by datta Nighut 
1. Introduction
Mumbai Development Plan 2034 Mumbai’s issues of inequality, overpopulation, and cramped living conditions are representative of larger urban India. The challenges that the city faces are large-scale, with rapid urbanization due to internal migration fueling the growth.
The city has evolved as an outcome of town planning schemes that began at the onset of the Industrial Revolution. It has been observed, time and again, that the city cannot afford to have a piecemeal and ad-hoc approach to growth management. Policymaking in relation to urban development has gone through a transition on different time scales of decades. Based on the evolution of national integrated urban policies, subsequent strategic economic shifts, and growth policies in the last few decades had to be more inclusive, equitable, sustainable, and long-term.
This need for long-term and sustainable growth brought the emphasis on land-use planning and other policy transitions, from discretionary development legislation to plan-based development legislation from the mid-1930s to the 2000s.
The paper sets out to investigate the Development Plan for Greater Bombay, formerly called the Mumbai Development Plan 2034. It comes at a time when nearly all the challenging issues the community is facing are related to the city’s design, including the issues of affordable housing, infrastructure deficit, and the need to design a response to issues of transport modal shift, higher density and parking management, environmental sustainability, economic development, and disaster prevention and response, and, above all, the concept of the right to the city as inclusion.
DP Remarks 2034 has the potential to define the characteristics of the metropolitan region of Mumbai, place the subcontinent on a different trajectory than at any time in the city’s history, and thus needs to be analyzed in detail.
1.1. Background of Urban Development Plans in Mumbai
Urban Development Plans in Mumbai trace their origins to the 1915 regulations, which were then replaced by the 1925 Act. Since then, there have been three official Development Plans for Greater Bombay that have functioned as the statutory mandates of spatial transformation of the city, and the first two Plans were from the post-Independence era.
These plans matched with the significant urban growth phases such as: a) expansion of the secondary or suburban phase; and b) economic liberalization. Mumbai has always been complex: the largest city with a high population density since the early 19th century, with practically no space for horizontal growth and expensive housing, an archipelago of seven islands.
Though a magnet for population, it also became home to an increasing number of households and communities seeking socio-economic security. Thus, it becomes pertinent to consider how this affected planning decisions.
Informal settlements have been dominant in Mumbai since the late 19th century, and Mumbai’s formal housing stock constitutes just about five percent of floor space, and the remaining floor space is created by unauthorized development over the past 50 years, and can be assumed to exceed that of the formal sector, which provides livelihood and jobs. In 2012, 55 percent of households were placed in slums, and in 2013, spaces like footpaths and streets were huddled – half in informal residential uses.
The urban poor live in homes that neither government nor market built, which are scaled into large slum enclaves spread out in suburbs and disconnected from the main city and mixed up with upper and very high-income groups’ housing units, government bungalows, defense installations, and business and IT parks.
The majority of these citizens do not have clean water supply, nor a sewage network, nor a connection to the electrical grid: to access basic utilities like public toilets, piped or otherwise water, or electricity, people pay an informal premium which is seven to ten times the official price. Given this background, it is indeed important to understand that the Development Plan has not been citizen-friendly at all, be it citizens living in poverty or otherwise.
Despite pro-poor measures in the Development Plan, it remains that the Development Plan doesn’t profile needs and linkages of the poor. The Development Plan needs a critical analysis of these valuable learning experiences of Mumbai.
1.2. Purpose and Significance of the Mumbai Development Plan 2034
1.2. Introduction The Mumbai Development Plan 2034 is a new generation plan in the era of data analytics and scientific planning. The city’s foremost problems, which include high population density, congestion in public transport, affordable housing shortage, poor quality of the built environment, and illicit development among others, have been included in the contents of this work with well-integrated and sound transdisciplinary perspectives.
The Development Plan has included several enablers in the form of creating new public open spaces, creating infrastructure for public health, reducing transit time, and shifting investment to the southern part of Mumbai. It is the beginning of transforming the plan document into a well-equipped mechanism for reforms that need to be implemented in the city. It is a policy document that ensures a future city for people, comprising a joint formulation of strategy and an implementation plan that is expected to deliver results to social processes.
1.2.2. Purpose and Significance The vision of the Development Plan is to transform the city of Mumbai into an inclusive, environmentally sustainable, livable, equitable, and competitive city.
The City Plan includes the desired growth in the Gross Domestic Product, population, employment, the required infrastructure, and the necessary open space per person. A vision of the development plan of the city explains the city’s ambition and direction.
