Planning the heterogeneous city: an analysis of the controversies on Mumbai’s Development Plan 2014 – 2034 in the making

The currently on-going revision of Mumbai’s development (MDP) plan is accompanied by heated controversies over a common urban future. After publication of the draft for public consultation in February 2015 an unprecedented public outcry and strong criticism by both, experts and civil society led to its temporary withdrawal. Meanwhile the first draft was revised and replaced by a second in summer 2016. Although exceptional in scope and consequence the events around the making of Mumbai’s development plan are highly representative of the tensions and conflicts pervading the development and regulation of contemporary cities in South and North. The study of controversies induced by the MDP is a unique opportunity to develop a refined understanding of the increasing heterogeneity of contemporary urban development and the challenges that it raises for urban planning. Building on the large amount of diverse data produced during the controversies and interviews with various stakeholders, I propose an analysis of the controversies based on French pragmatist sociology as developed in On Justification (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006). Using the analytical framework of different Orders of Worths, the approach allows to symmetrically account for competing visions over the future of the city and the different paths to urbanisation. Instead of searching for the hidden (capitalist) agenda and going behind a mere description of various “assemblages”, I attempt to understand how each conception of urban development pervades both, tools of urban transformation and thinking patterns of private and public actors.

Incremental Urbanism: A study of incremental housing production and the challenge of its inclusion in contemporary planning processes in Mumbai, India

Tobias Stefan Baitsch

Whilst urbanisation reached an unprecedented dimension, in a not so distant future half of the urban population will live in

informal¿ settlements. Often subsumed under the pejorative term slum, these habitats account for the majority of the future urban growth. Incremental urban development was once accepted as a viable means of addressing housing needs for large parts of the urban population. However, these approaches were largely abandoned in the 1990s in favour of mass housing provided through public private partnerships. While these largely failed in providing the required quantities and produced poor urban spaces, the scale of the phenomenon is such that incremental urban development needs reconsidering. However, in contrast to the well-documented experiences of the 1970s and 1980s, there is a lack of knowledge about the actual functioning of incremental development in contemporary regimes of urbanisation. Adopting an approach informed by French pragmatist sociology (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006), particularly the sociology of convention (Thévenot 1984), this research inquires into the production of slums at two levels: the intricate reality of housing production in Mumbai¿s slums and the contemporary controversies revolving around urban development. Building on fieldwork in a

self-built¿ resettlement colony in Mumbai forty years after it was established, this research examines how incrementally developing settlements are made, maintained, and transformed through everyday practices of local actors. Standing at the crossroads of the market, the political, and the social the so-called contractors are key figures engaged in the processes of construction and house making. As mediators in and of incremental urbanism they produce not only built-up space but also social space. Focusing on contractors as hitherto under-examined figures reveals that self-help housing in Mumbai, in contrast to conventional believes about housing practices of the urban poor, is by and large a professionalised mode of urban production. This research offers a refined account of the intricate reality of housing production and the ambiguous nature of incremental urbanism. Regarding urban planning, this research analyses the on-going revision of the Mumbai Development Plan 2014-2034 and the controversies accompanying it, which brings to the forefront the interplay of powers and arguments that otherwise are disguised in the dispersed and detached everyday making of the city. To better understand the discourse on current planning practices and struggles over conflicting approaches towards slums, this research examines the arguments and legitimization principles that underpin four major positions advocated in the controversies as the `good¿ way to urbanisation. Considering them as equally valid positions allows drawing comparisons between the different conceptualisations of urban planning and development, and the role and legitimacy they confer to modes of incremental urbanism. Reading the two moments in the production of Mumbai¿s slums together sheds light on the challenges to incorporate incremental urbanism into planning processes. It is argued that these challenges lie not solely with the conflicting rationalities ¿ or cosmos ¿ of how to create a just city, which clash in the controversies, but also with the ambiguity of incremental urbanism itself. Both of which contribute to complex processes of invisibilisation, or subalternisation, of incremental urbanism.

EPFL2018

Advancing Analytical Tools to Understand Urban Planning: Mapping Controversies around the Mumbai Development Plan 2014-2034

Tobias Stefan Baitsch, Salomé Clémentine Houllier Binder, Christine Lutringer-Gully, Luca Giovanni Pattaroni

The proposed article suggests that urban studies are in need of new tools to describe and analyze the different “regimes of urbanization” in an increasingly heterogeneous urban world. In order to create dynamic and relational descriptions of contemporary cities, we propose to use innovative mapping and analytical tools, which allow representing the richness and complexity of the controversies that accompany the making of a common urban future. Such tools are urgently needed to understand better the conflicting processes that drive urban development and to improve planning methods and policies. Through the event of the publication of draft Mumbai Development Plan (MDP) 2014-2034 and its temporary withdrawal and revision due to an unprecedented public outcry and strong criticism, we propose to use the methodological tool of mapping controversies in the field of urban planning. This event is highly representative of the tensions and conflicts pervading the development and regulation of contemporary cities in the Global South as well as in the North. Using preliminary findings from this ongoing study this article highlights the need for new descriptive methodology that would describe better the heterogeneous characteristic of the cities. Thereby, it proposes to contribute to the international debates on the transformation of urban conflicts and more broadly on the renewal of critical urban studies.

2016

Les étudiants, l'université de masse et la ville durable

Ismail Haddad

In a globalized space where mobility is growing, the capacities of attraction of the city are becoming increasingly decisive. Between the cities, through its attractive quality and attraction capacity, the university will become a decisive factor of location activity. The contribution of the capacity of city culture, development of meeting places is fantastic. Universities cannot live permanently on their side, next to the city. However, for too long, the city and the university in Tunisia have developed in ignorance of each other. Universities, since they have existed, admit with difficulties contingencies of civil societies. Governments are wary of students and teachers. This latent divorce materialized especially through the creation of campus, away from city centers in the functionality and the monotony of isolation. The urban university countdown is now universally condemned. Addressing universities as major facilities for both generating modern middle classes and meet the needs of these classes is probably a new perspective in the architectural and urban studies in Tunisia. Investigate the essence of the university and its space, understand, give it a face, it takes to trace the sources of the university, the genesis of the position in relation to our time, in any its specificity, to lay a few landmarks able to give an account for the complexity of its course. Why, how, by whom and under what conditions taking shape at a given time an edifice (the university) from a social vocation? What general needs and specific answers? In short, what is the territorial space that University now covers? In this sense, the systemic approach presents an additional interest because it proposes to connect into a single and same application dimensions of reality that are sometimes addressed separately by different disciplines and different actors, professional town planning, culture, life student or teaching. Indeed, we have chosen to begin this research by presenting a sample of general policies of academic development in an international perspective. In a second stage, we will continue research on the same theme, but by focusing it on Tunisia. In this context, we will consider the current inadequacy between the university and the changing needs of society. In the third part, we will study the spatial impact and synergy between the university and the economic environment. This theme is central to the debate on the complex interactions of urban dynamics and local development. We will conclude by reviewing the first two parts in the light of the results of the third. Furthermore, this research involved a provision of knowledge, which is able to provide solid foundations for working professionals in architecture and urban, social scientists, lawyers, economists and current officials in charge to define strategies and projects of agglomeration.

EPFL2009