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GOSSIP AND THE CITY INVESTIGATIONS INTO URBAN INFORMATION SYSTEMS

GOSSIP AND THE CITY INVESTIGATIONS INTO URBAN INFORMATION SYSTEMS PRASAD SHETTY INDIA MA THESIS, 2003, UMC 9 THESIS SUPERVISOR: FORBES DAVIDSON THESIS READER: Prof. MEINE PETER VAN DIJK INSTITUTE FOR HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT STUDIES AND ERASMUS UNIVERSITY P.O. Box 1935 3000BX Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Phone: +31 10 402 1560, Fax: +31 10 404 5671, Email: [email protected]

GOSSIP AND THE CITY: INVESTIGATIONS INTO INFORMAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS, PRASAD SHETTY, UMC 9, IHS 2003

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Preface Professor Meine Peter van Dijk’s (2000) essay “Summer in the City” sets the tone for this research. While in

the essay, Professor Van Dijk claims the importance of inhabitants in the city; he celebrates the

decentralisation processes in the cities that offer opportunities for the inhabitants to participate in the

development of their cities. In such a theoretical and actual context, Professor van Dijk locates the role of the

new urban managers to curate the interests of the inhabitants along with those of various other actors and

agencies.

In my own brief involvement with urban research in the metropolis of Mumbai, there has been a significant

realisation that urban realms being shaped by the interests of innumerable actors and agents. Mapping of

these interests however remain beyond the scope of scientific empiricism of objective truth. Moreover, the

contexts of my city of Mumbai describe how this scientific empiricism is used to legitimise actions of

dominant interests. Hence conceptualising of urban realms in terms of their actors and interest becomes

fundamental not only to understand them but also to intervene in them. These interests are in the realm of

subjectivity and political incorrectness. Perhaps scientific empiricism does not have the tools to

conceptualise them. Perhaps new tools are required. The primary enquiry in this thesis is towards setting

such tools.

The thesis undertakes investigations in the area of Urban Information System, where it suggests that certain

power and interests make these information systems. The impact of such information system being that it

becomes an un-debatable reality legitimised by the sanctions of objective scientific empiricism. And this

information system then becomes a base for urban interventions to be conceived. Conventionally, this

information system is made by what I choose to call “Hard Information”. These include measurable data on

land, incomes, age and other quantities. On the other hand, they invariable miss “Soft Information” which are

more qualitative. Even when this soft information is recognised, it gets filtered though the scientific models

popularly described through ‘indicators’.

The primary attempt of the thesis is to make a case for conceptualising soft information the way they affect. It

aims to involve the interests of Professor van Dijk’s urban inhabitants in the processes of urban

development, and further aims at formulating methods for such involvements. The title uses the term

“Gossip” as a generic term to describe the soft information like opinions, aspirations, biases and linkages.

The overtone of Gossip being subjective and politically incorrect is intended since there is a significant

pretension of conventional information system being neutral whereas the research proves it being not the

case. Further “Gossip” is also used as a mapping instrument to map soft information in an informal manner.

The thesis is primarily undertaken as an academic investigation into the processes of urban development

and hopes to inform these processes.


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Acknowledgements I would like to thank the Netherlands Government for the financial support for my education in Rotterdam, my

institute in Mumbai, the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute For Architecture and Environmental Studies

(KRVIA) for granting me this sabbatical and the Kamla Raheja Foundation for the financing my sabbatical.

This research has been a product of my involvement with three organisations that are harbour rigorous

investigations into the problems between urban development practice and academic research. These

institutions are: my parent organisation in Mumbai, the Design Cell (research and consultancy wing of

KRVIA), which articulated my concerns; my institute in Rotterdam, the Institute for Housing and Urban

Development Studies (IHS) where this thesis is written, which provided an environment for critical evaluation

of theory and practice and equipped my concerns with pragmatic methodological devices; and finally the

Trust for Collective Research Initiatives (CRIT) whose brief but promising history has already provided

substantially for my experiments in the real contexts in the metropolis of Mumbai. I sincerely thank my

teachers, colleagues, friends, well-wishers, critics and patrons of these organisations.

As this dissertation is presented, I am grateful to a number of people who helped with the conceiving,

formulation and articulation of the work. My supervisor Forbes Davidson has been patient with my work and

his encouraging criticism has been able to ground me into the realities of practice. His greatest contribution

to this work has been to make this work bridge the gap between academic research and useful development

strategies. I would like to thank my thesis reader Prof. Meine Peter van Dijk for his valuable criticisms to the

work. I need to mention my friends Prof Anirudh Paul and Kausik Mukhopadhyay whose encouragements

and criticisms have substantially articulated my concerns along with Rupali Gupte for her sharp criticisms

and her brilliant explorations in urban mapping, that have tremendously influenced this formative articulations

of this work.

This thesis has drawn from several discussions that I had with my friends and colleagues here in Rotterdam

who have informed this work through the immense experiences of their own context. I need to specifically

mention Marco Ledon, Lorena Acosta and Victoria Mogni for their valuable criticisms and most vital

questions that articulated the direction of my work. I need to also mention Pauli Heikkinen, Rania Tarazi and

Sukanto Toding with whom I had my initial discussions towards the development of my theoretical

formulations. In the academic development of this work, I would specifically mention Florentina Iugan, whose

genius conceptualisation of “opportunity-planning” helped significantly to conclude this work and extended its

scope towards informing further research.

A substantial contribution to this work has been from my colleagues and students in Mumbai. I would

specifically mention my colleagues from the Design Cell and CRIT who have not only helped me to put

together the humungous data in this thesis, but also have articulated several theoretical formulations. I want

to specifically mention Rohit Muzumdar, Nilesh Rajadhyaskha, Yogita Lokhande, Nikhil Khadilkar and Vinesh

Iyer for their energetic, motivated and spontaneous support for this work.

I would like to thank the Residents’ Association of Bandra Reclamation, officials from MHADA, MMRDA,

MCGM and the various people, private practitioners, journalists whom I interviewed during my fieldwork in

Mumbai. I want to thank my mother, sister, niece and the staff of KRVIA whose silent support has always

been hopeful on me. Finally I would like to mention all my friends and classmates in Rotterdam; and my

colleagues and students in Mumbai who have provided an encouraging environment during these sixteen

months of my education.


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Summary In the first parts, the thesis investigates into the various aspects related to the making of urban information

systems. It makes three arguments regarding conventional urban information systems. Firstly, it suggests

that there is a relationship between urban information systems and urban interventions. Secondly it argues

that the urban information systems are not neutral and suffer from several problems of power, interests,

methods of making and ignoring soft information. Due to these problems in the urban information system, the

urban interventions remain inappropriate. Lastly, the paper contends that the conventional information

systems require to be elaborated with soft information where the people (whom the information system

represents) participate in the making of this elaboration. The first parts of the paper hope, that with such

elaborations, more relevant and appropriate interventions can be articulated.

The paper further formulates methods to conceptualise soft data, involve people and possibilities of such

information system entering the mainstream planning process. The formulations made in the later parts of

the thesis are tested on the actual conditions in the city of Mumbai. Structure of the Paper The paper is structured in Four Parts:

The First Part is included in Chapter 1, 2 and 3 where the problems of conventional information systems are

identified and the intentions of the research are clarified. Chapter 1 is an overall introduction to the nature of

the problem. Chapter 2 undertakes a theoretical critique of the conventional urban information system. And

Chapter 3 elaborates on the methodology and research design for the thesis.

The second part of the thesis is included in Chapter 4, which undertakes discussions on five cases of urban

development in the city of Mumbai. The main aim of this part is to establish links between urban intervention

systems and urban interventions and to prove that urban interventions remain inappropriate because of the

shortcomings in the information system. The chapter further describes the main components of the

conventional information systems, nature of shortcomings in it and the inappropriateness of the interventions.

The third part is described in Chapter 5 and 6. This part undertakes theoretical articulations from the

discussions in the case studies and based on the analysis of the shortcomings of urban information system,

formulates strategies to overcome these shortcomings. Chapter 5 discussed overall strategies of making the

new information system, its contents, the players involved and the means in which it could enter mainstream

planning processes. Chapter 6 undertakes a theoretical survey towards articulating ways of making the new

information systems.

The fourth part, which is in Chapter 7, describes an experiment undertaken to apply the formulations from

the third part of the thesis. The experiment is based on a real case of urban development in Mumbai and is

towards setting a new urban information system.

The conclusions in Chapter 8 summarises the chief formulations of the research, reflects critically on the

achievements and shortcomings of the research and further sets up a new agenda for further research.


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List of Tables Table 1.1: Five Projects and Policy in Mumbai.......................................................................................................2 Table 3.1: Research Matrix for five case studies..................................................................................................14 Table 4.1: Changes in Slum Re-development Policy in comparison to prevalent Information Systems..........18 Table 4.2: Summary of projects answering the research questions ...................................................................27 Table 4.3: Problems of Information Systems and result on Interventions ..........................................................28 Table 4.4: Success in implementation of objectives of the project/policy ...........................................................28 Table 4.5: Actors, Aspirations and Other Issues in the Projects/Policies ...........................................................29 Table 4.6: Relevance of Interventions ...................................................................................................................29 List of Figures Figure Source Figure 2.1 Relationship between Field, UIS and Interventions Author Figure 2.2 Method of making Conventional UIS Author Figure 2.3 Method of making Conventional UIS with GIS Author Figure 2.4 Problems with the GIS Author Figure 2.5 Problems with the conventional information system Author Figure 3.1 The Research Design Author Figure 4.1 Mapping by the NGO of slums Website: www.sparcindia.org Figure 4.2 Slum Redevlopment Scheme Design Cell, KRVIA Figure 4.3 Physical Plan of the Mill Lands Design Cell, KRVIA Figure 4.4 Redevelopment of Dilapidated Building Design Cell, KRVIA Figure 4.5 Documentation of Heritage Precinct Design Cell, KRVIA Figure 4.6 Flyover in Mumbai Design Cell, KRVIA Figure 5.1 Problems with the Conventional Information System Author Figure 5.2 The necessary Link of new information system Author Figure 6.1 Means to trap Gossip Author Figure 6.2 Stages to develop the new information system Author Figure 7.1 Newspaper clipping on the development of open space Times of India, 22 June 03 Figure 7.2 “Community Diary”, The New Information System CRIT Figure 7.3 Identification of Horizons CRIT Figure 7.4 Questionnaire to the Community CRIT Figure 7.5 Actors in the Context CRIT List of Abbreviations CRIT Trust for Collective Research Initiatives (NGO of academicians researching on urban issues) DCR Development Control Regulations GOI Government of India GOM Government of Maharashtra IHS Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Rotterdam KRVIA Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute For Architecture and Environmental Studies, Mumbai MbPT Mumbai Port Trust MCGM Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai MMRDA Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority MSRDC Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation NHSS Nivara Hakk Suraksha Samiti (NGO working with housing issues for poor) Rs Rupees (Indian Currency) (exchange rate is about Rs 50 per 1 US$ in 2003) SPA Special Planning Authority SPARC Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (NGO working with poverty issues) SRA Slum Redevlopment Authority SRD Slum Redevelopment Scheme UDRI Urban Design Research Institute


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CONTENTS

Preface................................................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ...............................................................................................................................................iii Summary............................................................................................................................................................... iv Structure of the Paper.......................................................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ......................................................................................................................................................... v List of Figures ........................................................................................................................................................ v List of Abbreviations.............................................................................................................................................. v

1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................................1

1.1. FIRST POINT OF ENTRY: THE MAP AND THE PLANNING CONCERN ...............................................1 1.2. SECOND POINT OF ENTRY: THE PLANNING PROCESSES IN THE CITY OF MUMBAI ...................1 1.3. CONCLUDING FORMULATIONS AND RESEARCH AGENDA................................................................3

1.3.1. Problem Statement..............................................................................................................................3 1.3.2. Research Objectives ...........................................................................................................................3

2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 1: A CRITIQUE OF URBAN INFORMATION SYSTEMS...........................4

2.1. INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................................4 2.2. PART 1: DEFINITIONS .................................................................................................................................4 2.3. PART 2: DISCUSSIONS ON THE PROBLEMS OF CONVENTIONAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS......6

2.3.1. The Problems Of Power And Interest ................................................................................................6 2.3.2. The Problem Of Authoritative Objectivity ...........................................................................................7 2.3.3. The Problems of Structure and Methodology ....................................................................................8 2.3.4. Problems of Soft Data .......................................................................................................................10

2.4. PART 3: A CASE FOR CONCEPTUALISING SOFT DATA.....................................................................11 2.5. PART 4: CONCLUDING QUESTIONS AND POSSIBILITIES .................................................................11

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.........................................................................................................................13

3.1. TASK 1: CRITIQUE OF THE CONVENTIONAL URBAN INFORMATION SYSTEM.............................13 3.2. TASK 2: RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND INTERVENTIONS ................14 3.3. TASK 3: SET UP A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK TOWARDS A NEW INFORMATION SYSTEM ..15 3.4. TASK 4: EXPERIMENT OF CREATING A NEW INFORMATION SYSTEM ..........................................15

4. INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND PLANNING PROCESS: 5 CASES OF DEVELOPMENT IN MUMBAI..16

4.1. INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................................................16 4.2. CASE 1: SLUM REDEVELOPMENT SCHEME ........................................................................................16 4.3. CASE 2: MILL LAND REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT..............................................................................19 4.4. CASE 3: CESS RULE FOR REHABILITATION OF DILAPIDATED BUILDINGS...................................21 4.5. CASE 4: HERITAGE CONSERVATION REGULATION ..........................................................................23 4.6. CASE 5: FIFTY-FIVE FLYOVERS PROJECT...........................................................................................25 4.7. SUMMARY OF THE CASES ......................................................................................................................27 4.8. CONCLUSIONS...........................................................................................................................................28


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5. FORMULATION FROM CASES AND EMERGING STRATEGIES ...............................................................30

5.1. FORMULATIONS FROM CASES ..............................................................................................................30 5.2. STRATEGISING FROM THE FORMULATION.........................................................................................31

5.2.1. New Information System: Complimentary Elaboration rather than an alternative ........................31 5.2.2. Who should make it?.........................................................................................................................32 5.2.3. What should it contain?.....................................................................................................................33 5.2.4. How should it enter mainstream planning? .....................................................................................33

6. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 2: TOWARDS A NEW INFORMATION SYSTEM.....................................35

6.1. CONTEXT OF THE NEW INFORMATION SYSTEM: THE EVE OF INTERVENTION .........................35 6.2. THE FORM OF THE NEW INFORMATION SYSTEM..............................................................................35 6.3. THE BOUNDARIES OF THE NEW INFORMATION SYSTEM................................................................36 6.4. THE CONTENTS OF THE NEW INFORMATION SYSTEM AND CLUES TO MAP THEM..................37

6.4.1. Character of the context....................................................................................................................37 6.4.2. Interests involved in the context .......................................................................................................38 6.4.3. Linkages of the context .....................................................................................................................39 6.4.4. Using Gossip as a mapping tool.......................................................................................................39

6.5. USING THE NEW INFORMATION SYSTEM............................................................................................41

7. TOWARDS A NEW MAP: EXPLORING POSSIBILITIES OF MAKING A NEW MAP................................42

7.1. THE CONTEXTS OF THE EXPERIMENT.................................................................................................42 7.2. THE PROJECT ............................................................................................................................................42 7.3. THE PROCESS ...........................................................................................................................................43

7.3.1. The problem of conceptualisation: The idea of a Community Diary ..............................................43 7.3.2. The problem of conceptualising interests: Theoretical Formulations ............................................44 7.3.3. Mapping Interests: Activating the Informal Information System.....................................................45 7.3.4. Survey Results...................................................................................................................................46 7.3.5. Survey Conclusions...........................................................................................................................48

7.4. LEARNING FROM THE EXPERIMENT.....................................................................................................49 7.5. THE STATUS OF THE EXPERIMENT: THE PROJECT CONTINUES...................................................49 7.6. CONCLUSIONS: WHAT THE EXPERIMENT DID AND WHAT IT DID NOT .........................................49

8. CONCLUSIONS: NEW QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS .............................................................................51

8.1. SUMMARY OF THE RESEARCH ..............................................................................................................51 8.1.1. Critique of Conventional Information Systems ................................................................................51 8.1.2. The relationship between Information Systems and Interventions ................................................51 8.1.3. Setting up an agenda and method in theory for a new Information System .................................51 8.1.4. An Experiment with creating a new information system .................................................................52

8.2. CONCLUSIONS FROM THE RESEARCH................................................................................................52 8.3. NEW QUESTIONS ......................................................................................................................................53 8.4. AGENDA FOR FURTHER RESEARCH: OPPORTUNITY PLANNING ..................................................54

REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................57


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1. INTRODUCTION 1.1. FIRST POINT OF ENTRY: THE MAP AND THE PLANNING CONCERN I would begin by elaborating on the idea of “Planning Concerns”. In developing a strategy for interventions, the “concerns” behind form an important part. It is these concerns that conceive visions and develop plans and processes to execute them. These concerns hence remain the core of a planning exercise. One of the tasks undertaken in this work is to investigate into the processes, interests and the instruments that articulate the “Planning Concerns”. Philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari attribute the instrument of a “map” as one of the primary articulators of the planning concern (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). Map for them is more of a generic term that includes the definitions of a far more wider Information System as well as its representation and not merely factual information. They insist on “making a map and not a tracing” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). Hence a map considered not merely a representation of the reality, but is also a powerful tool to imagine the reality, to construct it, to understand it and further, based on such an understanding, intervene in it. I would undertake a far more elaborate analysis of the Information Systems in the next chapter. This link between the Deleuze and Guttari’s Map (Information System) and the planning concern is one of the primary investigations of this work. The constrains of this work forces me to focus around the Urban Landscape and I chose the most familiar landscape of Mumbai as a site to undertake this investigation. Hence the focus is on “Urban Information Systems” of Mumbai. To explore the link between “Planning Concerns” and “Urban Information Systems”, the concept of “conceptualisation” becomes crucial. Conceptualisation here refers to the process and product of understanding a certain situation. Simply, it is how and what one sees in the situation. For example, a school could be understood as a set of rooms, or a set of people, or a producer of knowledge, or a seat of power so on and so forth. These are all conceptualisations of a school. To make changes in such a school, one needs to be concerned. This concern is developed through the conceptualisation of the school. Problems in such a school are located in the concern and hence in the conceptualisation. Deleuze and Guattari’s Map becomes the instrument of such conceptualisation. Benedict Anderson calls this conceptualisation as “imagining” (Anderson, 83). I detail the relevant part of his thesis in Chapter two. James Corner suggests that the Map further becomes the basis from which interventions are conceived (Corner, 1999). He indicates that the Map becomes a future projector of the system from where one could launch interventions. At this point, for our purposes, we could conclude that Urban Information Systems are instrumental in forming the conceptualisation of the urban issue, which in turn inform the planning concern, and these concerns articulate the problems and set strategies for urban interventions. Having prematurely established “Urban Information Systems” as one of the most important hinges in the Urban Development process, I set up another task for this thesis, which is, to investigate into the processes of developing the urban information systems in the city. Chapter two details a critique of Conventional Urban Information Systems, identifying its problems and further making a case for its elaboration. 1.2. SECOND POINT OF ENTRY: THE PLANNING PROCESSES IN THE CITY OF MUMBAI While the above schematic deliberations suggest a theoretical entry to this thesis, certain other problems in the Planning Processes in the city of Mumbai trigger another entry point. In several instances of urban interventions, the interventions have either not met their set objectives or have triggered several other problems. I would briefly sketch the landscape of contemporary Mumbai as a background to further the discussion. The metropolis of Mumbai has seen significant shifts in its cultural landscapes in recent years with the liberalised economy of the global city showing many consequences on local cultures. The changes in the


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location of the formal industrial sector have been one of the first instances of these shifts. Local productions have been terminated and newer centralities of productions have been established. The cadaver of the earlier production units including the labour has been left to decay. The space previously occupied by them is being hurriedly co-opted by the manifestations of the new economy. The city no longer allows any protected labour organisation or indigenous enterprise in production (Shetty, 2002). Along with de-formalising labour, the economy has created a new middle class in the city. This new middle class has to be distinguished from the earlier middle class because of its affording and consuming capabilities. This has become the most powerful group in the city where all productions are aimed towards luring its aspirations. Along with this new middle class, there exists another layer of the informal city. They exist simultaneously in the interstitials of the city. These may be the hawkers, the household maid or any kind of service labour who do not enjoy the infrastructure but serves the new consumer group. The polarisation between these two sets, the new-middle class and the informal labour is considerably increasing and sometimes shows violent consequences like the riots in the early 90s. Along with these two distinct groups, there exist many other interlinked interest groups in the city like the state machinery, the NGO’s, the political parties and the large corporate. The metropolis could be seen as a contested domain of these actors and agencies (Shetty, 2002). The rapid urbanisation overlapped with changes in the economy have manifested in several problematic urban issues, these include rapid informalisation of labour, derelict industrial lands, dilapidation of urban building and infrastructure, increasing traffic densities, increasing informal settlements and loss of urban heritage. In such a new landscape of the city, certain interventions were undertaken to deal with the above issues. Their impacts however remain inappropriate. A cursory survey of five projects and policies would indicate the inappropriateness. Different actors initiated these projects in the past decade of the city. ISSUE INTERVENTION IMPACT

1 Slum redevelopment policy

Large number of informal settlements with very poor living conditions

Providing of free houses to the slum dwellers

Slum Dwellers sold their houses, developers lost interest in developing, and new slums are formed

2 Mill Land Redevelopment

Closure of Fifty Seven Textile Mills

Development of an master plan to reuse the Industrial lands

Huge resistance from the Mill Owners as well as the Labour, Project transformed

3 Policy of Cessed Buildings

Nineteen thousand old and dilapidated buildings

Setting up of a policy for reconstruction using private developers with provision of additional development rights

Urban Densities increased, rapid gentrifications threatening infrastructure

4 Policy of Heritage Conservation

Degradation and negligence of built heritage in the city

Identification and grading of heritage buildings and setting up of a policy for their protection

Restricted increase of built area increasing prices, buildings had no incentive to be maintained

5 Project of 55 bridges North-South Traffic being slow and time consuming

Increase of road area by building 55 bridges

Number of cars increased, the trains have become more crowded

Table 1.1: Five Projects and Policy in Mumbai Based on the formulations in the first part of this chapter, I attribute the inappropriateness of these projects to the inappropriate Urban Information System that were followed in the conceptualisation of the issues. This sets the other task of the research, which is to establish and examine the link between Urban Information Systems and Urban Interventions.


