A view of the Campa Cola compound and other highrises in the Worli section of South Mumbai. Mrinal Desai / Courtesy NFB

In the scramble to grow, builders have cut corners—harming residents and the future of the city.

Nandini Mehta and her husband raised their family in an apartment in the Campa Cola compound in South Mumbai’s Worli neighborhood. He bought the place in 1988, and she moved in with him in 1992 after their marriage. Two daughters, now in their late teens, were born and grew up there. But in 2005 the Mehtas realized their home was in jeopardy. That year, the Mumbai Municipal Corporation ordered the demolition of roughly 100 apartments in the compound where the Mehtas lived. Turns out there were legal inconsistencies in the way the seven buildings that made up the compound had been constructed. The builders had made more floors than were sanctioned by the BMC, and although the corporation had pointed out these problems, it hadn’t stopped the construction. Series Vertical living's past, present and future Go The news came as a surprise to the residents, says Mehta. They hadn’t been stopped from purchasing the homes, from moving in, or from paying property taxes. For a decade now, some of these residents have been bargaining and pleading to keep their homes, fighting a roller-coaster legal battle. In 2014 it seemed they had lost: the Indian Supreme Court ruled in favor of eviction. Then in June of the same year, at the height of the Indian summer, local authorities cut off water, power, and gas for all the floors deemed illegal. Mehta and some of her neighbors went without these essentials for 10 months. “It was a question of survival for us, and [it was about] saving our homes,” Mehta tells CityLab. “We did what we could do.”

Nandini Mehta is just one of millions affected. Even though there’s still hope for her and her neighbors, she see a bleak future for Mumbai. “There is no checkpoint,” she says. “The transparency isn’t there, even today. What is a common man supposed to do? It’s just going to get worse. There are more and more loopholes that the builders are finding to be able to commit these crimes. At the end of the day, it’s the buyer who suffers because the builders have so much political clout with the authorities that they get away with everything.” Cities are changing fast. Keep up with the CityLab Daily newsletter. The best way to follow issues you care about. Subscribe Loading... Mumbai’s Housing Paradox In 2014, Deborah Cowen, a professor in the department of geography and planning at the University of Toronto, arrived in Mumbai to research its urban growth as part of a collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada on the HIGHRISE documentary series, an exploration of vertical living in the global suburbs. As her flight descended, Cowen saw the aerial view of the city many visitors are familiar with: clusters of tall buildings standing on a sea of slums. Mumbai’s multiplying highrises (see the timeline below) reflect the staggering income gap of its residents. On the one hand, you have billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s 27-floor luxury home worth $1 billion; on the other, you have small, cheaply constructed shacks in Dharavi, one of the largest slums in the world.

Displacement and ineffective slum rehabilitation are the most obvious consequences of Mumbai’s recent housing trends. But another consequence is compromised safety. In 2013, for example, a shoddily constructed building in the Thane suburb collapsed, killing 74 people. Twenty-six were children. The government’s push to regularize illegal highrises, coupled with recent changes to regulations that now permit higher buildings, has led to a predatory “redevelopment economy,” Cowen says. “We're seeing that this was happening all over the place—sometimes not so violently or without the surprise of residents—but there was this economy emerging where developers could profit off of building higher buildings ... and making a whole bunch of money off the additional floors,” she says. Poor Planning Fueled the Problem When it comes to placing blame for Mumbai’s housing troubles, unethical builders and corrupt bureaucrats are obvious targets. But a lot of the responsibility for Mumbai’s awkward growth falls on the shoulders of the city’s flimsy urban development policies, says Hussain Indorewala, an assistant professor at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture. He says the city government has taken a backseat when it comes to planning, letting the real estate industry drive local development.

“There’s a confusion about what planning is supposed to be for,” says Indorewala. “It’s a land-owner and developer-centric approach, which puts private property before use.” The city’s new urban development plan, for example, is “not even a plan, it’s like a loose regulatory framework for the real estate industry,” he says. The looser the rules, the easier it is for developers to manipulate them. The situation aggravates existing urban inequalities, activists and academics argue. “I t’s a land-owner and developer-centric approach, which puts private property before use.” Mumbai’s story is extreme and alarming. But it’s actually not that abnormal. “We generalize from the New Yorks and the Londons rather than other places,” says Cowen. “Some of the most important processes in learning … what is happening and what could be happening elsewhere, comes from a city like [Mumbai]." If left unchecked, cities like Mumbai can expand and grow haphazardly, sidelining, excluding, and ultimately harming residents. This story is part of the Highrise Report, in collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada. CityLab is proud to host the U.S. premiere of “Universe Within: Digital Lives in the Global Highrise,” the final interactive documentary to come out of the HIGHRISE project, produced by the NFB.