Bandra is disappearing: Is this what Mumbai calls development?

About 35 years ago, I used to frequent a newspaper office in the Fort area of ​​Bombay. I visited so often that a portly security guard named Misquitta recognized me when I walked in and started chatting. When he heard that I lived in Bandra, he said: “Me too! But the place is changing, it’s going towards the tubes. All those lovely old bungalows, they’re demolishing them and putting up tall buildings. Bandra is not Bandra anymore.”

For the next few weeks I wandered the streets of Bandra, admiring the bungalows that my friend feared would soon disappear. Many had already been replaced by high-rise buildings, and many more have since disappeared. As I write this, I’m counting the ones I remember still existing. Ten fingers are enough.

renewing a city

Now, with the enactment of the city’s Development Control and Promotion Regulations of 2034 (DCPR 2034), there is a second wave of extinction: the “redevelopment” craze. Five- and seven-storey buildings are being demolished and 18- or 20-storey towers are being built in their place. Everyone involved in this process has heard of the relevant DCPR regulations that govern major redevelopment schemes across Mumbai: 33(5), 33(6) and 33(7). Additional floor space index (FSI) rights make redevelopment financially irresistible, especially in high-value suburbs like Bandra.

I wonder if there is another Misquitta who will mourn one day: “All those beautiful, mid-rise buildings, they tear them down and put up skyscrapers. Bandra is not Bandra anymore.”

It is true that Bandra has changed dramatically. Two 20-story buildings across the street are nearing completion, with four more buildings on the corners. A 10-minute walk on Turner Road takes me past at least eight other roads under construction. My seven-story building is already dwarf.

What does all this mean? For one thing, a lot more people. A century-old, one-story bungalow turns into a 14-story building, a 28-story tower: 28 households that were once one. India’s population has increased roughly fivefold in a century. This is eye-popping in itself, but sets it against Bandra’s 28-fold increase.

And not just people. Bungalows were built at a time when few families owned cars. Let’s assume each bungalow has one, though. Today, a “redeveloped” Bandra building I know of, which once housed a bungalow, allocates three parking spaces per flat. That’s 84 cars where there once was one.

Let that sink in. Consider the pressure on infrastructure, traffic, pollution and resources.

A changing form of suburbia

Architect and urban designer Samir D’Monte of the Bandra Collective, which redesigned the Carter Road walkway and proposed redesigns for many parks, believes today’s regulations will make Mumbai increasingly unlivable. His latest presentation, ‘This is the Way Bandra Ends’, traces the evolution of the suburb from 1950 to 2050.

An old Bandra building | Photo Credit: Pexels

A representative view of what Bandra will look like after redevelopment | Photo Credit: Special editing

“With new laws [DCPR 2034] for setbacks – open space between a building wall and the plot boundary [in many cases, it amounts to barely 10-12ft] — 80-90% of the city’s existing tree cover will be destroyed. A 12ft setback means that when you build a building you will kill the root zone of all existing trees.”Samir D’MonteArchitect, urban designer and member of Bandra Collective

He argues that the “way it is developing” could “transform a typical Bandra street from a community of just 100 residents and eight cars in the 1950s into a corridor of thousands of residents and vehicles in the coming decades.” His slides show us imaginary corridors: bleak Manhattan-style canyons whose first three or four floors are devoted to parking. This dead concrete cuts off human interaction between the buildings and the street. This leaves cities dull and unsafe, as urbanist Jane Jacobs’s “eye on the street” theory suggests.

Additionally, the direction the city is taking “further ignores the existing rich fabric of the city” such as Parsi colonies. chawlsurban villages and indeed Bandra’s bungalows – “giving rise everywhere to a stupefying sameness.”

A slide on Bandra’s street transformation from Samir D’Monte’s presentation ‘This is the Way Bandra Ends’. | Photo Credit: Courtesy of Samir D’Monte

Architects Sameep Padora and Shantanu Poredi suggest measures such as community-led planning and giving incentives to developers to contribute to the neighborhood. This could produce “all-weather walkable streets,” as at Ballard Estate. According to Alan Abraham, redevelopment “significantly increases building density without making commensurate provision for social and urban infrastructure. Are we creating more parks, playgrounds, schools, hospitals or public spaces in response to population growth”? After all, Manhattan has its canyons, but it also has Central Park and a few smaller green spaces.

A representative view of what Bandra will look like after redevelopment | Photo Credit: Special editing

The only constant thing is change

All of this raises a question: Are we really “developed” if what was once a lush suburb with few cars and walkable streets is overtaken by bumper-to-bumper traffic, side-by-side skyscrapers and small recreation areas? Are there any lessons from or for other cities? Residents of Bengaluru regularly complain about their ‘Garden Cities’ turning into a traffic-clogged, dust-choked metropolis. Isn’t there any other way?

Then again, places change inexorably and inevitably. After all, there was a time when people first came to Bandra to breathe fresh air, enjoy open spaces and relax by the sea. Even in the 1950s there were rice fields here, a fact that many current residents would find hard to believe. My late friend Sophie Reuben, who moved from Colaba to Bandra in the 1940s, recalled that the rice fields were punctuated only by the occasional bungalow built by Bombayites who preferred to live here rather than visit from Chinchpokli or Girgaum. Reuben remembered that the neighbors were too far away to shout. “Anyway,” he added with a smile, “screaming didn’t suit life in Bandra.”

Which Bandra do we remember and mourn his loss? Rice fields? Bungalows? Moderately high-rise apartment blocks? Will someone a generation from now lament something even more monstrous after the disappearance of today’s 20-story towers and dozens of cars? Is “monster” the right word?

I share D’Monte’s fear; Maybe this is really how Bandra ends. So has Bandra ended already? I wonder how my old friend Misquitta will respond to this.

The Mumbai-based writer is most recently the author of: Roadwalker: A Few Miles on the Bharat Jodo Yatra.