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provided by UCL Discovery CITY, 2013 VOL. 17, NO. 3, 343–360, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2013.798884 Concrete geographies Assembling global through transport infrastructure

Andrew Harris

Through a focus on the concrete geographies of transport infrastructure in contemporary Mumbai, this paper develops a critical engagement with assemblage theory and the global city. It details how international consultants, contractors, investors and investment, as well as materials, techniques and technologies, have helped sustain and strengthen Mumbai’s relations, associations and flows of global reach. In so doing, it demonstrates how ‘global city-ness’ is generated and articulated through diverse human and non- human components. However, the paper argues this exploration of socio-material assem- blages needs to be combined with an analytical probing of the comparative imaginations, discursive categories, elite coalitions and uneven geographies involved. By drawing on post-structuralist theories of globalisation while emphasising the practices, visions and agendas of specific social groups in Mumbai, the paper aims not only to provoke new empiri- cally grounded dialogue between assemblage thinking and critical urbanism, but also to encourage alternative ways of imagining and planning the global city.

Key words: global city, assemblage, Mumbai, transport planning, comparisons

Introduction lights, and an array of flyover piers. Some of these bear concrete segments of the rriving at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati new ‘Sahar Elevated Road’ while others Shivaji International airport in are still in steel skeletal form. Beyond the ADecember 2009, the immediate road, large piling rigs marked Bauer and experience of the city outside the main the silhouetted cranes and mixing units of terminal is one of concrete blocks, dust Larsen and Toubro’s casting yard can be and construction. Ramps and bridges are seen (Figure 1). being built over carefully manicured Over the last 10 years, there has been a lawns and gardens to connect to several flurry of new transport initiatives in new multi-storey car parks. The road Mumbai such as the Sahar Elevated Road, from the airport to the Western Express often involving complex engineering pro- Highway is jammed with traffic despite cedures and international contractors and the late hour. Access to the middle of the expertise. These have included the construc- road is restricted with large yellow and tion of elevated roads (flyovers), the black ‘Larsen and Toubro Limited ECC opening in 2008 of Mumbai’s first ‘skywalk’ Division’ barriers, some garlanded with (elevated pedestrian walkway), the launch of

# 2013 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted. 344 CITY VOL. 17, NO.3

Figure 1 Concrete casting yard for the Sahar Elevated Road, in the vicinity of Chhatrapati Shivaji International airport, December 2009. Photograph by the author. Please visit www.verticalurbanism.com for further visual material metro-rail projects, the opening of the and demands of the rapid urbanisation of –Worli Sealink in 2009, and plans Mumbai’s metropolitan region. The technol- for more roads, metro-lines, mono-rails, sky- ogies, consultants, investment and imagin- walks and sealinks—at a variety of heights— ations involved in building new transport threading through the entire metropolitan infrastructure have also played a significant region (Figure 2). This expansion and upgrad- role in assembling and asserting Mumbai as ing of Mumbai’s transport infrastructure is a a global urban space. There are direct connec- response to what the Economist (2012, 105) tions between the people and materials calls ‘transport bedlam’ in the city. The con- involved in recent transport construction struction of new roads, bridges and rail activities and growing aspirations and systems over the last decade has been an visions of Mumbai as ‘world class’. Transport attempt to alleviate severe congestion needs to be understood as centrally impli- exacerbated by one of the highest motorisa- cated in increasing attempts over the last 10 tion growth rates in the world, rapid years at reconfiguring Indian cities to match suburban population increases, and the the Asian—and global—reputations of extension of the city both up and outwards Shanghai and Singapore (Batra 2009; (Sharma, Jain, and Singh 2011; United Bunnell and Das 2010; Roy 2011). Nations 2009). In investigating the relationship between This paper, however, suggests that this new transport projects and global Mumbai, spate of new transport construction projects the paper engages with post-structuralist should not be understood as simply a techno- understandings of ‘globalisation’ and the cratic response and remedy to the pressures ‘global city’ that prioritise assemblages, HARRIS:CONCRETE GEOGRAPHIES 345

