Wissink (2013) Enclave Urbanism in Mumbai
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See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235941565 Enclave urbanism in Mumbai: An actor-network-analysis of urban (dis)connection Article in Geoforum · June 2013 DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.02.009 CITATIONS READS 49 522 1 author: Bart Wissink City University of Hong Kong 94 PUBLICATIONS 729 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Cities and the Super-Rich View project Reassembling Asian Cities: Urban Controversies, Critique, and the Urban Studies View project All content following this page was uploaded by Bart Wissink on 07 March 2016. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Please cite as: Wissink, B. (2013) ‘Enclave Urbanism in Mumbai: An Actor-Network-Theory Analysis of Urban (Dis)Connection’, Geoforum, 47, June, 1-11. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.02.009 Enclave Urbanism in Mumbai: An Actor-Network-Theory Analysis of Urban (Dis)Connection Abstract The built environment of Mumbai is changing rapidly since the early 1990s. Condominiums and office towers shoot up everywhere, shopping malls and multiplexes are opened, train lines, motorways and other infrastructures are planned and built, and informal settlements grow. These changes are easily read in terms of the alarmist narrative on urban fragmentation that depicts ‘enclave urbanism’ as a tool of urban elites. Employing the forces of globalisation, these elites supposedly enhance their dominance through the development of walled and well-connected enclaves, while pushing away underprivileged groups. Analysing the Tardeo Towers project in Mumbai, this paper employs Actor-Network-Theory to reflect on the adequacy of this narrative. In Mumbai, urban enclaves turn out to be nothing new. And while globalisation and economic liberalisation do support the emergence of new urban enclaves, domestic characteristics like the existing urban landscape and its objects, the structure of the Indian state, land and building regulations, corruption, mafia, and the business-politics nexus structure the specific local expression of urban enclaves. We conclude that urban objects like the Tardeo Towers create and bind groups of stakeholders in new and surprising ways. While some elites do benefit from these urban enclaves, others resist, and underprivileged groups do benefit as well. Therefore, the study of ‘enclave urbanism’ has to move beyond a general alarmist narrative, towards precise empirical research into the causes and effects of the emergence of specific enclaves in specific local contexts. Keywords Enclave Urbanism, Mumbai, Actor-Network-Theory, Controversy, Segregation, Gated Community 1. Mumbai – The Making of another Enclave City? “Ten years ago, the perception of this area was totally different. It was a mill workers area. It was very central in Bombay, but it was also always a poorer part. Just like you do not want to go into a slum, you did not want to get into the mill area as well. All of that has changed over the last decade”. We are talking with the owner of one of the former cotton mills in Mumbai’s Girangaon, or the ‘mill village’. Until the start of the 1980s, this 2000-plus acre area was home to some sixty mills that had been the basis for the city’s emergence as an industrial centre in the nineteenth century (Chandavarkar, 1994; Dwivedi, 2006). At its peak, the area housed some 250.000 mill workers, creating a unique workman’s culture 1 (Chandavarkar, 1994; D’Monte, 2006). But this is all history. With the demise of the textile industry in the 1970s, the Bombay Textile Strike in 1981-82, and new land regulations, one mill after another closed. Since the early 1990s, mills started to be controversially redeveloped into high-income apartment buildings, shopping malls, leisure spaces, and office towers, changing the Mill area beyond recognition. Figure 1: Recent landmark projects in Mumbai The Mill area developments are part of an endless list of new projects in Mumbai 2 (Figure 1). These include office areas like Mindspace in Malad, the Bandra Kurla Complex between Bandra and Kurla, and the Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City in Navi Mumbai; mixed use areas like various former mills in Lower Parel or Hiranandani Gardens in Powai; housing projects ranging form the glitzy Tardeo Towers to the middle-class Mittal Housing Enclave in peripheral Vasai; new public spaces like the Bandra seafronts; and infrastructure projects such as the Bandra-Worli Sealink, the metro from Versova to Gatkopar, the JV Link Road, and the new JNTP harbour East of the city. And there are many more plans: amongst others for two Special Economic Zones (SEZ’s) in Navi Mumbai encompassing a new harbour and a new