Beyond Urban

Abstract

India is urbanizing at a massive rate, and predicted to have 50% of its population classified as urban by 2050. The Mumbai Metropolitan region is an urban agglomerate that represents the emancipatory qualities of urbanisation while simultaneously showing signs of urban decay that reflects a poor urban strategy. This urban decay is however blamed on the city’s rural-urban migrants who are seen to contribute to over-crowding in the city leading to a competition for urban resources. The project attempts to identify these labour migrants through various narratives and historic precedents of migration in the city to form an understanding of the shortcomings of the present Metropolitan regional plan. To understand this rural-to-urban transition in the city, the research project identifies that urbanisation neglects to consider the rural landscape that it seeks to change in present day growth models and seeks to propose an alternative strategy for urban India. Review of literature on the subject indicates that rural change occurs by land acquisition and change in land-usage, rural to urban migration (transference of poverty), reduction in the agricultural production and villages reduced to slum like conditions. The design project seeks to propose an alternative model for urbanisation that incorporates the agricultural economy to improve the edge city sub-region of Vasai-Virar with examples at various scales.