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Module 6: Urban Planning and Design

Lecture 42:City Design and Contemporary Urban Changes

The Lecture Contains:

Cities as sites of consumption

The Divided city: gentrification and ghettoization

The Mega-transformation of Mumbai

References

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Module 6: Urban Planning and Design

Lecture 42:City Design and Contemporary Urban Changes

In the last lecture we will discuss a few themes that capture the dynamics of city building process in
contemporary times. In the previous lectures we have seen how urban design is a product of societal
forces as well as conscious planning activity. The different considerations behind the city building
process, as Paul Knox points out, have varied from mythology, religion, military strategy, national
identity, public health, economic efficiency and sustainability. In contemporary times an important theme
that emerges is the development of the city as a site of consumption. The cities have changed from
sites of production to consumption and they have got increasingly divided between the gentrified
sections and the unplanned quarters. In this lecture we talk about the themes of consumption and social
exclusion. The contemporary transformation of Mumbai following the logic of the second-circuit
of capital will also be discussed here.

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Module 6: Urban Planning and Design

Lecture 42:City Design and Contemporary Urban Changes

Cities as sites of consumption

It has been pointed out that in contemporary times the culture of the cities has shifted from one of
production to consumption. Writing about the passages of Paris, Walter Benjamin had
recognized their impact as the moment of transformation from a culture of production to one of
consumption. Capitalism for him was a system that empowered objects with the means to express
collective dreams (Knox 2011: 83-85). In Paris initially it was the passages, gallarias and then came
department stores that changed the face of urban consumption. Introduction of electric lighting brought
unprecedented changes in the entire shopping experience. It made advertising attractive through
dazzling displays and shopping districts safer through street lighting (see lecture 24). The contemporary
transformation of cities in India has focused on creating ‘world class cities’. We will discuss some of the
resultant unintended and intended consequences of such transformation through the case-study of
Mumbai. Before that a quick look at the ways of maintaining the social divide in contemporary cities.

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Module 6: Urban Planning and Design

Lecture 42:City Design and Contemporary Urban Changes

The Divided city: gentrification and ghettoization

Within the cityscape there are different ways of maintaining distance from the ‘other’. In different social
contexts there are processes of exclusion that are distinctive of those places. In the article by Ali
Madanipour, the author discusses how city design helped keep the perceived ‘other’ at a distance.
“Physically, it has been translated into creating spatial enclaves with the help of spatial barriers between
social groups, using distance and walls to keep them apart”. It is argued that the property market and
with zoning policy has further consolidated the social geography of the fragmented cities. Both
suburbanization and redevelopment/renewal of the city-centre favours the growing middle classes. The
notion of defensible spaces arose which referred to spaces where communities are expected to have
control over the areas outside their homes. This control was represented by walls, gates, presence of
security and surveillance cameras. Gentrification of the cities and ghettoization are the two-sides of the
same coin in the new urban landscape. They are spatial manifestation of exclusivity and exclusion.
While in the former case resources are exclusively managed and enjoyed by those who can afford it,
the latter suffers from lack of access to resources. These processes also get entwined with the question
of race and ethnicity. The kind of ghettoization that has been witnessed along class/race lines in
America and along the line of ethnicity/class groups in India are cases that illustrate this point.

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Module 6: Urban Planning and Design

Lecture 42:City Design and Contemporary Urban Changes

From production to consumption/mills to malls: the changing cityscape of Mumbai

The new economy of the globalized world has had profound impact on urban spaces. Consumption has
been the driving force in the economy of the cities. Liberalization, along with new technologies, has
affected urban lifestyles and social inequality has sharpened. Dramatic changes have been taking place
in the urban landscape triggering debates and conflicts around the use of urban space.

While many classical sociologists had envisaged the city as an arena of freedom, and diversity, in India
we have witnessed the rise of nativist movement in the cosmopolitan mega city of Mumbai. The city,
which was the outcome of ‘implosion’ of heterogeneous people and their skills, now claims homogeneity
as its essential attribute. Political groups have claimed the city to be belonging to certain ethnic group.
Apart from this rhetoric of political homogeneity there has been steps through urban planning that
creates a divided city in a different sense. We will be discussing a paper by R. N. Sharma where the
author focuses on urban renewal in Mumbai. It shows how the urban renewal programme is wary of
diversity and employs different means to create homogeneous enclaves and gated-communities.

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R N Sharma’s paper articulates several issues that lie at the heart of the transformation of Mumbai
under the neo-liberal paradigm of market-driven development. The vision of transformation of the
financial capital into a ‘world-class city’ is based on the concept of urban renewal. The urban renewal
programme has come to be known as enclave urbanism where land grabbing by private builders has
been the norm. It has been a process of accumulation by dispossession that lies at the core of
urbanization under capitalism. Following Manuel Castells, the author explores how urbanization under
globalization is an expression of capitalist formation as seen in the division of the city into ‘consumers’
living in gated neighbourhoods, separated from the underprivileged other-half.