Exploring transport infrastructure, more- over, disrupts a dominant emphasis on multi- national companies and financial and business services in global city research (e.g. Sassen 2001; Gordon 2002; Carroll 2007). Although the last decade has seen explora- tions of alternative attributes and connections in studies of the global city, such as media networks (Kra¨tke 2003), disease (Ali and Keil 2006) and religious knowledge (Flusty 2005), there has been no concerted attempt to examine the links between transport, auto- mobility and global city-ness (although, see Anand 2006). This is despite John Friedmann (1986, 72) identifying ‘major transport nodes’ as one of seven selection criteria of the ‘world city’ in his seminal 1986 hypothesis.1 By focusing on the global relations of transport infrastructure in Mumbai, this paper seeks to fore-ground an actually exist- ing urban situation rather than contributing to a tendency in a growing literature on urban assemblages to rely on meta-theoreti- cal speculations (although, see McGuirk and Dowling 2009; Edensor 2011; Simone 2011). The need for more empirical research was one of the main points of consensus that emerged from the recent extended debates in this journal on the relationship between assemblage and critical urbanism. McFarlane (2011) talked repeatedly of the necessity of ‘thick description’, Brenner, Madden, and Figure 2 Selection of major transport projects recently completed or under construction in Mumbai (cartography Wachsmuth (2011, 236) were sympathetic to by Miles Irving) assemblage’s role in opening up ‘empirical research agendas’, while Acuto (2011, 558) emphasised ‘in-depth fieldwork’ and Farı´as relations and connections rather than hierar- (2011, 366) spoke of the need for ‘open and chies, scales and boundaries in their analyses exploratory inquiry’. This paper contends (Amin 2002; Latham 2002; Taylor 2004). that if assemblage theory is going to have Authors, such as Doel and Hubbard (2002) any critical analytical scope in urban and Smith (2003b), have considered how studies, it is through its adoption and exper- ‘global city-ness’ has been generated by the imentation within in-depth empirical topological clustering and dispersion of studies—such as those on global cities and globally distributed actors, actions and transport—investigating specific actors, encounters. There have also been attempts, materials and contexts (and context of con- particularly by Smith (2003a) and Farı´as texts). Not only will this assist in any future (2010), to use actor-network theory (ANT) rounds of ontological squabbles but will to challenge the way objects, scales and help clarify and circumscribe the rather networks are conceptualised. diffuse and imprecise way that assemblage, 346 CITY VOL. 17, NO.3 and indeed critical urbanism, has often been infrastructural projects as iconic, speedy and marshalled by its proponents, and reduce a big has allowed Mumbai to be deemed suit- tendency towards what Tonkiss (2011, 588) ably ‘world class’. calls ‘template urbanism’ where the assem- This investigation of the diverse human and blage approach ‘might over-write the empiri- non-human constitutive elements of new cal contexts it seeks to describe’. transport projects in Mumbai aims to show This paper’s ‘concrete research’ foray how ‘grammars of gathering’ and ‘relational- (Brenner, Madden, and Wachsmuth 2011, ities of composition’ are central in global 237) adopts a range of inter-related methods city-ness (McFarlane 2011, 205–206). Never- undertaken between April 2009 and January theless, although using assemblage theory as a 2012 across an array of sites connected with research orientation and methodological new transport projects in Mumbai. These stance to examine particular socio-material include 20 formal interviews with engineers, configurations and process-based ontologies politicians, policymakers and transport con- of city-making, the paper does not seek to sultants, archival analysis of planning reports, overload assemblage with ‘analytical weight’ newspapers and engineering diagrams, and (Brenner, Madden, and Wachsmuth 2011, ethnographic and visual documentation of 238). It emphasises the importance of specific administrative offices, construction sites and elite coalitions in assembling recent transport spaces underneath new transport structures. projects in Mumbai and forging new global By tracing out the workings of the ‘given comparisons. These groups, it suggests, have empirical context’ (Tonkiss 2011, 588) of deployed the discursive category of ‘world transport infrastructure construction in con- class’ to help instigate and normalise a specific temporary Mumbai, and offering a careful financial and social agenda and aesthetic vision probing of the comparative imaginations and of the future city. This has prioritised improv- discursive categories used by particular social ing the accessibility, connectivity and desir- actors, this paper aims to provide an example ability of particular areas of Mumbai—such of how micro-scale descriptions can be com- as the international airport—considered bined with analyses of urban restructuring essential to attracting foreign investors and and the key dynamics of contemporary investment. The construction of new trans- global urbanism (Robinson 2011). port projects in Mumbai has not only The paper begins by detailing how trans- created and consolidated globally extensive port projects in Mumbai have established, relations and networks but has cemented sustained and strengthened the city’s uneven geographies of power and connection relations, associations and flows of global (Anand 2006). Transport infrastructure in reach. It argues these have consisted not Mumbai, like water pipes, sanitation only of consultants, contractors, investors systems, housing policies and land markets, and investment but an assembling of has been a key mediator in shaping an increas- materials, techniques and technologies. In ingly fragmented and polarised metropolitan this it draws on ANT-inspired approaches landscape (Gandy 2008; Graham, McFarlane, to explore how the ‘mundane artefacts’ and Desai 2013; McFarlane 2008; Harris (Latour 1992) of transport construction in 2008; Doshi 2012; Banerjee-Guha 2009). Mumbai have played a role in articulating new relations of globality (see also, Merriman 2005; Jacobs 2006). The paper emphasises the Global relations of transport in Mumbai importance of comparative practices and imaginations in bringing these transport Mumbai’s transport infrastructure has always assemblages in Mumbai into a global been characterised by expertise, investment frame of reference. In particular, it suggests and ideas from overseas. For example, that the perception of recent transport Bombay’s Presidency’s Road and Tank HARRIS:CONCRETE GEOGRAPHIES 347

