Gamdevi: Lessons from Mumbai’s past that could help it create a better future

Throughout history, cities have been defined by how they have adapted and responded to crises. Over the last few months, Mumbai has been battling the Covid-19 pandemic and widespread flooding due to the increasingly intense monsoon and longstanding planning failures. In an era of rapid climate change, these challenges will only increase. Mumbai’s ability to provide all of its residents access to decent housing, mobility and security will have important social, economic and environmental implications.

At a surface level, the city’s older neighbourhoods such as Gamdevi, near Grant Road in South Mumbai, offer charm and heritage. But digging deeper to investigate the origins of these areas and the principles that informed their development offers lessons from the past that could help frame equitable and energy efficient plans for the future.

The Gamdevi neighbourhood grew out of colonial Bombay’s need for affordable, well-planned housing at the turn of the twentieth century. From the 1860s, many of Bombay’s wealthy residents had moved into spacious and airy neighbourhoods like Byculla and Malabar Hill. Poor and middle-class Indians remained largely concentrated in squalid conditions on the northern periphery of the Fort precinct. The growing metropolis’s need for improvements in sanitation, housing and living conditions was brought into clear...

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