Tall dreams meet ground realities

To qualify as tall, a building must rise at least 150 metres. India has 123 fully completed tall buildings, of which 102 are in Mumbai alone. India is 12th on a worldwide ranking collated by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), a US-based non-profit.

It is CTBUH that set the height benchmarks for tall and super-tall buildings. Super-tall buildings are those that rise 300 metres or above.

At the top of the CTBUH list is China with 3,320 tall buildings, followed by the United States which has 902 tall buildings – 318 are in New York City alone. Dubai’s Burj Khalifa is the world’s tallest building at 828 metres. In India, just one – Mumbai’s 300.6-metre Lokhandwala Minerva – falls in the super-tall category. But despite the recent proliferations of tall structures, India still ranks eighth behind countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines in Asia even.

“Nothing says we have arrived on the global scene more than having the world’s tallest building,” writes American economist Jason Barr in his latest book “Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers”.

The iconic form of the Empire State Building (the tallest in the world between 1930 and 1971), he writes, was “a global beacon for American entrepreneurial and engineering prowess… and other cities seek to imitate its magic by erecting their version, be it the Shanghai Tower, the Burj Khalifa, or Taipei 101.”

However, as Barr told HT, these towers also have an economic rationale: “For countries, especially in Asia, it is a signal (to the world) that they are open for business and eager to receive foreign direct investment.”

Going by India’s per capita GDP, the vertical growth in its cities “is exactly where we would predict it to be.”

But India, Barr pointed out, is “yet to employ them (tall buildings) in the same manner as other Asian countries like the UAE, China, or Malaysia.”

The vertical growth in urban India was led by Mumbai, where high-rises became a necessity due to the rise in population, affluence, and geographical constraint. The city’s first skyscraper, the 80-metre Usha Kiran at Carmichael Road, was built in 1961. Over the years Usha Kiran was home to some of the country’s most affluent families including the Ambanis and the Godrejs.

However, the construction of tall buildings accelerated only in the 2000s as post-liberalisation growth became steady. A 2023 report by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and CBRE, an international property consultancy, states nearly 77% of India’s tall buildings are in Mumbai and the city will continue to grow vertically.

Anarock Property Consultants projects a 34% increase in skyscrapers with over 40 floors in the larger Mumbai Metropolitan Region in the next six years.

The much-awaited Mumbai projects include the super-tall 320-metre Palais Royale at Worli, which will have its first habitable floor at 82.5 metres; the 282-metre-high residential complex Arav at Byculla, and the 270-metre Sesen at Nepean Sea Road.

According to the CTBUH dashboard, Kolkata is the second-tallest city in India with ten buildings that are 150 metres or higher. The city’s tallest structure, The 42 at 249 metres, was constructed in 2019. Gurugram and Noida share the third spot in India, followed by Hyderabad and Bengaluru. As urbanisation accelerates and land prices soar, building upwards rather than outwards becomes more economically viable and efficient, said Anarock’s Anuj Puri.

Earlier this year, the West Bengal government said it would revisit provisions of the Urban Land Ceiling Act which is still not repealed in the state despite the Centre ending it in 1999. Experts say this may open up large parcels of land in Kolkata for vertical development.

But reforms are already underway. Since 2015-16, the real estate sector in Kolkata has been incentivised, said Sidharth Pansari, president of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations, Bengal. Developers get a 10% additional Floor Area Ratio (FAR) on pre-certified green buildings and 20% extra FAR on projects within one kilometre of any Metro corridor.

In real estate planning, the Floor Space Index (FSI) and FAR determine the size and the height of buildings according to the size of the plot. FSI is a percentage, while FAR is a ratio.

In Hyderabad, the big push came in 2006 when the then-Andhra Pradesh (now Telangana) government allowed unlimited FSI to attract real estate investments.