The Mumbai Development Plan 2034 sets out the overarching paradigm that believes in the city’s capability to manage tremendous growth, on the shoulders of thematic reports. It reflects the economic aspiration of the city to grow in GSDP terms from a significant amount to a larger amount by 2034, translating to a compounded annual growth rate.
The plan includes some of the most holistic environmental sustainability targets to be achieved, affordability, equity, and employment from past development plans and laws. Driven by detailed data and scenario analysis until 2034, it provides answers to how much Mumbai needs to add over its existing urban services and a roadmap that indicates when this addition is to be made as per the demand.
2. Major Elements of the Mumbai Urban Development Plan for the Year 2034
Revisiting the APL and access to housing and other public services An interesting shift from the status quo is visible in the Mumbai Development Plan 2034, (DCPR- 2034 PDF) with the proposed floor space index increasing at a city or regional level and selected district geographical level.
The proposed Development Plan norms are being projected as a spatial policy intervention to change the regional pattern of economic development. The proposed Development Plan claims to increase affordable rental housing due to rational land use designation, a significant percentage of lands in existing development plan roads, and an increase in affordable housing that may be made available.
This would be mostly through incentivization in the form of higher growth-enhancing FSI. We must analyze the norms closely to check the probabilities of the proposed claims of reformed FSI.
The necessary statutory and regulatory changes have already been made part of the 2034 development plan. The current view of FSI-induced growth led to the belief that physical growth in terms of consumption of actual floor space as a percentage of GDP is a measure of wealth. Arithmetic calculations indicate the immense potential of growth premium over and above the gross project value of the real estate.
It makes money compared to other forms of economic activities in the region. At an economic level, global investment inflow also has the double effect of both capital appreciation and rent growth. So contextually, among city regions governed by semi-localized productivity, FSI mainly ensures the locality gains from large neighborhood tastes. Ideal housing Gini should also be at the minimum level in a neighborhood supported by social cohesion.
Therefore, would more FSI always result in less congestion due to more housing accessibility? In our current Indian context, consensus emerges on the hypothesis that agglomeration benefits require continual investment in social or policy capital, which is the high level of trust and healthy norms among local businesses and in the local government system. Gamman status is an output of the visible signals seen in the city. All things considered, the reform must have a reason for FSI when it supports regional productivity and reduces push factors for further economic activities.
2.1. Zoning Regulations and Land Use Planning
Zoning regulations specify the intended land use in ways similar to the land use plan. Nevertheless, development plans and zoning regulations are different in various ways. These plans guide and control the growth and development to ensure that they take place in ways that are of the greatest benefit to the city and its residents. The maps and handbook sheets, therefore, guide all aspects of physical development.
Zoning is an integral part of land use planning, and as it deals with the manner of using the land, it is also known as ‘use zoning’. Zoning tries to ensure compatibility between the different uses of land in the city so that no user of the land is adversely affected by the operations of the other users of the land in the vicinity.
Zoning also affects the form and density of an area. However, zoning is restricted to the regulation of the intensity of the use types. The term ‘intensity’ refers to the magnitude of development, and it can be represented in terms of similarities. The similarities of different intensities of development, such as low-density residential development against high-density residential development, can be measured and shown on a map.
2.2. Infrastructure Development and Transportation Planning
With a growing population, there is always increasing pressure on infrastructure. The world over, cities that are congested have a poor quality of life, and as such, efforts are always made to decongest them through proper transportation modes. While funds are a major constraint, land requirements further add hurdles to the process of building urban infrastructure.
The process of land acquisition meets stiff resistance, and the question that is frequently asked is whether there are options for decreasing land acquisition in transport infrastructure. The first part of the research deals with calculating the cost of land acquisition for proposed road projects in the revised development plan. During the research, various models and developments are some of the solutions that I would like to concentrate on so that if we adopt the construction of such infrastructure, there would be less land acquisition required.
The transportation infrastructure costs increase directly with it. Land requirements for the construction of infrastructure become a major issue. Stretches of roads developed as access-controlled have been reduced everywhere, with traffic speed plummeting.
One of the more frequent objections raised to the provision of better facilities for buses is that it requires taking space away from other uses, reducing street width, and ultimately causing travel delays. It is noted that given that the average inner-city arterial carries little peak period traffic, buses cause far less delay than commonly thought. Buses are deliberately made slow by traffic and signalization patterns. Concern arises about mediocre land use values, the lack of a competitive sector of the economy, the lack of a competitive banking market, the financial sector, and, in particular, the limited use of public revenue-generating property tax in financing local government expenses related to the development of urban transport.
