9 minute read
CONTEXT
“The interdependence of architecture, planning and urban design achieved through the language of landscape, which combines the capacity of artistic visualization and the potent energy of conceptualizing terrain, is the only perceptive way that can challenge the design concerns of overgrowing cities.”
Rajiv Lochan, 20093
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The image of Mumbai has been cultivated from a terrain of porosity, fluidity and accommodation to one of control, rigidity and an obsession with definition over the last three hundred years.2
What once was a terrain that could adapt and actively participate in the negotiation between, land, water and the ‘in-between’, has become a constricted mass of sub-par infrastructure. This latter state is an amalgamation of a dedicated ideology of separating the ecology of the land from that of the city.
The complex situation which I have labeled a crisis has many faces — natural, social, political, economic, cultural, but to understand and delve into these complexities I believe that the best places to begin are the underrepresented spaces within the city where they intersect. One of these intersections is the ‘edges’ of urbanity. Edges which are neither land nor sea, the edges where urban transitions into the urbanrural, the edges which the two gray areas in today’s metropolis aggressively negotiate to occupy.
It is at this precipice that it becomes important to understand not just the physical but the social, ecological and economic structures of these edge conditions, which despite their nonglamorous generalization play a pivotal role as a foil to their extensively planned counterparts.
Ignoring this fog of generalization in most traditional media, I see immense intricacy. Understanding this complexity, I think is better served in viewing the ‘edges’ in terms of their component elements and then tracing the connections which enable these to collaborate. This section begins to understand these elements by individually contextualizing them in the city of today.
Informal Settlements (Urban Rural / Slums)
The word ‘slum’ originated as a way to refer to criminal activity, which then was reinterpreted into a word that highlighted areas where these criminal activities take place. Although in this age of neo-liberalism and ‘wokeness’ we would imagine that these antiquated connotations of the word are long gone, it still carries the burden of its maligned past. It is due to this very reason that I will refer to these ‘urban-rural’ conditions as (informal) settlements inspired by Nikhil Anand in Hydraulic City. 4
Mike Davis explains how, “the classical stereotype of the labor-intensive countryside and the capitalintensive industrial metropolis,” has flipped in developing countries resulting in uncontrolled urbanization through, “the reproduction of poverty, not by the supply of jobs.”5
Forces such as the mechanization of agriculture have pushed the rural population towards the illusion of the economy of the city, while the city lacks the infrastructure to support the demographic explosion. According to a 2017 report from the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “around 55 percent of the world’s population is thought to be living in an urban area or city, with that figure set to rise to 68 percent over the coming decades.”6 Lack of formal housing and systems for allocation of such housing has and will continue to leave the essential migrants to the mercy of their agency. This atmosphere has made the sustained emergence of informal settlements inevitable and the question of their citizenship highly contentious. The duality of the served and those serving city rose from a colonial pursuit of expansion in terms of the urban fabric and commerce. The monied society claimed what they pleased. This persists to this day, not only in terms of physical configurations but government policies as well. Initiatives such as the Slum Redevelopment Scheme (SRS), introduced to develop improved housing and
New Delhi
Mumbai
Population Density by District 2020
<2000000 2000000 - 4000000 4000000 - 6000000
6000000 - 8000000
>8000000 Kolkata
Mumbai
Arabian Sea
Chennai Bay of Bengal
Mangrove areas
Sea India
The estimates are consistent with the midyear national projections from the U.S. Census Bureau International Data Base (IDB).
access to infrastructure revealed itself to be one which quite openly accommodated illegalities to serve the private developers while the displaced communities of migrant workers and indigenous Kolis found themselves in inhumane transit camps.7
Scholars such as Mehrotra worldwide have shown deep curiosity and commitment to documenting the robust social, cultural economic systems which emerge, not despite but because of the normalization of these conditions of presumed depravity.8 In contrast to the negative narratives, it is important to view these settlements in terms of their historic context and in doing so, the relation between indigeneity and modernity within them leading to a robust system of survival.
Using existing documentation of these complex systems I hope to unearth opportunities within these communities for new ways of mapping that might enable the validation of their right to the city as well as the ingenious entrepreneurship through which they survive in this age of unsustainable over-development.
Wetlands / Mangroves
Ignoring this fog of generalization in most traditional media, I see immense intricacy. The historic foundations of Mumbai’s coastal ecology are the mangrove forests, developed over millions of years. These ecologies include a spectrum of micro-ecologies— sea to the creek to mudflats to mangroves to intertidal zones to dry land.
