A Bridge Too Near
in Urban Planning: Last Monday’s so-called “public hearing” on the Peddar Road flyover project seems to have been designed for failure. There is no logical reason why a large group of Nationalist Congress Party members should have felt it necessary to disrupt it — apart from the fact that the NCP controls the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation, the project proponent. It’s unlikely that these fine, dedicated party workers will be found swanning back and forth along this road. The only reason why any road and bridge building contractor would love such a project is, of course, its monumental cost. There’s money to be made here, lots and lots of it. » continue reading
A Manifesto For Mumbai
in Urban Planning: Mumbai matters. How can it not? The sixth most populous city and one of the largest urban regions on the planet, it is home to over 20 million people. It’s a city that speaks over a dozen different languages, each one uniquely filtered, adapted and adopted: only here will you hear an irate bus conductor bellowing at a passenger “aage chal, khaali-peeli bichme khada hain khamba ke mafak” — an absolutely delicious phrase that melds Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi and Mumbai into one unmistakable linguistic bhel-puri that still gets the message across. » continue reading
Alien Vs Predator, Hawker Vs Pedestrian
in Urban Planning: This is a familiar sight. A police wagon rolls up. The street bursts into frenetic activity — shouts, calls, men running, wooden racks and trays being gathered and squirreled away into the some recess between buildings. The oddest things are flung into the police truck: pots, pans, shirts, pedestals, baskets, cutlery. It takes the better part of an hour, sometimes less, sometimes more, and then there is an unusual quiet to the street, a strange sense of space. It doesn’t last, of course; they are all soon back, later that day or the next or the day after. » continue reading
Exterminating Communities
in Urban Planning: What kind of government, what kind of system allows suffering like this? Very early in Gregory David Roberts’s Shantaram comes this reaction to a first view of Mumbai slums. It is a reaction fuelled by shame, guilt and rage, and it is the view of an outsider. We who live here have passed beyond such feelings. We simply do not even notice them any more. Perhaps this has to do with our ‘culture’ of the philosophical shrug and the always-reliable excuse of karma. But karma and justice are uneasy bedfellows. » continue reading
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If Only We Had Listened
in Urban Planning: On 1 September, Charles Correa turned 80. By any measure, it has been an extraordinary life, marked by uncommon professional success and international recognition as one of the great designers of the world. A week earlier, Ratan Tata released Correa’s new book, A Place in the Shade, a collection of essays and lectures spanning several decades and extending his previous book, The New Landscape. » continue reading
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Minimum City
in Urban Planning: A few hundred yards down the road from Nana Chowk to Tardeo, next to Sunkersett Mansion on the road’s left, there stands a small temple. It has a handsome arched entrance and clear space on three sides. This is not one of the over-built modern temples that substitute spirituality with size and commerce; this is an old, quiet place of worship that appears ageless. It also looks like a last act of defiance against the towering monstrosities that surround it. A little further on is another, an agiary. That, too, has withstood the steady onslaught of commercial high-rise development. » continue reading
Murdering Trees, Killing Cities
in Urban Planning: In the run up to Mumbai’s municipal elections, of the many to-be-left-unfufilled promises made by political parties, two were common: less corruption and more “infrastructure”. The latter, in our peculiar notion of what makes a ‘world-class’ city, only means more roads, more bridges. No one promised to make our city more liveable. In my constituency, apart from the familiar talk-to-the-hand and offerings for lotus-eaters, there were many odd symbols for candidates: a sewing machine, an LPG cylinder and something that looked like a pasta machine cross-bred with a meat grinder. Not one had a tree or anything that looked like it. » continue reading
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Playing Games With Our Cities
in Urban Planning: Part of the process of growing up is the recalibration of the dazzling career ambitions of childhood to far less glamorous endeavours. Few ever realize their dreams. Fewer still know exactly what they want to do when they grow up. Some dreams, like becoming a dentist, are unlikely. One thing no child ever dreams of being is an urban planner. » continue reading
Walking The High Line
in Urban Planning: In Mumbai, we have become used to limiting our thinking of public open spaces to areas planned for public parks and gardens. To create a public open space out of abandoned, privately owned industrial infrastructure requires a leap of imagination. » continue reading
What Kind Of City
in Urban Planning: Last Tuesday, protesters from Vasai did the unthinkable: marching to South Mumbai from Vasai they diverted onto the Bandra Worli Sealink, otherwise closed to pedestrians, and so stormed a cars-only citadel. The police were unable to stop them. Questions were later raised about this act of “illegality”, but the comment from independent MLA Vijay Pandit, who led the march, provides another perspective. “Why should the Sea Link be only for rich people and their cars?” he asked, calling the Sea Link a rich people’s bastion. » continue reading