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1.3. CONCLUDING FORMULATIONS AND RESEARCH AGENDA The above two entries suggest two useful formulations: • There is a relation between Urban Information Systems and Urban Interventions • The appropriateness of Urban Interventions depend upon the appropriateness of the Urban Information

Systems Also the above two entries articulate the problem that is intended to be addressed in the thesis along with the research objectives: 1.3.1. Problem Statement The conventional Urban Information Systems remain inadequate to understand the field and hence the intervention based on such information systems remains inappropriate. Based on such a problem statement, I set two objectives for the research, the first is an investigative one and the second is the exploratory one. 1.3.2. Research Objectives 1. To understand the relationship between the field (Urban Site), Urban Information Systems and Urban

Interventions 2. To explore the processes of elaborating conventional Urban Information System to facilitate appropriate

Urban Interventions


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2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 1: A CRITIQUE OF URBAN INFORMATION SYSTEMS 2.1. INTRODUCTION This chapter discusses the issue of Urban Information System and analyses it theoretically. I have set the scope of this chapter towards making a case for an informal information system after problematising the conventional information system. The informal information system is the information system built not through legitimate and conventional processes but with the aim to include the aspirations and opinions of people that often get missed in the conventional information system. This makes the conventional information systems susceptible to biases of power and interest. I have taken certain academic liberties in the paper of mixing methods utilising strategies of journalistic writings. While I begin the paper with a doubtful contention, I build it up with regular historic and analytical surveys and finally conclude with a playfully serious strategy. The intention is not casual, but it is rather to use history and theory towards raising new questions and formulating newer possibilities. I do not explore these possibilities in this paper, but introduce them hoping to explore them in a much elaborate work. The paper is structured in four parts: Part one deal with introducing the concepts of Urban Information Systems. This part establishes Urban Information System as an ambiguous and complex concept and further argues that these systems become the base for not only understanding the society, but also to conceive interventions. I have briefly discussed other aspects relating to representation in this section without detailing them. Part two details the four problems of Conventional Information Systems relating to power and interest; methodology; objectivity and soft data. The problems of power and interests are articulated through a historic survey towards proving that certain interests have always made information systems for specific purposes of control. The problems methodology, structure and objectivity are based largely on the works of contemporary critics and theoreticians with an analytical criticism on the specific process of developing conventional information systems. I critique the aspects of technological innovations from a technical methodological orientation. The cultural critique of the digital divide is important here, but not discussed since it is a familiar idea in contemporary times. I introduce the problem of soft data not getting included in mainstream information systems but detail this aspect in the next part. Part three makes a case for Soft Data after introducing the problems in the previous part. It clarifies the concept of soft data, argues for the inclusion of soft data into the mainstream information system and discusses certain cases that attempt to conceptualise the soft data since the sixties. Examples are available of such processes before the last mid century and also in traditional and folk art and literature, but the examples after sixties are important because they start the process with the critique of the conventional processes. I also introduce the idea of using gossip as a tool to conceptualise soft data. Part four essentially summarises the paper towards formulating the research agenda of the forthcoming work. I sets up questions and objectives and also skims through certain strategies for dealing with the problem. 2.2. PART 1: DEFINITIONS In this part I would attempt to develop a working understanding of certain terms that would help in launching the discussion further. Before I enter into the discussions on information systems in detail, it would be necessary to spend some time in understanding the term “Information Systems” and what are the components, which are the actors involved and what are the purposes of it. These questions would be discussed in detail in the next two parts. Here I would like to introduce the complexities involved in the term. “Information systems” is a fairly


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ambiguous term. Along with including the actual elements of collecting, storing and accessing data, it encompasses in it the aspects of mapping, representing, converting data into information and knowledge, conceptualising societies and finally using them. The complexity in the system is that there cannot be a single agency that makes, keeps and controls such systems, because it is not possible. And the ambiguity is that information system encompasses within it such large number of activities, processes and players that it becomes difficult to identify one single thing as an information system. For example, for a city planner, the information system is just not the maps that he/she has drawn, but also all the statistics that are produced by his/her colleagues in other departments. But this still is not completely the information system, because the planner needs to know about what his bosses and the politicians think. He/she cannot of course miss any kind of information that he/she hears regarding the illegal transactions that happen in the city, nor can the opinions of people in his/her neighbourhood and other neighbourhoods and the legitimacy of such opinions could not be missed. Further, his/her family and the entire network that he/she has established laboriously over the years could not be ignored. The list seems unending and this is just the case of the city planner. Other professions have their own information systems. It would be worthwhile to understand the information system of a local pick-pocketeer. And they are all a part of the Urban Information System. But seldom all of them are really considered by the planner. Mapping refers to the processes of creating “Data Scapes” (MVRDV 1999), a term that is developed by a Dutch planner Winny Mass. While mapping include aspects of observing, collecting, analysing and representing data, “Data Scapes are actual products of these processes. The most prominent kinds of “Data Scapes” have been the Census (and their graphical representations) and the Map that are used to understand the city. “Data Scapes” in other words are the tactile products that become synonymous with Urban Information Systems. I shall use the critiques of the “Map” and “census” to further understand the concept of Urban Information Systems. I would take the liberty of replacing the words map and census with “Data Scapes” as it conceptualises within it a more holistic understanding towards formation of the Urban Information System. Furthermore, the ideas of “Data Scapes” and “Urban Information Systems” are fairly new and require such historical nomenclature precedents. James Corner (1999), in his critique of “mapping” suggests that a “Data Scape” (map) mediates between being not only an archaeological excavator but also a future projector. “Archaeological Excavator” here would imply that the Data Scape is a tool towards gathering all necessary data and formulating the processes that go into the understanding of the society. On the other hand “Future Projector” would mean that the Data Scape is a base from where future developments are conceived. If we apply these idea to Urban Information Systems, then we could conclude that these systems are not only reflectors of the society that they represent (archaeological excavator), but also are instruments from where future interventions could be launched (future projector). The focus of this paper would be in the “archaeological excavator” aspect of the Urban Information System. But I would argue that the rational for, the type and nature of the future projections depend largely on the way the urban information system is made or on the archaeology of it. To articulate the idea of “Archaeological Excavator” further, I would introduce the concept of “imagination” developed by Benedict Anderson (1983). Anderson suggests that

“Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined…

URBAN INFORMATION

SYSTEM

INTERVENTIONS

FIELD

SOFT

INFLUENCES

Figure 2.1: Relationship between Field, UIS and Urban Interventions


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…. Three institutions of power, which, although invented before the mid nineteenth century, changed their form and function as the colonised zones entered the age of mechanical reproduction. These three institution were the census, the map, and the museum: together, they profoundly shaped the way in which the colonised state imagined its dominion – the nature of the human being it ruled, the geography of its domain, and the legitimacy of its ancestry” (Anderson, 91).

Anderson introduces a landmark idea of “imagining” a community. He further states the instruments that become important to this imagination. I would return to these instruments in the next section, but here would reiterate that urban information systems become crucial for the way the society is imagined. It is Urban Information Systems and their tactile manifestations, the Data Scapes that help us to conceive the environments and form the basis for our understanding of the society. It is from this imagination of societies that we are able not only to excavate the hidden patterns of the society, but also project intervention possibilities Sociologist Catherine Smith furthers this idea of imagination but reverses the notion where imagination forms the basis of producing the Data Scapes. In her history of mapping she states:

“Imagination has played a key role in the history of cartography. Long before the fifth century BC, when Greek scholars found the Earth to be a globe, and in far corners of the Earth never touched by their learning, people imagined the shape of the Earth they lived on. The Aztecs saw their world as five squares; ancient Peruvian as a box; ancient Egyptian as egg-shaped. Some early Chinese also believed the Earth to be like an egg or like a ball, and derided those who thought of it as flat and square within circular heavens. In Japan, before Christians missionary arrived at the turn of the seventeenth century brining with them the notion that the world is round, there seems to have been at least one theory of the Earth as a cube” (Smith, 91).

Smith’s study brings us to an important point where Data Scapes not only become a part of the imagination of the society, but also they themselves are a product of imagination. Philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari detail this aspect further:

“What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real. The map does not reproduce an unconscious closed in upon itself; it constructs the unconscious. It fosters connections between fields, the removal of blockages on bodies without organs, the maximum opening of bodies, without organs onto a plane of consistency… The map has to do with performance, whereas the tracing always involves an ‘alleged competence’” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987).

Deleuze and Guattari focus around the creative aspect, especially into the processes of putting together of the Data Scape and their representation. They hold the representational aspect of the Data Scape far more important as the one constructing its own reality. To summarise this section, I started with the scepticism regarding the idea of Urban Information Systems where I attempted to establish it as an ambiguous and complex idea. Developing a working understanding using Corner and Anderson, the Urban Information Systems could be seen as not only an instrument to project future interventions, but also as a tool to imagine the society. Infact in number of instances it becomes the basis of understanding. Further Smith, Deleuze and Guattari engage in a discussion on the representational aspect of the Urban Information System suggesting that there is an element of imagination in it and hence it constructs the reality for us. In the next two sections I would attempt to delve into the various problems of Conventional Information Systems. 2.3. PART 2: DISCUSSIONS ON THE PROBLEMS OF CONVENTIONAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS 2.3.1. The Problems Of Power And Interest One of the important questions to ask at this point is “Why is an information system required?” Amongst other questions are “Who makes such information systems?” and “Who uses them?” I would attempt to make a quick historic survey of information systems that were produced for Mumbai. These ranged from descriptive miniature paintings to efforts in writing local histories. 1. Pre-colonial efforts in information systems include maps made by earlier rulers for formulating strategies

of attack or describing the strengths of existing rulers. Maps and lengthy descriptions made by travellers also became important. One of the important sources of information however remained the spy-agency. The important point to note is information system is used as an agency of surveillance and the


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knowledge hence created from it is of utmost important for any decision making process. The information system however was patroned and used by the rulers who becomes the treasurer of the knowledge that it creates.

2. Colonial efforts of creating information systems include three distinct sub-parts as described by Anderson (1991): the map, the census and the museum. Other sub-parts however could be found in the excessive obsession of the colonising mind to understand and describe “objects” of the orient undertaken by painters, biologists and other professionals. Here again, information systems were made to generate knowledge that could be used to control. These could be maps made by the Portuguese for location purposes and by the British essentially as a tool to collect revenue or for administrative control purposes. The most important characteristics are the imposition of cartographic methods that remained as a base. However, during the colonial enterprise, the information system used by the rebels and the freedom movement is important to note. These depended upon informal communication systems, small underground press, local newspapers and a large network of volunteers. The main aim was to gauge opinion, articulate it and harness it to overthrow the tyrannical empire of the British.

3. The post-independence systems of information are similar to most of the systems that any typical state would follow with the map, census and the museum remaining the backbone of the information system. The important aspect is however the dominance of technocracy controlled by bureaucracy in these information systems. These information systems get characterised by departmental differences, where each department has its own information base without correlations with other departments. Amongst the information systems developed by different Governments, two essential types include systems made by the Socialist Government for allocation of resources and systems created by the Government in the liberalised economy attempting to resolve the tensions between transitions from the command economy to the market economy. One of the manifests of the earlier system was the idea of the Development Plan, while the examples of later attempts attempt visionary decentralised structure plans. However, even here, as in all other experiences of information system, these systems remain largely control elements, the only difference being that now, the technocracy and the bureaucracy is able to share some power with the politicians. Somehow, the important aspects of information system to be able to gather collective opinion is not still an issue. It is the same people and the interest group who still control knowledge and manufacture opinion.

4. Lastly, we have been able to identify several efforts of information system that do not necessarily form the part of the mainstream information system, but are more oriented towards aspects of managing opinions. These rely largely on what I describe as “informal information system” and could be considered useful towards managing the city like Mumbai better. Also the role of the local media becomes utmost important here.

The two aspects evident in this survey are regarding power and interests in the information system. In answering the questions that we started with in this section, we could historically see that information systems generally got developed specifically for surveillance or control. It was patroned by the authority over the area, historically to control knowledge of the area. Along with the aspect of control, there is the attitude towards governance (essentially collection of taxes) that gets built into the requirement for information system. 2.3.2. The Problem Of Authoritative Objectivity The excessively quoted story by Jorge Luis Borges becomes a key beginning of the problems connected to methods and the immense trust on actuality and objectivity. I quote the parts of the story here:

(The cartographers of an imaginary Empire) draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering exactly the territory so that the real territory underneath the map is obscured. The people of this Empire come to relate more closely to this map than they do to the original territory underneath (they live, work, and play on it, etc.) When, eventually the map becomes tattered and frayed, and ultimately disintegrates, the people become nostalgic for it, feeling that they have lost something. The real territory, which is now revealed to them, seems alien, unfamiliar.

Borges brings out the various problems related to the creation of Data Scapes. While he foregrounds the irrelevance and impossibility of creating a Data Scape which is a real representation of the society in all ways, he also articulates the problems what such a Data Scape does to the way the society sees itself. Several contemporary critiques have brought into foreground the problems related to excessive trust on objectivity. Denis Woods states:

The objectivity of modern maps is so taken for granted that they serve as powerful metaphors for other sciences, on occasion even for scientific objectivity itself. The canonical history of Western cartography reinforces those assumptions of objectivity. The history tells of a gradual progression from crude Medieval views of the world to


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depictions exhibiting contemporary standards of precision. In actuality, all maps incorporate assumptions and conventions of the society and the individuals who create them. Such biases seem blatantly obvious when one looks at ancient maps but usually become transparent when one examines maps from modern times. Only by being aware of the subjective omissions and distortions inherent in maps can a user make intelligent sense of the information they contain (Wood, 1993).

Woods hints at certain representational problems of the Data Scapes. Inherent in his arguments are the problem of symbolism, scale and distance. One can understand these problems as basic for any cartographic project. The uses of symbols have a twin problem, firstly they tend to generalise objects striping them from their specificity and secondly they make cartographic knowledge available to the only privileged individuals aware of such codifications. The problem of scale gets built into the problem of symbolism. To illustrate this problem I will use the case of a slum getting represented in the city map. When seen from the scale of the city, the slum may appear fairly organic, unplanned, chaotic and significantly different from the rest of the parts. Zooming slightly closer, one would be able to identify the relations with immediate surroundings. And zooming at the level of a household, the slum may appear extremely planned with minimum resources that are managed within a community, which shares them. The slum here appears most rational in it’s management and planning of resources. Hence it is not surprising that early planners trained in stiff cartography looked at the slum as a disease of the city. It is only recently with new methods of cognitive mapping that slum is treated as an integral part of the city. The problem of distance is more of a theoretical problem related with the position of the researcher. The conventional ways of creating Data Scapes assume that the researcher and the object of study are far from each other and have a critical distance between them, which allows them to see these objects in perspective. However such positions carry with them the problem of the researcher being an “outside saviour”. Moreover, since the researcher is not a part of the context, he/she would never be able to relate to the problems of the context. We can perhaps understand this concern when we demand for “active participation” of people in development. What we are actually demanding is that people from the certain context become the researchers of their own context. Scott Lash points another important characteristics of the information system: its tremendous authority over knowledge production based on what he calls as “facticity”. I quote from Lash, who identifies the power of the unopposed “fact”, its agent and its irrelevance:

“I think power works through an incredible facticity now, and through an indexicality on a very immediate level – although it also works discursively – but it works incredibly in the sense of nonlegitimated power. You know how you read a newspaper: it just hits you with brute facticity, and you don’t think about arguments. And I think there’re a lot of ways that power works in the information age. It doesn’t work so much through consent, but through an indexical violence, and it’s nonlegitimate.” (Lash, 2002)

The important point here is the idea of “irrationality of facts” and its authority along with its capacity to manipulate opinion. The grand narrative that is so heavily critiqued in the contemporary discourses also seem to surface again as an intention in the Geographical Information System that attempts to map all data and generate a grand knowledge. But the absurdity that we keep facing all the time is how to grasp this knowledge, whether it is possible to grasp such knowledge, and if not what is the purpose of such systems. 2.3.3. The Problems of Structure and Methodology Conventionally information system would include the following processes: Observing (specimens or objects to be included in the information system), Collecting (data on the specimens), Organising (classification, comparison, analysis) and Representation as information towards knowledge creation (production of data-scapes like census document, statistics, graphs and maps). It is not merely an exclusive process of creating objective knowledge but is the process of conceptualising the societies. It has a framework, within which all specimens are located, which functions towards inclusion or exclusion of specimens or even establishing relationship between them. James Corner articulates these problems more fundamentally and analytically:

“Throughout the twentieth century, mapping in design and planning has been undertaken conventionally as a quantitative and analytical survey of existing conditions made prior to the making of a new project. These survey maps are both spatial and statistical, inventorying a range of social, economical, ecological and aesthetic conditions. As expertly produced, measured representation, such maps are conventionally taken to be stable, accurate, indisputable mirrors of reality, providing the logical basis for future decision making as well as the means for later projecting a designed plan back on the ground. It is generally assumed that if the survey is quantitative, objective and rational, it is also true and neutral, thereby helping to legitimise and enact future plans and decisions. ….the various cartographic procedures of selection, schematisation and synthesis make the map already a project in the making. This is why mapping is never neutral, passive or without consequence; on the contrary,


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mapping is perhaps the most formative and creative act of any design process, first disclosing and then staging the condition for emergence of new realities. …..Mappings have agency because of a double-sided characteristic of all maps. First their surfaces are directly analogous to actual ground conditions…Because of this directness; maps are taken to be ‘true’ and ‘objective’ measures of the world, and are accorded a kind of benign neutrality. … (and second) is the inevitable abstractness of maps, the result of selection, omission, isolation, distance and codification”, (Corner, 1999).

