GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO GATED COMMUNITIES IN THE BANGALORE METROPOLITAN AREA

These decades of the 21st century are characterized by increased urbanization and the angst of climate change. Studies have estimated that by 2030, more than half of the worM＇s population will be living in urban areas. In the decades to come, sustainable development of cities and metropolises will be a major challenge confronting planners and administrators everywhere. Green infrastructure, its design, development and maintenance is apart of any urban facility and administration. One of the prominent spatial manifestations of rapid urbanization is called as ＂gated community＂. In its modern version, a gated community is a form of residential complex or housing estate with many self-contained possibly exclusive amenities. They have their own enclosure made of walls, fences and hedges,＂ exclusive entrances and paths for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists. 1 Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka, is the 5th largest metropolis of India. The Bangalore Development Authority had sanctioned 96 residential group housing development plans till 2011. These are located in the 3rd Ring Planning Districts which are suburban areas and are developed as gated communities by private developers to attract buyers from the higher income groups; they have their own security specificities. A spatial concomitance of this growth is the emergence of privately developed gated communities to cater to the housing needs substantially of the IT industry incumbents. The emergence of these largely exclusive gated communities has led to its own environmental and social specificities. The design guidelines, exclusivities and open spaces, recreation facilities, self- contained service outlets etc. of gated communities and non-govenmental organization＇s role therein also are to be recorded. This paper explores the role of green infrastructure in selected gated communities in the Bangalore Metropolitan Area.