Department sourced ‘twelve iron rollers’ in the ongoing building of ’s first double- 1845 from England because they were decker elevated expressway on the Santa ‘better than those produced here’ and a Cruz–Chembur Road, with their senior London contractor was approached to carry staff visiting twice a year (Figure 3). This is out the works as ‘native firms were incapable’ their first project in India, and one that they as they had ‘unsuitable knowledge’.2 Under were awarded not only on the price tendered British colonial rule, roads and railways but because ‘they had undertaken similar were constructed to ensure easy access to flyover projects on this scale internationally’ cotton, opium and other goods from the (interview with senior engineer, 2009). This city’s hinterland, and to help spatially divide reflects the view stated in the feasibility colonial administrators and traders from the study prepared by Wilbur Smith in 2003 for rapidly expanding ‘native’ population the non-rail components of the Mumbai (Hazareesingh 2007). After Indian Indepen- Urban Transportation Project II (MUTP-II) dence in 1947, modernist aspirations for a that ‘major highway schemes should be con- more rational city of uninterrupted traffic structed by international contractors’ grew. The Japanese firm Higashi and Tsujii (Wilbur Smith 2003, section 6.8). Similarly, was commissioned to make a preliminary the 2.4 km J. J. Hospital flyover along geological study for a subway line in 1957. Mohammed Ali Road (officially called the In the Bombay Traffic and Transportation Makhdoom Ali Mahimi Flyover), which was Study from 1963, the Connecticut transport completed in 2002, and the 5.6 km Bandra– consultants, Wilbur Smith, in association Worli Sealink, which opened in 2009, were with the London-based Freeman, Fox and designed and project-managed by the Partners, recommended the construction of London-based Dar Consultants, with exten- a ‘West Island Expressway’ and other pro- sive experience of projects in the Middle East. grammes to provide fast and unimpeded Transport projects in Mumbai have also movement to private motorists. increasingly received international invest- The last two decades have seen a strength- ment. In the early 1980s, the Chief Minister ening and expansion in these connections to of (the Indian state of which international transport consultants. In 1994, Mumbai is the capital city) visited Dubai to the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Develop- try to secure support for transport upgrading ment Authority (MMRDA) commissioned a in Mumbai but was forbidden by Prime Min- report from the UK consultants WS Atkins ister Indira Gandhi who restricted the use of on transport policy responses to rapid foreign funds for infrastructure projects (Save traffic growth in the city. Frischmann Bombay Committee 1999). However, many Prabhu, an Asian subsidiary of the London- of these capital restrictions were lifted with headquartered engineering consultancy Pell liberalisation reforms of the Indian Frischmann, were similarly commissioned economy in 1991 and the dismantling of the in 2005 to explore the feasibility for elevated socialist ideological roots in the politico- pedestrian walkways in the region. While the administrative apparatus (Srinivasan and Canadian company LEA Associates were Tendulkar 2003). This has opened up new cir- tasked by the MMRDA to carry out a Com- cuits of capital and financial institutional prehensive Transport Study in 2007—the first innovations in infrastructural investment major survey of traffic patterns since that (Kundu 2001). Many Indian firms have new orchestrated by Wilbur Smith in 1963. international ownership. The Mumbai As well as international consultants, the flyover and skywalk consultancy specialists last 20 years have seen a greater number of S. N. Bhobe and Associates are 51% owned foreign construction firms involved in large by TPF, a Belgium consultancy group, transport projects in Mumbai. The US while US-based Jacobs Engineering Group company Louis Berger have been central in has a majority stake in Consulting 348 CITY VOL. 17, NO.3

Figure 3 Signboard outside Kurla station for the forthcoming double-decker flyover along the Santa Cruz–Chembur Linking Road, July 2009. Photograph by the author.

Engineering Services (CES), one of the example, the construction of flyovers over co-authors with Wilbur Smith of the the last decade has involved enrolling of MUTP-II report. In July 2011, the US-based ‘state-of-the-art’ international machinery, private equity firm, Xander Group, acquired with Liebherr cranes imported from a 14.5% stake in HCC Concessions, a Germany, concrete paving machines from Mumbai-based company which designs, Britain and piling rigs from Italy and the finances, builds and operates transport infra- USA (Figure 4). The engineer in charge of structure, including the Bandra–Worli Sealink. constructing Bandra West skywalk proudly commented that ‘we are using the best escala- tors in the world’, referring to the proposed Assembled technoscapes of global transport use of Schlindler equipment from Europe (interview, 2010). Mumbai’s increasing entanglement in global New techniques and materials from over- transport expertise and ideas elsewhere has seas have also been introduced in flyover not only been through new flows of people and skywalk construction. These include and investment, but also through the assem- ramp building design, cement polymer com- bling of materials, techniques and technol- posite coating, mastic asphalt road surfacing ogies. These ‘technoscapes’ have not only and Italian sound reduction technology. developed the scale and scope of transport One engineer working on the skywalk in projects in the city but, involving multi- Mira Road in Mumbai’s Northwest suburbs sited networks of association, have helped proudly commented on how they were increase Mumbai’s global connections. For using German covering sheeting. This he HARRIS:CONCRETE GEOGRAPHIES 349

