This article was a product of the collaborative Town Planning exercise between The Sir J.J.College of Architecture Mumbai and Columbia University ,NY (Masters in Urban Planning) in 2010. The project was to regenerate the Eastern Waterfront of Mumbai, through extensive documentation, analysis and generating ideas to give the coast back to the city. The article is majorly written by Prof. Mustansir Dalvi, the Sir JJ College of Architecture, Mumbai. Prof. Dalvi is also a poet having a list of publications to his credit. He can be followed at @asanyfuleknow on Twitter. Studio inputs given by Ar. Komal Potdar, Student, Sir JJ College of Architecture, Mumbai (2006-2011), now pursuing Masters in Conservation (School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi)
Mumbai’s Eastern Waterfront – the temporal context
Mumbai in 2010 – The city is up for grabs. Every inch of land, used or unused, is like a patient in diagnosis- looked over, pinched and prodded, examined, analysed and debated over for a treatment, usually called Redevelopment. There was a time not so long ago that the few remaining undeveloped areas were coveted, the open spaces vied for. Those spaces are no longer available. Now it is the space that is already built upon that is in the foreground. With an economy booming, developers and speculators have at their disposal the best specialists and the best equipment to raze existing places in the city in order to raise shining edifices of the new wealth. In this effort, the older areas of the city are fair game, branded as decrepit, congested, unhygienic and prone to collapse. These spaces- mill lands and inner city areas are now the sites of future redevelopment.
One site however has been coveted for a long time. It is a site to die for, given its size and location. As long as the length of the old Bombay, it runs along the entire eastern edge of the island city, between one to three kilometres in depth, and most importantly out of bounds for most, literally, separated from the rest of the city by a wall. The Eastern Waterfront (EWF) is today collectively the harbour and port, the vast docklands and storage areas. It is restricted to the rest of Mumbai for a variety of real and perceived reasons. Today, thanks to Google Earth we can see over the wall in some detail, even if we cannot access all of it physically, and its immense potential to revitalize the city is being understood.
What if this entire stretch of brownfield sites were made available to the city? There would, of course, be two ways to go. The first, given the precedents in Mumbai today, these areas would be gleefully subdivided by speculators like many slices in a pie, and each slice would generate millions by the creation of gated communities for those who could afford a prime plot, office space or condominium by the sea. This spectacularly upmarket location could easily break every known baseline for a city where apartments have already been sold for Rs. 100,000/- per square foot. Or there is the other option, which is that this inaccessible land is made accessible for the use of the city at large, for the citizen, irrespective of the depth of his or her pocket, for communal use, for public facilities, for recreation and for sustainability. The area east to the wall, as it were, would belong to all. This could transform the city and its inhabitants. This could bring down the wall.
This is not as impossible a proposition as it first seems. The city of Bombay germinated more than two hundred years ago because of seeds planted along the eastern waterfront. Historically, this is where the martial, the maritime and the mercantile city began. What began as a simple manor house and factory built by the Portuguese changed radically when the ownership of the islands exchanged hands with the British. The British seized the potential of the natural harbour on the eastern edges of the islands to create a mercantile hub as an alternative to the erstwhile port of Surat. They first developed the Fort and the Harbour, then brought in the trades people, then the service industry to the docklands. When the city boomed in the middle of the nineteenth century thanks to its centrality in the cotton trade (thanks to the blockages resulting from the America Civil War) the city attracted vast numbers of migrants who settled all along the city walls, close to the EWF, and made their lives in the burgeoning port city. Soon the southern tip would be dominated by British, developed the Bombay Fort. Toward its northern edge the first migrants- from the trading communities of Gujarat- the Parsees, Bohras and Banias created economic opportunities from the docks. Later migration from all parts of what is now Maharashtra state sank roots on the islands. All along its bastions on the outside beyond the esplanade, settlements that would be later known as the native town were developed. Later reclamations unified the islands and joined them to the mainland on the northeast. As blanks were filled, the EWF grew to what it is today.
Observations from the site surveys
At the end of the surveys it became obvious that almost the entire stretch of the waterfront is currently out of reach for the citizens of Mumbai in terms of public access. This was however an area of appropriation and occupation, populated by a myriad of occupations and a mishmash of users. A comparison of both, the eastern and the western coasts of Mumbai brought about a stark contrast within functions and the variety of activities and accesses. On the EWF, many types of self generated dwellings sustained people in constant transition. What new developments were observed consisted of usurping space and trying to fit into the crevices and the niches of the already established town. However, the relation between the old and the new is not always symbiotic.
