Cities : Mumbai

Alright, cities are generally viewed as extremely big and overrun by skyscraper, and it’s even more true when we think of futuristic cities. So today I won’t be talking about large and future looking cities shifting into new form. Instead I want to think about cities that doesn’t look like cities. Understand how they work and try to figure out what are the limits of their way of shaping themselves.

So, let’s talk about Mumbai. According to insight guide, it is a big powerhouse. 15millions inhabitants (7 times more than Paris), it holds 1.5% of the total Indian population but produce “one third of its tax revenues and 60 percent of its customs duty”. The city is basically massive, so how hard is it to maintain order and cohesion in that big of a city? You make neighborhood matter. People are their own police and organize project within their neighborhood. If your house gets broken, people around you help you reconstruct it. If you have garbage that start accumulating, you create a gathering, so everyone is helped and participle. Even if the idea is good and work, it is not without flaws. This quasi-absence of higher hierarchy creates trouble and criminal organization flourish. According to insight guide it is “the most crowded, powerful, corrupt, crime-ridden and compelling metro-polis in India.”. Not only that, but the city has crowed related problems too, the “people build their own house” way of thinking doesn’t really allow huge project to emerge. The main transportation method is bus, and even if there’s 3minutes delays between bus, they are usually heavy crowed, and even more when in peak hour traffic. Same goes for pollution. According to Mumbai megacity project, the city has “no mandatory recycling system in place by the government to date”. This is problematic when you know that there’s approximately 7000 metric tonnes of rubbish being disposed of each day. This creates a lot of pollution, especially when you consider that car and buses are heavily used there. Same with sanitation “Approximately 60% of Mumbai's population live in slums with no running water” this creates a lot of problematics, people’s water is getting easily infected, especially when they live in slums.

We can see that even if the “neighborhood” strategy settled in Mumbai is working, it is not ideal. By the past Tokyo used to work like that after it was destroyed, the fact is it shifted into its actual strategy that allowed it to grow and became the megacity we know today. Actualy, Mumbai is trying to do this shift. For example, traffic light are being renewed to prevent traffic problematics as much as possible, same goes for a organizations called “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” trying to create point where good and sanitate toilet structures. The problem is that those solution aren’t really a shift, it’s more about trying to issue the problem than fixing it at its roots. There’s also a bigger plan of relocating people by building high rise building but the solution seems limited since Mumbai was built on a swamp.

It is by now clear that Mumbai has problem with the overall structure that allowed it to rise and be called a megacity. The aim is now to bring order and create a safe and healthy place for everyone to live in.

...