Figure 4 Mait piling equipment from the USA used in Figure 5 Pre-cast concrete segments of J. J. Hospital the construction of the flyover along Dr Babasaheb flyover over Mohammed Ali Road, April 2009. Photo- Ambedkar Road between Sion and Byculla, April 2009. graph by the author. Photograph by the author. suggested was very good at keeping the decade has witnessed the extensive use of walkway cool in strong sunshine and much software packages and computer technology better than the ‘Indian material’ used for from overseas. As Atul Bhobe, managing Mumbai’s first skywalk at Bandra East (inter- director of Bhobe and Associates, suggests: view, 2009). Perhaps the most important inter- ‘I would say it has changed from 1996/97. national innovation in transport construction Until that point ...there weren’t that many to be enrolled has been the use of pre-cast con- projects so you would typically be doing crete segmentation techniques. First pioneered maybe three flyovers a year or four flyovers a in Germany in the 1950s, Dar Consultants year which means you had a lot of time on introduced them to Mumbai in 2002 to build your hands which meant you could do the J. J. Hospital flyover (Figure 5). This manual calculations. Software was not so allows flyovers to be built without bulky scaf- easily available in India. There were import folding enabling construction to proceed over restrictions; there were foreign exchange busy existing roads and densely populated restrictions. You couldn’t just walk in and neighbourhoods. buy software off the shelf. So people in India used to be stuck ...with programmes that you Connections into international networks developed on your own ... We are [now] have been made and strengthened not only working with the latest software that is through the construction of transport pro- available on the international market.’ jects but through their design and technologi- (Interview, 2009) cal rendering. Although transport consultants in the city were using IBM machines to code Other new uses of international software traffic surveys during the early 1960s, the last include Autocad programs to model the 350 CITY VOL. 17, NO.3 look and appearance of plant creepers up the transport projects have allowed Mumbai to sides of flyover structures. be framed as contiguous with the technology, The overall management of transport pro- ambitions and innovations of other more jects and systems in Mumbai has also archetypal ‘global cities’. For example, the become closely integrated into international Wilbur Smith report from 1963 suggested standards and codes. As S. L. Dhingra, Pro- ‘the staggering proportions of all modern fessor in Transportation System Engineering highway programmes are in evidence every- at Mumbai’s Indian Institute of Technology, where; Bombay is no exception’ (205). suggests, ‘the MSRDC’s [Maharashtra State Although the report offers a proviso that Road Development Corporation] style of ‘when related to the design of American functioning is not very different from the systems’ the proposed highways for way infrastructure projects are executed Bombay are ‘about one tenth as great, based abroad’ (interview, 2009). This is evident in on projected populations’ (209). the design, typography and placing of new The last decade has been filled with similar road signs along Mumbai’s expressways comparative gestures made between Mumbai over the last decade, which contrasts to the and the transport characteristics of cities situation in 1993: outside India. The Frischmann Prabhu (2005) report on skywalks compiled data on ‘Apart from being virtually invisible, road projects from Minneapolis and St Paul— signs in India are usually placed at traffic described as ‘forerunners in developing the junctions, not well before, so that it is too late modern skywalk system’ (5)—as well as Cin- ... to follow them This problem was solved cinnati, Des Moines in Iowa, Calgary, Hong years ago in the West, simply by placing these Kong and Singapore, with an ‘Interesting signs centrally over the road, overhead and well clear of the tallest vehicle.’ (Desai 1993) Pedestrian Bridges’ appendix including examples from Anchorage, Seattle, London For the politician Nitin Gadkari, responsible and Sheffield. The LEA study from 2010 for launching the ‘55-flyover’ project in 1997, compared Mumbai with , Mexico this new international transport ‘know-how’ City, Sa˜o Paolo, Tokyo, Seoul and Cairo, in Mumbai has had important impacts on contrasting traffic patterns and facilities the approach to construction more generally within a 20 km radius of the city centre— in India: ‘the technology has changed; the with no acknowledgement of differences in precast technology has improved; ready mix coastline or topography. concrete is made mandatory, compulsory; Overseas visits undertaken by Indian five-drill machines are imported from engineers, architects and politicians have abroad and because of that, [we have the] also facilitated and encouraged Mumbai to upgradation of the construction industry in be situated in an international comparative India’ (interview, 2009). framework of transport construction and provision—continuing and developing engineers’ status as ‘perhaps the first Global comparative frameworks of modern professional group whose move- transport construction ments became truly “global”’ (Hazareesingh 2009, 29). Atul Bhobe remarks how his inter- Although new transport projects have national travels to other cities are likely to increased the flow of international specialists, have shaped his design and consultancy investment, materials and techniques into work on skywalk projects in Mumbai: Mumbai, it is only through comparative prac- tices and imaginations that the ‘global-ness’ ‘One travels the world and one sees, [and] one of the city’s transport infrastructure has learns from what one sees ... Personally I been established and affirmed. Major have seen the skywalks in Hong Kong which HARRIS:CONCRETE GEOGRAPHIES 351