They existed before the Mumbai we know today was crafted. These forests have traditionally played a vital role in the coastal ecosystem. From serving as breeding grounds for fish, to erosion control, to acting as a buffer between land and sea, their importance cannot be overstated. What makes them of great contemporary vitality is their found properties of processing industrial chemicals and urban pollutants to cleanse coastal peripheries and sustaining the roots of local communities.
Over the last three centuries the aspirations of human control over the peninsula, maximizing its economic potential as well as extremely limited understanding of this ecology have normalized the act of land reclamation at the expense of the mangroves. The colonial claims of these spaces being sources of “illness and bad odour”9 in the 1600s, to the blatant violation of Coastal Regulation Zones (CRZ) such as that in Bandra- Kurla Complex, shows an escalating trend of ignorance.10
The Koli fishing villages, which have had roots in these lands and waters for abundantly longer than the idea of Mumbai as a city has existed, are being marginalized through housing and environmental policies which have vested interests in the capitalist market.11 This forms another edge to the city. One between the natural conditions of the ecology and an imposed landscape of impermeability.
The failure to learn and acknowledge the flexible and resilient systems of the coastal ecosystem, as well as those of the communities whose lives intersect with them has resulted in an impasse. One which bodes negatively for us (the citizens) in the long term.
At this crossroads, it has become imperative to take a step back and consider an alternate ideology, one in which “our survival is not dependent upon superiority, but upon symbiosis.”12 Learning from the marginalization and displacement implemented through the urban design practices of the past and their effects on the indigenous communities and the greater urban environment as in the case of the floods of July 26, 2005, policies such as the Coastal Regulation Zones (CRZ) could be revisited along with contemplating newer policies to sustainably leverage the latent socio-economic potential of the coastal forests by first understanding their complex processes.
Water
Ignoring this fog of generalization in most traditional media, I see immense intricacy. If I were to identify a single natural resource that you could credit with defining the identity of the landmass we call Mumbai, it is water.
The monsoon and the sea—one sustains life and the other the economy of this center of commerce and human migration. Given the vitality of the interface with the aqueous ecologies, the relentless desire to tame it appears to be redundant. But this has never seemed a logical deduction when it comes to strategizing for the future.
One must go back to 1760 to chart the lineage of imposing a desired singular character on a terrain and system which perpetually tends towards flux. The obsession with physically realizing the separation between land and water, I would say was the origin of today’s Mumbai. Contemporary Mumbai—a city which relies on the transportation of water from hundreds of kilometers away13 while the rain which falls within its geographic boundaries resides in the sewers which in turn pollute the natural water bodies, a city where devastation caused as a direct result of unnatural interventions inspires ‘improved’ implementations of similar ‘solutions’, a city where ecology seems to lose its battle against the everincreasing hard edge of land.
As water constantly attempts to find its balance in this ever-expanding construct, so do those living on the edges of the recognized city. It is at these very edges that the interests of the two intersect. Marked by fatal floods which uproot communities on one hand and a constant struggle to validate their urban citizenships through their access to water infrastructures which never seem to reach them on the other.14
I would say that pivoting focus on working in conjunction with riparian qualities detailed in SOAK: Mumbai in an Estuary by Mathur and Cunha, the neglected edge mechanisms of Mumbai could be revitalized in an environmental, economic and social paradigm.
Consideration of water as a driving force in the urban revitalization of these edges prompts one to be cognizant of the “temporal dimension,” in response to our current pedagogy which, “forces us to think in terms of absolutes.”15
Ignoring this fog of generalization in most traditional media, I see immense intricacy. Drawing from the context of the ‘edges’ of Mumbai which are often overlooked in the process of city planning and a seemingly assumed homogeneity of these spaces which in reality are constantly shaped by extremely complex socialcultural and ecological processes, I question if I could devise a tool to address this ambiguity.
Going forward, the epicenter of my exploration of this position I have taken will be the study and imagination of scenarios through which the historic practice of mapping can be reconfigured to effectively record and advocate for the increasingly layered cities of the world such as Mumbai.
To achieve this I will first begin by identifying and elaborating the actors and forces which have shaped these ‘edges’ of concern as well as the mapping practices of the past and present which have attempted to capture aspects of this urban-rural-ecological landscape. Learning from these research endeavors and studies, as well as case studies where there has been some success in recording complexity and diversity at various scales, I will work on developing a mapping strategy of my own. The geographical focus of this will lie on the edge of the hyper-urbanized city and less populated coastal lands which face forced upheaval and transformation as Mumbai continues to grow along with its demand for land to build on.