I would club the problems pointed by Corner into a term “Interpretation” for further discussions on the processes of making Urban Information Systems. I would now focus in detail on how the Urban Information System gets made in contemporary environments, Conventionally, the Information System Structure looked something like the figure 2.2. So-called “Raw Data” is collected from the various societal conditions through mere processes of Observation by the researcher. This data is further organised to become information. There are two aspects of importance here, firstly, that in every process of Observation, Collection, Organisation and Information, the data undergoes substantial interpretations, deletions, generalisations and presumptive modifications. Secondly, the information systems generally remain sectoral in nature. This means a number of organisations may collect same data for different purposes, or there might be a possibility that one set of information influences the other, but never understood because the formats of information system does not allow such correlations. To resolve this problem of correlation, a powerful system of organising data developed in the 90’s, the Geographic Information System (GIS). Essentially, GIS, uses the geographic base (in term of a cartographic map) and relates all kinds of statistical data to such a geographic base. In other words it creates object specific database attempting to describe all characteristics of a geographic object (may be a region, a city, a road, a plot, a building or even a person) on a same platform. The usefulness of this kind of organisation is that it is possible to generate patterns of the society that was otherwise not possible in the conventional system. For example, the conventional map would give purely locational aspects of all the objects and to extent physical patterns of the area and relations between the physical objects. But GIS makes it possible to relate statistical data like densities, ownerships, genders, age classifications, class classifications etc to this geographic data. Hence it would be possible to find out things like which are the specific shops in a city that have an income over a certain amount. And when such shops are located on a map, a pattern emerges in relation to other data. In this example one might be able to relate the relation of these shops to higher

Figure 2.2: Method of making Conventional UIS

Figure 2.3: Method of making Conventional UIS with GIS


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income group residential areas, or business streets etc. Our ideal Information System based on GIS was hoped to look something like the figure 2.3. Hence the attempt here is to produce a common correlated database that is capable of creating a common knowledge base that would then enhance the understanding of the area under study as well as facilitate the decision making process that would affect such an area. This resolves the second problem of correlation, but does not address the first problem of “interpretation” completely. This is because at every level and most importantly at the level of observation and collection, there is an aspect of interpretation of data that becomes important depending upon who is observing and collecting such a data and what is the interest of such a researcher. Also in organising and finally analysing such data the “actor” who is actually doing this seems an extremely powerful agent whose interests are important to be understood.

The GIS model attempts to resolve this problem through making the various kinds of data “object specific. The model hopes that there could be objectivity to such a framework of data management. The knowledge that gets created from the GIS however remains so large that it becomes important who needs such a knowledge and for what purpose. All knowledge remains unseen in this format. So actually the Information System based on GIS looked like the figure 2.4. The important aspect however is to realise that there is power and interest that still operate in all these frameworks. GIS could be hence seen as the highest obsession towards creating an holistic information system

or a large all inclusive control and survellience system. The examples of such organisation of data in the city of Rotterdam is an excellent example of this attitude where every individual object and activity is watched. The present discourses on “Information Systems” tend to have a managerial impetus hinged around Lash’s “facticity” and there seems to be an excessive reliance on the current technological developments towards achieving such an impetus. These discourses not only aggressively promote the technological development as the only alternative in information management but also tend not to acknowledge the other existing modes of managing information. Not denying the tremendous abilities of these technological developments in being able to manage information, the discourses however seem not to do two things. Firstly they do not provide any critique of the managerial impetus and secondly they seem to overlook the existing capacities and priorities of societies towards handling the technological development. Moreover there are significant researches that focus on the problems of “digital divide”, capacity of the society to handle technology and other contextual problems regarding technological developments. I would not focus on these problems in this paper, but look at certain other structural problems of Information Systems. 2.3.4. Problems of Soft Data The critique on the methodological aspects and the obsessive authority of factual objectivity brings us to the ideas of soft data. Soft data could be understood through Jonathan Raban’s work “Soft Cities” where he conceptualises cities to be made of soft elements in the realm outside of empirical objectification. He declares:

Cities, unlike villages and small towns, are plastic by nature. We mould them in our images: they in turn, shape us by the resistance they offer when we try and impose a personal form on them…… the city as we might imagine it, the soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate in maps and statistics, in monographs on urban sociology and demography and architecture (Raban, 1974).

Figure 2.4: Problems with the GIS


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I would discuss the idea of soft data in the next section, with certain cases that attempted to conceptualise it. To summarise this section, I would quote from Late Cartographer J. Brian Harley who forcefully describes all the problems discussed in the above section:

“One effect of accelerated technological change - as manifest in digital cartography and geographical information systems – has been to strengthen its positivist assumptions and (to breed) a new arrogance in geography about its supposed value as a mode of access to reality. If it is true that new fictions of factual representation are daily being foisted upon us, then the case for introducing a social dimension into modern cartography is especially strong. Maps are too important to be left to cartographers alone” (Harley, 1989).

2.4. PART 3: A CASE FOR CONCEPTUALISING SOFT DATA

In the context of Mumbai, the city hosts a highly complex dynamic relating to the various processes that contribute towards the making of the Urban. The systems informing City Planning on the other hand not only remain unacquainted with large parts of the dynamic but also reduce this dynamic into highly simplistic static set of information. The dynamic here refers to the immense set of complex changing relationship that people enter in a city. To consider a case of Mumbai, a typical chawl (an industrial labour housing) would house in it all kinds of issues of ownerships, contest for space, gender issues, caste issues, class issues, policy problems etc. Whereas this chawl gets represented as purely a rectangle in the city maps, the statistics of the city strip the relational nature of the data from information in its mere obsession for generalisation. The city records mainly focus on the aspects related to revenue collections, sometimes to the aspects of physical structure (especially when the price of the land is very high) and rarely into the aspects of ownerships. They never seem to touch any of the “softer issues” that were mentioned above. This kind of selective representation is not only true for most of the sites within the city, but gets actually promoted (where the city turns a blind eye) whenever larger powerful interests get involved. For instance, the development plans of the city never seem to recognise the slums and the areas under such settlements get converted from being Non-Development Zone to Residential Zone over the next development plan. Then we see that builders get invited to develop these lands. The problem that appears from the above discussion is related to the inability of the current information systems towards mapping the “other softer relations” in the city that become important. These lie in the realm of aspirations, opinions, biases, interests, etc. Soft Data includes all kinds of data such as differences in opinions, interests, quarrels, gender biases, informal networks amongst various social groups, class differences expressed in social conditions, behavioural patterns, historic events, local stories, economic conditions, legislative conditions, regulatory mechanisms and even political interests (Corner, 1999). The conceptualisation of soft data does two distinct things: firstly, it makes the data scapes more relevant, and secondly somehow resolves the problems of interests and power through representing all interests and power. In the concluding section, I would summarise the formulations and discussions in the paper to raise questions and find clues for the dissertation that would be undertaken. 2.5. PART 4: CONCLUDING QUESTIONS AND POSSIBILITIES Along with becoming the basis of understanding the societies, we have established that, despite all objective claims, information systems remain biased and adhere to certain interest and power. They by themselves are powerful agents from where interventions are conceived. We have further discussed the problems of methodology and structure of the conventional information systems and elaborated on the problems of interpretation that happens at every level of building as well as reading an information system. Finally I have presented a case for including soft data of the city, which would be essential to understand the aspiration and the opinions of the society under consideration. Several questions get raised in the above discussions that become fundamental in understanding the information system towards a relevant tool of the urban systems: Do we need a detailed information system? How can the problem of power and interest resolved in the information system? Can people make it and will that resolve the problem of information systems? Does the information system need to be geographical at all? What is the role of spatiality in the information systems? How do we include the soft data of the city in its information systems?


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The conventional mainstream Urban Information Systems remain inadequate to understand the Urban Realm. This is specifically because of the problems in mapping not able to conceptualise soft data, resolve the problems of biases and power. This I hope would articulate my research problem with a twin objective, firstly to conceptualise soft data towards elaborating urban information systems and secondly to find ways and means in which such conceptualisation could enter the mainstream planning process. I have perhaps also established significant clues to strategise the inclusion of soft data of the city. This could be seen in the alternative information system. I chose to call it Informal information systems because the processes of building this information system do not get the vulgar approval of scientific legitimacy. Informal Information System would include all the processes and frameworks that exist in the city towards informing its citizens, where citizens could participate and collectively generate an opinion on the issue of concern. Informal Information System may lie between the range of highly organised local media and scattered but powerful urban gossip. Instances of engagement with the informal information system could be found everywhere in the city, in the formal and informal urban spaces, within a house, in public transport, within offices and even in institutions. Recent researches and experiments in mapping soft data use Gossip as a powerful mean. It would be useful to set up a working definition to bind Gossip and then to understand its structure. This is specifically because the grapevine structure of Gossip is argued to be capable of entering all systems. Media and the way information is used by media could provide an important clue in this direction. Several cases of mapping soft data are also available which I briefly discussed that could be further studied in detail. Also cases of informal organisations and the way information is managed in them could be studied on the field. The challenge is however to conceptualise this data and then find a process where it would inform mainstream planning. But I suppose, this would also depend on the way the process of conceptualisation is built. Gossip remains a powerful tool here that is capable of entering any organisation and institution in the city. To use this strength constructively is one of the primary tasks set in the research. Within such theoretical background, the possibility of exploring informal information systems to understand various urban spaces and expose newer relations so as to re-conceptualise them and articulate the role of Urban Management after such a re-conceptualisation could be seen. Hopefully, such explorations will have their effect on the “planner’s reference manual” that was so often used to understand the city.

Figure 2.5: Problems with the conventional information system


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3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY RESEARCH DESIGN As indicated in Chapter one, the research has two objectives, the first is the investigative objective and the second is the exploratory objective. To operationalise these two objectives I set two tasks for each.

The above diagram shows four tasks to operationalise the research problem and the objectives: 3.1. TASK 1: CRITIQUE OF THE CONVENTIONAL URBAN INFORMATION SYSTEM The first task is to set a critique of the conventional Urban Information System theoretically. This has been undertaken in the previous chapter of the theoretical framework through review of literature on the subject. While it becomes the theoretical framework, the task is concluded towards setting up the problem statement, forming of research question and formulating hypothesis towards carrying out the research. In the

URBAN INFORMATION

SYSTEM

INTERVENTIONS

FIELD

SOFT

INFLUENCES

INVESTIGATIVE

EXPLORATORY

PROBLEMS OF SOFT INFLUENCES

DEVELOPED FROM THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 1

TESTED THROUGH CASES OF FIVE

PROJECTS/POLICIES IN FIELD STUDY 1

METHODS OF MAPPING SOFT

INFLUENCES ARTICULATED FROM THEORETICAL

FRAMEWORK 2

1 2

3

EXPERIMENTED IN A MAPPING EXERCISE

IN FIELD STUDY 2

4

Figure 3.1: Research Design


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detail of the theoretical framework are also clues to set specific research questions that are attempted to be answered. This is the formative part of the thesis that will develop into becoming the investigative part. 3.2. TASK 2: RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND INTERVENTIONS The second task is to understand the relationship between the Field, Urban Information Systems and Urban Interventions in the city of Mumbai. To activate this task, I set out the research question: Research Question What informs Planning Concerns and what are the impacts of interventions developed from such concerns? Based on the problem statement and the theoretical framework I further hypothesise: Hypothesis There is a relation between Urban Information Systems and Urban Interventions. Since the Urban Information Systems are unable to map soft data, the interventions that are planned based on such information systems remain inappropriate.

To answer the research question and to test the hypothesis, I set the following methodology:

Research Methodology The research method is essentially a Case study of Five Urban Projects / Policies in the past decade in Mumbai City. The criteria for selecting these projects/policies are:

• They all are a result of the urban landscape described earlier in chapter one • They were undertaken by different urban actors and are in different sectors • They are all recent (past ten years) projects and had a substantial citywide effect • My own knowledge and involvement with these projects

I further set specific sub-research questions to activate this part. The following matrix shows the projects selected as well as the specific research questions related to the study.

Table 3.1: Research Matrix for five case studies.

Method For Data Collection All the above-mentioned projects had a spatial team working on them, which undertook the studies and prepared the reports of the project. All projects gathered substantial media attention and were discussed in

PROJECTS / POLICIES Issues Sub-Research Questions Slum Re-

development Policy

Mill Lands Re-development Plan

Policy for CESSED Buildings

Policy of Heritage Conservation

Project of 55 Bridges

UIS What informed the concern? Actors Who informed the concern? Who took the decisions? Whose interests were

addressed?

Interests What were the interests? Concept-ualisation

How was the issue conceived?

Concern What were the problems? What were the challenges? What were the

opportunities?

Strategy How was it addressed? Impact What was the outcome?


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several conferences around the city. The documents and people thus produced would be my sources of information. I would employ the following methods specifically for data collection: 1. Interviews with Key informants: This would include the persons involved with the project who would act

as a memory of the project and the persons affected by the project. The interviews would focus around gathering information on the above questions.

2. Review of Project documents: This would include analysis of not only project reports, but also all the information that went into making of these reports. The city archives, municipal archives, metropolitan authority and other state bodies would hold such material.

3. Review of other relevant documents: This would include a content analysis of key articles published by journalists, academic scholars, NGOs and other actors other than the state.

3.3. TASK 3: SET UP A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK TOWARDS A NEW INFORMATION SYSTEM The third task is to undertake an analysis of earlier effort of mapping soft influences. This is undertaken essentially to get clues for exploring possibilities of mapping soft influences. To activate this part, I would study ten research initiatives in mapping soft influences. The clues of mapping soft influences along with formulations from the case studies would indicate a framework for developing a new information System. This part is intended to become a base for the exploratory part of the thesis 3.4. TASK 4: EXPERIMENT OF CREATING A NEW INFORMATION SYSTEM The fourth task is to explore into possibilities of making an information system with soft data using the framework articulated in task three. The research is set in the context of a real project in Mumbai to save an open space from getting appropriated by developers. The project is done for the community, which requires a bargaining tool that could be presented in the court of law to make arguments to keep the open space as a public space. The experiment is to map aspirations and opinions of the community and present these as an information system that could be used as a legitimate bargaining tool. The methodology adopted for mapping of aspirations and opinions is detailed in chapter seven. The thesis is a methodological exploration itself and hence it would be irrelevant to detail the methodology of this part here. It would rather appropriate to describe the methodology as the main text of the research itself.


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4. INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND PLANNING PROCESS: 5 CASES OF DEVELOPMENT IN MUMBAI 4.1. INTRODUCTION This chapter undertakes discussions on five cases of urban development in the city of Mumbai. The aims of these case studies are: 1. To establish the relationship between Urban Information System and Urban Interventions 2. To prove that the Urban Intervention have been inappropriate because of the shortcomings in the Urban

Information Systems 3. To identify the components of the Conventional Information System and its shortcomings The structure of this chapter is planned with discussions on each of these cases with specific focus on the Information system that was adopted and the inappropriateness of the interventions. Further I summarise these discussions to answer the specific research questions that I articulated in chapter three. Finally I conclude with identifying specific problems in the information system and listing the nature of inappropriateness of the intervention in each of these cases. 4.2. CASE 1: SLUM REDEVELOPMENT SCHEME With the economic vibrancy and opportunity that Mumbai produced, the population in informal settlements kept growing in the city of Mumbai much before it came to be seen as a problem after independence. Kalpana Sharma’s (2000) book on Dharavi (the largest slum in Asia) maps the existence and growth of slums to late 19th Century. These settlements however grew on the outskirts of the city on marshlands and other places that were difficult to develop by mainstream developers. The slums only came into real Urban concern of the city in the 60’s and 70’s when the real estate prices started climbing and slums became to be seen as a disease of the city. The relationship between the real estate prices and urban growth and occupancy of land by slums never gets explored in any literature. With the concern for the popularly called “tax paying citizens” of the city, the city officials used the strategy to demolish slums so as to clear the disease of the city (Patwardhan, 1985). The most powerful instruments of the “disease” conceptualisation was the physical map that showed high density areas with unliveable conditions along with the immense force from the so called “tax paying residents”. From the seventies, however, as a resistance to the popular “disease” conceptualisation and the subsequent demolitions that took place, a huge network of academics, social workers, journalists and NGOs started foregrounding the rights of the slum-dweller to stay in the city. Their main bargaining tool was the immense amount of data that was collected from ground surveys to establish the informal settlers as useful residents of the city servicing it. They also made a human right case towards changing the government’s policy from demolition of the slums to taking care of the slum dwellers. The elaborate data of the NGO SPARC (1985), on slum dwellers collected through several innovative mapping techniques of household surveys, family photographs, neighbour interviews etc. became important tools to negotiate for such a status of slum dwellers in the city. Here the slum dweller was conceptualised as a part of the city, serving it and the aim of the strategy was to take care of such an underprivileged part of the city. Following such a pressure generated by the information created by these groups and overlapped with the impositions of the World Bank and the Habitat Resolution, several schemes to “take care of the slum dwellers” were experimented in the city (Naik, 1996 and Telang, 1996)1. The most recent scheme is the Slum Redevelopment Scheme introduced in 1991 and amended in 1995. I would elaborate on this scheme for my evaluation in the thesis.

1 Several steps were taken by the Government of the State to address the problems of slum dwellers in the city of Mumbai. These ranged from recognising the slum dwellers by giving them identity cards (mid 70s), providing basic infrastructure (Slum Improvement Schemes, 1976), providing security of land tenure (Slum Upgradation Programme of early 80s), providing Site and Service Schemes (mid 80s) where the slum dweller was to make his/her own house and the state provides basic infrastructure and gives land tenure, Upgrading Infrastructure (Prime minister’s Grant Programme, 1985) and finally the Slum Redevelopment Scheme where partnership was sought from private groups of builders to solve the slum problem. The last case is described in the main text.


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As per some estimates around 55 to 60 percent people are staying in informal settlements in Mumbai (Telang, 1996). With feeble information through maps and census documents by the mainstream planning and pressures developed through the information created by the NGOs, the Slum Redevelopment (SRD) Scheme was born. The most important influencing ideas however were the facilitating role of the

Government promoted by the Donor agencies along with the much-sought Private Partnerships (Joseph, 1996). The Scheme sought to involve the Private Developer/Builder to address the problem of Slums in the city. As per the scheme, the slum dwellers need to form a society and register it with the Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA, instituted as a single window to overlook the schemes). The society formation required 70 percent of the slum dwellers to agree for the scheme. Then these societies could appoint a Developer who would develop the land on which the slum exists. The builder would then propose a scheme to be approved by the SRA. The Developer required to provide free tenements of 25 square meters to all families registered in the society on the land of the slum. During the construction period, the Developer is required to accommodate the slum dwellers in a

transit camp on his/her costs. The Developer also needed to deposit Rs 20000/- (approx. 400 USD) with the SRA for future maintainance of the free housing provided to the slum dwellers. In return, the Developer gets free additional development rights2. The Developer could use these rights to develop any kind of development to be sold in the open market. The Developer has to use this development right on the same site where the slum is rehabilitated where the land is given free to the developer. But since the existing Floor Space Index, FSI (Floor Area Ratio, FAR) was too low, this new additional construction was not possible to be accommodated on existing sites. To solve problem, a series of modifications were made to the Development Control Regulations (Government of Maharashtra, 1991). The Slum Redevelopment Schemes got an additional FSI (FAR) much higher than existing3. The planning rules were relaxed with side and front open spaces reduced. Two buildings of eight stories could come next to each other at a distance of 1.5 meters. Further, if with all these relaxations, if the Developer was not able to still accommodate his additional development rights in the site, then these rights were given as Transferable Development Rights that could be used in any other site. This additional development right was the incentive for the Developer to undertake such a project. The Slum Redevelopment Scheme however did not achieve what it had promised. Upto 1996, barely 250 projects have been cleared by the SRA and work has commenced for only 47 cases (Singh, 1996). This means that out of 6.5 million slum dwellers, only 250 thousand would be housed if all these projects were successfully implemented. And this has happened in the first five years of the Scheme. And this would then mean that we would require around 120 years to house our entire slum dwellers provided if the slum does not grow (Singh, 1996). The reason for this has been many folds. Singh (1996) attributes it to excessive regulations in the schemes making them unworkable for Developers. Ground surveys indicate the corruption

2 The Developer was given a right to develop an additional development of 75% to 133% of what he/she develops as free housing for the slum dwellers that could be sold in the open market. 3 FSI or Floor Space Index is the equivalent of the Floor Area Ratio. This is the ratio of Developable Area over Plot Area on a given Plot. For example If the Plot is 1 Square Meter and the FSI is 1.3 then one is allowed to develop only 1.3 square meters on the land. One could do this by constructing additional floors. In Mumbai, the FSI is between 1 and 1.33. For Slum Redevelopment Schemes, The FSI is 2.5.

Figure 4.1: Mapping by the NGO of slums using unconventional information like family photos, group formations etc.


