The redevelopment of Mumbai’s mostly derelict docklands will, if a government appointed panel has its way, create a waterfront where people living in the world’s second most densely-populated city can go to lift their spirits, and the rich can go to play.
“This is a real opportunity to give Mumbai what it doesn’t have, to give it open space,” said Narinder Nayar, a businessman who sits on the panel, whose recommendations will be unveiled this week.
Owned by Mumbai Port Trust, the largest landowner in India’s financial hub, much of the 7 square kilometres (2.7 square miles) up for redevelopment is occupied today by crumbling warehouses, informal housing and workers who eke out a living breaking down disused ships or sorting through scrap metal.
The government, which has valued the land at $12 billion, is pitching the project as a shining example of what urban regeneration in India should look like: transport minister Nitin Gadkari wants a giant ferris wheel similar to the London Eye.
“We should be looking towards the examples of New York, London, Sydney…Barcelona as well, to see what can be done with our former industrial areas on the waterfront,” Nayar said.
Whereas Mumbai’s western shoreline looks out to the Arabian Sea, this land is located on the protected eastern side of the city’s southern tip, affording a view across the harbour to the mainland, where a new deep-sea container port is based.
Nair says the panel will recommend that about 30 per cent of the land be opened as public space, and the construction of a hospital and affordable housing, linked by new train lines.
There are plans for a floating hotel and convention centre too, and a tender is already out to build a luxury marina to cater for the city’s super-rich.
With its natural harbour, Bombay, as it was called back then, was rapidly developed during British colonial times, and much of today’s city sits on reclaimed land that joined up a string of tiny islands off India’s western coast.
Mumbai hasn’t got a great track record for urban planning, however. Mounting demographic pressures and long delays for infrastructure projects have often meant that whatever progress takes place has already been overtaken by the population’s growing needs.
