By: Manju Yagnik, Vice-Chairperson, Nahar Group
Track2Realty Exclusive: One of the most ardent desires of an individual is to own a house with location and comfort being the determining factors in most of the cases. However, to get access to shopping facilities or entertainment hubs or medical care or even to commute to workplace remains a sheer imagination almost beyond fulfilment in India.
Even if you buy property in a posh locality, you may face the hurdle of walking a long distance to reach a supermarket or a mall, or may have to drive through the busy traffic to get to a hospital during emergency situation. By choosing to live in integrated townships it becomes easy to eliminate such problems, as integrated townships make it possible for you to walk down to the supermarket for shopping or your kids to cycle their way up to the school and to access ancillary facilities like hospitals or entertainment centres within a short distance.
Standard of living is automatically raised as people get an access to all elements of modern living that a standard gated community has, for example swimming pools, joggers’ park, children’s playground, club house, etc, by offering a small amount as annual fees.
Having their own infrastructure, these townships do not depend heavily on delivery proficiency of the local municipal corporation. Sewage management, water supply, power back-up and overall maintenance of the immediate surroundings are all taken care of by the township management systems. Also, since such residential projects have various levels of security to protect the entire project, homeowners are assured of much higher levels of safety for themselves, their families and possessions.
Today, facilities management companies are collaborating with the township management authorities to offer world –class and professional services in all these areas, eliminating headache and botheration of the individuals about maintenance and replacements of units.
It is also noted that the residential housing solutions that these townships offer is the most attractive one that gets in customers. Irrespective of whether these are short term or medium term customers; the other commercial components of the township heavily depend on the residential housing factor.
The ‘walk-to-work’ culture has ushered in the trend of mixed use integrated townships in many projects. Apart from residential zone, there are retail, healthcare and education facilities being provided. In some cases, these townships are also offering zone for commercial establishments making them an ideal example of ‘Walk-to-work’ culture.
The townships in metros offering good connectivity with the landmark destinations makes them most favourite cities within city. The luxury factor in integrated township comes into play when it is built around high-end amenities and facilities such as golf course, luxury hotels and state-of-the-art hospital facilities.
In fact the new generation large township projects have made modern, fully-equipped and self-sufficient residential projects affordable to the middle class. No longer are such properties available only to moneyed HNIs and NRIs. Salaried individuals are buying homes in projects that offer well-defined living spaces, recreation facilities, office complexes, convenient retail establishments and a superior standard of living.
These projects offer ultimate value for money, making more sense than building smaller or one off projects because they are the most modern and sustainable model of urban growth. Owning a home in one of them assures a lifestyle that is impossible to find in the city centres.
Developing such projects goes beyond pure economy and business. It offers the developer an opportunity to contribute to the futuristic growth of a city in a planned manner. A developer thus becomes an expert, an architect of city planning in his own right.
