Demand for integrated townships on the rise

As housing preferences are likely to change post the pandemic and people move towards peripheries of cities, demand for integrated townships will increase in times to come, according to Anuj Puri, Chairman of Anarock Property Consultants. "Going forward, dispersed offices and flexible workplace policies around WFH will spur housing demand on city peripheries, beyond the city-centre hotspots. This will lead to higher demand for large township developments which, because of their massive size, have been developed on the peripheries," Puri said.

However, he noted that integrated townships account for a mere 2 per cent of all housing supply since 2010, so their numbers are currently inadequate to meet the coming demand.

According to data from Anarock, the top seven cities have just 101 integrated township projects, launched since 2010 till date, with 3.16 lakh housing units. Of this total, 57 projects are largely residential with basic facilities like a small retail shop, pharmacy among others and the remaining 44 are mixed-use developments with dedicated retail, entertainment, education, commercial, health and residential spaces.

The National Capital Region (NCR) has maximum integrated townships, at 42 projects with around 1.33 lakh units, followed by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) with 17 projects having 63,500 housing units. Hyderabad has nine township projects, of which only 1 is mixed-use and 8 are purely residential. Together, they have more than 21,600 units. Bangalore has 10 mega township projects with 35,230 units in all, of which 3 are mixed-use and the remaining 7 are large, well-equipped residential communities. According to Anarock Property Consultants, during a pandemic like Covid-19, there is a strong rationale for living in integrated townships.

"These self-sustaining, compact urban ecosystems are now more than just lifestyle upgrades - they provide the kind of controlled environment that makes a big difference during such an outbreak," it said in a report.