Akurli on left(before) , Fields in between villages in centre(now), Kamothe on right(after)

Navi Mumbai, the twin planned counterpart of an expanding Mumbai has had stories since 1972 which are now being replicated at it’s peripheries. The exploration of these tales as they were before, as they are now and as they seem like they will become soon speak volumes about the patterns in which our cities are growing.

My family moved from the Middle East (Oman) to Mumbai in 2000 – Navi Mumbai, to be particular. In this post i narrate instances from my growing years, with the city growing up alongside me as a playmate first, and then a mere acquaintance. But that was before our disagreements finally lead to estrangement.

The Decongesting Twin

Navi Mumbai is a Planned Satellite City on the west coast of the Indian state of Maharashtra (Presently, the world’s largest). It was developed in 1972 as a twin city of Mumbai. It was initially planned with a specific purpose: to decongest Mumbai and become an alternative haven for the multitudes that throng to Mumbai from all over India. The City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) was formed on 17 March 1971. It was given the mandate of converting about 344 square kilometres (133 sq mi) of marshy land lying between the village of Dighe in Thane district and the village of Kalundre of Raigad district into a new city. The area covered 150 kilometres (93 mi) of the total 720 kilometres (450 mi) of the Konkan coast. The villagers of the area lived a calm life much different from the life in the neighbouring city of Mumbai. Privately owned land conisisting of 86 villages covering 15,954 hectares (39,420 acres) within the present limits of Navi Mumbai and further villages measuring an additional 2,870 hectares (7,100 acres) were acquired by the government of Maharashtra.  By 2000 CIDCO had developed about 117.60 square kilometres (45.41 sq mi) of land.

Map of Navi Mumbai, Indian Institue of Geomagnetism

CIDCO carved out 14 nodes – small townships – of the land with a view to facilitate comprehensive development and to give it an identity of a new city. These nodes are named Airoli, Ghansoli, Kopar Khairane, Vashi, Sanpada, Nerul, CBD Belapur, Kharghar, Kalamboli, Jui Kamothe, New Panvel,Ulwe, Pushpak and Dronagiri. Vashi and Nerul were the first to be developed and the most densely populated.

By the end of the 1990s, the planning authority of Navi Mumbai initiated private participation in the developmental activity of Navi Mumbai. (source:www.cidcoindia.com)

Navi Mumbai and i

Mr.Banerjee, one of my dad’s colleagues invited us over for dinner the other day. He had moved to Bombay about a year back, when my dad offered him a job. His family stayed on in Delhi till he could arrange for the necessary accommodation. One year since, he has finally found himself a house he could afford and has asked his family to join him here. My dad’s office is located in Sanpada in Navi Mumbai and i have lived here, in Vashi for the past 10 and a half years. When i came for the first time in 2000, it seemed to be a much smaller place than it seems now. Our knowledge of the extents of New Bombay was limited to Nerul where my school was and Juinagar and Sanpada which we had to pass to get there in the schoolbus. Then there was Panvel where a few people in class used to stay and the Khargar where one boy had once invited us over for his birthday party and which we fell short sightedly in love with at that time. Belapur became popular by the time i went to Junior College(2004) and my dad’s office which was first in Vashi shifted to CBD(as Belapur is popularly known, visualized to have been the Central Business District) .In the first few years we used to go for drives to the sinister CBD with its strangely shaped abandoned buildings that we marvelled at. It looked to us like an epidemic stricken abandoned fantastic township and we used to attack our Dad with questions about why it was dead like that(the answer involved something to do with CRZ violations- boring details when one is 12). Koper khairane was nearby, though people who hailed from any place other than Vashi were looked at cockily and thought of to be ‘poor’ and ‘unfortunate’.

Triangle Building- Belapur, Tall-Tales

In the following years the built landscape around us morphed, turning out to be not so different from the one we had left behind in the construction fantasy that was Dubai. The pages in our local newspaper-The Twin City Times doubled, tripled and eventually quadrupled with classifieds about the shiny, affordable, chic new buildings with swimming pools coming up in every empty corner i knew around. When we started looking for our own house in 2003, i exclaimed at how wonderful the colours were and how awe inspiring, the shapes! Slowly it became quite the fad to be living in Nerul, Khargar, and even Koper khairane.

One fine day, my childish awe turned to adultish horror in an unexpected jolt. I went for my favourite drive, after a span of around 2 years along our very own Palm Beach Road and in the bargain, stumbled upon those mutilated cardboard box like creatures snaking along the roads that would haunt me long after. They chewed unapologetically on everything that dared to fall upon their path, not sparing even the mangroves of yore.

