The past twenty years have witnessed the decisive end of attempts at state-centred urban planning in Mumbai. The post-Independence Development Plan, which has guided land, housing, and economic growth since the sixties, stromectol uk, has been displaced in favour of piecemeal investments in infrastructure and transport, and housing and slum rehabilitation by the state, with increased participation from private builders and agencies. Ivomec liquid, With the retreat of the state from its ambitious agendas of rational land-use, equitable distribution of services and resources, and protection of the environment, the instruments of abstract spatial planning used by the state have withered and mutated into new urban forms marked by severe exclusions and enclosures. Classical urban planning practice was historically premised on the segregation of the functions of modern urban life into residential, stromectol order online, commercial/industrial, and public spheres, and their centralised location governed by state directives. Ivermectin for birds, However, Asian cities have constantly demonstrate the falsity of this separation of functions — with their vast districts of dense, mixed-use settlements governed by porous legalities, popular politics, and tactical negotiations over space and survival, ivermectin online. This vast and complex economy has been inadequately imagined as the Third World 'slum' or theorised as the 'informal economy', order cheap stromectol. With the retreat of the state, centralised planning practice and its technocratic spatial imagination has been appropriated into a new spatial regime in which a predatory class of private builders dominates the production of formal housing for a minority of the rich, amidst rising inequality in access to housing and basic services for the majority of the urban poor in Mumbai [1].

Modern, Stromectol for scabies, western approaches to architecture, urban design and planning still treat urban housing as a place of residence, domesticity, and leisure — as a privileged site of social relations, and a prized object of consumption, generic stromectol. However, a greater understanding of the cultural history of Asian cities must situate urban housing as a key unit of production in the urban economy, the material grid and medium through which everyday politics and culture are experienced. Stromectol buy, In mega-cities like Mumbai, the dissolution of large manufacturing industries in the eighties, and growth of new elite-oriented service economies in the nineties, has elevated the construction industry and land speculation into the primary circuits of cash and capital accumulation in the city [2]. While a functional and economic separation of home and workplace is a central tenet of modern urban spatial practice, stromectol usa, in Asian cities like Mumbai this false spatial division poses severe obstacles to situating the production of housing as part of the larger 'informal' economy of small scale manufacturing, casual labour, and flexible employment which defines the urban landscape for the majority of the urban poor. Order cheap stromectol, Such a classical understanding of the role of the housing economy also lends support to the predatory urbanism and its regime of speculative accumulation, legal exclusion, and the violence of mass demolitions of the homes and workshops of the urban poor. Ivomec wormer, The valorisation of the middle-class home and over-consumption in the urban media has its parallel in the marginalisation of the majority of the urban poor from land and housing — some 60% of the urban population of around 14 million citizens. Secure housing is now the most desired object of consumption by all classes, from land-less squatters and working slum-dwellers to established tenants and the middle classes. The new social and spatial relations of global Mumbai have given rise to various movements for housing and tenancy rights, and are now becoming the main arena for public politics.

Our presentation will focus on two practical interventions by the Collective Research Initiatives Trust (CRIT) in these new urban landscapes in Mumbai, topical ivermectin, on understanding urban housing as social practice in the contemporary city. The first interventions include an online platform, called the Mumbai Free Map [3], Stromectol merck, in which a digital base map of Greater Mumbai is being made available in an accessible and interactive web-based interface. Through this platform — built completely on open source software, copyleft city maps, and public geo-data — communities can read and write free information on their neighbourhoods, buildings, public spaces and environment and assess the existing opportunities for self-development, order cheap stromectol. This information, while ostensibly 'public', has previously only available to a closed circuit of builders, municipal officials, stromectol cheap, and their agents, and our hope is to create a new medium for communities to realise their spatial rights in Mumbai. The second intervention by CRIT which we shall discuss is a programme for Community Housing Support [4] providing financial models, Order stromectol usa, policy advice, and architectural, design and information services to urban poor communities seeking to redevelop their housing through an open and decentralised design and financial model, with communities replacing builders as the agents of self-development. In this programme, buy cheap generic stromectol, CRIT is working with local housing associations in the Mumbai Tenants Federation and Slum Rehabilitation Society. Through an open design and production process, communities are actively involved in the design and construcion of integrated home and work units, spatial types which allow for inclusion and flexibility. The model of developing a community corpus to finance the housing project also allows use of the often lucrative profits from commercial land values to be reinvested in the maintenance of the housing by the community as a secure asset.

