Metropolitan imaginations: Sao Paulo & Mumbai

Metropolitan imaginations of the majority world

Mumbai, São Paulo and the expanding understandings of metropolitan urbanization

Rafael Marengoni, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Summer of 2020

Introduction

This research proposes an investigation of Mumbai and São Paulo as Macrometropolitan regions, that is, as central regions in a network of metropolitan areas within their contexts. This study will investigate the relationship between urban morphologies, regional infrastructure and the historic development of these cityregions. It also aims to understand what organizational structures, if any, exist at these scales, and how these may operate across the urban design of these geographies. This is a particularly pressing issue as we see the urgency in which regions must collaborate in new ways to face their shared challenges such as the current covid-19 pandemic or the ongoing climate crisis and its escalating effects on urban regions.

To achieve this, the study aims towards investigating first the metropolitan level of organization of these city-regions, their demographic dynamics, spatial distributions of infrastructure, and ultimately their resulting morphology.

To develop this project, a series of cartographic explorations, including an analysis of urban design visions for both of these cityregions have been developed. Theoretically, it builds on concepts

of regional urbanization, “Megalopolis”, city-regions, planetary urbanization and conurbation as explored through the extensive work developed by Gottmann (1978), Soja (2011), and Brenner and Schmid (2013).

Given the specificites of these geographies the study also relies on the works of Tavares(2015), and Mehrotra (1995), to assess further characterizations of the São Paulo and Mumbai contexts.

Technically, this study builds in the direction proposed by Boeing (2019) in which, through the analysis of extracts of networks we gain further understanding of complex urban morphologies. Boeing also proposes the use of OpenStreetMap (OSM) network data as a proxy for these analysis, and widely explores the potentials of the data sets provided by OSM in his work. Boeing further elaborates on the validity of OSM as potential next step from the classic references of morphological and cartographic analysis such as Giambattista Nolli(Verstegen, 2013) or Allan Jacobs (1984) The discussion around metropolis structures, particularly investigating the city-regions and regional urbanization phenomena

is explored thoroughly in the work of Edward Soja (2011). In the analysis of this concept, and building on the, Soja engages with the morphology discussion by contrasting the Chicago Urban Ecology School of thought: the defined 19th Century Industrial City Model, its concentric zoning and axial developments. This discussion further explores the issues of the morphology across the metropolis , initiated by compactness, the industrial-housing complex, and the organical ramifications. In this sense, Soja understands the metropolis as the breakdown between the center vs. suburbia dichotomy; arguing that cities are leaning more (nowadays) into regional processes.

include simultaneous and overlaid effects of decentralization and recentralization, reindustrialization and deindustrialization amount to the complex territorial organizations of the city region.

In this narrative, the Urban-Region would be characterized not by the dualistic view of the high-dense core vs. low-dense suburb, rather it would be a nuanced population distribution over a larger region, becoming “a polycentric network of urban agglomerations where high densities are found throughout the urbanized region”.

It is on these concepts and premises that this study proposes a further analysis of Mumbai and São Paulo, as well as the immense potential to study the phenomena of the metropoli of the global south — the “majority world”.

Soja goes on to argue that the economic changes, specifically wherein the disparities in wealth concentration further extrapolate the shifts in urbanization patterns. These shifts would

This analysis proves fundamental to engage with a study centered not on what Soja mainly investigates, rather it allows for a different perspective on city-regions such as São Paulo and Mumbai. As such, understanding the morphology of these cities, and the development of their urbanization processes as a comparative narrative is a field that has not been extensively explored, and thus merits further investigation.

Definitions and Methodology

In this study two areas are investigated: the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), and the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo - in doing so, it was necessary to first compile comparable data sets for both regions, as well as adopt a geometrical definition for the regions for the purposes of spatial analysis.

1973, in is differently from the MMR, is composed exclusively of adjacent municipalities’ territorial limits. It is composed of 39 municipalities and has an administrative structure based within the municipality of São Paulo and the state government of São Paulo.