Nerul, the site of my schooling days had become unrecognizable in these intimidating new shadows, and the same could be said for Sanpada, Khargar, Koper khairane, Belapur (still warmer than the rest, with its shaded streets , hills and low rise houses) or Juinagar. I started becoming rather skilled at avoiding visits to these places and recently when Mr.Banerjee’s invitation came in, i jumped at the chance. He had found his home in this place called Kamothe which i’d never heard of or visited earlier. There was still hope. Or so i imagined.

Investigating the Innards: Kamothe

I don’t remember the drive down to have been much fun as the unending rows of buildings, none lower than 10 storeys, touched shoulders with one another and glowered at me for judging them so hastily. I turned my face away in guilt. Once we neared the place, i recognized with much difficulty what had been but an empty, isolated patch of land after Khargar. To my dad’s surprise and mine, it was crawling with residential towers, shops and malls. It had taken only a little more than a year for this to happen. A whole new civilization had ‘developed’ just a little distance away from us and we had not a clue about it. There were huge hoardings flaunting the work of this builder and that. We finally found our way to Mr. Banerjee’s place and i was thrilled at the fact that i had now been giving a chance to dissect first hand and reconsider my shallow judgements about one of the rubber stamp buildings that i despised with instinctive fury.

One glimpse at the underbelly of this building complex was enough to make one wonder about what really happened. When i entered, there was an amply large parking lot which accommodated a handful of 2 wheelers, a few rickshaws and 2 cars. It was silent and there was no sign of life around. The lift said that the building was 12 storeys high but that’s about all it did. We huffed, puffed and panted our way to the 11th floor and along our way found long narrow passages with about 8 flats per floor (mostly unoccupied)and peeling sun mica clad doors and freshly plastered walls. It was a new building, about a year old, we found out soon enough as Mr. Banerjee ran halfway down to meet us and take us up. The living room was of reasonable size and had a large window on one wall. Still, the lack of any kind of air flow or ventilation made it difficult to breathe. The kitchen was modular and bright green in a tragic, but admirable attempt at making it look cheerful. The bedrooms, systematically divided into rooms spanning 4 tiles, seemed inadequate for a family of four. But just the fact that there were 2 whole bedrooms, a hall and a kitchen kept everyone happy. As the compartments multiplied so did one’s social status. The slow suffocation in the still air was immaterial in relativity.

One could only accommodate a foot (sideward) inside the narrow balcony and the view was a kitchen and a bawling baby a few metres away on one side and the stagnant mosquito breeding open creek/drain on the other. Promises of air conditioned gyms and power back up lifts in the glossy brochures never materialized. The building itself was less than half full, the rest merely bought on basis of speculation. Neighbours lived in apartments far apart and did not interact. They are mostly migrants from other states in search of jobs and must travel to far off places in the city for work. Water was scarce and power cuts abundant. There was no security yet and the building wasn’t a co-operative housing society. More like every man for himself, thus, only barely a neighbourhood. If a slum can be defined as a squalid urban area characterized by sub standard housing and lacking basic human requirements for living, this surely would qualify as one. Makes one wonder why migrants would choose this over the so-called informal settlements in the city-those with a clear idea of space organization, ventilation, security, community, economy and livelihood. And what are the other options? If this is the future of our cities, it is indeed a stark, dark one. The Dystopia of a New’er’ Bombay indeed.

What really happened

Termed as ‘Towers of Shame’ by NMTV(500 under investigation for illegalities in March 2011),Palm Beach Rd.,Navi Mumbai

Before the late-2000s financial crisis i.e. the global recession when the housing market suffered greatly, there was a big property boom in Navi Mumbai.  Within this 2005-2006 bubble, there was a massive demand for housing. Investors flooded the market and small builders rushed in to make houses available as quickly as possible to fulfil this demand, irrespective of poor quality and inadequate infrastructure. Nevertheless, prices escalated. Once the bubble burst and the market collapsed worldwide, the investors were stranded with houses that they could not sell at profitable rates anymore. This is what resulted in the hastily built, sparsely occupied rows and rows of sub-standard speculative housing in some nodes of Navi Mumbai.

