Sustainable Landscaping in New Panvel, Panvel.

New Panvel's redeveloped plots leave only a thin band of open ground around a larger building, and most of it tends to end up paved. Treated with care, that band can hold rain, shade the ground floor and cut the water bill. We use planting beds set into the setbacks, permeable paving where cars must park, and drought-tolerant native shrubs watered from the STP's treated water. Nothing is planted that will need tanker water to survive April.

New Panvel is the CIDCO node laid out beside the old market town, across the railway station from its bazaar lanes. It was planned in numbered sectors of housing-society buildings, row houses and schools, with markets at the sector centres and a grid of internal roads. For years it grew slowly and stayed low. That has changed with the airport and the new approach roads: older plots are being redeveloped into taller buildings, and open land at its edges is taken up by residential layouts. Most of its people commute, by rail or road, to jobs elsewhere in the region.