Elitist PlanningThe city of Mumbai has grown from 1600 people in 1715 to more than 12 million today. They have gone this massive urbanization with little urban planning.
Mumbai was one of the British Presidency towns. It was developed as a port for foreign trade. The colonial model presented by Brunn and Williams fits Mumbai well. The fort was and is the center of all activity and the city grew outward from there. The wealthy British colonialists and native population were separated by the fort, and the East/West divide still remains today.
Elitist PlanningElitist planning has always been an issue in Mumbai. Planning has always echoed the voices of the ruling class, whether it was the British, Indian traders or presently, the finance and industry owners. The government has not done much to intervene in planning strategies and has mainly left the development of the city up to the upper class businessmen. Even when the government does develop planning strategies they are developed with the monetary influence of the upper class. This has left a great rift between the classes with little assistance being given to the poor. Mumbai has developed systematic planning since the 1950s, however it is planning that is still linked to the business class. The only times that the government has intervened favorably for the lower classes have been in times of Crisis.
The first crisis that spurred the government to action was the Cholera
epidemic from 1862-1864. The government panicked about conditions and created
the Municiple Corporation. However, within 30 years
conditions had once again deteriorated so severely that in 1898 an oubreak
of the Bubonic plague occured in the mills. It
spread rapidly, and within three months 6000 people were dead and 
several thousand had fled, spreading the disease all over India. In
acknowledgement of the need for action, the government created the City Improvement Trust(CIT). The CIT continued as the main
planning agency until 1920 when conditions were once again so terrible that
another agency had to be created to handle all of the problems, so the Bombay Development Department was developed. But, yet
again, in 1983 another development agency, the Bombay
Metropolitan Regional Development Authority was created. They were made
the Special Planning Authority of three projects: the Back
Bay Reclamation Project, New Bombay and
Vasai/Virar.
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