Unaffordable Luxury

Affordable Luxury on sale in farming fringes of Navi Mumbai

As a result of this, in the last few years, a new market of ‘affordably luxurious’ housing has sprung up on the fringes of Navi Mumbai. These are mainly in agricultural areas outside the CIDCO jurisdiction, beyond New Panvel. The target consumers would be newly migrated families as well as second home buyers. The existing villages are placed at around 2km intervals interspersed with paddy fields on either side of the state highway that winds through to Pune. The villages are at this point under the Panvel Municipal Corporation(PMC) but have panchayats and are listed under the Industrial Zone in the Development Plan.  Due to this reason, the law entails that only a 200m belt of agricultural land surrounding the village be made available for conversion to non agricultural land and given an FSI(Floor Space Index)of 1 to develop upon. The remaining land only has an FSI of 0.3(meant for agricultural infrastructure) and hence is not profitable for a builder to build on. What makes this land affordable for the builders and hence the future owner is the fact that most of this development is on what used to be agricultural land. Deals with the local talati in charge mean that the builders acquire a farming licence by unscrupulous means like buying land in Rajasthan which bestows this right relatively soon. Once this is done, they use the licence to buy off land from these villages and then converting them to NA land. The methodology includes offering tempting lump sums of money to the farmers as compensation here but at the same time, allowing little or no scope for sustainable personal growth or investment. This also seems more preferable than waiting for CIDCO to acquire the land and then getting minimally compensated only a number of years and court cases later. The farmer as per trend succumbs, but only to invest in three main areas- A bigger home, a marriage in the family or in buying lands in villages a few kilometres away that still haven’t come under the stranglehold of the builders.

Land use and actors involved

All of these scenarios would eventually lead to the drying up of these unsustainable lump sum compensations. This would mean the much discussed move from the villages to the city in search of jobs, only adding to the urban sprawl and squatter settlements, thus kicking off a vicious cycle. Their families stay back in dying patches of land that are part of a now defunct village with only houses but no means of livelihood. Their 200 year old fields will soon turn into empty 2 bedroom flats. So who really is paying the price for this luxury? The protected areas shall too go under the scalpel as they ready themselves for complete Residential Zone status (greater FSI, higher buildings and larger swimming pools) thanks to the rising property value with the upcoming friendly neighbourhood International Airport.

The reinforcement of the agro industry can help stabilise and make agriculture more lucrative and create employment opportunities both at the production and marketing stages. A broad-based nurturing of the agro-products industry would support both social and physical infrastructure. Since it would cause diversification of crops and localization, it would also enhance the quality of land, create food surpluses and reduce transport expenses and damage. Localizing markets and production can lead to better quality food, better prices for the consumer and a bigger profit margin for the farmer.

As Stephen Corry of Survival International puts it, “The ‘development’ of tribal peoples against their wishes – really to let others get their land and resources, is rooted in 19th century colonialism (‘we know best’) dressed up in 20th century ‘politically correct’ euphemism. Tribal peoples are not backward: they are independent and vibrant societies which, like all of us always, are constantly adapting to a changing world. The main difference between tribal peoples and us is that we take their land and resources, and believe the dishonest, even racist, claim that it’s for their own good. It’s conquest, not development.”

Investigating the Innards: Akurli

But this is not the only reason to revise our present development models. On exploring and mapping this scenario, both physically and experientially, there are observations made (detailed in the drawings and pictures below) which set it apart from the present trajectory of development, explained in the first part of the post.The map, to be read from bottom all the way to the top, unfolds to reveal a physical as well as experiential narrative about a village named Akurli, that lies along the State Highway, 3 kms away from New Panvel in Navi Mumbai. Sometimes it also takes one into people’s houses and lives while at others, talks about existing village-at-the-brink-of-conversion archetypes.

Experiential Map for Akurli, beyond Navi Mumbai-by Masoom Moitra (Click to navigate)

Here are some perfectly well functioning civilizations being systematically wiped out by ones made on exclusively a profit motive with nonchalant disregard to social, economical, spatial or structural implications. In Mumbai, low quality high rise housing continues being used as a tool to generate more money from existing money for the rich to get richer. Meanwhile houses further lose their ability to, well, house. The much required expansion of the affordable housing typologies that have already evolved over years in villages and other such settlements which dictate the real needs of the expanding city are yet to be given consideration. A comparison leads one to wonder which model really is the more regressive one at this point. Are they are even two warring extremities or is a sensitive hybrid necessary? Maybe along with our obsolete city- building practices, our ideas of progress and development in terms of neighbourhood patterns are too in need of that long delayed intervention. But for now, let us just say-

Excerpt from ‘There You Go!’ by Oren Ginzburg

-Masoom Moitra, joining the team from Mumbai(These questions formed the premise of my architectural thesis. If interested, do contact for details on the subsequent proposal)

We didn’t realize when we entered into 2012 – so busy was our agenda. Right now we are in the throes of an exciting pedagogic exercise involving contractors from Mumbai’s unplanned settlements and about 60 students of the JJ College of Architecture, Mumbai. This is part of the institutions Affordable Housing class and along with the professors Dalvi, Pitkar, Alexis De Ducla, and others, the class looks at the techniques and processes of how each structure is built in neighbourhhods as varied as Shivaji Nagar, Govandi, Uttkarsh Nagar, Bhandup and M.G. Road, Dharavi. The contractors, Pankaj Gupta, Amar Mirjankar and Anwar along with several others are the resource persons and the groups working with them are making new discoveries every week. These sessions culminate in the workshop scheduled between January 23-25th when we have more resource persons from all over the country who will join the discussion. Will keep you updated. Involved in the program from URBZ are, Matias, Rahul, Priyanka, Masoom, Benjamin, Shyam, Ajit, all of whom will be sending in updates in the coming weeks. A very happy solar new year to everyone!

