3. Etudes de
cas sur Mumbai et Ahmedabad
3.1. On the Edge: Planning and Imagining the
Western Coast of Mumbai
Malini
Krishnankutty (Architect and City Planner,
Mumbai) and
Himanshu
Burte (Architect,
Mumbai)
In the island city of Mumbai, the sea forms the
single most important natural boundary of the metropolis. Given the
fact that
its western edge has been bearing the thrust of Mumbai’s
development, this
paper focuses on this seaside edge in an attempt to address several
questions
like the following:
-
What is
the precise nature of the western edge,
marked as it is by peculiar ecological, historical,
sociological, and architectural conditions and potentials?
-
How does
planning address the specialness of
the edge condition, if at all?
-
What is
the underlying attitude of the
metropolis, to nature, and hence towards its natural boundaries?
It is reasonable to
expect that urban planning
practices would have developed dedicated approaches to the planning for
this
zone which would account for the above concerns and accommodate them in
a
politically equitable manner. However, the planning authorities in the
city
have not been alive to the special condition of the edge. A very
important
reason for this is that the multi-dimensional reality of the edge has
not been
adequately described. No single description even seeks to elaborate
upon the
intricate weave of historical, cultural, political and ecological
specificities
of the seaside edge of Mumbai. This paper briefly describes this weave
by
touching upon the various places, facts and events that characterizes
the
special reality of the edge.
The indifference
towards the seaside edge is also
indicative of a particular attitude towards nature that may well be
common in
India. From their actions, it appears that planners tend to think of
the
wilderness as a quiescent non-presence and are always surprised when it
strikes
back, as has happened with the leopard attacks along the fringes of the
Sanjay
Gandhi National Park or at Versova where changes in tidal patterns,
possibly
caused by reclamation at Bandra, have sent the sea lash consistently at
buildings along the sea.
The response of civil
society towards the
seaside edge is governed largely within the framework of leisure, which
also
connects back market economics as well as to the processes of
consumption. Thus
real estate prices of private property along the waterfront have risen
in specific
areas over three decades, even as recent upper and middle class
citizens
initiatives have focused on turning the seaside edge into a string of
elegant
promenades. Urban development along the edge is being accelerated also
by the
city planners with projects like the Bandra Worli Sea Link which
bypasses the
city by building a bridge over the sea, in the process threatening the
livelihoods of fishing communities nearby. This is one example that
shows how
concerns with the human rights of the original dwellers of the land-
the
fishing communities- intersect with any reasonable consideration of the
rich
heritage their villages symbolize for the city as a whole. The paper
suggests
that a paradigm of development which ignores the wilderness and
overlooks the specialness
of the edge condition in pursuit of infinite physical expansion is
inappropriate for a city whose very emergence has had much to do with
the fact
that it is on the edge of the sea.
3.2. Conflicting
Stakes
over Land Use: Can Protection of Environment be reconciled with Housing
Requirement? The case of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park
in Mumbai
Marie-Hélène
ZERAH (Institut
de Recherche pour le Développement,
Paris)
In Mumbai,
approximately half
of the population
lives in slums and occupies only 8% of the land in spite of the many
housing
programmes in the 1970s. Limited in its spatial expansion, Mumbai,
along with
Tokyo ranks among the cities with the lowest ratio of green spaces per
inhabitant. As a result, the “brown vs. green”
conflict is even more
exacerbated than in most developing and Indian cities.
Debates on conflict
over land
and conquest of
new spaces are regularly raised. They often question the formulation
and
practices of land development policies, in particular the role of the
builder’s
lobby and its well-knitted connections. On the discussions surrounding
the
protection of the environment, the conflict over the Sanjay Gandhi
National
Park (SGNP) is the most emblematic one. Spread over an area of 103 sq.
km. in
the north of Mumbai, it is the largest world park with such
considerable
biodiversity in a metropolitan city, and therefore a unique case of
people vs.
park conflict. As the issue remained unresolved, environmentalists,
thereby
involving judicial intervention, filed a Public Interest Litigation.
Though, not strictly
located in
the peri-urban
areas of Mumbai, this case study can provide a significant contribution
to the
understanding of the importance of disputed places in urban India as
well as
their impact on peripheries. First, it is one among other cases where
the
judiciary has been increasingly drawn in to tackle urban environmental
issues.