2.3. Sustainable Development and Environmental Conservation
Sustainable development cannot be achieved without the consideration of environmental conservation. Environmental conservation simultaneously includes environmental protection and pollution control. Institutions enhance the control mechanisms.
Development Control Regulations provide restrictions, safeguards, and mechanisms in the draft development plan. The varied and diverse land-use zones are proposed with the intent to conserve the green and open spaces, forests, and more. Sewage treatment and solid waste management systems are planned in the draft development plan. Hill slopes and water system areas are to be protected from pollution by not allowing inevitable urbanization to pollute these areas.
Innovative pro-environmental provisions are not explicitly embraced in the draft development plan. On another note, the major concerns of the Development Control Regulations, land-use reservation plan, and development plan relate to its pro-environment initiatives.
The basic concept of the authorities in enacting a land-use structure that invites necessary water transport while alternatively developing and abusing the sea, creeks, rivers, nalas, and others, thereby increasing the flooding risk along with associated pollution and health risks, is questioned.
There are various provisions in the Development Control Regulations that comply with sundry environmental protection standards, such as annual maintenance and the removal of illegal growth in silt; the conservation of waterfronts and their facilities; and the prevention of hill slopes and water supply areas from pollution and the like.
But these are not adequate to curb the problem within the obligations. Development planning with sound policy may help in the prevention of this problem, rather than approaching it from the side of repeated and futile solutions.
3. Implementation Strategies
Planners use many techniques and tools to inform their decisions. Effective implementation strategies are necessary to ensure that the policies and programs chosen can be carried out successfully. This chapter covers the processes and the role of the various authorities and government agencies in managing the urban development process proposed in the Development Plan.
The MP is a statutory document, so it is obligatory and the responsibility of the three levels of governance, both the work of the Planning Department of all the municipal corporations in the state and the State and Central Town and Planning Department, to execute the development controls and the proposals at their respective levels in a coordinated manner.
The Mumbai Development Plan 2034 has to not only propose the strategy of development but also the process of managing the development in a systematic manner. This process is a transcendental perspective, and to a broader understanding, the responsibility of these authorities and government agencies changes with the change of the stage of the planning process, as they are the principal executing authorities of the development.
These authorities have to execute the policies, plans, and programs and give effect to all the development controls, organize, finance, and administer a tariff. It should be noted that the proposal for house setting up is different in each of the categories, but an orchestrated approach to all four categories listed is required. Preparation of monitoring and assessment mechanisms is a strategy of the stage of administration that has to be followed by each of the planning stages. Also, they have to respond to the election of the area, and if needed, the government has to help the municipal authorities and provide feedback.
3.1. Role of Government Agencies and Authorities
Local, state, and national government bodies play important roles in framing a regional and city regional plan, city development plan, and local area plan. These plans provide a macro perspective, sectoral and interdisciplinary linkage, sectoral and competitive status analysis, strategy and objectives, investment analysis, etc.
The final output of the local area plan in the form of a development plan provides physical output in terms of town planning and improvement areas reserve, amenities, facilities, and services, road and transportation, etc.
The agencies and schools provided in the legislature for local, statutory, technical, and financial support interact with various departments of urban planning and development, Government of Maharashtra, Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, City and Industrial Development Corporation, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, Housing and Development Bank, Slum Rehabilitation Authorities, and police, traffic police, fire department, education boards, local bodies, and organizations, etc.
The process of actual construction, design, costing, supervising, monitoring, collecting, and accumulation of funds is performed by these institutions and departments. These agencies have a multifunctional and personnel approach comprising dividing the nature of infrastructure into spatial categories and subcategories that require a mixed package of actions for development and creating the effect of synergy.
The actual capacity to develop left-behind and backward areas and regions should be vested in these agencies.
The agencies should streamline their role, function, and the delegation of power, department, and identification of ministerial responsibility, coordination with all other development agencies and local government, and ensuring the effectiveness of the expansion or backward region growth. Agencies should aim for all programs and the employment generated locally to utilize resource-based inputs and capital that should be locally developed, and in this case, the responsibility of the construction correlated with industrial estates management, particularly in the housing sector.
The public agency approach is top-down, where integrated decision-making and multitasking with a given capacity approach from the beginning is incorporated. The development provision with the consent of relevant stakeholders is essential, and revenue should also be given to the local area municipalities.
Restricting or dispersing these camps is a constitutional policy guideline and economic direction in the interest of industrial and economic planning departments. In fact, this is the strategy that will bring the synergy of government agencies working together into focus, with the national approach again related to the integrated public agencies through an interdepartmental way.
