With the administrator’s rule ending last week, Mumbai’s newly elected representatives are back to helming the region’s development plans, ranging from big-ticket infrastructure projects to greening initiatives.
You see it in many cities around the world, in North America, Latin America, China, Korea, and parts of London. But there are also fabulous examples we have seen in Taiwan and Hong Kong, where people are temporarily moved for redevelopment, but only a block away.
This is something that we need to think about in places like the Dharavi slum. It’s one of the largest slums in the world, with about 8 lakh to a million people residing in a few square kilometres. When you think about redeveloping Dharavi slum, you should consider its assets and what we would lose if we lost the Dharavi slum.
It is a very busy industrial area for garment and leather manufacturing, so if you disrupt that, you break up those intricate supply chains. To prevent disruption to this supply chain and economy, it’s crucial to rebuild around them, which means engaging the community.
Q. Across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, the government is investing heavily to lay new metro lines. How can planners implement transit-oriented development (TOD) in densely populated cities?
Karen Chapple: What’s interesting is that in my book, I wrote the chapter on TOD around the world, we looked at, I think, 40 different countries as examples of how they had done it. But there was very little in India at the time and I remember feeling very frustrated.
Story continues below this ad
There’s quite a bit written about the TOD model in Tokyo and Hong Kong, where, when they built the lines, they bought the land around the stations and made sure that, as new stations came, there was a lot of new housing with amenities like schools. They fund much of this development around transit zones through land value capture, a mechanism that exists in some Indian cities. It could be used here in Mumbai also.
Land value capture is a way of acknowledging that when you put in a new transit line, property values go up, creating a windfall. But the idea of the land value capture is that windfall in land value shouldn’t go to an individual who just happened to get lucky. It’s a public investment in transit, so that windfall should be for the public as well, so it taxes that windfall and puts it back in and pays for housing, pays for social housing, or affordable housing.
Another observation about TOD in Mumbai is that even though over 50 per cent of people walk everywhere, it’s not a walkable city. If you’re going to realise the benefits of transit, you have to make sure the ‘last mile’ is well pedestrianised, so getting to the station is super easy.
Q. Currently, the civic authorities – BMC – are attempting to carry out pedestrianisation projects, but challenges like encroachments and hawking emerge as key impediments. How do you look at improving walkability in Mumbai?
Karen Chapple: Mumbai is one of the great cities around the world, with a stunning location and in the way it was laid out. Many cities around the world, like Barcelona and New York City, are shutting down streets and pedestrianising large areas. For instance, Times Square in New York was completely traffic-ridden, but eventually, they rerouted traffic and got rid of the cars.
Story continues below this ad
Wouldn’t it be something to have large areas of Mumbai pedestrianised? Especially in pockets of South Mumbai, I think large areas could be pedestrianised, which would even help air quality tremendously.
It’s also about simply having wider sidewalks, given the number of pedestrians. Until people feel safe walking on the streets, even the public transit will not be utilised as much as it should be.
Q. Large-scale infrastructure work in Mumbai often comes at the cost of the environment, with hundreds of trees facing the axe for a singular project. How can one ensure sustainable development in a space-starved city like Mumbai?
Karen Chapple: A lot of it lies in regulation. Regulations are essential to ensure that every time you take down a tree, you put one up. Every time you build a highway, you need to build a row of trees alongside it.
If it’s hard to pay for, then maybe you need to tax the billionaires a little bit. I came across a figure that there are 51,000 millionaires in Mumbai and maybe 25 billionaires.
Story continues below this ad
California, where I worked for many years, follows this model. That’s how it survives. You have a lot of very, very rich people from tech, and they want to be in California, and they will pay taxes to stay in California and make sure it’s beautiful, with good air quality and green infrastructure. There’s a public commitment to that. I would suspect that many of the 50,000 millionaires love Mumbai and would help support its re-greening.
Besides this, space can be carved out on private property; if there is no space for green on the streets, we could introduce regulations for green roofs. Even public infrastructure, Mumbai’s waterfront walkway can have trees alongside it. San Francisco, when it redid its waterfront walkway, put a palm tree every block. They’re expensive, but they’re committed to it. It’s worth it. It’s for the planet too