Order cheap stromectol, The presentation will focus on the new geographies of community resistance to the predatory forces of the new metropolitan environment, through our work with local housing rights movements and associations of the urban poor [5]. While the Asian city is famous for its rich local geographies and exotic cultural mixes, we need more detailed studies and analyses of the cultural history of housing in Asian cities — both as a material technology and as a social practice. The tactics and negotiations of urban poor communities in the context of Mumbai's contemporary housing crisis indicate a new form of urban politics. The future directions will be articulated by a historical understanding of the production of urban housing as material culture in the Asia Pacific.

References

[1] “The City as Extracurricular Space” by Prasad Shetty, Anirudh Paul and Shekhar Krishnan at http://www.crit.org.in/papers/iacs forthcoming in the Journal of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, September 2005.
[2] Post-Industrial Landscapes Projects on Mill Lands at http://www.crit.org.in/projects/girni and Dock Lands at http://www.crit.org.in/projects/docklands
[3] Mumbai Free Map Community GIS (Geographic Information System) at http://www.crit.org.in/projects/gis
[4] Community Housing Experiment at Betwala Chawl at http://www.crit.org.in/projects/betwala
[5] Geographies of Resistance, presentation by Anirudh Paul at Workshop on Emerging Urbanism, SARAI-School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, http://www.crit.org.in/papers/saraispa.

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Buy stromectol online, There are several arguments routinely invoked about making Mumbai into a City State. They go something like this — for most of its modern history, Bombay was an island off the coast of India, a cosmopolitan port city with enterprising migrants and bustling industry and commerce — symbolic of India’s engagement with the world, rather than with its rural countryside. Stromectol generic, This pre-Independence Bombay is now viewed with sepia-tinted nostalgia by heritage enthusiasts and the media as an innocent age of civic order, a beautiful city which existed before the filth and chaos of democratic politics. Bombay became the victim of narrow linguistic politics when Maharashtra was formed in 1960. Since then, the story goes, public culture has been parochialised by Marathi chauvinism and mismanaged by vote-bank-seeking politicians, buy stromectol canada. The beautiful city is now a horrible mess, and this situation must be reversed through bold action, to make it a world-class metropolis again.

The economic rationale for creating a new City State is the counterpart to this narrative — that Mumbai is denied an equal share of the revenue it generates (which the Centre invests elsewhere in the country), that the city’s resources are otherwise plundered by rural politicians and illegal migrants who don’t care for the city, that new industries are locating elsewhere, and we cannot keep up either with Singapore or Shanghai, or even with Bangalore or Hyderabad, buy stromectol online. Something must be done to avert what the media have recently termed the “death of the city”, and statehood for Mumbai seems like a bold solution to a host of very real problems affecting the quality of life and governance in India’s biggest city.

Let’s take apart these arguments. Will statehood mean anything in terms of the everyday life of the metropolis and the issues that matter to most of us — housing, environment, Purchase generic stromectol, infrastructure and the jobs. The advocates of statehood for Mumbai have a point when they claim that many of the city’s greatest problems remained unsolved because of Delhi raj. Much of the revenues generated and collected in Mumbai are skimmed off by the Centre for redistribution in poorer states and backward areas. Buy stromectol online, But the city takes as much from rest of India as it gives back to it. Mumbai’s insatiable hunger for natural resources, energy, and human labour makes it a predatory force on its hinterland, cheap stromectol usa. The surplus the city extracts from the rest of the country must be invested back into the states, in the city’s own interest. This is not an argument for rural subsidies or charity. Boosting consumption and spending in the countryside is key to the city’s long-term survival and prosperity. Mumbai will grow into a world-class city by finding domestic markets for its good and services in rural and small town India, not simply by chasing back office services outsourced from America and Europe.

In this view, a Mumbai City State will make little difference to our economic well-being — healthy growth is as much about the distribution as about creation of wealth, and while cities are engines of growth, the fuel for this engine must be constantly supplied by labour and capital from outside the metropolis, buy stromectol online. Generic ivermectin, Our taxes are paying for the fuel to which keeps the city humming smoothly. Let the Centre prime the pump by investing in states and rural areas where private investors don’t dare to tread — market forces will take care of Mumbai, which should contribute its fair share to the Centre, and should raise money for the rest of its needs in global financial markets. We need inspired leadership, not statehood, purchase stromectol online, to achieve this goal. If we go by the example of Maharashtra’s finances, statehood for Mumbai will encourage profligacy and wasteful expenditures — whereas competing for investment in the world economy will impose fiscal discipline on the city. We should not keep begging for government handouts like a whining stepchild of the license raj.

