The studio

This studio was initiated by Geeta Mehta and Richard Plunz, who is currently teaching Urban Design to students of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia. It was organized in Mumbai by URBZ in collaboration with Professor Dalvi and Professor Mishra of the JJ School of Architecture. Fourth year students from JJ School of Architecture joined the studio along with graduate students from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences’ new School of Habitat Studies.

Review at JJ-School at the end of the Mumbai visit in January 2010. More photos here.

The site

The context of the studio will be the 30 km of shoreline on the eastern coast of Mumbai, one of the richest cities in Asia in economic as well as cultural terms, but also one where over 60% of the people live in informal settlements without adequate infrastructure. Within this, the studio will focus on the docklands, which were the raison d’être of Mumbai’s founding and development till recently.  Mumbai Port Trust owns approximately 1800 acres of this land between Colaba’s Sasoon docks and Wadala. These were previously used for container yards, warehouses and ship repairing. With the moving of the port activities to the more modern container port across the harbor, this premier land situated in the Mumbai Island is underutilized for marginal activities such as ship breaking and recycling. The shape this redevelopment will take will deeply impact the future of Mumbai.

The redevelopment involves major ecological and social issues such as the displacement of dockworker communities and their livelihood. It also raises the problematic of public space and amenities in the densest city in the world (22,000 persons per square kilometer). Just a few years ago, the Mill land where sold off to developers who quickly built luxury housing for profits, in spite of the vocal opposition of NGOs and prominent architects and planners professionals who lobbied for holistic development that would provide housing and amenities to all segments of Mumbai’s society.

Above all, the project must balance the following conflicting needs:

- Environmental concerns with the pressure for speculative real-estate development

- Interest of owners and developers vs. that of residents and workers.

- Interest of stakeholders and residents vs. citywide and regional interests (in a context of enormous scarcity of public spaces).

Issues

- Waterfront sustainability in the context of the Mumbai estuary: reclamation in the face of sea level rise, flooding and monsoon.

- Pollution of the Eastern Waterfront and destruction of the marine ecology.

- Social equity, rights of the people who are currently living in the docklands and working in Mumbai’s informal economy.

- Potential of the waterfront as a new public space for Mumbai.

- Provision affordable housing on the site.

-  Historic preservation of the docklands fabric, and local histories.

- Transportation infrastructure to connect the Eastern Waterfront with the rest of the city and New Mumbai, across the harbor.

Context

See slide set