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problems encountered by the societies to get registered or getting their proposal sanctioned by the SRA4. Singh (1996) also indicates the decreasing interests from the Developer community due to fall in real estate prices, problems of providing transit accommodation, and the fear of the flats not getting sold due to accommodating slum dwellers along with people who would buy from the open market. The main criticism from the planning community however is the use of FSI as the incentive tool rather than the control tool (Das, 1996, Telang, 1996 and Joseph, 1996). They argue that the additional FSI would increase the problem of the city. Because the present dense slum areas would become denser with more cars and less

infrastructure to accommodate them. Their second criticism is related to the aspect of maintainance. The Schemes accommodate slum dwellers in high storied apartments that have high maintenance cost. The planners fear that this would become unsustainable to the slum dwellers.

Issues Research Question 60’s and 70’s 80’s and early 90’s Late 90’s and ‘02 UIS What informed

the concern? Physical Map Voting List

Census Data NGO archives

Soft Data

Actors Who informed the

concern? “Law abiding citizens” (Upper Middle Class)

NGO Academy

Who took the decisions?

Municipality State Government No Decision taken

Whose interests were addressed?

“Law abiding citizens” (Upper Middle Class)

Slum Dwellers State and NGO Developers

Slum Dwellers City

Interests What were the

interests? Clean City – Green City

Living Conditions Land, Votes, Popularity

Economic Opportunity Living Conditions

Conceptualisation How was the

issue conceived? SLUM AS A DISEASE OF THE CITY

SLUM AS A PART OF THE CITY TO BE TAKEN CARE OF

SLUM AS AN ENTERPRISING ORGANISM

Concern What were the

problems? Diseased city Unhealthy Living

Conditions 60% people occupy 8% land

What were the challenges?

Peaceful eviction Finances Convert

What were the opportunities?

Clean City Land Enterprise and Economic Growth

Strategy How was it

addressed? Demolition Upgradation and

Rehabilitation Not the Fish, But the tools to Fish

Impact What was the

outcome? Lower class outcry Rise of the NGO Supreme Court Stay Order

Slum dwellers sold their houses New Slums More Slums

No outcome

Table 4.1: Changes in Slum Re-development Policy in comparison to prevalent Information Systems

4 The survey of some of the societies indicates that the slum dwellers had to pay between Rs 12000 to Rs 80000 (240 UDS to 1600 USD) to the office bearers to register the societies. On the other hand, the developer could pay anything between Rs. 10000 to Rs 200000 (200 USD to 4000 USD) to get the plans cleared.

Figure 4.2: Slum Redevlopment Scheme showing conditions of vertical slum


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However, the Slum Redevelopment Schemes came under other criticism (KRVIA, 2003) of the slum dwellers selling their flats (informally) and going back to the slums. The planners and the city officials attribute this behaviour to the indecency and laziness of the slum dwellers who sell their flats to gain money to spend on short luxury life. However the surveys of an academic institute showed some other reasons for this behaviour (KRVIA, 2003). The slum was studied with several layers of economy, social pattern and physical space through activating a soft information collecting method where students would undertake elaborate interviews, map routines of families, understand aspirations and opinions and finally map opportunities. The study conceptualised the slum dwelling as a unit of production and slum dweller as a unit of enterprise. The slum was just not a place where the slum dwellers lived, but it was also a place of work. It has spaces, which could accommodate a community washing space, a leather tannery, a ceramic kiln or a cooperative food-manufacturing unit. The new Slum Dwelling Schemes in all its manipulation of the Development Control Regulations never recognised this character of the slum. The entire scheme was driven by the impetus towards creating permanent housing for the slum dwellers. The value of legal tenure in the city of Mumbai is immense and as soon as these lands were released into the open market, there was a great down raiding by the lower and middle income group into these sites and the slum dweller immediately sold the flat to them since these flats were useless for the work pattern of the slum dweller. The study conceptualised the slum as an economical space. It sought to harness this character through providing opportunity for growth of this economic activity and removal of middle-agents who were presently appropriating the profits made by the labour of the slum dwellers. The study proposed the formation of cooperatives for the slum. Hence one could see that when the information system was the physical map, the conceptualisation of the slum was that of the disease and the intervention was of demolition. When the NGO came up with the information system of census and tabulating activities of the slum dwellers, the conceptualisation was that the slum is the part of the city and the intervention strategy was towards taking care of the slum. However when the soft information system is activated, one realises that the Slum is an economic space and the relevant intervention is to harness this opportunity. 4.3. CASE 2: MILL LAND REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT By the mid eighties, it was clear that Mumbai was shifting from being an industrial center to a service based economy. The cotton textile mills, that were the real engines of the city’s growth since the middle of the 19th century, were facing immense problems to survive in the city. There were essentially four reasons for this. One of the first reasons was that the profits of cotton mills traditionally was not reoriented into the modernisation of the mill, as a result by the 80s it was difficult for these mills with old technology to compete with other textile manufacturers around the world5. The second reason was that land prices and demand for land for commercial activities within the city was extremely high. It was obviously more profitable to sell the lands rather than to run a non-profit making textile mill. Moreover sustaining the mill’s infrastructure, the energy required and the other taxes made running a mill into a loss making business. The third and the most important reason was that industrial labour in the city had become extremely strong and was highly demanding. In the event of such a traditionally strong and highly organised (almost militant) labour, running a mill within the city was becoming difficult (D’Monte, 2002). The fourth reason was a planning blessing to the entire issue. The Regional Plan by the Metropolitan Board (1974) identified that existence of industries within the city is a great threat to the city’s environment. It causes problems of pollution and intense migration in the city burdening infrastructure. The Regional Plan that came in the 90’s (MMRDA, 96) however was far more articulate and focused on its agenda on the city. It saw the city’s future in service industry and as a financial center. It proposed that all heavy industries have to be shifted out of the city and this would be good for the economical, social and environmental health of the city. In the late eighties, the Government of India declared a number of cotton textile mills of Mumbai “sick”. The status “sick” is a where the mill runs in a state of not making adequate profit, but the labour is supposed to get their minimum remuneration till the mill is either modernised or another decision on the mills takes place. The Municipality of Mumbai drafted a regulation (Regulation 58 in the Development Control Regulations), (GOM, 1991) to facilitate redevelopment of the mills. As per the regulation, if the Mill Owner intends to

5 This can be confirmed by the case of two Mills, Bombay Dieing and Century Textiles. These two mills have no intention to shut or to move from the city. On the other hand they are making good profit. Ground Survey (by the author during working for another project: Redeveloping the Mill Lands of Mumbai, 1996) indicates that these mills have invested on advance technology in recent years.


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undertake a redevelopment, then he/she can divide the part of the mill that is non-functional into three parts equally. One part has to be given to the city for creating open spaces and amenities, the second part has to be given to the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) for constructing housing and the third part of the mill could be developed by the Mill Owner as per his/her wishes following the regulations of the Municipality. The Government felt that by doing this it would solve the problems of the Mill Owners and the labour (who were expected to be compensated by the owners) and also get something for the city. A number of Mills in Mumbai took this opportunity to redevelop instantly. Invariably the entire mill underwent redevelopment and huge commercial complexes started coming up in the city. The places left for the city and for MHADA were the pieces of land that were not of great locational advantage for the commercial development. On the whole the development was haphazard and the city was on the loosing end because these developments were burdening its infrastructure more and the spaces left for the city were not of any public importance. There were several resistances to the idea of shifting industrial lands out of Mumbai (Adarkar, 1996, Grover, 1995), but more resistance was to the unplanned development in the Mill Lands. With pressures of resistance from City Planners and Architects6, the State Government then decided to have an integrated development plan for the area, where the plan would decide which parts of the Mill would be left for the city and the MHADA and which should e allowed for development. Also the Plan required to regulate the kind of development that would come up in this area. To make such a plan, the State Government appointed a team

of planners, economists and architects led by Charles Correa, a famous architect from Mumbai who was also responsible for the idea of New Bombay in the 70s. The committee was popularly called the Correa Committee and this committee was based in one of the architectural schools7 in Mumbai. This school undertook the preparation of groundwork required for the recommendations. The most important informant of the area for the Correa Committee was the Development Plan, a map at 1:2500 scale. It revealed the dense fabric of the area with the mill lands sprinkled in this fabric. The examples from London, Boston and Rotterdam of Industrial land Redevelopment were important cases for the Correa Committee. The entire concern articulated from the learning from the international concern, was to create “useful public spaces” in this area. The Committee decided to divide the whole mill lands into three parts rather than each mill. In this manner, large urban spaces as per classical definitions of urban spaces were possible. The Committee thus came up with a plan for the area (Design Cell, 1996). The existing landscape of the area however was not ready for such a concern. Public Space necessarily did not mean classical open space in this area. Instances of Public spaces could be found on a

busy street, a neighbourhood pan and cigarette shop, or even a railway compartment. Classical idea of creating an open space as a Public Space was under severe question, and the local population could not relate to such an idea. The plan angered all players, the owners were against it since they were loosing opportunity to develop the best parts of their lands, and the labour was not really interested in the idea of public space to be traded off with their jobs.

6Ground Survey and interviews indicate that a group of planners led by the Planning Chief from the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority, but under their own personal capacity undertook an investigation on the developments in the land and made a presentation to the Chief Minister of Maharashtra in December 1995. Also a public seminar was organised by the Urban Design Research Institute (an NGO) on the issue. Further, architects, Chandrashekhar Prabhu and Karan Grover, presented the case to Bombay First, a very influential NGO in the city of Mumbai based on their Studies of Mill Lands of Mumbai. 7 The Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies was the base of the Correa Committee.

Figure 4.3: Physical Plan of the Mill Lands, Chief informant of the Mill Land Redevelopment Project


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The Report by the Correa Committee failed to gather any kind of support; on the contrary it became a big issue to be criticised in Public Forums (LHS, 1996). The information system adopted by the Committee had missed completely the issue of public aspiration, of the sky scraping land prices in the city, of interests of various groups. The cartographic map employed for its execution, never enabled to the Report to understand the softer issues of the area. It was a conventional case of the master architect planning the lands from above, and the information system made from above. The Mill Lands Report is now seven years old and there were several other reports that came after this Report. Some reports were more biased on the side of the labour (Adarkar, Adarkar and Das, 1999) suggesting the land division in four parts an additional part for the labour. The most recent development on the issue is the amendment of the development control regulation (GOM, 1991) in 2000. As per this amendment, the owner of the mill is allowed to develop the equivalent of existing ground cover (the land presently occupied by mill buildings) and the rest of the land would be then divided into three parts. This amendment seems completely lop-sided towards the interests of the owners. There are several efforts by City Planners to renegotiate the entire issue8, but the whole endeavour has been a set of reactions to earlier reactions. The role and the legitimacy of the Information System is under severe question as when it informed the concern, it seemed inadequate, and now more softer information seem to inform the planning process. 4.4. CASE 3: CESS RULE FOR REHABILITATION OF DILAPIDATED BUILDINGS Several studies (Muttagi, 1984, Sundaram, 1885) blame the Rent Control Act for the dilapidation of the housing stock in Mumbai. The Rent Control Act of 1948 that froze rents at 1940 rates to stop unreasonable hikes in rent by the landlords. The above mentioned studies suggest that this move by the Government did two things: firstly, it discouraged landlords to build housing stocks on rent forcing a culture of owning houses and secondly, it left a large amount of building stock un-maintained since the landlords were not interested, nor had the resources to maintain. On the other hand Das (1985) argues that a large amount of dilapidated buildings existed in Mumbai much before the Rent Control Act. For our purposes here, we could assume that the Rent Control Act contributed to the dilapidation. This housing stock existed predominantly in the industrial lands and housed the labour group of the area. The most popular form of this stock was the “chawl”, typically a multi-storey building with a huge number of single room tenements between 8 square metres to 15 square metres in area and sharing common facilities of toilets and bathrooms. The building type generally had a courtyard in the center with tenements strung around this courtyard with a common corridor. It is also usual not to have a courtyard. The building construction was generally a load bearing type with wooden frames and wooden trussed pitched roof. Some later chawls were also constructed with reinforced cement concrete frames. The tenements were constructed for a single migrant labourer working in the cotton textile mills and were built in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Usually the labourers shared these tenements with other labourers to save on rent. But later, they got their families to the cities. It is now usual to find such a single tenement housing a complete joint family of more than six people. The overuse of resources in this type (Das, 1985), the disinterest of the landlords to invest on them (Muttagi, 1984) and the poor economical situation of the tenants (Sundaram, 1985) left this housing stock completely overused and in the state of intense decay. The buildings became a threat to the lives of tenants that were staying in them. The issue came into foreground in late sixties with a huge number of such buildings falling. The State Government9 then appointed an expert committee10 to study the issue and give its recommendations. The committee carried a detailed survey of the buildings and identified around nineteen

8 Several Architects and Planners are presently redrafting the Integrated Plan for the Mills. The aim is to respect the amendment of the Development Control Regulation, but rather give the Owner not land, but a development right instead and bargain the land for the city. The idea of Public Space still seems to rule the concern. This information was collected by personal interviews of Mr. Charles Correa (Architect), Mr. Vidyadhar Pathak (Chief Planner, MMRDA), Mr Chandreshekhar Prabhu (Chairperson, Advisor to the Housing Minister) and Prof. Anirudh Paul (Director, KRVIA) 9 State Government here means the Government of Maharashtra, which is one of the states in India. 10 The Government of Maharashtra appointed an Expert Committee to research on the issue of old and dilapidated buildings in 1965. This committee was popularly called as Bedekar Committee (Muttagi, 1984)


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thousand buildings that were showing dilapidation11. The committee also recommended the formation of a separate board that would undertake repair and reconstruction of these buildings. Under these recommendations, the State Government passed a legislation in 1969 called the ‘Bombay Building Repairs and Reconstruction Board Act’ constituting the subsequent ‘Bombay Building Repair and Reconstruction Board’. The State Government here assumed responsibility of repairing the old buildings or reconstructing them. Under the new law, the government levied a Repair and Reconstruction Cess tax at different scales on the basis of rateable value. Government Buildings and buildings under cooperative ownership were exempted from this tax. The Municipality was entrusted with collection of this tax and transferred it to the State Government to create a pool for the repair and reconstruction. The Municipality also had to contribute some amount to this pool, while the State Government gave adhoc grants to this pool. This pool was then used for carrying out structural repairs, for reconstruction and alternative transit accommodations of the tenants. Around 500 buildings were repaired every year like this with the annual budget of Rupees 200 to 250 Million (Sundaram, 1985). A quantitative survey made by Pathak and Pendharkar (1984) suggest that Rupees 12000 Million would be required to reconstruct nearly 16000 buildings constructed before 1940. This is obviously a very steep task for the Government. A large number of studies in the mid 80s were extremely critical of this scheme. The first and the most popular argument were the cost ineffectiveness and the low output12 of the entire scheme (Pathak and Pendharkar, 1984, Muttagi, 1984, Sundaram, 1985, Das, 1985). The second criticism was targeted towards the high degree of financial and managerial capabilities required to execute this programme (Sundaram, 1985). The reconstruction programme means inclusion of financial, organisational, engineering and social dimensions. And the studies indicate the incapability of the Repair Board to perform in all these dimensions (Sundaram, 1985, Das, 1985). The third criticism was summing up the ineffectiveness of the scheme (Sundaram, 1985, Das, 1985). This criticism was suggesting that the repair of the old buildings does not lengthen the life of the building too much. In short time a new repair would be required. The fourth and final criticism was more of a social nature (Sundaram, 1985). This was commenting on the poor living conditions in these buildings. As described earlier and reinstated by Das (1985), the dilapidation of the buildings was predominantly because of overuse of the commodity. It is usual to find more than six people living in a single room of 10 square metre and around 30 such households sharing three water closets and three bathrooms. While these studies created an information system regarding the entire issue, they were also indicating two very clear directions: a. It is uneconomical for the Government to undertake such an activity all by itself without a clear financial

policy (Pathak and Pendharkar, 1984, Das, 1984) b. It is not worth to repair these buildings, but rather it would be better to reconstruct the entire building.

(Das, 1985). Some studies were also mentioning a complete urban renewal programme (Sundaram, 1985)

With such a background, the government came up with a complete new policy based on the recommendations of another expert committee in 1997 (Sukhtankar Committee Report, 1997). The policy was popularly called as the CESS Rule for Redevelopment. At the core of the policy was the idea to encourage private participation in reconstructing dilapidated buildings and discourage the repair of them. The policy suggested that a building listed as a CESS building could undergo reconstruction if the landlord and seventy percent of the tenants agree. In such a case they could hire a developer for the new construction. The new construction requires to follow the regulations as per the Development Control Regulations. The old tenants get flats that are as large as their old tenement or 20.9 square meter whichever is more. The costs here include not only pulling down and reconstructing new buildings, but also providing transit accommodation. And here the government would not give any money. To offset this large cost, the policy suggested giving of additional development rights on the property. Hence, the new building would have tenements for the old tenants plus will have additional real estate (either residential or commercial or both, as allowed by the development plan regulations) for selling in the open market. And the money acquired from this selling would be used to finance the entire cost of the project. The additional development right is spelt as 50% (or FSI of 2.5, whichever is more) of the existing development given in terms of Floor Space Index

11 The old and dilapidated buildings were categorised into three categories: Category A: 16502 buildings that were constructed before September 1940, Category B: 1489 buildings that were constructed between September 1940 and December 1950 and Category C: 1651 buildings that were constructed between January 1951 and September 1969. Totally there were 19642 buildings. 12 Only 1000 buildings were reconstructed or repaired out of 19000 between 1969 and 1983 (Muttagi, 1984)


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(FSI). There was also an incentive 10% additional FSI given for older buildings making the total additional FSI as 60% for quicker responses. The policy brought about a huge rush by the developers to invest and redevelop the dilapidated buildings. The CESS Rule however attracted a huge amount of criticism articulated well in a study of the impacts of this

rule on an old residential district. The study was conducted by an architectural institute and was a part of a larger study on conservation of historic districts in the city off Mumbai (Design Cell, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003). The study indicates that the essential problem with the CESS rule is its ignorance towards the local conditions and the blanket application of the policy. One sees that the new developments undertaken by the Cess Rule have come up only in areas with very high real estate value and not in the other areas where the problem of dilapidation is very acute. The study indicates that this not because the additional development was not able to offset the price of reconstruction, but because the profit margin was not very high (Design Cell, 2000, 2003). The study points out the problem of the excessive profit margin sought by the developers. While the cost of construction is relatively low (Rs. 750 per square feet), the selling price in these areas is extremely high (Rs. 10000 per square feet) indicating a profit of almost 350% on the investment13 (Design Cell, 2003). The study raises an important question of whether the rule was made to re-house people or provide profit to the developers. But the greater criticism was towards the larger implication of the rule on the city. The profits made was not invested back into the city rather this newer development brought gentry and burdened the infrastructure more (Design Cell, 1998). Parking problems became severe in the area. Moreover living conditions were getting affected due to higher buildings blocking light and ventilation to the lower ones (Design Cell, 1998). The new rule does not indicate any urban

planning and design regulations, rather attempts only to solve the financial problem. And this would not be solution to macro problems of the city, where in the long term, the city would have to pay for the increasing density. There are also cases studied (Design Cell, 1998) of tenants being threatened to agree for reconstruction in an area where the buildings were in a sound condition. The study (Design Cell, 1998, 2003) indicates the lack of information and its correlations with other information and the blanket nature of the policy. The identification of the buildings was solely on their age and not on their structural stability. Moreover the affording capacity of the specific area to repair their buildings was not taken into account. Buildings with extremely rich tenants have undergone redevelopment under the policy, but buildings with poorer tenants have remained the same. The policy also does not take into account the micro real estate deviations. The study raises questions on the private partnership sought and suggests the state to undertake the process under the same mechanism (Design Cell, 2003) Hence, the information system employed by the policy developers remains inadequate. But more importantly the case shows the problems of blanket surveys and blanket policies. 4.5. CASE 4: HERITAGE CONSERVATION REGULATION Heritage Conservation has been the latest phenomenon in Urban Development of Mumbai and the Heritage Regulation Policy of 1995 has been one of the most powerful policies that have significantly shaped

13 Considering existing building to have total built-up area as 1000 square feet. Then the developer is allowed to build 1500 square feet and sell 500 square feet. Considering the rate of construction as Rs. 750 per square feet, then the investment would be Rs. 1, 125,000 for the entire construction. And the 500 square meters would be sold at Rs. 10000 per square feet bringing to total income to be Rs. 5,000,000. This means a profit of Rs. 3,875,000 over an investment of Rs. 1,125,000 or 344 % of Profit.

