FPJ Edit: Maximum city needs more than tactical urbanism

A viewing deck at Dadar beach, a garden set in a traffic island at Tardeo and one under the Parel flyover, a spruced-up Bandra Talao etc. transform unused spaces in the city into meaningful urban spaces. Art on compound walls and flyover pillars lifts your spirits. Other efforts at ‘tactical urbanism’ by Minister for Environment and Tourism Aaditya Thackeray are safer school zones for children and walkable footpaths for the elderly. The scope of these projects is limited but their perception value is high. No doubt these eye-catching schemes have to do with vote-catching but they are welcome in a city used to being taken for granted; a city that’s grown so cynical about politics that half of its voters take off to Lonavla or Matheran on polling day. The Maximum City needs more than the minor interventions of tactical urbanism. The Thackerays, the Pawars, the Fadnavises must think big. Mumbai has all it takes to be a beautiful city; the sea and the sandy stretches, the lakes and the lagoons, the hills and the forests... And unlike other metros, Mumbai is a night queen. But the hitch is that the city is unable to showcase itself; it’s a vivacious entity with a bad dress-sense and terrible make-up.

Take the iconic Marine Drive bay, which just a handful of cities in the world are blessed with. It is supposed to have been beautified with help from a tycoon but it looks like chrome plating on an antique. Look at where Marine Drive ends -- a concrete jumble of office blocks on reclaimed land called Nariman Point -- an ugly monument to greed. D N Road, which leads from the world heritage structure of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus to Flora Fountain shines today, thanks to the efforts of conservation architect Abha Narain Lambah who lobbied to get the neoclassical and Gothic revival buildings restored and shrank the hoardings and signboards on them. Yet, if your gaze falls on the blue plastic raincoats on the domes of the GPO building, the heritage halo of the CSMT precinct dissipates in a flash. We are simply unable to take a holistic view of things.

There was a time when British tourists took a tree tour of the city in tongas. Now, the island city has lost almost all of the pre-Independence era foliage to road widening and digging for the metro; thank God the maidans are intact. The replacement trees -- fast-growing exotic varieties such the peltophorum and gulmohar -- have shallow roots and fall like nine pins in monsoon gales. The biggest spoiler in Mumbai are its narrow and clogged roads. If it has to make an impression, Mumbai must first unclog and then spruce up its highways, central avenues, skywalks and approach roads to railway stations. Wider pedestrian walkways, designated spaces for hawkers, uniformity in street furniture, flower beds, clean public toilets and some quality art installations. Is this asking for too much? Half of it is tactical urbanism.

The streets need a canopy of native flowering trees such as the Indian laburnum, the Pride of India and the Bauhinia (Kachnar), not hoardings blocking the sun. Best Tree/Garden/Avenue awards ought to be instituted in every suburb. And for God`s sake, why can’t the richest municipal corporation in India get jet sprays to clean the trees of the dust and the grime. Up to the 60s, even the roads were washed every night. We ought to revive the practice. A recent study by the National Environmental Engineering Institute (NEERI) attributed 71 per cent of all PM10 pollution in Mumbai to road dust. The BMC does not take beautification seriously because greening the city is not part of its obligatory duties. Likewise, the railways are unconcerned about cleanliness on the tracks and a dash of greenery at local stations. Come to think of it, why can’t ‘sarkari’ buildings, hospitals, police stations etc be incentivised to maintain greenery in their premises.

Mumbai is a coastal city with huge creeks but it has done precious little to exploit its seafront and to develop water sports. As in the case of D N Road, it took a private citizen to initiate the cleaning of Versova Beach. It took Mumbai 30 years to start water transport and that has a long way to go.

Mangroves are showcased as nature’s wonders in other countries with ticketed tours but in Mumbai, they are used exclusively for dumping debris for encroaching on them. World over, creeks are meant for recreational fishing, boating and water transport; here they are open gutters. The less said the better about Mumbai’s four rivers. A beginning of sorts though has been made by declaring the Airoli mangroves in Navi Mumbai as a flamingo sanctuary.

Despite the negatives, private enterprise and public participation have led to wonderful transformation of small parcels of land. The Priyadarshini Park and the Amarsons garden in south Mumbai, to name two. Who would believe that the garden behind Goregaon’s InOrbit mall, as good as any in Singapore, was the Chincholi Bunder dumping ground or that Joggers’ Park and Bandstand promenade in Bandra were rocky patches abutting the road. Mumbai, which touts itself as the ‘Urbs Prima in Indis’, has just 1.24 sqm of accessible open space per person. It missed a big opportunity to improve the open space to population ratio 15 years ago when the mill lands in Central Mumbai opened up for development. In fact, architect Charles Correa had envisaged a five-km green corridor running from Mahalaxmi to Parel, but once again, greed aced good sense. Don’t the tycoons who have made their trillions from this city aspire to emulate the Tatas? There is a dire need to re-imagine the city, to harness its energy and to tap its immense wealth but for that we need to think straight, think big and have a grand plan. The sugar belt satraps who rule the state have no such dreams. Now, it is for those who have grown up in Mumbai and for those who grown in Mumbai rather than on Mumbai to give something back to the city.

Published on: Monday, February 21, 2022, 09:42 AM IST