has got a lot of areas with skywalks, I’ve seen global consultancy firm McKinsey & Singapore, I’ve seen U.K. where there are Company by a corporate pressure group skywalks, but you know these are assimilated called Bombay First (founded in 1994 on at the back of your minds when you the model of London First). Offering short implement these projects.’ (Interview, 2009) ‘benchmarking’ studies of international cities such as Cleveland and Shanghai ‘that Comparative learning has also often been became world-class’ (Bombay First 2003, more formally implemented. A firm of 10), this report inspired a Task Force set up Mumbai architects and planners, Aakar by the Chief Minister of Maharashtra a year Abhinav Consultants, visited Singapore in later, which argued that transportation is 2009 specifically to study airport and multi- Mumbai’s ‘most pressing need in its bid to storey car parks. More prominently, the Min- become a world-class city’ (Government of ister of Public Works for the Government of Maharashtra 2004, 18). The rhetoric McKin- Maharashtra, Nitin Gadkari, organised a sey’s consultants established of achieving South-East Asian study tour in 1997. world-class ‘standards’, ‘levels’ and ‘quality’ Together with some of his chief engineers, now widely pervades documents, presenta- he visited Singapore, Malaysia, Bangkok and tions and discussions around transport Indonesia; countries that were ‘treated as futures for the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. giants in the infrastructure market’ (Bhobe This includes devices used to present and 2000, 2). Gadkari (2009) was particularly perform transport planning schemes. The impressed with Malaysia: ‘this was the best foyer on the sixth floor of the MMRDA experience I ever had which gave me a new administrative headquarters in the Bandra– direction to think. When I came back in Kurla business district houses a series of Mumbai I started working on Mumbai– models of new and proposed transport pro- Pune Express Highway and flyovers’ jects underneath a large brightly coloured schemes.’ Moreover, this comparative poster. This proclaims the summary state- framing does not necessarily require inter- ment from the Vision Mumbai report: ‘trans- national travel. Many offices of architectural forming Mumbai into a world class city with and engineering firms in Mumbai responsible a vibrant economy and globally comparable for transport projects in the city display quality of life’ (Figure 6). Concrete technol- images of buildings such as the Petronas ogy in the city has also been shaped around Towers in Kuala Lumpur on walls or compu- a compulsion for ‘world-class’ standards ter screensavers. and attributes. At a location just off the main road through the Bandra–Kurla World-class dimensions of transport Complex, I came across a slogan in capital infrastructure in Mumbai letters written on a wall urging ‘MAKE IT WORLD CLASS’ (Figure 7). This is a site It is important to recognise how this com- where testing has been undertaken to parative framing of Mumbai in relation to improve the strength and consistency of con- urban transport systems elsewhere has been crete used in piers for the double-decker elev- articulated through specific registers, dimen- ated expressway next to Kurla Terminus. sions and imaginations. In particular, the ‘World class-ness’ has been signified and construction of transport infrastructure over supported through transport infrastructure the last decade has been undertaken with in several distinct if overlapping ways. widespread reference to Mumbai as a Firstly, transport projects have been pro- ‘world-class city’. This phrase was popu- jected through relational imaginaries of larised by a 2003 report entitled Vision Mumbai as an iconic city. Iconicity in terms Mumbai: Transforming Mumbai into a of groundbreaking architectural design and World-Class City commissioned from the spectacular urban landscapes has become an 352 CITY VOL. 17, NO.3

Figure 6 Transport project displays, MMRDA building, June 2009. Photograph by the author. increasingly important aspect of claims to LED lights3 and stress bars specially imported global competitiveness and relevance (Kaika from the UK (Midday 2012). The new 2010; Miles 2005). In the offices of Louis Bandra–Worli Sealink is perhaps the clearest Berger at Kurla, I was shown a book entitled example of a new iconic form of world-class Bridge Engineering by S. C. Rangwala. The transport infrastructure in Mumbai, featuring cover featured photographs of three interna- on the front cover of the June 2011 edition of tionally esteemed urban bridges: Sydney the London-based lifestyle and design publi- Harbour Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge in cation Wallpaper Magazine, as well as the San Francisco and the Puente de la Barqueta Mumbai First website4 (Figure 9). However, in Seville. In the bottom left, I was told, was a proposed tri-level structure on the Eastern an image of a flyover in Dadar in central Express Highway at Chembur is also Mumbai (Figure 8). This was a clear attempt deemed to be ‘a source of pride for Mumbai’ to place transport structures in Mumbai in and, in particularly hyperbolic terms, ‘one of the same framework as iconic bridges the engineering wonders of the 21st Century’ around the world. Similarly, the bold (India Infoline 2010). colours, shapes and lighting of skywalks As well as their iconic qualities, transport throughout the metropolitan region are often projects have allowed Mumbai to be viewed referred to in terms of their ‘iconic’ design. as sufficiently global in terms of the city’s For example, the suspended circular form of increased speeds and timings. This is not the Grant Road skywalk is deemed to ‘show- only in ambitions for quicker movement case the vibrancy of the city’ according to the and circulation through the city embedded MMRDA’s chief skywalk engineer, Anand in the building of new transport infrastruc- Kumar Pahal (quoted in D’Mello 2009), with ture, but also in the increased pace of HARRIS:CONCRETE GEOGRAPHIES 353