Left Buscoldo Italy, right MG Road, Social Nagar, Dharavi, Mumbai

Walking through Mumbai for an Italian student of architecture means confronting something totally different from his own culture. I am a student at the Politecnico of Milan and originally from a small village of just 2500 inhabitants in the north of Italy, Buscoldo, close to a town called Mantova, which has a population of roughly 45000 people. About a month ago I left behind my quiet life and got absorbed in the crazy world of Mumbai. I thought I was prepared. I thought I knew what a big city was, how it works, but actually I was far from it.

I am in Mumbai for 3 months to do an internship at URBZ. My aim is to understand the process of incremental-improvement in Dharavi and other neighbourhoods in Mumbai.

In the recent years I had the opportunity to explore different realities. I spent one year in a South American metropolis, Santiago de Chile. Chile is perhaps not such a typical South American country, because of the strong cultural and economic influence it gets from the US. Santiago is also a mad city but its sense of organization and feel is very Western.

Santiago de Chile

Coming to India made me realize that the last few years of my life have been a curious “Russian doll”-like experience. I grew up in a really small village, where everybody knows each other, I studied in a small town, spent time in Milan, lived for one year in Santiago de Chile in a neighborhood as big as my hometown, and now I am spending time in Mumbai which has a population twice as large as Santiago.

Looking back at my village from Dharavi helps me understand better where I come from and what’s special and universal about it.

In Mumbai I stay in Dharavi, one of the most dynamic and populated unplanned neighborhoods in the Asian continent. Even if at first sight it has nothing in common with a small village like mine, I realized that reality is actually more complex. I was most impressed, for instance, with the deep sense of place and community that people have in Dharavi.

I live in a small apartment in a seven-storied building and I know my neighbors because I have learned from them to keep my door open. This self-imposed rule originated from the time they all lived together in low-rise “chawls”, before their patch of land was redeveloped in the 1980s. The role that my house-front played in Italy is played in Dharavi by the hallway, which connects my life with my neighbors’ life. It is a world of social interaction which fulfills the need that we architects tend to fantasize about public spaces. That little passage from door to lift, with the small gesture of keeping doors open creates a great meeting and interaction space, which was never designed to be used that way. This is just what people chose to do.

A few days ago in Dharavi, I saw Paul -one of the strong men of the neighborhood where the URBZ office is located- preparing lunch for 150 people (photo on the right). I was really surprised but also remembered that this also happens back home when we celebrate something that connects the entire community.

Dharavi is a context where poverty is not a problem. In fact many families keep investing their earnings to improve their own homes. In Italy too we are interested in building up better houses and improving it. The process is very similar, what changes is the type of technology we use.

I live in a house which my father built. He is a Geometra (a specific Italian technical specialization related to construction) and what he basically did for most of his life was to design houses. In this case he was like a typical contractor of Dharavi, who, together with his client tries to build or improve a house, without the help of architects or engineers. What he basically did, was take the typical single house we have in the north of Italy, and tried to redo it with different materials, mostly wood. This is new in a place where wood is not a local material, and has generated a lot of debate in the community.

I have to admit that before coming here I was pretty worried, but now I understand that if we are willing to get involved in the places we visit, maybe the differences we perceive at the beginning are simply stereotypes that we have to outgrow.

My father in front of the house he built in Buscoldo

Just in case you thought URBZ had gone into hibernation to escape the summer heat, this is just to let you know – nothing like that! We have been super active, primarily at the Shelter, with Grace joining us and getting all the kids of the neighbourhood excited with plenty of new art based programs and projects lined up for the coming three months. A good chunk of the URBZ diaspora – and there is such a thing – has been doing some terrific conceptualizations and designs for a garden extension for the Shelter. Meg, who has been having some of the liveliest and fun conversations with young friends from several neighbourhoods in and around M.G. Road made an inspiring installation at the Shelter and produced a CD titled Social Networking. Reports and photographs of all this and more coming up soon right here. Also, some exciting news expected from Europe in the next day or two. Stay in touch.