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.
The doyenne of urban activism, Jane Jacobs, urged professional urban planners to understand that a city is more than its economy and its structures, that it is made by the everyday lives and interactions of people. Through her writings and on-ground protest work, for years together in New York and Toronto, she nudged people to not get carried away by the gleaming modern narratives of urban development which render people and places invisible. Despite criticism, Jacobs continues to be read, around the world, by people interested or curious about cities. Her vision and ideas – sense of place, micro-level interactions, street as a theatre of everyday ballet, the importance of neighbourhoods, and the resistance to top-down large-projects city building — still hold relevance.