Buy stromectol online, Delhi raj in Mumbai is more onerous when it comes to other issues, such as land-use planning and the housing market. There is a widespread myth that the city doesn’t have enough space for everyone — particularly migrants and the urban poor. Ivermectin for horses, This is because of land monopoly, not land scarcity. The city’s three largest land-owners are Central Government bodies not accountable to anyone in Mumbai — the Central and Western Railways, the National Textile Corporation, and the Bombay Port Trust. Between them they have enough open space — at least two thousand acres in the Island City itself — to build new public transport, order generic stromectol online, rehabilitate all slums, provide huge public parks and gardens, and create entire new business districts in Mumbai. But statehood for the city will make little difference here, buy stromectol online. Like the present Maharashtra Government, Cheap stromectol uk, a new Mumbai City State would not necessarily have greater control over the Railways, Textile and Shipping Ministries and their land and infrastructure in the city. And we already have a well-funded agency for land use and planning, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), whose authority needs be extended beyond building roads and rehabilitating slums for the World Bank.

What about the local bodies that provide the infrastructure of our daily lives. Would a City State make a difference to these public institutions, stromectol online purchase, currently run by the BMC. Municipal hospitals like KEM and Sion are some of the country’s finest, and their alumni staff the emergency wards and operating theatres of hospitals all over India and the world. Buy stromectol online, Similarly, the BEST is perhaps the only civic agency to have successfully managed the city’s growth by its steady expansion of services throughout Greater Mumbai in the past thirty years. Because of the BEST, Ivermectin canada, we are the only city in India which can really enjoy the basic freedoms of modern city life — affordable public transport and constant electricity. Delhi, which has been run both as a Union Territory and now a City State, still doesn’t come close. But a Chief Minister of Mumbai would probably seek to privatise these crown jewels, which have served us well for almost a century.

Will a Mumbai City State decentralise governance and give us greater say in our daily lives in the city, order stromectol uk, or is it just another move to centralise control over the city in another unaccountable and unrepresentative body like those which govern us now. McKinsey and other private lobbyists like Bombay First have recently advocated appointing a “chief executive” for Mumbai, who will run the city like a private corporation and coordinate between the patchwork of bodies which govern the city now — MHADA, MMRDA, Buy stromectol usa, SRA, MSRDC, and other agencies run by the invisible hand of bureaucrats, engineers and their political masters. What these and other proposals such as city statehood share in common is the desire to centralise control over the city’s resources, rather than to decentralise governance, giving us a greater stake in our lives in the city.

There are already a host of measures to change civic life which have been legally enacted, but which will take a serious fight to see implemented at the local level, and are more worthy of consideration than a new Chief Executive or Chief Minister for Mumbai, buy stromectol online. Foremost among these is representation at the local level by non-party ward committees and community organisations, which is guaranteed by the 74th Amendment but is barely implemented in Mumbai, buy cheap generic stromectol online. Another long-standing proposal is to trifurcate the overburdened BMC into separate municipal corporations for the Island City, Eastern and Western Suburbs, to make it more responsive and efficient, and for the BMC to have an elected Mayor rather than a state-appointed Municipal Commissioner. Stromectol for lice, Yet another important law is the Right to Information Act, currently being used by activists to argue that the Mumbai Mill Lands should not be gifted to mill owners who have lately become real estate speculators. It is these various local initiatives which need to be supported to make world-class changes in our everyday life in the city, not the unrealistic fantasy of a Mumbai City State.

Originally published contra the case made by J.B. D'Souza on Should Mumbai be a City State. in TimeOut Mumbai, 10 April 2005

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Cheap stromectol, If you look left while crossing Haji Ali into Worli, the brightly lit ground floor showroom of a well-known auto major is emblazoned with the words “improving the quality of life”. You can’t miss it, because this is a congested junction, Order praziquantel, with cars queueing up at the next signal to ascend the Worli Fly-Over. Stuck in the gridlock, you’re forced to ponder the shiny cars and hopeful slogan, and try and forget the honking horns, buy stromectol canada, choking exhaust fumes, and street kids trying to sell you fashion magazines, Stromectol for lice, before the signal changes.

Surely the guys at McKinsey and Bombay First, who must also get stuck in traffic jams, would appreciate the irony. Their recent report on making the city “world-class” — and yes, cheap stromectol uk, improving its “quality of life” — has just joined the long queue of studies, reports, Ivermectin for mange, and consultancies on the city’s ascent to becoming a global city. Recent changes at the state and centre have shown the government is increasingly keen to step in and clear the traffic on the road to Mumbai 2010. Plans and strategies that piled up for decades are beginning to move, and the authorities are trying to play traffic cop between contending visions of the city’s future.

