I’m not interested in beautifying cities” – Shirish Patel https://architecture.live/not-interested-beautifying-cities-shirish-patel/ October 26, 2023
In 20 years, projections suggest that the city is almost certainly going to be unlivable due to sea level rise. I think that’s right. I want to ask you seriously, as somebody who has been a planner for so long…we really have a serious issue. It is not going to be enough to build sea walls to prevent flooding and so on. One will have to think about relocation. Not just few people who can invest elsewhere and afford to fly out…but also for the millions of people who live in low-income settlements. And it will have to be at an unprecedented scale…relocating so many people. How would one even begin to conceptualize this challenge? How would you go about it?
Urban growth is concentrated in tier 2 and tier 3 centers. No way we can improve or recast tier 1 cities. Not possible. Forget about Bombay. Forget about Pune. Forget about Nashik. Look at all the smaller towns we have. Kolhapur, Sholapur, you know, Ratnagiri. And just plan those very carefully. Plan them to locate employment centers.
Have incentives for industry to go there. I think they could be made attractive locations…for that kind of activity. And I think the first step in doing all that is mapping each of these places. I don’t think we’ve done that. I think we should just carefully map each of these towns. And there are enough architectural and engineering colleges around the state to be able to undertake a serious mapping exercise, in which above all you identify the important locations you want to preserve. Whether it’s a temple or a grove of trees or whatever, you identify all those things you want to preserve. Map the area. Lay out transit lines for growth. They may or may not happen here. But you lay them out and freeze them. No new construction happens on those [transit] sites. And if it happens, it can be demolished without compensation. So I think the only way out is that. And automatically, if the centers become attractive, people will move away, as the population of the island city is declining. So people will move away in larger numbers. I think that’s the only way to do it. Nothing you can do in Bombay will help. And I don’t see that happening.