High Density and its Impact on City Infrastructure:Case of Old Area of Pune City

Increasing population is like a knock-on effect that affects every positive aspect of city’s infrastructure. It leads to various problems like traffic congestion, poor housing, and degradation of urban environment. The old areas of city often attract population because of its good connectivity to employment centres as well as greater accessibility and mobility to other areas. In such areas, new high rise buildings are constructed replacing the traditional housing of ground and first floor structures on the plot area. This causes additional pressure of increased households on the existing services thereby leading to crowding in terms of per capita service used. Similar is the case of Prabhat road area, which is one of the oldest areas in the Pune city. It exhibits a changing character from low density traditional housing to high density high rise development. In this area, the service related issues have risen in recent years. Every service has a threshold, beyond which the systems will not function effectively unless they are expanded. It is thus necessary to assess the capacity of existing facilities and prevent its breakdown through provision of additional services or restricting uncontrolled growth.