Dobrivoje Toskovic in town. Picture by Aranya Sen

Dobrivoje Toskovic feels Salt Lake would have benefited more from a greater thrust on group housing as opposed to plotted bungalows, given the population density in Calcutta.

The architect-planner from erstwhile Yugoslavia, who had drawn up the original master plan for Salt Lake during Bidhan Roy’s regime, is back in the city, at the initiative of the state chapter of Indian Institute of Architects (IIA) and Centre for Built Environment (CBE).

“Dr BC Roy had told me to take good care of the middle class when I was asked to draw the Salt Lake master plan. Accordingly, I had proposed to devote 70 per cent space in the new town to collective buildings or group housing, and the remaining 30 per cent to low-rise individual houses and public buildings,” Toskovic, 81, told Metro.

But the state irrigation department, which was handling the project, forced a reversal of the residential land-use ratio, allotting 70 per cent of the township’s space to individual plotted housing. “One-storey bungalows on four-cottah plots are a luxury for Salt Lake,” he smiled.

Toskovic was the head architect and town planner in the waterways enterprise Ivan Milutinovic of Belgrade, which won the global tender for dredging the Hooghly during Roy’s tenure. The silt was then dumped in Salt Lake and the Yugoslav company was requested to do the master plan for the township, which was approved in 1964.

The veteran town-planning expert is, however, happy that the broad structure of his plan was adhered to. A tooth-comb inspection of over 50 bird’s-eye-view images on Google is the source of his conviction.

“There are central hubs in each neighbourhood, as I had proposed, and it doesn’t seem like the sleepy township it was when I last visited in 1990. My vision was to ensure that the central park had enough greenery to generate a soothing breeze. I must check out how it has evolved,” he smiles.

Toskovic will probably get a chance to move around Salt Lake only on Tuesday afternoon, escorted by civic chairman Biswajiban Majumdar.

The one void he would like to fill in what has been “the most satisfying new-town project” of his career, is an iconic structure in Salt Lake. “Maybe a Tagore Memorial...,” suggests Toskovic, who now advises on urban planning in Serbia. “His plan was grammatically flawless,” felt CBE president Santosh Ghosh.