3.2. Public Participation and Stakeholder Engagement
The development plan is an opportunity for many actors to influence city planning. It is possible to involve the public in various points of the process and thus facilitate the exchange between administration and citizens.
This is a new approach and represents a move away from traditional administrative planning. Both the new Urban Development Policy and its aspect, the Mumbai Development Plan, call for increased transparency and staff involvement in city planning in order to advance the vision of a sustainable and inclusive city.
Through a comprehensive multi-stakeholder engagement process, the plan can integrate the full range of stakeholders, see the economy and environment as linked, and give both credibility and practical effect to the Mumbai Urban Development Policy.
While planning relies on policy, policy change should be based on the needs of the people and expert insights. Stakeholder engagement is a top priority, particularly in municipal government. Tools for engaging stakeholders were shared and implemented in workshops with municipal managers and council representatives.
Different methodologies were used to reach different sectors of society, including debates, focus groups, polls, scenario planning, and public meetings. The aim was to gather data and opinions from stakeholders and involve them in the development plan. The focus group sessions and questionnaires fostered dialogue on challenges, visions, ways to achieve goals, needs, fears, problems, and opportunities. Once the plan collects ideas and aspirations, the future scenario process begins, presenting the scenarios at workshops and exhibitions.
4. Challenges and Criticisms
The challenge of land acquisition for the plan, coupled with the added challenge of finding adequate, value-oriented rehabilitative locations, will be incredible.
This task appears to be a policy-driven afterthought, as if a Transit Oriented Development policy was decided upon and later added an Affordable Housing for All component without directly addressing the legislative framework and legal complexities involved in land acquisition. The draft acknowledges that 60% of land across the city is privately held. Unauthorized housing persists in 92,000 of the city’s buildings.
Affordability is thus only partially addressed. The affordable housing proposed would operate under four income to cost ranges, slightly above the third range. Additionally, the cost of housing could be repaid over 20 to 30 years depending on the income of the purchaser. Policymakers have not directly addressed the financial situation of the majority of slum dwellers whose incomes are low.
For months, slum dwellers’ immediate needs are ignored during the city’s rebuilding process. Families will continue to live in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, with no immediate improvement. Economic growth does not benefit the poor, increasing their vulnerability. Mass homelessness and insecurity are imminent.
The Mumbai Development Plan fails to address these issues and instead focuses on speculative and opportunistic urban development. It promises investment from around the world but fails to provide permanent housing for local citizens. This plan mirrors colonial urban planning ideals, aiming for transformation rather than patchwork solutions. One of the most basic challenges in front of the plan is the pace of implementation.
Regulatory inertia, a bureaucratic ethos that breeds delay, will cap the new plan’s potential for transformation. All these, put together under the light of such history, make the draft a subject for a policy analysis of what not to do and a warning against expecting an ‘Opportunity Maximizing’ draft development plan. As a philosophical school of thought, reading the history of urban theory cannot determine the plan’s success or failure in future implementation.
This is a plan which seems to have forgotten its own eyes, been blinded by the future, and hence proposes a body of rights and obligations without any principle for selective application. This begs the question of whether urban planning in Mumbai is possible while accommodating all residents. For the historical amplitude in the events that have led from embeddedness to the draft Mumbai Development Plan.
4.1. Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation Issues
4.1.1. Acquiring and providing land in a densely populated urban environment is cumbersome and subject to multiple legal and value determinations. The legal procedure consists of paying compensation in accordance with the value of the land as determined by its current use.
The moral issue relates to the displacement of a community that has invested mentally, emotionally, and culturally in a space, for reasons that generally exceed its immediate needs. Seventy-five percent of the land required to implement DP 2034 is privately owned, meaning that the MCGM has to negotiate with a plethora of owners for its timely acquisition, not considering titling problems and different occupancy structures.
For instance, in the 1991 DPs, 30% of affordable housing options or corridors were lands that had been caught up in legal disputes since 1910. To acquire land for public interests in the short to medium term, we still have to rely on the deep pockets of the State.
It can also mean that vulnerable or small landowners receive windfall compensation, courtesy of the extensive network of investors, real estate agents, and lawyers who see acquisition as a state-granted jackpot.
These have broader implications in terms of social inequities in local installations and inter-community dynamics. Sometimes, recuperating a fragmented purchase can be as challenging as when a hurried State acquires beyond its cash reserves; the slow release of compensation minus development charges further exacerbates this process.
