The post-1990s experience in Mumbai represents
urban renewal processes as in other cities of Asia. As a city that is topographically
challenged with land constraints and ageing infrastructure housing redevelopment
is a response towards decongestion of the inner city and densification of the
suburbs. This, in turn, is linked to neo-liberal urbanism characterized by economic
restructuring and greater global linkages. Under the aegis of neo-liberalism,
redevelopment has accelerated signifying a bigger and bolder approach to
address the long-standing problem of slums in the city.
It points to changing
governance, urban restructuring whereby Mumbai has graduated from the state-led
develop mentalist industrialization (that prioritized urban infrastructure to
support mass production and economic growth) of the 1960s and 1970s to the neo-liberal
and market-friendly processes of the 1990s. However redevelopment, a vital part
of this growth story, has resisted wholesale replacement of developmental
urbanism by neo-liberal urbanism by retaining the institutional and material
legacies of developmental urbanism through a tailored approach to redevelopment
in different parts of the city.
The redevelopment narrative in Mumbai has
resulted in sub economic centers or integrated development with their own
characteristic living and working typologies. Examples include Andheri,
Goregaon, Malad, Vikhroli, Sewri and Chembur infused with their own
characteristic social homogeneity that has subverted the pre-existing territorialised
social and economic structure. Mumbai is
a polycentric city, with the landscape and activities increasingly fashioned
around this concept. Redevelopment has also identified pockets of land that
hitherto were disconnected from the economic and development processes of the
city. These pockets are important land parcels in terms of location,
connectivity and development potential. Redevelopment has allowed such deprived
pockets to be integrated with the development process of the city.
Note: Abstract of original article written by Dr. Binti Singh & Manoj Parmar, featured in Domus India, April 2018 edition.