Administrative Divisions In Mumbai, the Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) was founded in 1975, even though the region had already been defined by 1967. As of 2012, the MMR includes the entire Mumbai City and Suburban District and parts of the Palghar, Thane and Raigad districs. The number of municipal corporations has been changing within the MMR, making its administrative composition unique. Currently, the MMR is administratively composed of 8 municipal corporations, 9 municipal councils, 35 census towns and 994 villages. For the purposes of this study, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region followed the contours according to the India subdivision limits of Taluks or Tehsils made available through the Global Database of Administrative Areas (GADM).

Both administrative divisions chosen use EPSG:4326 - WGS 84 geographic projections, and have been processed using QGIS.

The São Paulo Metropolitan Region (SPMR) was first defined in

Networks and Spatial Data As for morphological studies, the approach chosen to standardize the collection and subsequent analysis of data was to use OpenStreetMap (OSM) data. This was done to balance disparities across access to public data in India and Brazil, and to allow comparisons to be thematically consistent. The data categories used in this study included “highways” with the road hierarchy embedded within OSM, allowing to understand the differences across the extents of the networks. The hierarchies also allow to analyze the cities as a proxy to identify patterns of land use across the regions, wherein residential streets, living streets and pedestrian ways indicate the presence of permanence areas, and

where the larger routes such as trunks and motorways indicate regional connectivity and in their intersections areas of higher activity densities.

OSM also provides information on the presence of public transportation facilities, such as stops and buldings — these were used to understand the spatial distribution and continuity of transportation services, allowing for a proxy to assess regional integration. These include information on rail, bus, taxi. ferry and tram services and locations.

Proposed Analysis To analyze both regions the following analysis has been developed: In QGIS, both shapefiles were compiled to the proposed Metropolitan Regions for São Paulo and Mumbai; then, OSM data for both regions was also downloaded, cleaned and compiled, including public transportation, and transportation networks.

A series of calculations using demographic data is proposed to compare the metro regions in terms of their human footprint and spatial distribution. With these data sets 4 visualizations are

proposed for each region: 1 - the compiled OSM dataset for networks, to grasp the full extent of morphology, broken down into the ranging hierarchies; 2 - the OSM dataset for networks broken down into Motorways, Trunks, Primary, Secondary and Tertiary routes - assessing the contours for main destinations/routes throughout the metro areas. This allows to visualize the “high speed” areas, determining main corridors of expansion, higher activity densities and regional extent of the network; 3 - the OSM dataset for networks broken down into Residential, Living, Service and Pedestrian routes - allowing to assess the “slower” regions of the metro areas, in which activities indicate permanence and intra-neighbourhood flows; 4 - the OSM dataset for public transportation stops across modes including ferries, buses, rail, trams and taxi. These permit us to visualize the territorial continuity of routes and modes, and how integrated the metpoitan areas are by transit.

Metro and Municipal Analysis

Compiled Networks In the first visualizations we can observe the limits to the Metropolitan limits in Magenta, while the OSM networks routes color vary across a heat spectrum, following the intensity of the flows assigned to them. Looking at São Paulo, we notice a more expressive proximity between the municipalities networks within the Metro region and the ones outside of it. In Mumbai, we observe a relative isolation beyond the borders of the magenta MMR definitions, only shifting towards the Southeastern portion of the map, closer to Pune. In São Paulo, this region is known as the Macrometropolis or expanded metropolitan area, which correlates large populations within a short distance of the SPMR. One of the hypothesis of this study speculated about the potential for Mumbai to also bear influence within a proximity to its MMR limits, which, in fact, are not observed in these cartographies.

High Speed Networks The second set of cartographies isolates the networks with higher intensities associated to them: Motorways, Trunks, Primary, Secondary and Tertiarty connectors. These showcase the “barebones” of the urban fabric hierarchy, and allow us to assess

mainly two things: the first is the extent of regional connection, as the routes of trunks and motorways span across the regions, and the second is the main “destination areas” which could suggest higher activity densities. Again, we notice an expansive, regional footprint of this network typology in the SPMR, in which the network is entangled and sprawls towards other metro-regions.

Mumbai, however seems to be more contained. In the MMR version of this analysis, we notice the main city cores distributed around the Mumbai City and Suburban Districts, which could suggest a denser footprint within MMR’s urban fabric.

