Mumbai is one of India’s most heavily populated cities, ranking as the biggest metropolitan region in the country. As a result, a design for a new city called Navi Mumbai was presented in 1964. It was originally planned to further extend the urbanization of Mumbai to the mainland instead of any further northwards. This satellite town needed to decongest the population, absorb the migration from the countryside, reduce the concentration of economic activity on Bombay Island and lower the traffic congestions. Navi Mumbai was a city planned for the common man; with jobs and housing in different sectors.
But instead of becoming a city for the common man, Navi-Mumbai today is, as many cities of the so-called Global South, a place where social inequality is growing and housing becomes a commodity.
Housing is a primary human right, but for the urban poor it is a prerequisite of political and social citizenship. For them a house is not only for life alone, but a house is also a production and marketplace. So the project focuses on a better integration of the people from the lower income groups into the city’s urban fabric. So they have fuller access to wider social networks, a more dignified social role and a deeper source for accumulating information, credibility and dignity for the urban poor in public life as well.
Two World Merge is about two different scales. One being the unit scale, by combining economic and domestic activities within one housing unit to create healthier working and living conditions. The other is at the scale of the neighbourhood or city, by integrating the lower income groups with their home-based enterprises and businesses into the city. This economic integration of the lower-income groups will lead to an empowerment of their livelihood.