The poorest or most vulnerable of these owners—illiterate, elderly women, Dalits, fisherfolk—are often the very ones whose claims are not documented, so their legality can be questioned. Only 11% of the population is in slums in K West, and the rest is dutifully paying its Development Plan-mandated illegal construction penalties by queuing up at the MCGM. A rehabilitation plan for a slum population whose wadas reflect a generation of savings is different from a flat for a public works staff’s family at Khar.
4.2. Affordability and Housing for All
4.2.1. Affordability and Adequate Housing Different aspects related to housing have been critically analyzed in the foregoing paragraphs.
This section takes up the discourse on affordable housing in the context of the revised development plan. Mumbai has 4,196,251 households. The township population is about 13,594,000 as classified in the census. Although the per-capita average annual income of Mumbaikars is considered to be three to four times more than the national average, the basic hygienic norm of toilets per capita (1:25) according to the fecal sludge management policy, which entitles Mumbai to have 1,546,480 toilets, has not been achieved.
The majority may be earning more money than average, but this figure may not be true for 65-70% of Mumbai’s workforce that is earning a minimum daily wage. A corporation can have a revenue deficit but is still required to provide impetus for infrastructure creation, especially affordable housing. In the development plan, there has not only been an emphasis on infrastructure but also the prospect of financing after increasing the city’s floor rate.
This is not only flawed but also highlights the fact that affordability is not the mainstay in the renewed development plan. The housing shortage in the Greater Mumbai municipal region is 19.69 lakh, with a 99.52% housing shortage in the EWS/LIG sector.
4.2.2. Towards a More Affordable Housing Paradigm The demand for affordable housing is therefore significant. The earlier provisions and the amendments are grossly inappropriate to address the housing stock. Adopting the provision of regulation, particularly at the floor area benefit index of 1, is a flawed policy.
This propensity to contribute to the actual housing stock of the city is highly unlikely, as should also be evident from the inherent discussion on maximum housing potential.
The new development plan therefore starts with an expanded chapter on housing, which commences with policy 1: “To provide housing for all income groups, this policy will be implemented through physical and social infrastructure and housing facilities, including basic amenities, roads, social amenities, rental housing, and the gradual provision of social housing at affordable prices.
Relevant policies and regulations related to housing and promoting inclusive cities have been highlighted with changed words and methodology.
The formulated policy is based on addressing the housing needs of the urban poor, and it also requires improved civic services. There is an innovation put forth in the framework of the development plan that a city like Mumbai should experiment with: the concept of booking a plot for the urban poor within every development paradigm, earmarking the land for the urban poor. More innovative approaches to affordability are being listed in the second last chapter on housing, namely ‘recreational ground, affordable housing, and promotion of compact cities.
The policy clearly highlights the need to reintegrate the urban poor and support their growth for the urban transition towards urban poverty reduction. However, the policies don’t seem to appear within the planning approach of the development plan in the zonal regulations that would give an impetus to the rights of various slum communities, nomadic tribes, denotified tribes, and the informal population in the city.
5. Conclusion and Future Prospects
The Mumbai Development Plan 2034 is a visionary plan to address the new urban challenges of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region and to shape a new path for a ‘collaborative and productive city.’ The plan succeeds in adopting global trends in redevelopment to address the issues of housing development in the city.
This plan stands out as the first plan that calls for only 80% of the floor space index of the Mother Document and another 20% for ‘redevelopment with green strategy.’
Two new institutional mechanism programs, such as the Community Participation Programme (to ensure that the development is ‘for the people, of the people, and by the people’) and the Commerce Facade Programme (to pay attention to the working class of Mumbai who are the major contributors to the GDP of Mumbai), of the plan are implemented through dedicated lines of action plans from consultants.
A minor retrospective look at the implementation strategies is that 2034 is better planned than 1915, but there are some issues that need to be addressed. The public was consulted widely during the formulation of the plan of 2034, and we need to regularize the participation of the public in this plan since public informal participation in this plan is likely to be more. We need to introduce a tool in the plan to insert a tracking system for the government’s accountability towards plan implementation.
The proper analysis of research is required to implement some strategic indicators. Given this, the paper gives us future prospects as a roadmap for a more flexible and adaptable approach, recognizing that the dynamics of the city may change and affect the course of the plan.
There is a need to discuss the city’s many stakeholders and to collaborate with them. We need to pursue our research and continue our periodic assessments of the plan on a time-to-time basis and carry out the necessary adjustments in the policy accordingly.
Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM):https://dpremarks.mcgm.gov.in/dp2034/
Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI): https://www.udri.org/
Mumbai Development Plan for Greater PDF 2014-2034
What is the mumbai development plan 2034 ppt pdf
Thane Development Plan 2026 & Master Plan: Shaping the Future of Thane