The CTBUH dashboard ranks Hyderabad as India’s fifth tallest city where three 228-metre-high buildings are under construction. Not too far away, Bengaluru is about to start construction on a 250m sky deck, a ₹500 crore project touted as the tallest in South Asia.

Not everyone is impressed by these tall structures though. Girish Dravid, chairman of CTBUH India, said cities like Hyderabad have no compulsion to build tall because there is enough space to expand horizontally. “However, we have to respect the vanity statements of developers as a human trait, and the same goes with the rich buyers willing to pay a premium for higher floors,” he said.

Some cities, such as Delhi and its outskirts, opted for low-rises as ample land was available in the hinterland. “Whether it’s the DLF, Cyber City, or the Golf Course, buildings are tall but not tall enough to qualify as super or mega tall. That is because the city has ample land and is expanding in the periphery,” said Joshi.

Most Indian cities have sprawled horizontally and outwards for varied reasons.

Before the advent of formal town planning regulations, four or five-storeyed buildings were constructed cheek-by-jowl, leading to very dense habitation in many inner-city areas of Mumbai, explained Vidyadhar Phatak, a veteran urban planner. Low FSI, he said, was a reaction “to control population densities in cities.” The problem, he pointed out, is that FSI is not recognised as a market intervention. “If done rightly, it can help optimal and efficient land use. Otherwise, it can increase land prices and affect the affordability of floor space.”

In recent years, cities have become more liberal with the FSI allowance. Greater Mumbai relaxed the FSI allowance for buildings along wider roads. However, compared to other major Asian cities, these allowances are still low. According to a CBRE analysis, Indian cities typically have FSI of 2 to 5, so developers must pay a hefty premium for additional FSI to build higher. In contrast, Taipei ranges from 4 to 8, while Seoul and the Greater Seoul area allow for 4 to 13. Tokyo’s FSI varies from 0.5 to 13, Hong Kong permits between 10 to 15, and Singapore has a range of 8.4 to 15.

A 2017, a Niti Aayog report highlighted an unusual trend in Indian cities, particularly Delhi-NCR where a higher FSI is permitted on the periphery rather than in the city centre. This results in a shortage of space in the central business district, which is reserved solely for commercial use. Consequently, residential units are pushed to the outskirts, significantly burdening the transportation system.

The India Infrastructure Report-2023 says that Connaught Place and the planned areas of Delhi have been regulated to “near death” with very low FSI.

Delhi’s first master plan of 1962 prompted the expansion of Connaught Place Central Business District to include adjoining arterial roads such as KG Marg, Barakhamba Road, Baba Kharak Singh Marg and Janpath. An FAR of 400 allowed buildings to rise to 20 storeys, resulting in Delhi’s first lot of high-rises.

But this vertical growth was fraught with mistakes, said AK Jain, former planning commissioner of the Delhi Development Authority.

Instead of combining plots to create shared parking spaces, basements, pedestrianised plazas, traffic circulation areas, and social amenities, each building constructed its exclusive parking in a limited space, creating a template for chaos.

As a consequence, the FAR was reduced to 250 in the mid-1970s and further decreased to 150 under the 2001 Master Plan.

However, using the FAR allowance granted to government projects, the Civic Centre at Minto Road rose to 112 metres. Redevelopment of government housing in south Delhi led to high-rise growth in East Kidwai Nagar and the World Trade Centre in Nauroji Nagar. In industrial estates, several high-end residential apartment buildings were granted a higher FAR to compensate for the shutting down of their factories.

Some of the completed buildings have gone as high as 125 metres. Among the under-construction high-rises that are tipped to cross the 150-metre mark are The Amaryllis Versace in Karol Bagh, DLF One Mid-Town in Moti Nagar, The Leela Sky Villas in Shadipur, and NBCC’s Transit Oriented Development project in Karkardooma.

Barr noted in his book that historically the tallest buildings in cities rarely exceeded five storeys because people would avoid climbing more than 50 vertical feet for living or working purposes. This meant that the top floors had the lowest property values.

