The City covers a substantial area of land totalling to approximately 920 sq km and encompasses 19 villages of Dhandhuka Taluka and 3 villages of Barwala Taluka; total 22 villages of Ahmedabad District, making it the largest of the investment nodes proposed so far in the DMIC influence region. The site is strategically situated between the main industrial centres of Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot and Bhavnagar. It is linked to the major ports of Gujarat by State Highways but as yet has no direct rail connection. The nearest international airport is at Ahmedabad, although there is a current proposal to develop a new international airport to the north-east of the DSIR at Navagam Village. The existing population within the study area is only about 37,000 (census 2001), inhabiting small settlements. Agriculture is the principal land use and activity within the area, although the land is generally of poor quality and saline, especially close to the sea, and farm output is not high. Land values are therefore relatively low.
> NH 8 connects the Dholera SIR with Ahmedabad, Bhavnagar and Mumbai. Dholera itself has good connectivity with NH 8 (Anand) and 8A (Bagodra), augmenting Bagodra -Bhavnagar, Bagodra- Surendranagar- Radhanpur links.
> As a part of Golden Quadrilateral, the 500 km Mumbai- Ahmedabad- Vadodara Express way connects the region.
> In order to make the region more assessable, an airport and a port are proposed in this region.
> The port site is proposed to be connected by road with Ahmedabad – Bhavnagar highway at a distance of about 11 kilometers. Almost 2,057 hectares of Government land was allocated for the development of port site.
> Rail connection is being planned for Dholera, while the nearest meter gauge connection is Bhavnagar (34 km) and the nearest broad gauge station is Tarapur (103 km).
The land use is allocated based upon twelve spatial planning principles:
Creation of a compact city;
Integration of land uses;
Accessibility of industrial zones;
Focus of the city internally away from the central expressway, which will only have limited access;
Separation of industrial and city traffic;
Provision for a high quality public transport system;
Development of a poly-centric structure that has a number of commercial and community nodes;
Integration of existing villages into the new city;
Conservation of the better agricultural land;
Protection of the CRZ;
Development of a strong landscape strategy; and
A phased development programme that allows optimised investment.
A total of about 11,661 ha land area is allocated for industrial and logistics use in a number of linked mega parks, all of which have excellent access to the road and rail networks. In addition to the traditional industrial sectors, substantial additional land is allocated for knowledge based activities such as universities and research centres, bringing the total land area allocated for the economic sectors to over 12,891 ha. Additionally, about 12,000ha of agriculture land is allocated for future development.