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Module 6: Urban Planning and Design

Lecture 42:City Design and Contemporary Urban Changes

In the pre-modern Indian cities the neighbourhoods were divided along class lines. Traditionally the
inner part of these cities used to house the high status social groups while the groups lower in rank
used to be at the margin of the cities. The British colonizers made certain type of intervention in these
cities. They established a well-serviced and salubrious settlement adjacent to the old city. The civil
lines, cantonments, and the railway colonies constituted the new city whose basic design was markedly
different from the old parts. Now Bombay’s diverse population was based on the centrality of commerce
and ethnic segregation. Now, if in the history of Indian cities the dominant communities had the first
right to the city and the city dwellers always lived with their own people what is unique about ‘enclave
urbanism’?

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Module 6: Urban Planning and Design

Lecture 42:City Design and Contemporary Urban Changes

The author points out that the city was a product of merchant-capitalists, professional expertise, and
abundant cheap labour. The migrant workers were poorly paid and settled down near poor housing near
their place of work. The dock workers lived in huts close to the port and the mills workers in the ahatas
(corridors) of mill boundaries. In the 1920s through the Bombay Development Department (BDD) the
municipality erected some one-roomed chawls. Over a period of time these areas found themselves
flanked between the commercial areas and regular housing colonies. The mixed use of urban land
became part of Mumbai’s cityscape.

At the same time, the fast growth of the financial and industrial city carefully hid the fact that the textile
manufacturing base had collapsed and that there was flight of manufacturing capital. The growth had
reached a plateau and slowly Vapi, Surat, Pune and Ahmedabad were coming up as the beneficiaries
of this flight. “This declining phase, which began in the 1980s itself, is relevant to recall here as it
corresponds to the stagnation of the city, its aging housing stock, growing housing poverty, collapsing
infrastructure and rapid growth of the informal sector” (Sharma 2010: 75).

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Module 6: Urban Planning and Design

Lecture 42:City Design and Contemporary Urban Changes

1980s also witnessed rapid population growth due to migration from the rural areas. This resulted in the
mushrooming of slum settlements in the city. There was the rise of militant worker’s union. The historic
textile workers’ strike took place in 1982-83. During this time around 250,000 directly or indirectly
employed textile workers lost their jobs. This situation led to rapid growth of informal sector in the city.
The jolt to the economic viability of the city was underscored by the housing crisis.

The Development Control Rules were revised by the government in 1991 “for providing houses to the
millions of poor through a cross-subsidized scheme by bringing the private builders on the
scene.” (Sharma 2010:77). Private builders were brought in and they became an important agent of
urban renewal. Gradually the city came into the hands of builder mafia and speculators. Enormous
wealth was created by the merchant capitalists through the second-circuit of capital. It completely
distorted the housing market in the city. In this context housing was no longer a human necessity but
only a commodity, that too a highly priced one. The criminalization of the real estate market, a recurrent
theme of Bollywood films is based on the dark reality of the city.

Over a period of time housing for the poor became an important political issue but the author shows
how it has become a ploy for ‘building broomers’ to gain a free hand in the mega transformation of
Mumbai. The various schemes of resettlement favour the private developers who grab prime land in the
city by displacing the poor. Under the banner of tackling the housing poverty there has been widening
inequality between the privileged and the marginalized. This has led to ‘enclave urbanism’ in the city.
The author points out that the fight between these sections would intensify in future.

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Module 6: Urban Planning and Design

Lecture 42:City Design and Contemporary Urban Changes

There is also the view that the private-public partnership is capable of yielding good results and transit-
oriented urban development in India. If carried out in a transparent manner, it is argued that this
partnership would yield desirable results and contribute to the infrastructure needs of the cities (see
Isher Judge Ahluwalia 2013). While there is always scope for optimism we need to be aware of the
darker side of the such grand urban policies and make ourselves remind that in the final analysis our
cities need to be not transit or infrastructure oriented but oriented towards the people who inhabit the
city.

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Module 6: Urban Planning and Design

Lecture 42:City Design and Contemporary Urban Changes

References:

● Knox, Paul L. 2011. Cities and Design. London: Routledge.

● Madanipour, Ali. 2011. “Living Together or Apart: Social Mixing, Social Exclusion, and
Gentrification” In Companion to Urban Design. Tridib Banerjee and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris
(ed) London: Routledge.

● Sharma, R N. 2010. “Mega Transformation of Mumbai: Deeping Enclave Urbanism”. In

Sociological Bulletin 59 (1), pp. 69-91.

● Ahluwalia, Isher Judge ‘Hyderabad shows the way’ Indian Express Wed April 24 2013
(accessed on 24 April 2013 at http://www.indianexpress.com/news/hyderabad-shows-the-
way/1106678/)

Further Readings:

● Webster, Chris. 2007.“Property Rights, Public Space and Urban Design” In The Town Planning
Review, Vol. 78 (1) pp. 81-101.

● Baviskar, Amita. 2003 “Between violence and desire: space, power, and identity in the making of
metropolitan Delhi” International Social Science Journal Volume 55, Issue 175, pp. 89–98

Banerjee-Guha, Swapna. 1996. "Urban Development Process in Bombay: Planning for Whom?"
In Bombay: Metaphor for Modern India:Sujata Patel and Alice Thorner (ed). Bombay: Oxford
University Press.

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