4.163 J /11.332J
Urban Design Studio —
Urb Lab India: Landscapes and Urbanism: Reclaiming Mumbai’s Eastern Waterfront
Instructor: Rahul Mehrotra
rahulm@mit.edu
Phone: 617-324-5642,
Instructor: Alan Berger
aberger@mit.edu
Phone: 617-253-1907
Units: 0-12-9
Level: H
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor
This year's urban design studio is set in Mumbai (Bombay): home to over 13 million, the source of a third of India's federal taxes, and the location of the world's most prolific entertainment (film and music) industry. It is India's richest city, but also home to Asia's largest slum. Architects and planners are repeatedly confronted by these polarities as conflicting aspirations compete for urban space.
The studio will focus on Mumbai's Eastern Waterfront where conflict over land and divergent visions of the city are building to a flash point. The waterfront extends over 40 km and includes 1500 acres designated for use as a port. However, less than half the dock is regularly used, and the infrastructure reserved for ancillary operational activities, like warehousing and cargo evacuation, is considerably underutilized. Older wharves, now too shallow for modern ships, have been turned into (illegal) chip-breaking and salvage yards. Large tracts of land adjacent to the dock are littered with oil storage installations fed by an offshore oil terminal. All these areas along with the Indian Navy's dry dock are officially off-limits to the general public. The only parts of the waterfront connected to trest of the city are smaller jetties used by fisherman and commeter ferries. Consequently, designing a system that gives citizens access ot the waterfront without displacing the operational activities of teh port is the key challenge for this studio.
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