international airport, trans-harbour links, eight more metro lines, and numerous housing, office and retail projects. Together, these new developments contribute to the transformation of the urban structure of Mumbai. This transformation was kick-started after the 1980s, when economic liberalisation ended a decennia-long national economic policy of import substitution (Panagariya, 2008). The enhanced integration of India in the world economy coincided with the rapid expansion of new middle classes (Varma, 2007). The majority of the current developments mainly seem to cater to the consumption preferences of these emerging groups. Many of these new developments are physically separated from their surroundings through walls and gates. Mumbai’s urban transformation is thus easily read in terms of alarmist studies of the fragmentation of cities in the post-industrial society. These studies argue that previously integrated cities transform into ‘archipelagos of enclaves’ (Graham and Marvin, 2001; Hajer and Reijndorp, 2001). The result is an explosion of walled urban enclaves with exclusionary collective spaces – gated communities, shopping malls, cineplexes, and office towers – and connecting premium infrastructures. Meanwhile, the quality and quantity of generally accessible public spaces diminish. While there are different explanations for the emergence of urban enclaves, one dominant narrative presents urban elites as the driving force. Employing the forces of globalisation, this interpretation sees elites enhancing their dominance by building urban enclaves. The related exclusion of underprivileged groups threatens social integration and inclusion. Mumbai is thus depicted as another global city experiencing the dual processes of urban fragmentation and exclusion. It is the aim of this paper to reflect on the theoretical underpinnings of this narrative, and on its relevance for Mumbai. This aim results in the following research questions: What are the driving forces behind the emergence of urban 3 enclaves in Mumbai; and how does this relate to dominant narratives of ‘enclave urbanism’ in the urban studies literature? The next six sections will answer these questions. After this introduction, the second section presents the discussion on ‘enclave urbanism’ in the urban studies literature. The third section discusses the Actor-Network-Theory as a relational framework that enables a pluralist study of the emergence of enclaves in specific local settings. Section four then explains methodological choices that guided the research in Mumbai. Section five introduces the historical context of urban transformation in Mumbai, followed by a detailed analysis of the Tardeo Towers controversy in section six. Answering the research questions, section seven concludes the paper. 2. ‘Enclave urbanism’ and the ‘Narrative of Loss’ The urban studies literature describes today’s city with apprehension. For Amin and Thrift (2002: 32) the idol of this literature is the “authentic city, held together by face-to-face interaction whose coherence is now gone”. They describe a ‘narrative of decline’ that interprets social cohesion as the result of propinquity, and assumes that in today’s cities with diminishing propinquity, social cohesion is disappearing. Likewise, Forrest and Kearns (2001: 2126) observe “a common belief that there is less social cohesion now than in some (usually) unspecified period”. These alarmist views on urban cohesion are mirrored in recent discussions on public space in terms of decline and loss (Hajer and Reijndorp, 2001). Thus, Crawford (1999: 23) signals a ‘narrative of loss’ that “contrasts the current debasement of public space with golden ages and golden sites.” This “inevitably culminates in the contemporary crisis of public life and public space, a crisis that puts at risk the very ideas and institutions of democracy itself”. Over the last two decades, the interpretation of cities through this ‘narrative of loss’ is refuelled by ideas about the ‘splintering’ of cities, and the related radicalisation of class segregation. Well-quoted authors like Davis (1992), Castells (1996) and Graham and Marvin (2001) suggest that the transition to a post-industrial or network society is supported by new techniques of spatial separation adding to the already problematic nature of cities. The result is a new form of urbanism – enclave urbanism. Cities are restructured as patchworks of enclaves, each home to a selected group or activity (Douglass, Wissink and Van Kempen, 2012). Essential to this emerging ‘enclave urbanism’ is the introduction of social, legal and physical boundaries, often relating to differentiated regimes of governance. 4 ‘Enclave urbanism’ emerges in a context of neoliberal policies in which comprehensive planning for the public good