The entire stretch was once a partner to the growing trade and economic activities and gave rise to the cosmopolitan and cultural integration. However, current barriers created to safeguard the port activities have led to the disintegration and the breaking of connections with the city as a whole. Today, unsustainable development by the port authority threatens the ecology and the environment of the coast. The eastern waterfront, which was once the site for the new emerging capital for trade and transport, now lies in a state of disrepair.
Some proposals for different sites on the Eastern Waterfront
Redevelopment of the Ferry Wharf
Locally referred to as ‘Bhaucha Dhakka’, the ferry wharf has been the sole hub of water transport in this city by the sea that can be freely accessed by the citizens of Mumbai. Ferries connect the EWF to various other local ports on the western coast of Mumbai, especially on the Konkan mainland. This is still a popular site for transport and for the unloading of the fresh catch of fish that local fishermen bring in every morning.
Student proposals for redevelopment here included the introduction of a new commercial area to increase footfalls; realigning the approach towards the jetty to free land, to create a green corridor and retrofitting the defunct warehouses in the vicinity for community oriented functions.
Another look at the P D’Mello Road
The P D’Mello road has an iconic status in that it follows the entire length of the EWF creating a number of pick up and drop off points stitching the entire eastern edge of the island city into an accessible whole. It is one of the north south arteries that pulse through the heart of Mumbai.
Proposals for development envisaged the widening of the road and the creation of a buffer between the heavy traffic and the residential areas by introducing greens. Underground parking for the heavy load carrying vehicles would ease the clogged artery, while at the same time bringing accessible areas back into the city to support the economy. The road is beset with pavement dwellers that would have to be rehabilitated.
Redevelopment of Sassoon Dock
The Sassoon Dock represents the beginnings of the city of Bombay as a commercial and maritime capital of the Western part of India that saw its days of glory as a global checkpoint that connected the occident to the orient. Subsequently falling into relative disuse and disrepair as the context changed, it has now become a brownfield site that divorces the city from the water on the eastern edge.
A fishing village, or ‘Koliwada’ that reflects the island city before it became a port city still thrives and this had to be contended with. The proposal envisaged the development of a promenade near the Koliwada to bring in cultural exchange and tourism. This would be made possible by modifying the land use in Koliwada to provide basic services and sanitation. The market in the Sassoon Dock would be relocated to generate more income, as would the redevelopment of defunct godowns. The effort was to give this important edge back to the city.
Housing on the Eastern Waterfront
The provision of new housing stock for a city splitting at the seams is an ongoing need. On the EWF too, various kinds of housing exist. These sites are now being eyed for potential speculation through redevelopment. Speculative futures always have given short shrift to existing long-term users of the sites as they have limited means. New housing to them is provided as largesse- more as a ‘builder’s burden’. The only counters to this are the generation of design alternatives in housing that is equitable to current and newer users. As a term exercise a site on the Eastern Waterfront near Reay Road Railway station was chosen to create alternatives for equitable housing. These proposals would pay special attention to living and working, a typology that is a constant in Mumbai. The final designs went a long way towards achieving these goals through an equitable densification that gave the current occupants a respectable position in the redevelopment, and avoided the sudden gentrification of an area that is part of the inner city.
Sir JJ College of Architecture and Columbia University- the Experience of Collaboration
The collaboration between the students and faculty of the two institutions set off a series of observations and inferences into the present and the future of the brownfield sites of the eastern waterfront. While the desire for redevelopment is easy enough to express, putting the desire into practice is fraught with issues of perception, and the appreciation of the intangible.
The collaboration, with its cross-cultural reference points opened up new areas to analyze. Different perspectives from a visitor’s outlook helped to broaden horizons especially for students from Sir JJ for whom taking one’s environment for granted was an occupational hazard. Smaller details are usually overlooked when one has been a resident for years, but the students from Columbia tended to notice details that would otherwise have been missed. It was a great learning experience in all, with exchange of ideas and languages, putting on different thinking hats, detailing and analyzing areas, creating represents using simple hand drawings, putting one’s first thoughts onto paper, and not depending overmuch on software. Interaction with locals at various sites and gathering information right from the streets to the seas was a journey in itself.
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