However, from the 1870s onwards, Elisha Otis’s safety elevator and other innovations dramatically changed the rental dynamics for higher floors in New York City. Barr describes this “growth spurt as nothing short of revolutionary, like the introduction of the iPhone in 2007.”

Traditionally, Indians preferred low-rise buildings with courtyard living. The late Charles Correa, one of the country’s most prominent architects, argued that this model had crucial advantages.

High-rise buildings restrict activity to a handful of developers who have the money to organise finances, a small bunch of architects and engineers who could design them and even fewer companies that could construct them, he wrote in his 2010 book ‘A Place in the Shade — The New Landscape and Other Essays’.

Low-rises, on the other hand, wrote Correa, can grow according to the owner’s requirements and do not need such heavy investments and speedier to construct.

In India and much of the developing world, he added, high density does not come from high-rise buildings alone but from a high occupancy rate per room and the criminal omission of play spaces, schools, hospitals, and other social amenities. That is why, in most cities worldwide, high-rises are office buildings.

“No one lives in the Sears Tower (Now Willis Tower, Chicago). They don’t build 60-storey apartments like we do in Mumbai,” Correa said at a CBTUH conference in 2010.

In contrast, more than 90% of tall buildings in India are residential, while only 5% are for office space, said the CBRE report.

In a residential space, an investor can fetch a higher premium by positioning a skyscraper in the premium or luxury segments, as buyers are willing to pay over the market value for a “stellar view, better quality, and the status that comes with owning/renting a tower space.”

Tall buildings are capital-intensive and high-maintenance.

They must be structurally strong to endure strong winds, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.

They need passive firefighting systems and sophisticated plumbing for pressure control. Installing high-speed elevators, power generators, and water treatment plants and maintaining common facilities, lawns, parking, and lighting also push up electricity and water consumption.

Sprawling cities also have their own economic, social and environmental costs. Barr said that the skyscraper is a “geography-shrinking machine” that can be deployed when the demand for specific locations exceeds the land’s ability to accommodate it.

The vertical is also compact, allowing more people to live and work nearby, thereby reducing a city’s carbon footprint and the need to provide expansive infrastructure. That’s why, experts say, Indian cities will follow a mixed trajectory for now — expanding both vertically and outwards, subject to land prices, construction costs, and FSI regulation. But land is not infinite, and cities will hit their physical limits, having to go upwards sooner or later.

Redevelopment, for example, will require a relatively higher FSI and more storeys because taller buildings will have to accommodate existing occupants.

If city authorities are serious about going compact, the high-rise market will have to amalgamate the demand for residential and commercial space in the vicinity.

A CTBUH evaluation shows that 2023 was the 10th consecutive year that the world completed more than 100 buildings at least 200 metres tall. Indian cities also continued the vertical journey with 17 such completions. Even while opting for vertical growth, say experts, it is prudent to restrict buildings to reasonable heights.

“We must keep the urban growth functional and sustainable, go tall if there is no alternative to high-rises, not necessarily for the sake of making a statement,” said Dravid.

India’s strategy, they feel, is on the mark as many countries are rethinking this.

New York, for example, is not going to record-breaking heights due to rising construction costs, zoning regulations, and an erratic rental market. Even China — which last year completed 94 buildings that were 200 metres and higher — has set a height limit for tall buildings at 500 metres in 3 million-plus population cities to address oversupply and structural safety issues.

Ultimately, any prescription for vertical growth must factor in the ground constraints. “FSIs should not be determined by road width but land prices, which in turn, are largely determined by accessibility (read transit),” said Phatak.

In Indian cities, exponential growth in private vehicles caused by densification severely compromises mass mobility. Civic mismanagement and extreme weather events leave cities flooded and water-stressed, often in the same year. Power outages and water shortages are also not uncommon.

These issues must be resolved to ensure that urban growth—whether horizontal or vertical — does not become a liability.