Low Speed Networks By isolating the residential, living, service and pedestrian routes, we begin an investigation of the social urban fabric, and the actual extent of the sprawl frontiers in each of these areas. As the other layers had suggested, here we validate the hypothesis of a sprawling São Paulo and a condensed Mumbai. The territorial footprint within the SPMR is expressively larger than that of the MMR when we take these networks into consideration. Mumbai shows us a distribution of “pockets” over a selective and short list of locations while São Paulo seems to bloat in all directions.

Metro and Municipal Analysis

Distribution of Public Transportation Amenities/Services In the fourth comparison between the MMR and the SPMR, we use OSM data on public transportation (mainly stops). The data is divided by modes including taxi, bus, ferry, tram and train. Here, we notice that the distribution of the rail stops in and around the MMR follow a pattern that suggest that it is more connected and more cohesive on a regional level, than what we observe in the SPMR. In São Paulo, we do not observe the continuity of services consistently beyond the Metropolitan limits, rather we notice abrupt interruptions of services, particularly for rail.

Demographics and Infrastructure The fifth comparison this study proposes looks into some of the information that the OSM datasets fail to make explicit: the transition of theses places over time, the densities, administrative subdivisions and proportional comparisons of the distributions of infrastructure and populations across these areas. In these numbers, we notice that the MMR and the SPMR have about the same population size, with UN projections pointing towards Mumbai’s urban population to surpass that of São Paulo’s by 2030. However, even though they occupy a similar footprint, the Metropolitan

Regions’ densities are quite different. Mumbai’s Metro density is roughly twice that of São Paulo’s Metro, and when we observe municipalities alone, Mumbai’s density is about 2.5 times that of São Paulo’s. Yet, this distribution scale shifts when quantifying the densities of infrastructure, by using the networks provided byv OSM. These calculations help us understand the compactness of the cities’ morphologies. In this criteria, we observe similar densities for the municipalities, but a ratio of 2:1 at the metropolitan level, with São Paulo having almost twice the amount of networks per square kilometer. As for the administrative structure, the MMR’s subdivisions and overarching MMRDA present opportunities for democratic engagement and representative interactions between local and regional governance. The structure in São Paulo, in that sense, is potentially less flexible with mixed authorities at the municipal and state level governance and little authority at the local level within the sub-prefeituras.

Closing remarks

The exploration of a comparative study of the Mumbai and São Paulo Metropolitan regions show us the differences both have across morphology, infrastructural distribution, regional connectivity and continuity and populational territorial footprint. We see two cityregions of over 20 million inhabitants creating different responses to regional population distribution in such a way that Mumbai showcases a continuity of services and stratification of political administrative representation, whereas São Paulo is marked by its severe discontinuity despite its less stratified administrative divides. The direction of the development of Mumbai resembles that original intent showcased by the Correa projects, in which an expansion diverges from the North-South axis towards the East, as seen in the expressive occupations within Thane and northern Raigad limits. São Paulo too diverges from the North-South axis stretching both East towards São José dos Campos and West towards Sorocaba. In São Paulo, however had not been imagined by a sophisticated coordinated vision, such as the plans for the Navi-Mumbai expansion, rather it became an axial consequence of the reinforced rail lines during the Coffee Economy cycles of the early 20th century (Cardoso, 1960).

This study showcases that there are several categories and further analysis yet to be made to thoroughly assess these cityregions opening the potential discussion for more comparative studies between the metropoli of India and Brazil — in which similar sized occupations are coordinated by radically different guiding principles and administrative strucutres to account for tremendous densities. In comparing Mumbai and São Paulo, we are able to begin investigating what may be an alternative understanding for the metropolization processes within the cities of the “Majority World” described by Mehrotra (2020), and through such a lense interrogate the possibilities for future frameworks to coordinate the regional growth and development of these cities.

This is an approach yet to be proposed, but one which could perhaps allow us to reassess morphologies, transportation, access to services, density and fundamentally the spatial and territorial conditions of urban life within the metropoli of the majority world.

References

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Metropolitan imaginations of the majority world

Mumbai, São Paulo and the expanding understandings of metropolitan urbanization

Rafael Marengoni, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Summer of 2020