A Conformance Variation Approach for Ex-Post Master Plan Evaluation: Unveiling Urban Realities in Indian Million-Plus Cities

Land use plans, a crucial component of statutory master plans, are often deemed failures. To test this hypothesis, an ex-post evaluation of seven master plans from five Indian million-plus cities was conducted using percentage implementation (PI) and conformance variation (CV) as evaluation factors to ascertain variation between proposed and subsequent existing land uses. Contrary to master plans, a significant difference in CV was observed among land uses after performing analysis of variance (ANOVA) across all master plans and land use categories. Post hoc tests revealed that residential, governmental/public and semi-public, industrial, and overall developed/urbanized areas grew relatively as expected compared to recreational use.