Figure 4.4: Redevelopment of Dilapidated Building: High-rise in the dense context


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Mumbai’s urbanism. Several authors who are also activists of the movement have written elaborately on the process. I would summarise their arguments here to make the case for Urban Heritage Conservation before beginning to describe the information system because this is a case where specific interests have shaped the information system and the policy. Cyrus Guzder, one of the champions of the Heritage Conservation Movement in Mumbai, traces the origins of the movement to the 70’s (Guzder, 1993) where he suggests efforts of some NGOs14 as being the beginning. Guzder’s primary contention is that the Heritage Conservation Movement has been essentially an environmental movement where these NGOs were actively involved for a cause against the rapid deterioration of the physical fabric and the quality of life in the city. Whereas Guzder’s account of the Heritage Conservation Movement (Guzder, 1993) fails to establish the clear link in the Environmental Concern changing into a concern on Heritage, he tends to suggest that heritage was a useful tool to promote an awareness that was necessary to save the City of haphazard development that was occurring since 80s onwards. This haphazard development, Guzder suggests, was threatening the physical health of the city, its infrastructure as well as the liveability. He quotes the National Commission on Urbanisation to support his weak link between Environment and Heritage: “unlike archaeological monuments which can be saved by prohibiting development in the immediate vicinity, historic quarters and buildings in the cities are the very flesh and blood of urban settlement. These can be protected only by suitably guiding the physical growth of cities”15. While the quotation argues for protecting the existing fabric of the city (presumably its heritage), it sets up a policy clue of making guidelines for such protection. Along with the environmental arguments mentioned by Guzder, the most influential arguments that guided the movement were of classical romantic nostalgia. Surprisingly these arguments worked at all levels. The politicians were more than happy to undertake any burden of saving the history. For academicians, intellectuals and practitioners it was a new idea to toy with. Sangeet Sharma’s (1993) set of interviews with several intellectuals of the country reveal the intensity of this romantic nostalgia. Vikas Dilawari seems to be one of the most articulate in his conceptions of identity and history (Dilawari, 1997) relating to heritage, which becomes his primary argument for conservation. In the same essay, however, Dilawari (1997) points at one of the seemingly convincing arguments. This argument is towards protecting the traditional skills and work patterns. While on the onset, the argument has a romantic nostalgic tendency; on the other hand it has an economical agenda. The argument is articulated well in the Kanga Committee report on Urban Heritage of Mumbai (1992) and voiced again by Guzder (1993): “to retain the socio-economic character of traditional areas if residents wanted to continue to live in an accustomed environment, assisted by measures for substantial upgrading and renovation”. The argument seems to have an economical agenda of protecting cultures of work that spur innovation and enterprise. In the global context, such an agenda seems reasonable. Moreover, significantly, the argument shifts its focus from conserving buildings to conserving environments. Under pressure from NGOs, intellectuals, academicians, and support from high-level bureaucrats16, the Government of Maharashtra constituted a working committee to advice it on the Heritage Issue. The Report of the committee (Kanga Committee Report, 1992) reiterated the arguments stated above and drafted framework for the policy on heritage conservation.

14 The Save Bombay Committee, the Bombay Environmental Action Group and the Bombay Civic Trust are the three NGOs that Guzder (1993) mentions who began petitioning the Government to review its policies and gauge its environmental impacts. This later becomes the backbone for the Heritage movement. 15 The quotation is from Guzder (1993), where Guzder is quoting the report of the National Commission of Urbanisation (1988) under the chairmanship of Charles Correa. The commission was set up by the Government of India to conceptualise the changes in Urbanism in the country and guide the subsequent policy. 16 This information is collected from personal interviews of the conservation activists in the city.

Figure 4.5: Documentation of Heritage Precinct and Buildings by Architectural Academy


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One of the primary requirements of the movement was to know: what needs to be conserved? Which buildings exactly merit the heritage value? The movement relied heavily on the extensive documentations of Heritage Buildings taken up by architectural academies and Cultural Heritage NGOs in the city of Mumbai in the beginning of the 90s. While the documentation by the architectural academies (Academy of Architecture, 1989) or publications based on such documentation (Mehrotra and Nest, ed. 1994) made documentary evidences for heritage conservation; the documentation of the cultural heritage NGO, INTACH, was focused on listing buildings that had to be conserved (INTACH, 1986). The Kanga Committee’s first recommendation was to get a formal list of heritage buildings. This became the basic information system for the policy along with all the arguments. To break the concept of heritage into an empirical set of indicators to measure the worth of the building in terms of its heritage was the next endeavour in the movement. The architectural academies and INTACH had already formulated some theoretical arguments on heritage and valued them. The final policy however (GOM, 1995) formulated the criteria based on the following: 1. Value for Architectural, Historical or Cultural reasons 2. The age of the building and the period of its birth 3. The relevance in social or economic history 4. Association with historic person or event 5. If the building follows a distinct style or has a merit of being a community place 6. If the building is a part of any architectural movement 7. If the building is a part of an important precinct 8. If the building has a technological merit 9. Vistas of cultural importance (for streets and vistas) 10. Important public spaces (for open spaces) Buildings were immediately categorised and a list of heritage buildings was prepared. Then these buildings were graded in Grades 1, 2 and 3, depending upon the king of conservation that has to be adopted. The buildings under grade 1 were of high heritage value and the modifications allowed to them were minimum. But the entire process never consulted the people owning or living in these buildings. Moreover, value was attributed on fairly subjective grounds of the experts of heritage. The argument of socio-economical value of environment seemed to have been forgotten in the entire drive for saving buildings. The idea was not to protect living conditions of people, but buildings instead. As the listing was made, a Heritage Conservation Committee was constituted within the Municipality of Mumbai. The policy was framed called the Heritage Conservation Policy (GOM, 1995). This policy specified the buildings based on the list that need to be conserved and articulated the kind of modification that was to be allowed and all the proposals for changes in the building were to be cleared by the Heritage Conservation Committee. The committee became a huge power broker in the development of Mumbai with a number of allegations made by it time and again by citizens regarding its transparency17. The heritage conservation policy restricted the rights of building owners of developing their property. To address this issue, the state decided to give transferable development rights on heritage properties and this was again was to be decided by the heritage committee. The Heritage Conservation is a case of certain interests making the information system without considering the stakeholders. Today, a heritage property is considered to be a liability by the owner. The Heritage Conservation Committee has become nothing more than broker of development rights. 4.6. CASE 5: FIFTY-FIVE FLYOVERS PROJECT The geographical linearity of Mumbai with the work places located at the southern tip has shown a traditional demand for north south travel in the city. A report by the Metropolitan Authority on Transportation needs and proposals in the city of Mumbai suggests a diversification of this North South travel with work places getting distributed in and around different parts of the city (WS Atkins, 1994). The report further predicts a tremendous growth in the traffic demand with the north south demand still holding prominence (WS Atkins, 1994). The same report stresses on the importance of public transport to handle the situation: “One can also contrast the passenger carrying capacities of the different modes: cars carry only 4000 passengers an hour, versus 15000 in buses, 45000 by train and 75000 if there were an underground system” (WS Atkins, 1994). On the other hand several technical papers written to the support of this report, evaluate numerous local

17 The Heritage Committee came under severe attack for favouring certain projects and not others. A number of newspaper articles feature this fact.


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conditions of traffic problems in the city. These vary from traffic jams, overcrowding and even flooding. In various cases the report suggests the use of flyovers to solve the local problems. The report however does not comment on the link between the large travel demands, improvements in public transport and local problems of traffic. Several projects were developed based on the recommendations of this report. The famous Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP) was a result of this report. Under MUTP, several projects to improve the rail transport in the city were proposed. Rail transport was identified as one of the primary transportation modes in the Report of Transport. However, even though these improvement projects were proposed much

before road projects (Roy Choudhury, 03), a highly ambitious project of building 55 flyovers in the city was undertaken based on the requirements stressed on local needs of traffic indicated by the Transportation Report. This is the significant case where, selective data from the Urban Information System (in this case the transportation report) gets appropriated for intervention (in this case the building of fifty-five flyovers. Further, this project is also a case where the planning community opposes a certain decision and the political realm not listening to it. A. V. Ghangurde, the chief transport planner with the Metropolitan Authority, publicly cited at a seminar: “In Mumbai, this coalition Government took a drastic step by bypassing the apex planning body, the MMRDA (Metropolitan Authority), as its transport expert” (D’Monte, 2001). Gaurav Roy Choudhury attributes this entire moves by the government as a part of the large global reconfiguration with the Government trying to appease the corporate, making space for them in the city (Roy Choudhury, 03) His thesis further questions this absolute surrender of the government. The images of Singapore, Hon Kong and Shangai have always been the most saleable images amongst the political visions. The project is a case of political visions shaping urban interventions. Daryl D’Monte on the other hand exposes various other related issues in the project. Quoting from his journalistic writings:

“What was worrying about the entire process in Mumbai is the conspicuous lack planning. The investments are staggering: Rs 1740 crore for 55 Flyovers, Rs. 6000 crore for the Sewri-Nhave Sea Link and Rs. 2000 crore for the Western Freeway Sea Link from Bandra to Nariman Point. This Rs 10000 crore is being spent without the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, the top planning agency, or the municipal corporation being consulted. The executing agency, the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC), is taking all decisions itself, like a lab technician performing surgery on a critical patient. This is a piece with the controversial, which has been taken to court by environmentalists, where the head of the Jog Construction company earlier presided over an official committee to advise on the desirability of flyovers and was awarded this 140 crore contract!” (D’Monte, 2002)

D’Monte’s findings indicate several other reasons more than mere political visions to the entire project. He locates the project in the realm of corruption where Construction Company is actively involved in formulating projects for the city. But the planning criticism of the project comes from Roy Choudhury:

“Studies show that one line of rail traffic carries as many passengers as 9 lanes of bus traffic or 33 lanes of private vehicles. The road system, thus gives the minimum scope in providing public transport, with a train service-providing maximum. Though the existing road infrastructure can handle only 250000 vehicles, the number of vehicles is likely to touch 1.6 million by 2010 as 110 vehicles are added to the roads of Mumbai every day. The average speed of vehicles in the city is 6 to 8 km/hour. Further only 9% of Mumbai’s travelling populations has access to private vehicles, wherein 13% use the intermediary transport like the taxis and auto rickshaws, the remaining 83% public transport. The trains alone handle around 4.5 million travellers every day in Mumbai” (Roy Choudhury, 03).

The Fifty Five Flyovers project in the city did not address the issue of transportation; on the other hand it encouraged people to buy more cars. It is also a project showing immense elite bias. While it could be considered as an important political vision, the project tremendously contributed to the city pollution.

Figure 4.6: Flyover in Mumbai with Public Transport not using it


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4.7. SUMMARY OF THE CASES The five cases could be summarised as follows answering the sub research questions in chapter three.

Table 4.2: Summary of projects answering the research questions

PROJECTS / POLICIES SUB-

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Slum Re-development Policy

Mill Lands Redevelopment Plan

Policy for CESSED Buildings

Policy of Heritage Conservation

Project of Building Fifty Five Flyovers

UIS What

informed the concern?

Census Data NGO archives

Physical Map, Case studies from Europe

Survey on Dilapidation of Old Buildings causing threat to lives

Romanticism, Case Studies from Europe, Environmental Degradation

Cases from Honk-Kong and Shangai, Local Surveys of Traffic Congestion

Actors Who informed

the concern? NGO State, Professionals Professionals Professionals, NGOs Professionals and

Intern. Consultants

Who took the decisions?

State Government State, Professionals State State, Professionals, NGOs

Politicians

Whose interests were addressed?

Slum Dwellers State and NGO Developers

Corporate, Professionals, State

State, Tenants, Developers, Owners

NGOs, Professionals Car owners, Politicians, Bridge Builders

Interests What were

the interests? Living Conditions Land Votes Popularity

To Create Open spaces and Commercial areas

To repair / redevelop old buildings

To save built heritage from decay and abrupt development

To increase Road Space to solve traffic problems in the city, To build Bridges

Concept-ualisation

How was the issue conceived?

Slum as a part of the city to be taken care of

Vacant land as an opportunity for open spaces

Old buildings in areas of high land value is under dilapidation

Heritage needs to be saved, Policy should be made

The problem of heavy traffic is because there is less road space

Concern What were

the problems? Unhealthy Living Conditions

No open space The old buildings were dilapidated

Built heritage under threat of abrupt development and decay

There was heavy traffic on the roads

What were the challenges?

Finances How to get large open space with scattered vacant lands

There was no money that was available for reconstruction

No strategy and policy to save the building heritage

How to increase road space and get money for it?

What were the opportunities?

Land Vacant Industrial Land

Land value was high Influential Professionals and NGOs were involved

Technology of Bridges and World Bank Loan

Strategy How was it

addressed? Upgradation and rehabilitation

Consider the vacant lands as a whole and redistribute so as to get relevant open spaces

Give additional development rights if the building is reconstructed thereby the money got from selling the new component of development would subsidize old apartments

Listing and Classification of Building to be conserved, Heritage Society was institutionalised in the Municipality Policy prepared and implemented

By building Fifty Five Bridges in the City of Mumbai

Impact What was the

outcome? Slum dwellers sold their houses New Slums More Slums

The labour and the owners opposed as their interests were not taken care

Even buildings which were strong were pulled down, Builders threatened people to undergo reconstruction, infrastructure overburdened, only areas with high land value underwent reconstruction

The owners lost development rights, The idea of transferring development rights was used, Heritage Society of the Municipality became the biggest player and was open for corruption

People were encouraged to buy more cars causing more pollution. Corruption in Bridge Building Projects. Public Transport still overburdened. Bridges were built over important Public Spaces destroying their Character


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4.8. CONCLUSIONS The cases indicate certain clues regarding the Urban Information System as well as its relation with the planning process. The cases bring about specific problems with the Urban Information system and the subsequent relation with Interventions. These could be summarised as follows: Project or Policy What was the problem of the Information

System? And What was the subsequent result on the Interventions?

1 Slum Redevelopment Project

a. Information system does not include soft data on the slums and hence the intervention remains as a providing of housing

b. Information system considers private sector as the only alternative to undertake the activity of reconstruction

c. Important case where Information system becomes a bargaining tool

a. Slums are seen as problems of the city that need to be taken care, problems of living conditions, hence the intervention is to provide housing

b. The agent of Developers are involved and the focus of the project has become to make profits instead of housing the poor

c. Government is forced to intervene 2 Mill Land

Redevelopment Project

a. Typical case of City Planners making the Information Systems based on hard facts (Physical Plan becoming the information system)

b. No correlations with other data bases c. Completely misses aspirations and

opinions

a. Intervention does not acknowledge local contexts and understanding of public space

b. Intervention focuses on a political requirement and planners aspirations and completely misses responding to local aspirations and opinions

3 CESS Policy a. Problem of non-specific blanket survey and blanket regulation

b. Information system considers private sector as the only alternative to undertake the activity of reconstruction

c. No correlation with other kinds of local context like land value and problems of infrastructure

a. Intervention is a blanket policy and burdens the infrastructure

b. Advantage taken by developers is high and only they seem to be the beneficiaries and no one else

c. Even buildings that are strong are undergoing transformation

4 Heritage Conservation Policy

a. Problem of some interests making the Information System and also framing the policy

b. Important case where information system becomes the conceptualisation agent

a. People saw the policy as constraining their development rights

b. Case of creating another power agent and hence encouraging corruption

5 Project of Fifty Five Flyovers

a. Problem of manipulated hard data in the information system

b. Case where the conceptualisation completely shifted from the agenda of the problem

a. Intervention creates resources other people without problems

b. Case where interventions are driven by project proposals and not problem statements

c. Intervention has created problems of more cars in the city

Table 4.3: Problems of Information Systems and result on Interventions Further, The projects seem partially or completely successful in their objectives, which were: Project or Policy Objective Whether the Project/Policy was successful

in implementing its objectives 1 Slum Redevelopment Project To provide better houses

for the slum dwellers Partially

2 Mill Land Redevelopment Project

To create better public space in the city

No

3 CESS Policy To reconstruct dilapidated buildings

Partially

4 Heritage Conservation Policy To save Heritage buildings Yes 5 Project of Fifty Five Flyovers To increase road space by

building flyovers Yes

Table 4.4: Success in implementation of objectives of the project/policy While the various projects/policies seem partially or completely successful in implementation of their objectives, we need to make distinction between objectives of the project/policy against the relevance/appropriateness of them. To detail the aspect of relevance/appropriateness, we need to firstly


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identify the actors, and their aspirations, if the objectives took into consideration related issues in the context of the city and if the implementation caused other problems to the city. While we have elaborated in the previous tables (Table 4.2, 4.3) on the impacts of the intervention on the city, we need to still identify prime actors and their aspirations and the other related issues. Project or

Policy Prime Actors within the Context

Aspirations of Prime Actors Actors outside the context

Other Related Issues

1 Slum Redevelopment Project

Slum Dwellers Opportunity for better living and working condition

State, Politicians NGO, Planners Developers

High Property Value Slum is an industry

2 Mill Land Redevelopment Project

Labour and the Owners

For the labour opportunity of employment, and for the owners opportunity to develop their lands

State, Politicians NGO, Planners Developers

High Property Value Employment

3 CESS Policy Occupants of dilapidated buildings

Safe Building to live State, Planners Developers

High Property Value Burdened Infrastructure

4 Heritage Conservation Policy

Owners of buildings

Development of Property Rights State, NGO Planners

High Property Value

5 Project of Fifty Five Flyovers

Travellers within the city

Better mode of transport State, Politicians Planners, Developers

Burdened Public Transport

Table 4.5: Actors, Aspirations and Other Issues in the Projects/Policies Having identified Prime Actors within the context, their aspirations and other related issues, if we ask following questions for relevance/appropriateness of interventions against these projects, then we can prove the irrelevance/inappropriateness of these projects/policies: Slum Re-

development Mill Lands Re-development

CESSED Buildings

Heritage Conservation

Fifty Five Flyovers

1 Did the intervention address the problems of people within the context of the project?

Partially No Partially No No

2 Did the intervention address to local aspirations and opinions?

No No No No No

3 Did the intervention address other related issues of the city?

No No No No No

4 Did the intervention cause other problems to the city?

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Table 4.6: Relevance of Interventions The purpose of this chapter was to prove the first part of the hypothesis that there is a relationship between Urban Information System and Urban Interventions and they (Interventions) remain inappropriate because the Information System is inappropriate. In the next chapter, I undertake formulating of strategies to address this problem of Conventional Information Systems


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5. FORMULATION FROM CASES AND EMERGING STRATEGIES 5.1. FORMULATIONS FROM CASES

The above diagram summarises the process that informed intervention in the five cases described in the previous chapter (Chapter 5). The predominant informant here is the Urban Information System, which is composed of hard data. I would use Anderson’s (1991) nomenclature to describe the components of this hard information. The components are: a. Map: This component includes all kinds of cartographic patterns (like the physical map in the case of the

Mill Land project and the maps of transport problems in Mumbai in the case of the Fifty-Five Flyover project).

b. Census: This component includes all kinds of statistical data (like the NGO census in the case of Slum Redevelopment Policy and the survey data of 19000 dilapidated buildings in the case of CESS policy)

c. Museum: This is composed of other cultural knowledge based on the research; assumptions, interests of the planner (such as the study of European Industrial Land Redevelopment in the case of Mill Land Redevelopment project, the arguments of conservation NGOs in the case of Heritage Conservation Policy and the Aspiration of turning Mumbai into Shanghai and Honk Kong in the case of Fifty-Five Flyover Project)

The diagram also shows that there are soft influences of aspirations and opinions that affect not only the development of intervention directly, but also influence the formation of conventional information systems. This is evident from the case of the Slum Redevelopment Policy, where, contrary to the earlier state-