Figure 7 Flyover pier test site, Bandra–Kurla Complex, June 2009. Photograph by the author. construction. As Mr Nage, MSRDC chief new construction routines and practices, but engineer, comments: have also contributed to a globally compar- able speeding up of the city, both in attempts ‘A lot of machinery has been brought by a to save time for motorists by building fly- number of contractors. That is an amazing overs over busy junctions, and in the quick- change, which is speeding up each and every ening of the pace of implementation of work; otherwise it would have been very, very difficult to construct even a single major transport projects. flyover.’ (Interview, 2009) Another important way that Mumbai’s ‘world-class’ status and comparative global pos- Atul Bhobe similarly talks about how the speed ition has been imagined and tested through of construction has noticeably accelerated: transport infrastructure has been through ‘bigness’. Transport projects in Mumbai have ‘A lot has changed, not so much in the way been a way of meeting aspirations for scale that the concepts are prepared but more in the and complexity that emerge from imaginations way that concepts are implemented ...People of, and desires for, global city-ness. During have now realized that time is money, you informal conversations, engineers working on know 15 years back you would have a flyover transport construction sites would often talk project and the time period would be 36 months to complete; now the time period is excitedly of megaprojects in Dubai or China. 15 months.’ (Interview, 2009) One recounted how he always watched Extreme Engineering on the National Geo- New construction techniques and managerial graphic TV channel, and another talked enthu- know-how have not only entangled Mumbai siastically of a 26 km Chinese sea bridge. One across longer global networks and facilitated transport planner spoke of Nerul in Navi 354 CITY VOL. 17, NO.3

Thane and Kalyan-Dombivili. This helps create connections between residential colo- nies, malls and business districts and helps establish a level of coherence across the increasingly polycentric and distanciated region. Similarly, the travel and movement of materials and workers involved in trans- port construction projects reinforces the new territorial dimensions of Mumbai. Cement and concrete segments are brought in from casting yards located in areas such as Wadala on the edge of the Island City, which in turn use sand and dirt dredged from creeks on the fringe of the metropolitan region. At the same time, rubble from trans- port construction is taken outwards. For example, the demolition in 2009 of the older flyover at Lalbaug in central Mumbai involved 250 trips a day using 50 dump trucks to a site in .

Figure 8 Bridge Engineering by S. C. Rangwala. Photo- The political landscapes of Mumbai’s graph by the author. transport assemblages

Mumbai becoming a transport hub that brings As well as being attentive to the ways that together sea, road, rail, metro and bus in an inte- recently built transport infrastructure in grated way not seen anywhere else in the world. Mumbai has involved a gathering of invest- Another engineer spoke of his pride at how the ment, expertise and technology from over- 2.5 km Lalbaug flyover, which opened in 2011, seas, and a strengthening and reaffirming of would supersede the J. J. Hospital flyover as the Mumbai’s global standing, it is crucial to city’s longest elevated road by 100 m—although recognise that these transport assemblages it will itself be superseded by the ‘game- are not part of what Brenner, Madden, and changing’ 9.3 km in 2013 Wachsmuth (2011, 236) identify as a ‘world (Phadke 2013). Transport projects such as fly- animated by passive interactions among overs are, according to Santosh Desai (2004) actants’. They have been actively created, writing in the TimesofIndia, ‘big bold projects’ shaped and maintained by the practices, and ‘tangible signs that suggest that, finally, dreams and visions of (human) actors able India is serious about becoming world class’. to marshal resources and political decision- Another related aspect of bigness mar- making at a range of scales. These are the shalled through transport infrastructure is ‘sociopolitical agents’ (Brenner, Madden, its role in meshing together and ‘co-produ- and Wachsmuth 2011, 236) who have cing’ the metropolitan region—or what lobbied for the dismantling of restrictions Allen Scott (2001) identifies as the ‘global on inward investment into India, commis- city-region’. Flyovers and skywalks have sioned international consultants such as been constructed over the last decade not McKinsey, undertaken study tours of only in the traditional centre of the Island transport initiatives overseas and readily City but across the city’s Western and commented on the global status, or other- and out into Navi Mumbai, wise, of contemporary Mumbai. HARRIS:CONCRETE GEOGRAPHIES 355