While McKinsey is a recent entrant into the global game of urban brand-building, city architects and planners are its most usual suspects, cheap stromectol. For the past several years, the media and corporate world in Mumbai have been arguing over the “death of the city”, stromectol canada. There seems to be neither enough money nor political will to tackle the monstrous problems of housing, transport, Ivermectin for horses, infrastructure, and the city’s slipping position in the global economy. Visions of Mumbai have been stuck between the apathy of our elected representatives — the politicians — and the elitism of our un-elected representatives — the NGOs. While there’s no sign that state politicians have stopped milking the city’s wealth, order stromectol, or self-proclaimed “citizens groups” have ceased approaching the courts to solve the problems in their backyards, the past few years have seen hopeful changes. Cheap stromectol, During this time, a handful of professional architects have stood between bickering politicians and anxious residents, crafting their visions of urban renewal through shifting alliances with diverse clientele — from social movements and NGOs to the cocktail circuit and the corporate world (or as Hafeez Contractor puts it, “everyone from god-men to con-men”).

Architects are a unique breed of image makers and public intellectuals. Ivermectin online, Today styling themselves as “urban designers”, they market visions of turning Mumbai into Shanghai, London, or Gotham City with a few broad strokes, cheap stromectol usa. Often treating the city as a blank canvas, their visions frequently resemble science fiction fantasy or picture postcard nostalgia, Stromectol online purchase, and are a genre of story-telling which goes back several generations. The late Mulk Raj Anand founded the magazine Marg with a bold vision of a twin city across the harbour — likening urban planning to dreaming, and intoning that “in dreams lie responsibility”. Forty years later, purchase stromectol online, with the city still mostly growing northwards into Gujarat, rather than eastwards into Maharashtra, Order stromectol uk, architects are still dreaming more than planning.

Two of the largest land-holders in the city — the central government-owned Port Trust and National Textile Corporation — regard the recent initiatives by architects to redevelop their Dock Lands and Mill Lands as a lot of wishful thinking. Similarly, heritage enthusiasts have consistently failed to devise realistic financial strategies for building conservation, but are the first to protest when a picturesque bungalow faces demolition, cheap stromectol. To be fair, this is not the fault of the architects — the functioning of the city’s land, housing and employment markets reveals the limits of their vision-making, generic ivermectin. Beautifully designed buildings and public spaces are good for real estate values, but the same property market excludes the majority of the city’s population from access to affordable housing and secure tenure.

A higher quality of life requires more than just beautification of parks and monuments, Stromectol without prescription, and a smooth drive to the international airport — what McKinsey calls “quick wins”. Serious plans for improving the supply of credit, generating employment, and reforming local institutions are relegated to the footnotes of their Vision Mumbai, and most other vision statements. The roots of our civic malaise lies not in the inevitable decline and death of the city, but in our inability to understand and manage its relentless expansion. While planners and architects have a role to play in the ongoing debate on the city’s growth, a more comprehensive and accountable public vision is required to clear the traffic jam towards Mumbai 2010. You cannot cut the queue to the departure lounge.

Originally published as Mumbai Vision 2010: Reporting the Future in TimeOut Mumbai, 19 November to 2 December 2004

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PUBLIC SPACE: Space No Bar

The tallest tale about Mumbai is that the city is overcongested and space in short supply. This myth of land scarcity is used to justify everything from demolishing stalls and hutments to dereserving forests and mangrove areas. An oft-cited statistic claims that the ratio of open space to population should be four acres per 1000 persons in Mumbai, whereas there is actually only .03 acres per 1000, ivermectin scabies. Don’t believe the hype — this figure doesn’t take into account the concentration of vacant lands with a handful of large owners in the city and suburbs. If the protectors of public space looked beyond their gated communities, they would see that more than two thousand acres of land is lying idle or vacant in the Dock and Mill Lands, or is tied up with private trusts, state corporations, and defunct industries in the suburbs, buy cheap stromectol online. Enterprising encroachers and man-eating leopards are not to blame for your lack of breathing room. They are the victims of Mumbai’s monstrous spatial inequalities. Stromectol buy, Another popular statistic points out that 60% of the population occupies only about 6% of the city’s total land.

There is enough surface area in the city to give ample open spaces to everyone, rich and poor. The real problem is one of distributing this recyclable resource more equitably. Buy cheap stromectol online, But we so far have only seen narrow solutions to this city-wide problem. The challenge for planners and citizens is to come up with creative design solutions to high densities. Increasing awareness of the city’s geography and land-use patterns shows that public space is not just a local problem to be solved by creating landscaped islands surrounded by fences and private security guards.