Figure 5.1: Problems with the Conventional Information System


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sponsored information system, which regarded the slums as merely informal settlers creating problems for the city, the NGOs made an Information System, which they made an effort to foreground the relation of the slum with the city and the problems of infrastructure. In the case of the Mill-lands project, the only information system was the physical plan, showing the density of the built fabric, where the aspirations of the labour did not figure at all. The issue becomes clearer in the case of the Heritage Conservation Policy where aspirations and opinions of external actors were the only and the most powerful informants of the Intervention (in this case the Heritage Conservation Policy). In the case of Fifty Five Flyovers, the entire project seemed to be driven by mere external interests of politicians and bridge builders. The diagram further also shows the soft influences that do not affect the information system or the intervention at all. This is generally soft information of the people within the context. This is evident from the case of the Slum Redevelopment Policy where the capacity of the slum to become an industry and a place of enterprise was completely missed in the information system. In the case of the Mill Land Redevelopment, the information system completely misses out the aspirations of the labour. In the case of the Heritage Conservation Policy, aspirations of the owners of the Heritage Property are missed out. And in all the cases, correlations with cultural aspects of how people live and use the space (evident from Slum Redevelopment case of providing high rise solutions instead of work spaces and in the case of Mill Land project where certain standards of Public Space were assumed that was never appreciated by the local people) is missed out. Correlations with other issues of Property Value as well as Infrastructure seem to also be left out in most of the cases. The diagram finally summarises the problems as: 1. Problems of Interests, where external Interests influence the making of Information Systems 2. Problems of Methods, where conventional methods of mapping are not able to put together all kinds of

relevant information and rely largely on hard information described earlier 3. Problems of Exclusion of Soft Information on interests of Local Opinion and other cultural information

related to local contexts. These problems reiterate the problems articulated in the Critique of Information System in Chapter Two. But they are based on actual cases in the city of Mumbai. Hence to further my conclusions, from the cases, I can make two important formulations. 1. First: The problem of the Information System is because it is made by external interests for whom the

Information System becomes a playground to intervene. 2. Second: The problem of Information System is that it excludes Soft Information on the Context of

Intervention. Here I prove the second part of the hypothesis. 5.2. STRATEGISING FROM THE FORMULATION This part is intended towards strategising for changes in the conventional information system. 5.2.1. New Information System: Complimentary Elaboration rather than an alternative From the problems described in the first part of this chapter, the ideal condition would be to have an information system that is neutral, that has all kinds of information: hard and soft and that which represents all interests and is able to synthesise from such an information system a relevant intervention. But to imagine such a system would mean a neutral agency making such a system and having access to all kinds of information and moreover this agency needs to have a capacity to synthesise a relevant intervention. However chapter two suggests that the makers of information system have historically never been neutral, nor have access or a method to conceptualise all information. On the other hand, in the contemporary context of the Metropolis of Mumbai, such an endeavour to have such an information system seems like creating an imaginary information utopia. Mumbai city has yet to have a holistic information system (for example city wide Geographic Information System). As we have noted in the cases, each project demands its own information system and a specific information system is created for the same. In this manner there is no correlation with any other kinds of data. While the effort to create such a correlating database is underway, it seems that it would take a long time before anything useful could be made. This is simply because of the shear size of the city and its complexity18. But this new database using a geographical 18 Ground Survey indicates that the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority is considering setting up a database for the city in form of the Geographical Information System. While the finances for such an endeavour seems to


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information system still does not ensure the inclusion of soft data. We have also undertaken a systematic critique of the Geographical Information System in Chapter two. While the scope of this research extends into commenting upon the requirement to update the existing information system, the research recognises that this upgradation would be a large task and would require a huge amount of time. Moreover the research interest is not into creation of such a large database, but rather that of a relevant one. This could be done through elaboration of existing databases with relevant data. This is because the present problems of the city (from the cases) are based on such project-based information systems and planning is done through setting up projects, programmes and policies. And it is evident from the case of the Slum Redevelopment Policy (Chapter Four) that if the information system is slightly altered and elaborated there is a possibility of having a relevant intervention. Hence, while the research supports any undertaking of a creation of a large information system for the city, it proposes having a complimentary elaboration of the existing information system as more relevant for the current situation. The new information system is not an alternative, but a compliment of the existing information system. This would be relevant and appropriate till the time that a larger all-inclusive information system is put into place. Having proposed a new complimentary information system, we need to ask the following questions regarding this new information system: 1. Who would make such an information system? 2. What would this new information system contain? 3. How would this new information system enter the mainstream planning process? 5.2.2. Who should make it? The first part of this chapter formulates that the essential problem of information systems is that external interests make it and that this information system becomes a playground of these interests. Hence in answering the first question, the simple answer would be that the new information system should be made by the people whom it represents. But the larger question is: how should this be made? Once again the case of the Slum Redevelopment Policy (Chapter Four) provides clues. In this case, an NGO undertook mapping of the slum and their interests and used this information system to bargain with the government. The NGO in the process not only organised the slum dwellers but also actively worked with them to contribute to the making of such an information system. In the case of the Mill Land Redevelopment Project (Chapter Four), this opportunity was missed even in spite of having here an academic institute involved in making the information system. Academic institutions have the strength19 and the trust to undertake such a process, where it could involve a large community to participate in the creation of the information system. Hence one could conclude that formation of such a new information system could be facilitated through a third agency that is not a stakeholder, but works as a trustee of the community. The NGO group and the Academic Institution seem to be such possible groups because of their “non-profit making” interests. Though one cannot underplay the criticisms of the role of the NGO today20, the possibility of them being trustees cannot be denied. On the other hand, capacity can be built within the communities and their CBOs to undertake such an endeavour. In this capacity building exercise, again NGOs and Academies could play an

be a problem, the other important problem is to have an agency that has a capacity to undertake such a large task. Digitising the existing manually drawn maps themselves is creating a problem not only because of the volume, but also because of shear inability to cross check the data on field. 19 The same academy, the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute For Architecture and Environmental Studies, which was involved with the Mill Lands Redevelopment Project, also undertook another project of conserving an old residential precinct. This is a case where the academy was involved in making an information system where the residents of the community participated actively in the making of such an information system. This information system (the report of the project, which contained various dimensions of community) (Design Cell, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002) then became an important instrument in delineating the precinct as a conservation district. 20 Recently several projects in the city of Mumbai have been undertaken by the Government in collaboration with the NGO groups (the famous Mumbai Urban Transport Project is the most recent example). These projects though showed the immense resolve of the Government, described an antithesis regarding the role of the NGO. The involvement of the NGO was one of the requirements set by the World Bank who were the partial financiers of these projects. Classically NGOs developed in Mumbai as a resistance to the Government Policies that were not people-friendly or they developed as trusties of the people where they undertook certain grass-root activities. Now one sees a certain conflation of the role of the NGO and that of the government.


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important role. One of the most important agencies however that could be harnessed in developing this information archive for the community is the media. Iugan (2003) articulates the importance of this agency for three reasons: firstly it is a mid-landing agency which connects all actors within the context as well as outside, secondly besides becoming an archive it has the ability to become the voice of the community and thirdly, it has the capacity and the institution to undertake such an activity of mapping communities. 5.2.3. What should it contain? In answering the second question raised above on the contents of this information system, we can refer to the second problem identified in the first part of this chapter: the exclusion of soft information on the context. The new information system needs to contain soft information on the context. Chapter two (2.3.4 and 2.4) attempts to define the elements of soft data. Hence to re-quote from chapter two:

… (soft information) lie in the realm of aspirations, opinions, biases, interests, etc. Soft Data includes all kinds of data such as differences in opinions, interests, quarrels, gender biases, informal networks amongst various social groups, class differences expressed in social conditions, behavioural patterns, historic events, local stories, economic conditions, legislative conditions, regulatory mechanisms and even political interests (Corner, 1999).

These elements could be broadly categorised into three groups: Character of the Community (including gender biases, class differences expressed in social conditions, behavioural patterns, historic events, local stories and economic conditions), Interest of the Community (including opinions and aspirations) and Linkages of the Community (including informal networks amongst various social groups, legislative conditions, regulatory mechanisms and even political interests). Having identified the categories of the contents I would not delve any further on soft information here but I shall undertake an elaborate analysis of soft data and formulate methods of conceptualising it in the next chapter (Chapter Six). 5.2.4. How should it enter mainstream planning? As discussed earlier, the ideal situation is when soft information becomes a part of the mainstream information system. But since in the present context, there is no scope for such a possibility, especially because there is neither method nor intention; it would be necessary to imagine other ways in which soft information could enter mainstream planning. The adjoining diagram shows a possibility of where this soft information could enter. It could remain separate from the mainstream map, census and the museum, but enter directly as a separate set of information. Again here, the Slum Redevelopment Policy discussed in Chapter Four provides clues. In that case, the NGO developed an information system that was used as a bargaining tool with the government. There are also examples discussed earlier where the academy has developed such information systems. And if we continue with Iugan’s (2003) idea, then the media can start becoming this archiving and bargaining agency. Another possibility is to have a community web page that can be referred by the planners during planning for the community. Hence we could conclude that, because it is not possible in the present context to have an integrated information system and the soft information is important for planning, it should be made outside the mainstream information system. The NGO, Academy or the media could be used to facilitate such a making, but the information system should be made with the involvement of the community. It should not remain a static entity, but an ever enlarging, dynamic entity and hence the idea of a community web page is useful.

Figure 5.2: The necessary Link of new information system

This link needs to be established


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Moreover this information system has a possibility of becoming an organising instrument and a bargaining tool for the community. There are three ways that can be articulated in which this information system could enter mainstream planning process: 1. This information system could force itself into the Planning Process and requires devices for such a

forcing. Here again the media could become an important agency. The media is a powerful agent that can compel powerful forces such as politicians to acknowledge soft information. But the media can also be a large hurdle if used indiscreetly because it may unnecessarily create a large scare amongst many interests and also if the media is used prematurely, it might give time to adverse interests to prepare themselves for incongruent activities21.

2. But there are other informal ways that could be articulated, in which this information system could enter the planning process. Here soft negotiations could be possible, with city officials and powerful players like industrial houses and other local and global actors. Here the NGOs, Academies and Organised Communities could be useful agents of such negotiations. These soft negotiations are essential because they could influence the mainstream information system directly through influencing the knowledge of the planners and creating a relevant opinion amongst the planners on the interests of the community. And in the case of influencing other actors, this information system could become an important device in the city for gaining support from important players in the city22.

3. The third manner in which this soft information could enter the Planning Process is through conducting Public Meetings and Gatherings where the soft information could be presented. Here again the NGOs, Academies and the Media can become useful facilitators. There are several instances in the city where such Public Presentations23 are used to create a public opinion on the issue and force the city bureaucracy and administration to recognise the soft information.

This chapter was planned as the beginning of the exploratory part of the thesis, which is towards creating a new information system. We have been able to make some useful strategies towards such an endeavour regarding the position of the information system, the actors that could get involved in making this new information system, the contents of this new information system, and entry possibilities into mainstream planning. The idea is to use information as a power tool to effect intervention. Having clarified the intentions of the new information system in this chapter, in the next chapter I shall undertake a detailed analysis on the contents and methodology of this new information system through articulating a theoretical framework on setting up the new information system.

21 In the case of the Mill Land Project, the media was used much earlier in the project and this publicised the issue prematurely. The effect of this was that the surveys of the private mills became impossible because the private mill owners never allowed the study group to enter the mill. On the other hand in some of the state owned mills, the labour became a problem because they felt threatened. Moreover a lot more external actors (developers) were interested (from interviews of the members of the Correa Committee that surveyed the mills) 22 For example in the case of saving a public space (Oval Maidan) in the city, the community group approached several industrial groups and city intellectuals. These groups not only supported the development and maintainance of the open space later, but also created immense pressure on the court of law to decide on the public space in the favour of the community (from ground surveys and interviews of the residents’ group). I shall discuss this case in detail later in chapter seven. 23 The concern on the Mill Lands Project and the Heritage Conservation Policy was created over the public through a number of Public Presentations. The Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI, an NGO) in collaboration with other institutions undertook the organisation of such a public presentation. The UDRI public seminars have become an important part of the city’s decision-making processes presently.


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6. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 2: TOWARDS A NEW INFORMATION SYSTEM 6.1. CONTEXT OF THE NEW INFORMATION SYSTEM: THE EVE OF INTERVENTION The previous chapter makes a case for a new information system, elaborates on who should be making it and how it should enter the mainstream planning process. It formulates, based on the current context of the city of Mumbai that this new information system will have to remain outside the conventional urban information system and become complimentary to it. This formulation is made primarily because it would be highly time and resource consuming if all kinds of information were to be included in the mainstream information system. Moreover, while we are clear that interventions remain inappropriate because of the shortcoming of the urban information system, we are not sure if the opposite is valid, where all contexts (people, communities, geographical areas, wards etc) of the city need to start using such a new information system for all interventions to be appropriate. The question always arises: who would define the boundaries of the contexts and on what basis? In our case studies we found that all interventions are problem/challenge/opportunity specific and not necessarily specific to geographic boundaries or specific to traditional ethnic groups. Communities get formed in the city because they share common problems/interests that the particular project has brought to light. They do not exist otherwise. Further, the need of a new information system is primarily because our hypothesis that the intervention remains inappropriate because information systems do not include soft information has been proven true in chapters four and five. The point that needs to be noted however is that the hinge of the entire argument is the “intervention”. The above argument is towards suggesting that the context of the new information system is the “eve of the intervention” itself. This means that the construction of the new information system could start simultaneously with the process of planning the intervention and should be specific to interventions. It is then perhaps possible to conclude that everybody in the city need not start making new information systems. Moreover there is no relevance of such a purpose because in such a case, how would boundaries be set and towards what end? However often the “eve of the intervention” is hushed up and never known to the people getting affected by the intervention24. Even in this case, the new information system could start getting operationalised at any stage at which news of the intervention breaks out. But in the case of the Metropolis of Mumbai, the eve of the intervention gets disclosed much earlier through gossips and rumours in the city. This is not only because the media is active, diverse and competitive, but also because opposing groups like the NGOs, political parties and others are active here. This is an advantage in disguise because while the system becomes unstable due to such oppositions, it also becomes a balancing agency where unbalance of power can be checked. Moreover the metropolis of Mumbai has become highly complex for a single agency to control it. All cases studied in Chapter Four were known in the public realm before the intervention took place, but there was no effort to set up a new information system. Hence the relevance of the new information system is at the eve of the intervention itself. This intervention could be a policy, project or a programme. There may be several ways in which the eve of the intervention is known. We discussed how city gossips and rumours could become powerful agents. The media and other watchdog agencies in the metropolis are also important. Having identified the beginning of the new information system, in the next parts of this chapter I shall elaborate on how the new information system can be activated. 6.2. THE FORM OF THE NEW INFORMATION SYSTEM Mainstream Urban Information systems have distinct forms. We identified physical maps and statistics as important forms of this information system. The other important form is the “project report”. All the cases studied in Chapter Four have project reports that became most important information systems. These project

24 For example in 2001, after five years of the Mill Land Project, the policy on the Mill Lands was changed in the favour of the Mill Owners. This was announced in newspapers that did not have readership in the area of the context. Hence no one interested in the matter came to know about the new policy. Only a year later, when the effects of this policy were seen on ground did the people come to know. But even here there wasn’t a possibility of approaching the court with the problem of the policy and getting a stay on the issue. (From interviews with Journalist from the Times of India and an high ranking bureaucrat from the City Administration)


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reports contain in them not only information on the context but also ideas on the interventions. These project reports have become important objects in contemporary development practices and they typically contain elements of mainstream information system (Map, Census and Museum), or combinations of them in the form of the patterns created by Geographic Information Systems. The greatest criticism of these reports is that they do not contain soft information. Hence the form of the new information system should be able to accommodate in them soft information. This depends on the nature of soft information that is required to be projected and utilised. Quite often, “alternative project reports” could do the job. Typically these reports contain alternative mapping of soft information25. These reports become very useful agents when the requirement of the new information is towards creating a large opinion or if it is to be presented to another arbitrating agency like the judiciary. These reports are distributable, and work around the mental associations of legitimacy that “reports” have created. The well-argued printed text in form of a report is one of the most useful forms. The contents of this report can vary from opinions and counter arguments to proceedings of seminars on the issue. While the “report” has a great advantage of being tangible and legitimate, it has three important shortcomings. Firstly, it remains a static object and requires some single agent to put it together. Hence while on the one hand, its capacity to include large data is limited, on the other hand, it requires an interpreter who cannot be often trusted. The second problem with the report being used to create an opinion is its financial limitation. Publishing of a report often becomes an expensive affair and the affected community might not be able to afford it. The third problem is the methodological problem. The structure of the report is of a narrative, hence cross relating different types of information or simultaneously viewing different forms of information might not be possible. Hence, while the mainstream report creates one opinion, the new report might just end up creating another opinion without evaluating all opinions. To counter these problems of the “report”, the form of a website might be most useful. Websites have the advantage of being dynamic. Moreover, a website can accommodate a huge amount of data and synthesise it at the same time (like the instance of opinion polls in various news websites). It is non-linear and can make cross-referencing much easier. It is participatory and in the context of Mumbai, might be cheaper. One cannot however deny the accessibility aspect of such a form, but in the context of Mumbai again, this problem can be circumvented by using middle-agents. For example if slum dwellers cannot access the website, students who survey the place can become middle agents. The advantage of such a website is that many people can work on it at the same time. I would not undertake further analysis of websites as an alternative form of information system since that is not the scope of this work, but conclude suggesting that it is an important possibility. On the other hand, there could be several other forms that could be experimented with, that combine the advantages of the website and the report. For example, the website can be followed up by a report that promotes the most relevant opinion. Chapter seven undertakes the experiment where a community dairy is used as an information system that combines the advantages of the website and the report. 6.3. THE BOUNDARIES OF THE NEW INFORMATION SYSTEM The first part of this chapter identifies that the new information system is specific to the intervention. Hence the intervention itself defines the boundaries of the new information system. One needs to address however, the issues of what needs to be included here and what not and also what needs to be weighed/valued as more important than the other. Traditionally, there has been no logical argument on what is to be included and what not. The cases discussed in Chapter Four suggest that this issue was left to the discretion of the planner or other dominant interests. But nevertheless in all reports there is a fixed set of information that is included and fixed set that is excluded. In other words, the boundary is fixed. Raoul Bunschoten (2001) makes a powerful articulation for setting boundaries on urban development issues. He suggests using of what he calls “horizons” to set boundaries. A horizon is a geographical boundary around the project area depending on its force of influence. A series of horizons are drawn around the 25 For example, in the Slum Redevelopment Policy, the report created by the NGO, which contained mapping of the slums, was used (SPARC, 1985). On the other hand in the Mill Land Project, great resistance was generated by the report that contained opinions and press cuttings on the issue (LHS, 1996).


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project area depending on the magnitude and kind of influence that the project has within that horizon. The first horizon primarily includes stakeholders and other horizons hold other interests. The idea of horizons values the interests of the stakeholders within the first horizon more than the external interests. The interests outside the first horizon are located through finding linkages of the actors within the first horizon with outside horizons. Hence for example in the Slum Redevelopment Case, the existing slum and its boundary is the first horizon. The second horizon would be located by identifying where the slum dwellers work. Further the third horizon would be identified through finding what the effect of the slum on the surrounding area is. The fourth horizon would be identified through finding other interests of developers and politicians on the slum area. Here the interests of the first horizon and that is of slum dweller is valued more than the other interests outside the slum. The idea of horizons is important because of two reasons, firstly, it sets up priorities for regarding interests that are to be addressed and secondly, it has in it clues to identify issues and interests that affect the project through the linkages to the first horizon. Bunschoten’s idea of horizon could be most useful in defining the boundaries of the project area. Such boundaries are not boundaries that exclude but those that are selective in their inclusion and exclusion depending on the kind of interest. 6.4. THE CONTENTS OF THE NEW INFORMATION SYSTEM AND CLUES TO MAP THEM Chapter Five indicates that the New Information System should contain Soft Information. It further identifies the categories of the soft information, i.e.: Character of the context, Interests involved and linkages of the context. 6.4.1. Character of the context Hard information in the form of maps and statistics becomes primary indications of the character of the context. Here we would describe other relevant elements that describe the character of the context. Two characters that get missed in the mapping of hard information are: behavioural pattern of the community in the context and the biases of the community in the context. Behavioural pattern is how the community behaves under certain conditions. This is important because it indicates the relevance of the intervention. For example the failure of “public space” in the Mill Land Project was because the community could not relate to such an idea of public space. This is because the community had an extremely different behavioural pattern, which had created a very different definition of public space. The public space as per this behaviour of the community is a narrow street or a shop front instead of the classical public space that was proposed. The idea of behavioural pattern is very important to articulate a relevant intervention. The second character that gets missed is the biases of the community in the context. There are specific biases that the community has, regarding issues of gender, caste, class, religion etc. In the context of India, these biases surface in all activities. For development planning, these biases become important because their non-recognition could become a problem. The behavioural pattern and biases of the community in the context could be understood through understanding the image of the community. Image is not only a physical image, but also the image that gets built in the mental map of people. For example, the Mill Lands, the Slums, etc. have a distinct image of being an industrial place and an informal place in the mental map of people. It is these images that conceptualise the relations between people and set clues for their behaviour and biases. Hence the clue to describe the character of the context would be to start describing the image of the context for the people within it and outside it. There have been several attempts in conceptualising images since the sixties. I quote here two research examples of Kevin Lynch (1960) and Guy Debord (1958) who attempted to conceptualise images of the society. Lynch’s experiments in Boston included questioning several individuals on how they perceive a place and what they remember of it. He formulated that the city is conceived through sets of images in the mental maps of people. These images are of edges, streets, paths, nodes and landmarks. A map of the city could be drawn out of these elements alone. On the other hand Debord and the other situationists drew complexities of the urban areas based on their individual experiences of Paris. Both these experiments drew maps of images and experiences of cities to disclose several important phenomena about behaviour and biases that cannot be recorded through hard information.