Simple and efficient, rail travel nonetheless inspires a sense of romance. By train, subway, and a seemingly endless variety of trams, trolleys, and coal shaft cars, we’ve moved on rails for hundreds of years. Industry too relies on the billions of tons of freight moved annually by rolling stock. Gathered here are images of rails in our lives, the third post in an occasional series on transport, following Automobiles and Pedal power. — Lane Turner
Commuters disembark from suburban trains during the morning rush hour at Churchgate railway station in Mumbai on July 11, 2012. (Vivek Prakash/Reuters)
A worker walks through Madrid Atocha train station during a general strike in Madrid on November 14, 2012. (Daniel Ochoa de Olza/Associated Press)
Passengers board a train as they rush home to be with their families in remote villages ahead of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, in Dhaka on October 25, 2012. (Stringer/AFP/Getty Images)
People wait for their train to stop at the Solna subway station on November 6, 2012 in Stockholm. Over 90 of the 100 subway stations in Stockholm have been decorated with sculptures, mosaics, paintings, installations, engravings and reliefs by over 150 artists. (Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images)
Commuters walk on an installation of a musical staircase designed like a piano at a train station in Osasco, Brazil on January 10, 2013. Out of 42 steps, 34 have been fitted with “piano keys” that activate when stepped on. (Paulo Whitaker/Reuters)
Freight trains are readied at the railroad shunting yard in Maschen, Germany on September 23, 2012. (Fabian Bimmer/Reuters)
Thousands throng a platform waiting for trains to take them home after the Maha Kumbh festival in Allahabad, India on February 10, 2013. (Saurabh Das/Associated Press)
A train made of chocolate during a Guinness Book World record event ahead of the Brussels Week of Chocolate, entices at Brussels South station on November 19, 2012. The train by Andrew Farrugia of Malta is made of 1,285 kg of chocolate and is 34.05 meters long. (Julien Warnand/EPA)
Snow falls on Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul on January 7, 2013. (Bulent Kilic//AFP/Getty Images)
A man smokes a cigarette as he stands with his bike on a local train in New Delhi on November 8, 2012. (Kevin Frayer/Associated Press)
A passenger peers from a train heading to the Once train station in Buenos Aires on January 28, 2013. (Natacha Pisarenko/Associated Press)
The search for survivors continues in one of the worst manufacturing disasters in history. Fifty survivors were found today; the death toll stands at 304. Terrified workers notified the police, government officials and a powerful garment industry group about cracks in the walls, discovered just days before the collapse. The owner of the eight-story Rana Plaza assured 3,000 workers that the structure was safe and they returned to their jobs. The death toll nears 300 with more workers trapped under the massive concrete and wire. A small collection of the hundreds of images made over the last three days, follows. — Paula Nelson
A Bangladeshi garment worker lies crushed under the rubble 48 hours after the eight-story building collapse, April 26, 2013. At the disaster scene, where 304 have been found dead, exhausted teams of soldiers, firemen and volunteers continued to work through the mountain of mangled concrete and steel for a third day after staying on the job for a second straight night. Amid frustration about the slow pace of the efforts, thousands of anxious relatives burst onto the disaster site, prompting police to fire tear gas to disperse the crowd. (Munir uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images)
A Bangladeshi woman is lifted out of the rubble by rescuers at the site of a building that collapsed, April 25, 2013. (Kevin Frayer/Associated Press)
A Bangladeshi rescuer looking for survivors gestures from beneath a concrete slab, April 25, 2013. (A.M.Ahad/Associated Press)
Area residents crowd to watch rescue work in progress at the site of a building that collapsed, April 25, 2013, still hoping to learn the fate of their family and friends. (A.M. Ahad/Associated Press)
A youth reacts after seeing his relatives bodies, April 24, 2013. An eight-story building containing several garment factories collapsed in Bangladesh, and further highlighted documented safety problems in the clothing industry. Armed with concrete cutters and cranes, hundreds of fire service and army rescue workers struggled to find survivors in the mountain of concrete and mangled steel.(Munir uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images)
Geechee Dan Plays the 42nd Street Subway: He once played splashy uptown venues like the Cotton Club. Now, seven nights a week, Geechee Dan takes the stage in the underbelly of New York City. | Stephen Farrell
He sat quietly on the platform of the 42nd Street subway station, a haven for buskers of varying talent, this rumply, gray-mustachioed man, dressed in thick layers and a Yankees cap. From his shopping cart, which he had packed with two amplifiers, CDs of his music for sale and a plastic tip bucket, Geechee Dan cued his background music. (New York Times’ article video here)
As a disheveled man slumped near him on the crowded platform, and commuters peered occasionally into the tunnel hoping for a distant hint of an oncoming train, Geechee Dan, who is 72, started to sing. His voice broke through the rumble and swelled surprisingly; it turned the platform of the A, C and E trains into a musical nightspot. He started with the Temptations’ “Just My Imagination.” (“Every night, on my knees I pray,” he sang, and then he said in his smooth tenor: “Sometimes you got to get on your knees.”) He crooned, pleaded and growled for four hours, moving through such old-school rhythm-and-blues songs as Jackie Wilson’s “To Be Loved”; Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay”; and Sam and Dave’s “Soul Man.” He remained seated with his arthritis, but he occasionally rocked from side to side, and shuffled his feet. …more