Figure 9 Wallpaper Magazine, June 2011 (Photographer: Bharat Sikka)

Following sociologist Leslie Sklair (1998), it serving nexuses between contractors and is possible to identify four overlapping groups senior politicians and planners, have drawn of ‘transnational capitalist classes’ primarily together capital, ideas, materials, technology responsible for assembling and remaking and ambitions to shape, coordinate and instil Mumbai’s transport infrastructure: ‘globalising the system of transport provision in Mumbai. state bureaucrats’ of the MMRDA and A key component in this elite assembling MSRDC, transnational corporation executives of transport infrastructure has been the dis- and their local affiliates, globalising politicians cursive mantra of the ‘world-class city’, as and professionals, such as Nitin Gadkari, and propagated and disseminated by the 24-page other members of the car-owning middle McKinsey report in 2003, conducted with classes. These actors, often through self- ‘the active participation of the government 356 CITY VOL. 17, NO.3

Figure 10 Unfinished flyover at Barfiwala Lane, West, April 2009. Photograph by the author. institutions that run the city of Mumbai’ demands of corporate leaders such as the (Bombay First 2003, vii). The ‘world-class British-educated Nasser Munjee, former city’ has provided a compelling rallying CEO of the Infrastructure Development point and conveniently elusive symbolic reg- Finance Company and chair of the Physical ister to integrate a wide coalition of elite Infrastructure sub-group in the Vision actors despite internal disagreements and Mumbai task force: intra-urban divergences (see also, Baviskar 2011 on ‘world-class’ Delhi). Moreover, the ‘I meet many foreign investors daily who are elite extolling of ‘world-class’ transport infra- interested in Mumbai. But they don’t structure and its seductive vision of a modern, understand why we can’t fix our roads. I had free-flowing, 21st-century Mumbai has told the government just to restore the road proved difficult to counter and challenge leading to Sahar airport two years ago. That road is a disgrace but still there. I have given given its globally aspirational credentials up on Mumbai and the endless meetings with and framing ‘in the name of the greater officials which are never conclusive. Mumbai metropolitan good’ (Ong 2011, 18). must re-plan completely but no one seems to Yet, it is important to recognise how this be interested. No wonder CEOs of big emphasis on ‘world-class’ connectivity and companies are giving Mumbai the miss.’ urban modernity through new transport (Quoted in Deshmukh 2005) infrastructure in Mumbai has created if not necessitated new divides and disconnection This concurs with the perspectives offered (Anand 2006). The broad-based goal of by senior transport planners Murthy and Vis- achieving suitably world-class transport has wanath (2006, 58) in Mumbai Vision 2015: involved prioritising the concerns and Agenda for Urban Renewal: HARRIS:CONCRETE GEOGRAPHIES 357