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The other important informant of behaviour and biases is local history. In a Local History, the specific narratives of individuals and families become important. These indicate how preferences have been created in these individuals and families and clearly identify their behaviour and biases. This is more of an anthropological survey. Traditionally anthropologists have spent a lot of time with individuals and families in understanding communities. Their recordings have been noted and interpreted as the character of the community. But for the purpose of making our new map this might be highly time-consuming and irrelevant. The idea of a website would be useful again here to include such vast amount of data. This is because it would save time since people would put in their own data. Rahul Shrivastava, an anthropologist, describes an effective and efficient method to solve the problem. His Neighbourhood Project (Shrivastava, 2001) uses students from the College he teaches to document their own histories. These students are from the Mill Lands of the City. To quote from Shrivastava (2001):

The Neighbourhood Project gets students to document, visually and textually, the history and ethnography of their own buildings, houses and localities, integrate their own family histories into this narrative and then locate themselves within larger questions of identity and belonging, either as city-dwellers, national citizens or in any other way. This process gets them to link their own lives to the cultural politics of the cities and towns they live in and also raise pertinent questions about ways of belonging in all sorts of ways….. ……Important questions began to be raised. How did the city of Mumbai come to privilege a certain kind of symbolic heritage in terms of Marathi language and then Hindu religion? What did this do to those who were neither? And how could their organic links to the city’s history be understood in terms of the present politics of the city? How could they be such an intrinsic part of the city’s heritage in both narrow – and in the broadest possible – terms, be part of its history so intimately and yet be seen as cultural misfits in its present form? …..the Neighbourhood Project emerged as a method to organise these stories and experiences in a particular context. Not with the intention of writing any objective history or ethnography of the city, but with an aim of getting more and more people to write their own versions of it. Delving into family anecdotes, inscribing the experiences of grandparents and great grandparents, looking at their own buildings, housing societies and streets and then, very importantly, exchanging these stories with each other. ……The fact that local spaces also need a conscious attempt at maintaining peace, forging a sense of belonging which is autonomous from nationalist pride and making sense, in very definite ways of everybody who shares urban space, is something which needs to be underlined again. Finding out and exchanging histories and life-stories and making a conscious attempt at overcoming alienation which becomes so easy in the taken-for-granted, everyday world of locality is an important way of avoiding a repeat of the horrifying ethnic violence which we have seen in recent times. …… Most of Wilson College students who live in the old city of Mumbai, and who were part of the project, definitely began to relate to both, the college as well as their neighbourhoods differently, after taking part in the project. From being seen as “vernies” who were never accepted as part of the modern Bombay experience and being embarrassed at revealing their addresses, (there used to be a long pause before they would say, “...Dongri” or “…Girgaum”), many of them became more involved in discovering the histories of their localities and were proud to write and share this history. If these histories are made more explicit, then buildings, localities, towns that are classified as heritage structures, like Wilson College, will allow its spaces to fill with the voices of people who have lived there in the past and who have shaped the way the present generation occupies it today. This would also allow for a special way to forge bonds with the city, a way in which it would be impossible for anyone to manipulate its story. A way in which no one would be allowed to transform it into a battle-zone ever again. …… By getting students to document the history and ethnography of their own buildings and localities, integrate their own family histories into this narrative and then locate themselves within larger questions of identity, the Neighbourhood Project encourages them to broaden their vision and forge links with the city.

While the quotation suggests methods of collecting local histories, Shrivastava makes an important formulation that urban information systems are empowering agencies. Shrivastava (2001) aims at facilitating a writing of local history by the people. This process legitimised the existence of these people predominantly from the labour community and attempted to bring about a sense of sharing histories in the city. This is a case where the Information system becomes an Organising Instrument. We shall return to this point later in this chapter. 6.4.2. Interests involved in the context The critique of the conventional information system (Chapter two), the discussion on cases of Urban Development (Chapter Four) and the formulation from these cases (Chapter Five) indicate the importance of interests in the Information System. These chapters describe how interests manipulate the Information Systems and further, how information systems acknowledge some interests and ignore others. Chapter Five further articulates that it is the interests of people within the context that is often neglected in conventional information systems.


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In the eighties and the nineties, theorists conceptualised the city through articulation of definitions of space. Henry Lefebvre (1991) spoke about social spaces as more than physical space; they included what he called perceived spaces and lived spaces. His “Right to Urban Space” destabilises the idea of space as a physical hard idea and puts it in the realm of experiences and living. Taking clues from Lefebvre, Edward Soja (1989), formulated the ideas of conceptualising the city as sets of spatially located interests. Prof. Leo van den Berg (1987) provides a breakthrough conceptualisation of the urban as a function of spatial behaviour of its actors. These theoretical articulations open up a significant understanding of urban areas in terms of actors and their interests. The problem that the new information system faces is finding a way to conceptualise and represent the interests. To address the problem, we will have to operationalise this abstraction of interests into tangible measures. This could be done if we see interests in terms of opinions and aspirations. By opinion, we mean here, the opinions of individuals, families and communities on the context. Opinions indicate the problems of the context and the threats that are foreseen by people. On the other hand, aspirations indicate the expectations of the individuals, families and communities. We shall discuss methods of mapping opinions and aspirations later in the chapter (sub-section 6.4.4). 6.4.3. Linkages of the context The last part that mainstream information system misses out is a way of mapping relations between interests as well as relations of the project contexts with other issues in the city. For example, the relations of slum dwellers with developers who have common interest of land, or between mill workers and mill owners who have common interest of the Mill Land, or relation between the CESS policy and land values or Heritage Policy and Land values. Chapter Four describes how the intervention would have been more appropriate, had these relations been better understood. The proposition here is to use the earlier described idea of linkages in Bunschoten’s (2001) work discussed in 6.3 in this chapter. The base idea however comes from the Actor–Network Theory by Latour and Law. Bruno Latour and Jhon Law have significantly elaborated on the Networks of Actors (Latour, 1999 and Law, 1999). They explain social phenomenon as a function of the Network of Actors and Agencies. In other words, they relate interests of one actor to another. In Bunschoten’s experiments (Bunschoten, 2001), he furthers the idea of actor networks into a mapping of these. He suggests identifying interests in the first horizon and further finding linkages of these in other horizons. An architectural academy in Mumbai (Design Cell, 2002b) activated Bunschoten’s model for studying the Eastern Water Fronts of Mumbai, which are also the port-lands of the city. The problem faced by the Mumbai port was a considerable decline in business because another modern port had come up in its vicinity. While studying the actors and interests through the idea of linkages, the study group found innumerable external interests that were powerful and were interested in keeping the port as it is and not opening it up for re-development. These interests ranged from the underworld that doing business there to a foreign transport agency, interested in maintaining its business of moving goods in and out of the port. Of course all the interests that existed within the context were mapped along with the people who had property leased to them, large industries, informal sector and others. But it was important to understand the specifics of the interests of external actors. We shall detail the mapping of these linkages in the next sub-section. 6.4.4. Using Gossip as a mapping tool If we overlapped the formulations made in the previous two sub-sections on interests and linkages with the works of political economist Mark Lombardi (Richard, 2002), who draws elaborate maps of how global finances move articulating each actor and interest then we could get more clues for drawing up an alternative information system. But more important are Lombardi’s processes of mapping. He uses Gossip networks to understand interests. No doubt that after September eleven attacks on the World trade buildings, the FBI referred to Lombardi’s methods and works to zoom down on to the culprits. They used his Gossip Networks to excavate and find relations. Gossip here refers to a generic idea of informal information. These may be found in media, public spaces etc. Recent researches in language studies (Particularly evolutionary theories of Robin Dunbar, 1996) and sociology (like the works of Jorg Bergmann, 1993 Janet Lynme Enke and Donna Eder 1991) suggest that Gossip as an informal information and communication system is not only a basis of human language


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structure but also aggressively advocate the use of it to understand social formations, organisations, community patterns, and spatial organisations. In the light of these researches, the conceptualisation of space and hence mapping of it gets a new dimension. The four experiments discussed earlier of Shrivastava (2001), Bunschoten (2001), Lombardi (Richard, 2002) and the Design Cell (2003) have elements of using Gossip to reconstruct the information system. This might be in the form of “local histories” in the case of Shrivastava or Lombardi’s “media gossips” or the “interests” in the case of Bunschoten and the Design Cell. All four efforts of using such “gossip” suggest two points from where the gossip could be collected: Information Nodes and Venting Agencies. While information nodes are the points that accumulate informal information, venting agencies are agents who allow public opinion to be vented, they are hence first hand receivers of information. In the case of Bunschoten and the Design Cell, researchers and students were used as venting agencies.

In the case of the Design Cell’s experiment, after tapping this gossip, it is processed for deriving character in terms of behaviour and biases and further for interests in terms of opinions and aspirations. Another reason for using gossip is however is to trace other interests. In this case, the researchers of the Design Cell followed links given to them by their first agents in the first horizon. For example, one of the actors in the first horizon was the gatekeeper. He gave links to the agency that he was working for as well as his family. The researchers followed these links to study if there was any relevance of these links to the context. While most of the links were useful, some had to be left out. The sieving was done based on the criteria set by the project context and the value given to each of the links. For example tourist families as links were obviously left out because they had no relation with the project context while families of the labour group were traced. The Design Cell’s research did not trace links from each and every actor, nor did it identify each and every actor. There was a substantial amount of random sampling done to understand character interests and linkages. In the same case, Gossip is further used not only as a mapping instrument, but also as a useful tool to create opinion and negotiate interests. The group that was studying the area presented the problems of the area in several informal discussions to several important actors. Further they discussed the opportunities and threats that these actors would have. While the Port Authority shut its door completely to the study group, the next part of the study got sponsored by Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation, which was financing the development of the port. The above case shows that Gossip networks become useful for two reasons: 1. They are able to trace interests, find and acknowledge them 2. They are able to create platforms for negotiations and bargaining Gossip is tarnished with an image of being unuseful, but we cannot deny the researches undertaken to prove that Gossip Networks become the most important social networks in society. Elements of gossip are found in all social relations. I cannot detail here the social studies undertaken on gossip, but would reinstate that informal communication has significant data to offer to make the new information system.

INFORMATION NODE

VENTING AGENCY

NODES Television

Newspaper Internet

Public Spaces Academy

AGENTS Researchers

Students Journalists Web site

NGO representatives

TAPPED FOR ALTERNATIVE MAPPING Figure 6.1: Means to trap Gossip


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6.5. USING THE NEW INFORMATION SYSTEM We began with making a case for a new information system in chapter five. In this chapter we elaborated on how to make a new information system. The diagram below shows the stages for development of this new information system.

In this section we would elaborate on how to use this new information system. While we began with the problem of having an “Appropriate Intervention”, we also argued earlier in this chapter (subsection 6.4.1) a possibility of using this new information system as an organising tool. This section would detail the uses of the New Urban Information System. 1. As an instrument to articulate a Relevant Intervention

Chapter Five describes that this new information has to force itself or negotiate through the system to get acknowledged. Clues for interventions would come from the information system itself. The scope of this paper is not to elaborate on how to articulate the relevant intervention. The paper presupposes that once the information system is in place then various interests would be acknowledged and hence the developers of the intervention would not be able to ignore the soft information not only because it is recorded, but also it has forcefully entered into mainstream planning process. The planning process could then reformulate itself using this new information system, which has become the blueprint of the context.

2. As an Organising Instrument More importantly, the discussions in this chapter were towards mapping soft information. Rahul Shrivastava’s (2001) experiment of neighbourhood project discussed earlier describes the use of the information system as an empowering element. It could be used to organise people and their opinion.

3. As a negotiation platform and a bargaining tool Depending on the form and the content of the information system, it could be used to negotiate and bargain with other powers. We have repeatedly mentioned the case of the Slum Redevelopment policy where the NGO used the new information system as a bargaining tool. On the other hand, Design Cell’s case described in 6.4.4 suggests the possibility of it becoming a negotiating platform for the community.

In the next chapter, I shall undertake an experiment to explore the possibilities of making the new information system on a real case, using the formulations from this chapter and testing its relevance.

Stage 1 The context

The eve of the

Intervention

Stage 4 The content

Soft Information

Character: Behaviour

Biases Interests: Opinions

Aspirations Linkages:

Other interests Other issues

Stage 5 The use

An appropriate intervention and

organising instrument

Stage 3 The Boundaries

The idea of

horizons

Stage 2 The form

“REPORT” “WEBSITE” “MIXTURE”

Figure 6.2: Stages to develop the new information system


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7. TOWARDS A NEW MAP: EXPLORING POSSIBILITIES OF MAKING A NEW MAP This chapter describes an experiment undertaken applying the formulations articulated Chapter Five and Six. The experiment is towards creation of a new information system and is based on a real development case in the metropolis of Mumbai. 7.1. THE CONTEXTS OF THE EXPERIMENT On the western coast of Mumbai, lies a piece of land that is designated as a Public Open Space in the Development Plan. The land belongs to the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA), a government agency that is responsible for housing in the state. Recently there have been rumours that under the directives from the city politicians, the land has been gifted to private developers to develop. Several newspapers carried the issue on their front page and confirmed the fate of this plot of land as being gifted to the developers. Soon the Public nature of the plot would undergo transformation and commercial complexes and clubs would inhabit it. The property is prime land since it is well connected and is on the seacoast of the city. Threatened by the actions of the government, the nearby resident’s association, apparently representing the community, decided to approach the Mumbai High Court through filing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) for saving the plot and maintaining its character as a Public Open Space. For this purpose, the resident’s association required bargaining arguments to prove that the plot of land was required to be kept as a Public Open Space. The community required arguments to suggest that the open space was important for the community and the city of Mumbai and the community required it to be used as a public space. The Resident’s association approached a group of architectural and planning academicians to prepare such bargaining arguments. The Group was called Collective Research Initiatives Trust (CRIT). I am a trustee of CRIT and the project overlapped with the period of my fieldwork. I took the opportunity to prepare the bargaining arguments for the Resident’s Association. The project in more than many ways fulfilled the requirements for my experiments with developing a new urban information system. Firstly, it was an instance where the decision by the government was taken against the opinions and aspirations of the community. Secondly, there was no information system other than empirical requirements of planning to keep the plot as an open public space. And quite often in Mumbai, the empirical planning requirements are compromised through economical arguments manipulated by the power holders. Hence it was a typical case where planning was done by outsiders who had other vested interests on the piece of land. Thirdly the case was a typical example where various conflicting interests were involved and the planning seemed to fulfil just some of the interests. And finally it was an opportunity for my thesis to develop an information system by the people that included various interests and put together aspirations and opinions of the community. Moreover this information system would become a tool for the community to bargain with the government for the Public Open Space. 7.2. THE PROJECT The project had a rather simple scope; it was to prepare a bargaining instrument for the community, which the community could present in the court of law, and argue for maintaining the public nature of the plot.

Figure 7.1: Newspaper clipping on the development of open space


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There was an instance26 in the recent history of Mumbai’s development where a resident’s association argued in the court of law to undertake responsibility over a public space (Oval Maidan) that the city municipality was unable to maintain. The resident’s association proved that the place was under severe threat of abuse and misuse and asked the court to hand over its responsibility to the resident’s group. In this case, the court of law had instructed the resident’s association to prove their capacity and gave the resident’s group a pilot period of one year to organise resources and set up a project. Subsequently the resident’s group with the help of several private groups upgraded the open space. They made several small interventions: fenced the area, levelled the open space for efficient drainage, demarcated areas for different purposes and appointed several private agencies to use and maintain the area. With the success of the first year, the court granted the permission to the resident’s group to undertake the responsibility over the Open space. This meant that the resident’s association would independently responsible for collection of the revenue as well as reinvesting it for maintaining the space. The case gave us (CRIT) several clues for preparing the bargaining instrument: 1. The case had to prove empirically that the space has to be kept as an open space 2. It had to foreground the aspirations, opinions and commitments of the community 3. It had to prepare a Physical Strategy to design and execute the design for developing and maintaining

the open space 4. It had to prepare an Organisational Strategy to look after the development and maintenance of the open

space 5. It had to prepare a Financial Strategy to develop and maintain the open space Moreover the bargaining instrument was not only being prepared for the court of law, but was also being prepared for the private parties who were to invest in the development of the area as well as for the various state and private institutions whose blessings were required for the development of the space. 7.3. THE PROCESS 7.3.1. The problem of conceptualisation: The idea of a Community Diary One of the first tasks for CRIT was to conceptualise the bargaining instrument, which was also an information system. Rahul Shrivastava, a friend of CRIT and an anthropologist had formulated in his neighbourhood project (2001) that urban information systems are empowering agencies. As described in the previous chapter (Chapter Six), Shrivastava (2001) aims at facilitating a writing of local history by the people. This process legitimised the existence of these people predominantly from the labour community and attempted to bring about a sense of sharing histories in the city. And further this sense of sharing history, Shrivastava argues would bring about an element of empowerment. What CRIT learnt from Shrivastava was that the people would make the new urban information system. It was conceptualised as a Diary of the Neighbourhood where people would add their characteristics, aspirations, opinions and commitments. The Diary would not only become an information holder of the community, but would also become a planning tool. The Diary then was to be designed. The diary along with being an archive of the community, had to make a case in the court of law. We formulated the dairy as a set of six books (of 8½ X 8½ inches) each asking one simple question. 1. Why is the Park Important?

This part of the diary makes empirical arguments about the need of the open space with respect to density of the area and the amount of open space available and required. It surveys the amount and nature of urban spaces in the city and makes an argument to retain this public space as an open space.

26 The case referred is of Oval Maidan in the Fort District of Mumbai. The maidan (large open space) was under threat of dilapidation and as per the community and was misused by various anti-social elements. The resident’s group argued that it was becoming a threat rather than a leisure space for the resident’s group. The Urban Design Research Institute made the study of the space and the recommendations for its revival.

Figure 7.2: “Community Diary”, the New Information System


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2. Who uses the Park? This part of the diary records the various users of the park, the routines of various kinds of people who use the park as well as other parks in the area. This part further details the character of the community, its strength and its weaknesses

3. For what is the Park used? This part details the various activities that the park presently hosts.

4. What are the Hurdles? This part identifies problems and threats not only relating to physical issues of drainage, maintenance and design, but also relating to organisational, managerial and other issues of interests etc.

5. How can we overcome the hurdles and manage the park? This part studies two cases of managing parks and other cases where the community has come forward to undertake responsibility over public spaces. It further suggests alternatives models for organisational and financial strategies to develop and maintain the park.

6. How can the park be designed? This part details the physical strategies required to develop the area.

While the mapping includes empirical statistics as well as analysis of physical plan, I would not include those parts of the research as they fall largely into the conventional information system. On the other hand For the purpose of my research, I shall focus on the area of mapping actors and interests, which contribute to various parts of the diary.

