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:
 
 
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[1] 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.


[1] Seize millions dans l’agglomération urbaine selon le dernier recensement de 2001.