Negotiating a truce at the warfront

Students and professors of Columbia University’s Urban Design Lab have had considerable experience with waterfront development. They have worked to improve sea-facing areas in their own backyard, New York City, studied and recommended changes to dockland areas in Toronto and Jamaica. So when the JJ College of Architecture decided to undertake a new study on Mumbai’s eastern waterfront, it decided to invite colleagues from the Urban Design Lab to work with it. Especially since the issue has been a contentious one, with activists and urban developers ranged against the Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT), each side blaming the other for not utilising the seafront appropriately.

“It’s come to a point when we needed a mediator,” says Rahul Srivastava of the city planning organisation Urbz, which was assisting students of JJ College and Columbia. “Because of past hostility, the MbPT has stopped talking to us. But we still need to tell them that the eastern waterfront, which is integral to the development of Mumbai, has been completely taken away by port activity.”

According to a previous study by the Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) and the Kamala Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environment Studies (KRVIA), the issue relates to about 1,806 acres of land in the stretch between Colaba and Wadala (and portions in Thane and Navi Mumbai) that is under the port trust. Activists allege that in a city where space is at a premium, the 28.2-km stretch — dotted with warehouses, railway wagon-breaking units and about 350 acres of slums and illegal squatters — could be put to better use. That if the port trust can’t come up with a plan for this, it should simply hand over the reins to the city authorities.

On its part, the port trust — faced with this shape up or ship out option — says that if it moves out, the builder lobby will find ways to move in. “The impasse has been going on for years,” says Pankaj Joshi of UDRI. Adds Professor Rajiv Mishra, principal of the JJ College of Architecture: “The port trust is being autocratic. It doesn’t want the city to tell it what to do. But authorities should remember that if business is good, it’s because they are in the country’s commercial capital, and they need to give something back to the city.”

There is some hope that the new study will finally end this stalemate. By month-end, Columbia and JJ would’ve concluded their research and placed new recommendations before the MbPT. And hopefully even invite intervention by the Centre.

Clearly, both sides are open to revisiting the problem. “There are two new aspects to this re-look,” says Srivastava. “City planners are now saying, ‘Let’s not talk about evacuating. Let’s urge the port to either incorporate a better land-use policy, or appoint someone with urban planning experience within the port structure.” Among other suggestions thrown up by the study-in-progress are first, to shift all major activities — warehousing, wagon-breaking and large storage units — to Navi Mumbai, and free up these areas for housing and recreation. “Shifting the entire port activities to the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) in Panvel will free up the waterfront to be used by the city,” says Mishra. “The port trust should break down the wall along the eastern waterfront and let the city grow all the way to the water’s edge.”

Another possibility would be to create a ferry service running from the eastern waterfront to other parts of the city, to take the burden off road transport. “If the MbPt allows terminals to develop along the eastern side, one could run an excellent ferry service from Ferry Wharf to other parts of Bombay,” says JJ student Aarti Chanodia, who is involved with the study. “We could pull the crowd to the eastern side, from where they could also take ferries to Elephanta and Alibaug.” Among other recommendations, are the creation of an east-west corridor, the relocation of slumdwellers to places like Govandi, transport terminals at Ferry Wharf for fishing boats and a renovation of Sewri Fort, which can then have a tourism hub on its premises.

Last month the students of JJ and Columbia split up into groups and ‘infiltrated’ designated field areas, including Sassoon Dock, Ferry Wharf, Cotton Green, Sewri Fort and P D’Mello Road. “Our study moves from the older ideas of widening roads and removing slums, to actually trying to understand how and why the eastern waterfront is underutilised. My group spoke to encroachers in P D’Mello Road to understand why they just won’t leave,” says Chanodia. One reason is that their ‘informal’ ways of earning a livelihood have become meshed with the more formal ones. A symbiotic existence plays out in the areas around the warehouses, that sees goods being stored in the warehouses and then transported to different parts of the country. This requires truck drivers, loaders and unloaders, which are drawn from the population of the nearby slums, says Chanodia.

Activists are particularly strident about the docklands being for the public because that’s what former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi pledged in a directive issued in 1980. Referring to JNPT being set up to de-congest overcrowded MbPT, it said: “…the feasibility report should provide for the release of land and dock areas in existing Bombay Port area for parks, etc”. Activists say only 50 per cent of the eastern waterfront is actually being used by the MbPT. “What is stopping them from opening up the rest?” asks Vice Admiral (retired) IC Rao of the Mumbai Docklands Regeneration Forum, “They should never forget they are the Mumbai Port trust. They are holding the land in trust for us. Now they need to give it over.”