Mumbai’s growth in the British era and post-independence years saw a frenzy of construction. This ‘development’ came at a cost. The city lost water bodies, marsh lands, open spaces and green zones. As population multiplied and the city expanded, more natural areas were constructed upon — hills quarried to build roads, mangroves and trees chopped to construct more houses, and flowing rivers turned into stagnant drains and dump yards. Here’s an exclusive excerpt from a research study, to be launched as a book, on how Mumbai grew into an urban jungle at the cost of its natural areas.
Despite its proclaimed democratic and egalitarian foundation, Chandigarh has emerged as a city designed for neo-liberal India with its grid hierarchy, segregation of functions, and wide tree-lined avenues attracting capital and property-owning class – but excluding labour. The city’s sector-based plan aims to eliminate “disorder” by ensuring that only prescribed activity and “legitimate” residents can occupy them. This is not a surprise because its planner, Le Corbusier, saw successful urbanism as a profit-making venture. Excluded and forced to occupy the periphery is Chandigarh’s labour class, including those who toiled to build the city. Their unplanned settlements, the labour colonies, have grown faster than the planned city. In this sense, this is also the story of the building of Chandigarh – one that is less told.