Second, in most cases, it leads to some form or another of relocation
of
population in peri-urban areas. This is such a case with the Borivli
National
Park. Approximately 30,000 inhabitants are supposed to be resettled in
a
village near the Kalyan Municipal Corporation, a secondary city
situated in the
northern part of the Mumbai urban agglomeration.
Actual documentation is
based
on primary
collection and analysis of available material, including the initial
writ
petition and the final court judgement. The paper is divided into three
parts.
The first part retraces the history of the National Park and the
emergence of
the perceived aggravated problems in the 1990s. The second section
takes a
close look at issues raised during the years of the PIL and the last
one
focuses more precisely on the issue of relocation of the displaced
population.
Résumé
Plus
de la moitié des 12 millions
d’habitants de la ville de Mumbai
vivent dans des conditions de logement précaires. Leur mode
d’habitat,
essentiellement composé de bidonvilles parfois
situés dans des endroits
dangereux (près des aéroports et lignes de chemin
de fer), n’utilise pourtant
que 8% de la surface habitée. Les politiques de
réhabilitation en cours
n’envisagent plus le relogement dans des zones
excentrées aux limites de la ville mais visent
au contraire à
l’amélioration
« in-situ » ou au relogement dans
les espaces non
bâtis de l’agglomération urbaine. Ces
politiques ne font pas l’unanimité car
l’espace est rare à Mumbai et les espaces verts
bien peu nombreux. Cette
question du maintien des espaces naturels est posée par des
organisations non
gouvernementales, dont certaines s’opposent ouvertement aux
politiques
d’habitat du gouvernement et de la municipalité.
Nous nous proposons donc
d’analyser les logiques des différents acteurs
(stratégies d’occupation de
l’espace, construction d’un discours sur le
patrimoine environnemental, définition
des politiques d’aménagement de l’espace
urbain) pour mesurer l’ampleur du
conflit « environnement –
habitat » et sa résolution ou non dans
les
politiques mises en œuvre. De manière plus
générale, cette contribution soulève
un certain nombre d’interrogations sur
l’applicabilité du concept de
développement durable dans les villes non
développées.
3.3. An investigation into the
quality of
life in the different segments of the urban periphery: Methodological
Issues
based on case of Ahmedabad
Darshini
Mahadevia (School
of
Planning, Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad)
The peri-urban is the
locale
where there is lot
of action in the large and metropolitan cities in India. The study of
peri-urban areas is to look at it not only with regard to urban
transport and
employment, but also with regard to urban infrastructure, amenities and
services, is crucial for an understanding of the positioning of the
inhabitants
of peri-urban spaces: is it merely a question of living on the
periphery (in
the geographical sense) or one of being relegated to the fringes of
urban
society?” “An inquiry into the living conditions
prevailing in peri-urban
spaces thus enables us to contribute towards a more general reflection
on the
parameters of sustainable “human” development in
the major metropolises of the
South.
This paper is about the
methodological issues
encountered in such a study and not actually measuring the quality of
life in
the segments of peri-urban areas of Ahmedabad, which is the seventh
largest
metropolitan city in India with Urban Agglomeration population of 4.5
million
in 2001.
The paper first of all looks at the aspect of
delineating peri-urban area in Ahmedabad. The definition of peri-urban
is
closely linked with the definition of ‘urban’
itself in context of horizontally
expanding city such as Ahmedabad. The task becomes complicated because
of
multiplicity of authorities and different boundaries of urban Ahmedabad
delineated for different administrative and planning purposes. The
second
methodological issue is with regards to spatial unit to be used for
measuring
quality of life in different parts of peri-urban. The third issue is
whether
such a study would depend on quantitative or qualitative methodologies,
and
whether in quantitative methodologies, secondary or primary sources
would be
use. The fourth issue is regards to the source of secondary data, as we
have
number of agencies that keep data on level of amenities and often
secondary
sources have outdated data, whereas the peri-urban is a very dynamic
locale.
Organising a primary survey without knowledge of the status of the
universe is
the fifth issue. In assessing quality of life, access to various
amenities also
needs to be assessed that expands the scope of the study to include
study of
delivery systems of different amenities. The sixth and the last issue
is with
regards to measurement of quality of life, definition and concerns
around
measurement.