percentile – for land developers.
In this case, the coefficient would be raised to 300 per cent. This effectively means you can build a structure of 300 square meters on a plot of land of 100 square meters.
The idea functions on the logic that by going up, you save on space on the ground and significantly increase parking capacity – an incremental number of which are mandatory for new commercial premises.
The main reason for the proposed plan is that cash-strapped municipalities cannot afford to buy up state land to use for parking space. Technocrats thus decided to turn to the private sector by giving them incentives.
Developers may also be required to create green areas.
Evgenios Hamboullas, who sits on the Limassol municipality Town Planning Committee, told a local newspaper that the scheme has added benefits: it will target specific areas, so that development is focused on strategic locations, thus taking advantage of idle plots and limiting the unchecked expansion of towns.
This in turn would curb the growth of garbage collection sites, saving money for the municipalities.
But Linos Chrysostomou, general manager of the Technical Chamber (ETEK), has dubbed the whole concept “incoherent.”
Speaking to the Mail, Chrysostomou said that encouraging businessmen to build high-rise blocks in town would have the opposite of the desired effect.
“In congested cities abroad, like London, authorities actually give disincentives for the creation of parking space, because the more berths you create, the more cars you attract, exacerbating the traffic problem.
“A fundamental principle in town planning is that city centres need to be viable, and in order to become viable they must become denser. One way is to build up. But in Cyprus, we have expansive cities on the one hand and congested centres on the other.
“Unfortunately, we tend to expand towns without thinking things through. Here, we have sprawling cities with 250,000 people which could support up to one million with better planning,” said Chrysostomou.
He said he doubted “very much” whether the plan thrashed out by the Town Planning Department would solve traffic problems.
“It will not work as a standalone measure…it needs to be part of a greater policy on town planning.
“To me, this smacks of a quick fix, and I suspect there was heavy lobbying from business interests,” he added.