HOUSING and DEVELOPMENT RIGHTS: Slumming it Out

Do you know how much FSI or TDR obtains on your plot, stromectol for scabies. Chances are that some local builder does, and is about to descend on your society to make you an offer you can’t refuse. The city’s construction industry makes super-profits from speculating in development rights, Order stromectol usa, manipulating building permissions, using shoddy materials and employing bonded labour.

When in 2002 the Congress-NCP Government appointed S.S. Tinaikar to inquire into the functioning of state housing schemes, his report was subseqently suppressed, as it decried the Slum Rehabilitation Authority as “of the builders, by the builders, and for the builders”, buy cheap stromectol online. Yet strangely, everyone from McKinsey and Bombay First, to city politicians, order generic stromectol, NGOs and architects, have embraced the SRA. This ostensibly pro-people mechanism rewards builders who undertake slum redevelopment with enhanced market value in an already overpriced housing market. Stromectol generic, The result is plain to see. Spaceship-like towers have sprouted in congested inner-city neighbourhoods, sucking dry local water supplies and gobbling up parking spaces. Buy cheap stromectol online, Former slum areas are becoming upmarket destinations, driving up local prices, and pushing out their former residents. Don’t expect the city visionaries to do much about this — social workers and housing rights activists in Mumbai have even set up their own construction firms to exploit the surplus development rights granted to slum housing projects. While there are no easy solutions to the housing crisis, uk buy stromectol, enhancing access to credit and ensuring security of tenure, decentralising the building process, and introducing greater regulation and transparency into the construction industry are a few ways to tackle the nightmare of Slumbai.

Builders lord over the city in the same way that Bill Gates dominates your computer desktop — restricting your choices through monopoly and muscle power. Ivermectin albendazole, And slum dwellers relate to the city like the hackers to the Internet — through decentralised networks based on common resources and mutual survival. We have a lot to learn from their visions of Mumbai. So go open source, and take back your development rights — form a society, hire an architect and engineer, get bank finance, and pocket the riches that the builders are skimming from our skyline.

TRANSPORT: The Real Speed Breakers

When left-leaning Ken Livingstone was elected as London’s Mayor a few years ago, he beefed up the city bus fleet by 35%, and introduced a steep “congestion tax” on private vehicles entering the central city at stipulated hours, reducing traffic dramatically and forcing people to use public transport, buy cheap stromectol online. Cameras in the city trace the offending vehicles, and the tax is automatically charged to car owners through a smart card system, which you periodically top up, ivomec liquid, like prepaid mobile phone cards. Ironically, this entire technology was devised by software and hardware developers in Mumbai — but our own authorities seem to have outsourced their responsibilities for traffic management to bridge builders and car companies. Buy generic stromectol online, In the late nineties, the Sena-BJP Government went on a spree of fly-over construction, lining our highways (and their pockets) with signs of largesse, and leaving 85% of the city’s commuters, who take the trains, buy cheap generic stromectol, untouched by their Shivshahi.

Plans for investment and upgradation of the city’s suburban railway system have languished for decades, turning rush hour into crush hour. Help is now on the way. Buy cheap stromectol online, The MUTP II (Mumbai Urban Transport Project) — jointly financed by the World Bank with the central and state governments — was finally sanctioned by the Vajpayee last year, after more than a decade of foot-dragging on various loan conditions, such as resettlment of slum-dwellers evicted from the railway lands, and creation of a new agency for unified management of the city’s railways, the MRVC (Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation). Uk order stromectol, Under MUTP, new lines are augmenting the busiest railway corridors, frequency and capacity of trains is being increased, and signalling systems are being streamlined. Not to be outdone, ivomec wormer, the state government has introduced the parallel MUIP (Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project), again for constructing more roads, though this time focussing on essential east-west links, Purchase generic stromectol online, widening and concretising of existing arterial roads and, thankfully, construction of pedestrian facilities like footpaths, subways, and over-bridges, stromectol 3 mg. These two packages together promise significant improvements in your everyday life on the move in Mumbai, but are not enough. The citizens’ movement needs to get on a suburban train and demand better treatment for the majority of commuters and pedestrians, who are easy prey for the biggest predators in our urban jungle — noisy, polluting, and wasteful private vehicles.

Originally published as Mumbai Vision 2010: Get Up, Stand Up in TimeOut Mumbai, 19 November to 2 December 2004

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