‘Mumbai region has attracted little Foreign Conclusions Direct Investment (FDI) in comparison to other world cities. To make Mumbai world The concrete and tarmac of large transport class, it needs to attract FDI in large amounts. projects, despite their visibility and ubiquity, State-of-the-art infrastructure, especially have largely been neglected in analyses of glo- traffic management and transportation, is a balising cities and urban ‘worlding’. This is prerequisite for attracting huge investments from both public and private institutional because, compared to skyscrapers, airports, investors.’ shopping malls or art galleries, they are not generally viewed as ‘desirable icons of “world In this logic, part of what Goldman (2011, class” amenities’ (Ong 2011, 18). Nor are 232) identifies as a new agenda of ‘speculative they understood as part of ‘socio-spatial tech- government’ in urban India, Mumbai’s nologies’, such as slum evictions and special success as a world-class city relies on a new economic zones, seen as central in implement- physical terrain being created that eases and ing the world-class city (Roy 2011). Yet this quickens the travel of foreign investors paper has illustrated how transport infrastruc- through the city and accordingly facilitates ture has played an important role in entangling an accompanying influx of capital. a city such as Mumbai into global relations The dominant emphasis in transport plan- of expertise, technology and planning. This is ning in Mumbai over the last decade has conse- not only through new and increased flows quently been on the vehicles, routes and of people, investment, materials and tech- experiences deemed most appropriate for, niques but through comparative practices and and conducive to, potential investors. This imaginations, in both formal documents and has meant a frequent prioritising of private everyday life, that have helped generate a cars over public transport, despite recommen- sense of ‘global city-ness’. dations from reports such as WS Atkins (1994) At the same time as investigating the net- advocating improvements to Mumbai’s bus works, relations and comparisons that have and train systems. It has meant a focus on produced and performed Mumbai’s global improving connections to business districts city status, the paper has also signalled the (such as the Bandra–Kurla Complex) and importance of identifying the main human airports (such as the Sahar Elevated Road to agents, city visions and discursive categories Chhatrapati Shivaji International airport) and involved in assembling and remaking trans- circumventing zones of less affluent housing port infrastructure. The paper argued that and more informal commerce. It has also the rhetoric of the ‘world-class city’ has involved attempts at inculcating what Ghert- enabled huge state resources to be channelled ner (2011) calls ‘world-class aesthetics’ in into facilitating projects that prioritise the the elite experience of moving through the mobility of foreign investors and elite groups city. Flyovers are regularly cleaned and main- with access to private vehicles. The techno- tained while the spaces underneath are often cratic registers adopted in transport planning fenced off or carefully landscaped to restrict and engineering and the incontrovertibility informal uses such as sleeping and selling of world-class-ness has meant this agenda (Harris 2012). People squatting or begging has been difficult to dispute and disrupt. under the Andheri flyover, where the road While using an assemblage approach as a from the international airport meets the ‘guiding sensibility’ (Brenner, Madden, and Western Express Highway, are regularly har- Wachsmuth 2011, 229) to explore processes assed and moved on. As Nasser Munjee of composition across diverse human and explains, ‘this cannot be the first sight for a non-human elements, the paper has empha- foreign dignitary landing in Mumbai’ sised the necessity of empirical research into (quoted in Deshmukh 2005). concrete urban situations in order to sharpen 358 CITY VOL. 17, NO.3 assemblage’s analytical potential. As John For example, a presentation prepared by an Allen (2011, 156) suggests, ‘the content of international consultancy firm on transportation the relationships that hold assemblages in in the Mumbai metropolitan region in 2009 place have first to be specified in some way stated—with seemingly no recognition of the for us to grasp their looming shape and tautologies involved—that ‘to be a world class wider potential significance’. This does not city, we need to move in the direction of world necessarily mean simply counterpoising a class cities’. Possibilities exist for reframing socio-material objectivism with larger con- world-class-ness, and imagining ‘how urbanism texts and wider questions about power and might be produced otherwise’ (McFarlane 2011, inequality, as Brenner, Madden, and Wachs- 211). More socially accessible and environmen- muth (2011) posit, but instead requires care- tally sustainable forms of transport such as fully detailing and assessing of the ‘often buses and walking could be heralded, and new uneven and uncomfortable practices of com- comparative models and references celebrated position’ involved (Anderson et al. 2012, 173). beyond the citadels of Shanghai, Dubai and Sin- The assemblage approach pursued in this gapore, including cities in Africa and South paper also allows infrastructure projects to be America and other urban settlements in India viewed as provisional and contingent achieve- and Maharashtra. In this way Mumbai might ments that demand constant attention to main- be used not only as a laboratory for rethinking tain their connections, performances and urban transport planning, but also as a means parameters (Doel and Hubbard 2002). This is for rethinking—and reassembling—the idea particularly the case for the global city-ness of and ideals of the global city. transport in contemporary Mumbai. The upgrading and construction of transport pro- jects has yielded considerable difficulties and Acknowledgements disconnections (Figure 10). Many projects remain incomplete, many quickly become Many thanks to several engineers in Mumbai obsolete, many exacerbate rather than disperse for facilitating site visits, and to the helpful congestion, others create faster speeds through comments of two anonymous referees. The the city that require new capacity elsewhere, paper draws from a research project entitled while imported materials and technologies ‘Vertical urbanism: geographies of the frequently prove unsuitable or too costly to Mumbai Flyover’ funded by ESRC Grant adequately maintain. The result is a new cycle RES-000-22-3127. of calls and proposals for more transport infra- structure, replacing or extending existing forms and systems, but this time bigger, bolder and Notes more spectacular, and yet again never quite 1 Mumbai does not feature at all in Friedmann’s (1986) attaining or reaching sufficient global city-ness. hierarchy of world cities—however, interestingly he The heterogeneous actor-networks that states ‘no city from a country of the “peasant produce the global city are similarly multiple periphery” was included, though questions might be and as Smith (2003a, 38) argues ‘alive and brim- raised about Bombay’ (72). ming with movements, practices, performances 2 Report on the Proceedings of the Road and Tank Department, . Bombay: and contingencies’. Notions and urban norms Government Press, 1841–46. British Library of ‘world class’ and ‘global’ are not fixed and Shelfmark IOL.1947.a.411. My thanks to Peter can be reinvented and reworked, especially in Harrold for locating this. the contemporary experimental ferment of 3 In responding to the use of LED lights on this skywalk, Asian cities such as Mumbai (Ong 2011). Subhash Nage, chief engineer of the MSRDC, suggested, ‘We always praise well-designed and Indeed the very success of the ‘world-class illuminated skywalks and bridges when we visit places city’ rhetoric over the last decade has been like Singapore and Shanghai, but when the MSRDC dependent on its elusiveness and ambiguities. tries to do something similar here, citizens and the HARRIS:CONCRETE GEOGRAPHIES 359

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