7.3.2. The problem of conceptualising interests: Theoretical Formulations One of the major problems in the earlier described case of the Oval Maidan was the immense enclaving of the Public Space. The Public Space became the private property of the resident’s group. While the rich resident’s could go for a morning walks with their dogs, the new design by the resident’s group excluded all the informal users of the space. Earlier the space was used by nearby slum dwellers, hawkers, street children, various informal cricket clubs and occasional drug addicts. All these activities were rendered as misuse and abuse of the space and the new fence along with the armed guards prevented these activities. Moreover the space was now territorialized by several formal clubs that afforded to pay the rent leaving just a small corridor to the pubic to cross the maidan. Hence one of the tasks of our (CRIT’s) new information system was to acknowledge and recognise all the interests, the powerful and vocal ones as well as the powerless and the quiet ones. This was especially to maintain the public nature of

space and to put it into the public realm rather than a private one. The theoretical chapter (Chapter Six) of this paper studies various methods employed earlier by several researchers (Law and Latour, 1999, Bunschoten, 2001, Design Cell, 2001) to map interests and actors. One of the most important formulations is by Law and Latour (1999) suggesting that all social phenomena are a function of the network of Actors, Agents and Agencies. The problem is then to conceptualise this network of Actors. Edward Soja (1989) provides an important clue towards the language of such conceptualisation. He suggests using of a spatial diagram against any other language because the spatial diagram can simultaneously put several elements together and see the relations as against the narrative or the statistic. Raoul Bunschoten (2001) furthers the idea through his methodological explorations in mapping Actors. In his landmark formulations he articulates that use of geographical diagram against the spatial diagrams of Soja. This is explored through the idea of creating geographical horizons where interests could be located. In the study (Bunschoten 2001) of the interests in Rotterdam Port, Bunschoten’s first horizon is the Port Area, the second the city of Rotterdam, the third is the Randstad area, the fourth is the Netherlands, the fifth is the European Region and the sixth horizon is the

Figure 7.3: Identification of Horizons


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Globe. The study begins with the first horizon and through the actors and agencies operating in this horizon understands other actors in other horizons. Along with the first idea of geographical horizons is the second idea of linkages. The study indicates methods to understand the networks of actors and agencies through exposing the linkages of each actor and agency within the first horizon. The Design Cell applied these methods in their study of the Ports of Mumbai (2002). They articulated that the diagram of Actors and Agencies was actually a diagram of interests where power nodes could be located and intervention in the urban realm is actually an alteration of these power nodes. Hence mapping of interests would mean mapping the network of power and this could be activated using linkages from the site. And all of this has to be diagrammatic for any kind of conclusion.

7.3.3. Mapping Interests: Activating the Informal Information System The project was given to us by the “community” to save the open space and it was threatened by the developers who were interested in developing the open space. We were involved as the trustees of the community preparing their bargaining instrument and this would be presented to the court of law for a final decision and the municipality would have to follow this decision. When we began, there were five actors; the conflicting community and the developers, the mediating bureaucracy, the judiciary and us. The problem discussed earlier indicated that if we were to continue with these interests, then we would end up marginalizing several other interests. Moreover, for me it was also an exercise in mapping opinions, aspirations, commitments and linkages. Chapter six concludes suggesting that gossip networks could be efficiently utilised to map all these factors. It also articulates the use of venting agencies to activate the gossip networks and collect the relevant information. We chose to utilise students as venting agencies using a semi-structured format of interviewing families in the community. We also circulated questionnaires to individuals to make the database wider. The format of the questionnaire however was to map the following: 1. Character of the community, through identifying routines, class, community affiliations, awareness to

political conditions, its capacity to undertake the responsibility over the open space. 2. Opinion of the community, regarding the current problems and threats to the open space under

consideration.

Figure 7.4: Questionnaire to the Community


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3. Aspiration of the community, regarding how it sees the future of the open space and what are its expectations of the open space, on what should happen and what should be avoided in the open space.

4. Commitments of the community, regarding its responsibility, the age-group and the nature of the group that would undertake such a responsibility and the sustenance capacity of this group

5. Linkages of the community. This was specifically important for two reasons, firstly to identify the other actors that were interested in the open space, and secondly to gauge the influence of the community in the city’s political environment through their formal and informal associations with important organisations.

The survey primarily included the 750 families who were represented by the Resident’s association that appointed us. For us at this moment this was the community. Forty questionnaires were distributed amongst members of this community as well as fifteen interviews were conducted amongst these families. Following the linkages from these questionnaires and the interviews an additional thirty interviews were made which again were mapping character, opinions, aspirations, commitments and further linkages. These additional interviews were made outside the 750 families, but of people who were staying in the vicinity. The linkages were followed by tracing direct relationships (like that of work in the case of servants staying in the vicinity or shopkeepers of the area etc) or indirect relationships (for example if someone knows people in the authority that owns the land, or knows anyone in the judiciary etc). 7.3.4. Survey Results Since the community that was supposed to be the primary agents that were to make the new information system, the residents’ association were the ones that distributed the questionnaires and then we as the study group were to follow the linkages. We compiled the results of the survey towards answering the following questions27: 1. Who is the Community?

The survey indicated that while the population was balanced in terms of three generations28, most respondents were in the first generation. And of those respondents, most were male members29. Also this area was the quarters of the government employees. This led us to the conclusion that the active members of the community were the “Retired, Male, Ex-Government Employees”, who have been staying here for more than 20 years30. The community seems to be politically aware31 with high enthusiasm for involvement32 in taking care of the public space. Present linkages with other organisations are mediocre but earlier bureaucratic links could be harnessed33. One other important factor that needs to be mentioned is that a predominant part of the second generation was involved in private sector as against the earlier government employees.

27 A selection is made of the survey results specific for the purpose of this thesis. Data was also collected on the open space requirements, measurement of lands etc. I would be focusing on the soft data from the community. 28 The population has been divided into three generations: First Generation: Above 58 years of age, Second generation: between 25 and 58 years of age and Third Generation: below 25 years of age. We found that 41% of the people were in the first generation, 42% in the second generation and 17% were in the third generation. Average family size was 3.6 persons. 29 The following is the survey respondent chart:

Male Female Above 58 years of age 23 6 Between 20 and 58 years of age 6 3 Below 25 years of age 0 2

30 91% of the people were staying for more than 20 years. 31 This was collated through asking questions regarding the political groups, types of newspaper read, media followings etc. 32 57% people showed high enthusiasm towards involvement in an organisation that would save the place, 31% of the people were unsure and 12% were not interested 33 Only 29% were connected to any formal organisation like an NGO or other group that would be useful in the development process. But since most of the people were high officials from the Government, their earlier linkages could be harnessed in an informal access. We were expecting a sympathetic response for the cause from city officials and easy entry to the administrative offices of the city administration.


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This group was enthusiastic about getting involved in the activity of saving and maintaining the open space. They wanted to get involved as “watch dogs to discourage encroachments, maintaining, reducing pollution and lobbying against political groups”34. But the linkages from the community led us to other parts of the community that uses the open space now. These were the people from the neighbouring slums. We conducted fifteen unstructured interviews there and found that the usage of the open space was more by these informal settlements and their children rather than the formal community described in the earlier paragraph. Moreover the survey also included that the time spent by the formal community in the open space was much lower than the children of the informal community. This was because there were spaces within the compounds of the formal settlements that were used by people from the formal community for their recreational activity and these spaces were absent in the informal community. The physical survey also indicated that there were other users of the open space like the occasional hawkers who sold their wares around the open space. Part of the open space was rented for exhibitions and other community activities like marriages. Hence there were other stakes on the same open space. The answers to the question indicate dividing the community into formal community and the informal community. Further there were other actors who had stakes like the hawkers and people who came there for specific activity but did not stay there. We would henceforth classify these actors and the informal community into the group called “others”.

2. What are the biases of the Community? The formal community was predominantly from an upper caste/middle class group that liked to call themselves “Civilised, Educated, Well Behaved, Cooperative, Peaceful, Enthusiastic, Like Minded and Sharing social activities”35. The community liked to stay in this place not only because of these reasons, but also because they perceived the location as “convenient, having a good access, well planned and with good surroundings like the sea”. On the other hand the community almost unanimously agreed on the dislikes. They did not like “the other group” using the open space and felt that parcelling the land for other activities like exhibition and marriages was a public nuisance. On the other hand the informal community had no problems with anyone using the open-space.

3. Why does the Community need the open space? The formal community listed a series of reasons regarding their needs of the open space: Environmental Reasons (of ecological balance, ventilation, and breathing space) and Cultural Reasons (like for recreational purposes and social and cultural gatherings). The formal community was specifically concerned about the Elderly and the Children and they also argued that since there were several educational institutes in the area, the open space would be useful for these children36. On the other-hand, the concerns of the informal community were not articulate. They did not recognise any need of the open space. When posed with the question of where would their children play if the land was developed as a commercial space, the answer that the study group received was: “on the road”. The existence of the open space was incidental to the informal community.

4. What is the opinion of the Community regarding the Open Space: Its present Use, Its Problems and Its

threats? The formal and informal community were very vigilant of the usage of the open space. They articulated that the open space was used for “Exhibitions, Circuses, Film Shootings, Marriages, Religious gatherings, Political Meetings and Recreational activities”. The formal community was however emphatic about the open space being used as a garbage disposal place and being used by Encroachments and Antisocial Elements37.

34 This data was summarised from qualitative answers to questions like: How would you see your self get involved? Why do you want to get involved? 35 This was summarised from the qualitative data that came from the perceptions of the community of itself. These were answers to questions like: why do you like to stay in this area? What are the things that you don’t like in this area? 36 This was summarised from qualitative data that came from questions like: Why do you need the open space? The summaries of the interviews however were clearer about arguments of open-space for institutions and environmental purposes. 37 This was summarised from the qualitative data that came from questions like: What is the present use of the open space?


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The informal community on the other hand was not specifically clear about the problems of the open space38. The problems listed by the formal community were: Environmental (like Traffic, Noise, Cleanliness and Pollution), Incongruent Activities (Marriages and exhibitions causing nuisance, antisocial activities such as presence of drug addicts, presence of people from the slums and encroachments) and problems of Planning and Managing (like the open space being poorly maintained with no levels for drainage and no clear edges). Further the threats could be listed as threats of: Land Appropriations (the formal community was well aware of the land getting appropriated by the politicians and developers. Some people even felt that the land could be appropriated by the local authorities for some incongruent development and other educational institutions), Environmental Threats (people were concerned about the water logging problems and garbage problems causing health hazards. Some were concerned about the growing traffic and noise pollution), Encroachment (Most respondents were concerned about slums and other unauthorised activities taking place in the area)39.

5. What are the Aspirations of the Community regarding the Open Space?

While the informal community was not very clear about their aspirations towards the open space, even the formal community was unclear. The informal community did not have any aspirations on the area except one opinion was that it could be developed for housing the slum dwellers. On the other hand in the formal community, 41% of the people suggested that the land be developed into activities like: Gymnasium, Sports Centre, Exhibition hall, Community Hall, Library, Swimming Pool, Theatre, etc. 32% of the people spoke of the space being kept as an open – public space for recreational purposes. And the remaining 27% of the people were intending to partly keep the space open and partly develop it for the above-mentioned activity. The formal community was however unanimous about what they did not want: They did not want the slum dwellers in the open space40.

7.3.5. Survey Conclusions While we were able to map the character, interests and linkages, the survey findings gave us several unexpected results that were important before we could move further in the project. 1. The community was unclear in its aspirations. While we expected people to suggest the open space to

be kept open as a public space, most people wanted some development. On the other hand the “Residents’ Association” was very clear about maintaining the space as open. For us the question was whether the Residents’ association really represented the community aspiration.

2. The second and most important problem was that the definition of the community was not clear, because if we considered the users of the space as the community, then all informal people would be stakeholders. The formal community however that had appointed us clearly did not want the informal community to have any stakes on the open land.

3. The interest of the informal community was also not very clear. We concluded that this community was more interested in livelihood problems and problems of being evicted, and hence problems of having no space for leisure did not feature in their list of problems. In that case our problem was whether we should recognise the need for them to have the open space, or work with the bias that the open space is required only for the formal community.

38 The responses of the informal community were answers like: “There is no problem”. Moreover, all problems of traffic and incongruent developments like marriages and the informal community saw meetings as positive activities where they thought the space was active. 39 This was summarised by the qualitative data that came from direct questions on: What do you think as the problems of the place and threats to the place? 40 This was summarised by the qualitative data that came from direct questions like: What do you want in the open space? What do you not want in the open space?

Figure 7.5: Actors in the Context


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We presented the problems to the Residents’ Association. And the residents’ association was very clear in indicating that since they are the project patrons, their interest should be the planning interest. 7.4. LEARNING FROM THE EXPERIMENT Our effort of mapping interests was successful. The dynamic bargaining instrument, based on informal information system, which was the new information system, was made. However the project direction would have changed if we followed this new information system. It clarified several important issues: 1. There was no community. The interests within the community were conflicting. We realised after the

survey that the people whom we were talking to was a small resident’s group and not the community. While this resident’s group was claiming to represent the community, its interest to have a public space was not concurred with the rest of the group whom it was representing. This puts into foreground a fundamental problem on the definitions of community and its collective aspirations.

2. If we followed the wishes and aspirations of the so-called community then we would marginalize several other parties. This brought us into a planning dilemma of whose interest to address. The larger question was if the planner can have an interest that is above all specific interests then what is the ethical base of such an interest? We realised that the context is the whole set of interests and planner’s interest is just one of it and is not the most important. If it was the most important, then the entire idea of having a new information system to foreground the aspirations of the people was under question.

3. Though we were calling ourselves negotiators of interests, we were not able to acknowledge all interests since the so-called community financed the project.

7.5. THE STATUS OF THE EXPERIMENT: THE PROJECT CONTINUES In spite of all the dilemmas discussed earlier, we decided to continue the project and maintain the open space as a Public Open Space. We also decided that while it was important to keep the space as an open space, it would be unethical to exclude the “other” users of the open space. Hence, we articulated our task towards fighting for the open space against appropriation, but not designing it exclusively for one specific community. Here we were against the aspirations of the formal community, but the study group decided against such a community aspiration. The project now continues as follows: 1. The new information system would have been completed by the time this thesis is submitted, but will

grow with the community and this will become the bargaining tool of the community 2. Along with making a case for the urban open space, the project of creating a new information system

will also propose a financial and physical strategy to maintain the open space 4. A PIL (Public Interest Litigation) will be filed with the Mumbai High Court for a decision to develop the

open space as a Public Open Space. 5. The project has been publicized through the media. Meanwhile the community and the media are

lobbying for a public opinion and some blessings from the city officials. 6. The community is also approaching some business houses to finance the development and

maintenance of the public space 7.6. CONCLUSIONS: WHAT THE EXPERIMENT DID AND WHAT IT DID NOT I would keep the conclusions of this section specific to the issue of new urban information system and return to the planning dilemmas in the last chapter. The experiment did two important things: 1. It conceptualised soft information of the community. It was able to conceptualise the character, interests

and the aspirations of the community into a new information system that had the form of a community diary.

2. It shifted power from external actors to internal actors. The community diary was able to enter the planning process through use of the media. The residents’ group became the power agent as against the


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politicians and the developers. They now had instruments not only to bargain their aspirations but also tools to mobilise resources to execute their aspirations.

The experiment however failed to do two other important things: 1. It was not able to become a negotiating platform. While it was able to include soft information, it could not

include interests of weaker groups. The group that was funding the project dominated the articulation of the intervention. In other words, while it shifted power from one set of actors, it did not make all the actors powerful. It marginalized other set of actors such as the slum dwellers.

2. It was not able to get a consensus for a planning concern and articulated the planning concern based on the interests of new power holders. The community itself had conflicting aspirations. But there is always a possibility of getting a public meeting activated where a common interest could be articulated. But the survey results proved that people with interests of developing the area were more than the people who wanted to keep it open. And since the residents’ association was against such an idea, the possibility of a community meeting was impossible.


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8. CONCLUSIONS: NEW QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS The conclusions are in four parts. The first part is a summary of the research undertaken, the aims, the processes, the experiments, the findings and the formulations. The second part attempts to summarise the achievements of the research and the chief findings of the research. The third part puts together new questions regarding the findings of the research and makes some more new formulations. The fourth part describes the possibilities of new research that can be undertaken from the experiences of the current research. 8.1. SUMMARY OF THE RESEARCH The research is planned in four tasks. The first part of the research is towards setting up a critique of conventional information systems, where I argue that interventions in the urban realm remain inappropriate due to the inadequacies of the information system. In the second part, I discuss five cases of urban development interventions in Mumbai attempting to establish a relation between conventional information system and urban intervention. The result of this discussion ends in a formulation that the inadequacies of urban information system are because outsiders make them and they do not include soft information. In the third part, I formulate a framework for making a new information system using informal information systems that could compliment the existing information system and solve the problems of the conventional information system. In the last part I undertake an experiment to apply this new framework for creating the new information system. I shall summarise briefly each of these parts. 8.1.1. Critique of Conventional Information Systems The research sets up a definition of conventional information systems based on Anderson (1991) who claims that the map, the census and the museum become the primary base for information systems. Chapter Two argues that conventional information system is never neutral. They suffer from problems of power and interests depending upon who makes them and for what they are made. Further they have a methodological problem of excessive reliance on cartographical patterns and unquestioned objective facts. The paper argues that every level of making information systems undergo a process of interpretation where information is created rather than reality represented. The argument is not towards conceiving an un-interpreted informational utopia; free of abstractions, but to specifically target the problem of misappropriations that the conventional information systems allow and attack it with methodological articulations. Finally the paper makes a case for soft data, data on aspirations and opinions that are generally missed in information systems. It suggests the conceptualisation of soft data to overcome the problems of power and interest. This soft data would require specific methodological articulations as well as remain in the realm of subjective knowledge, generically described as “gossip” in this paper. 8.1.2. The relationship between Information Systems and Interventions After the theoretical articulations from the Critique of Conventional Information System, the research undertakes case studies of five projects and policies from the city of Mumbai to understand the relationship between Information Systems and Interventions in Chapter Four. This chapter further attempts to understand what contributes towards the conventional information system and how the intervention is consequently affected. While the theoretical articulations prove true in the description of the cases, the case studies indicate specific problems with the information systems. The case studies suggest that interventions were not appropriate in these projects and policies because of two essential reasons: first, the information system was made by outsiders using conventional methods, and secondly, the information system did not conceptualise local aspirations, opinions and contexts. Furthermore, information systems have remained to be un-debatable realities and playgrounds of external interests. 8.1.3. Setting up an agenda and method in theory for a new Information System Based on the conclusions of the case studies, this part of the thesis (Chapter Five and Six) attempts to strategise addressing the problems of conventional information system. Chapter five argues for the making of a new information system, which compliments the existing information system and further formulates that this new information system is to be made by the community that it represents where NGOs, Academy and the Media could be used as facilitators towards creation of this new information system. The chapter further


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describes the contents of this new information system as “soft information” and articulates ways in which this new information system could enter mainstream planning. It suggests using media, soft negotiations, lobbying and other activities like public seminars and forums for this new information system to enter the mainstream planning process. Chapter six undertakes a more rigorous investigation into the methods of making the new information system. It argues that the new information system should hinge around a project and its context is the eve of the project. Hence it could start from providing knowledge for a specific project and continue informing other projects. This chapter also deliberates over the form and boundaries of the new information system where it proposes using innovative forms of websites or diaries and setting several boundaries for information rather than one strict boundary. These boundaries could include and exclude information depending upon the relevance of the information, but at the same time most information is recorded. The chapter further articulates the constituents of the soft information as: character of the context (behavioural pattern and biases of the community in the context), interest of the community in the context (opinions and aspirations) and linkages with other interests and issues outside the context. Finally, this chapter conceptualises using “informal information system” to map character, interests and linkages. It reviews several experiments in mapping soft information and suggests using of Gossip Networks that not only have a capacity to foreground most interests, but also are capable of creating platforms for negotiations. 8.1.4. An Experiment with creating a new information system With a background of such a theoretical framework, I had an opportunity to test this new information system on the field through a project. Chapter Seven describes this experiment. The project was to make a bargaining instrument for a community. The community wanted this bargaining instrument to present in the court of law to save an open space for public use. This open space was under a severe threat of developers appropriating it for commercial purposes and the state administration unable to save it. The only alternative, the community thought, was to plead the case with the judiciary. The community required arguments to suggest that the open space was important for the community and the city of Mumbai and the community required it to be used as a public space. For the research it was an opportunity because there was a condition to develop an information system by the people, including their aspirations and opinions that was also going to be used as a bargaining tool for the community. Research was conducted to understand who the community was and what its interest was, with an intention that this interest could then be voiced for the negotiation. But the results of the research were surprising. There were no common interests and aspirations within the community. In fact most interests and aspirations were found to be conflicting. Moreover, the definitions of the community were under question because the only unanimous interest of the community was to exclude “others” who were using the open space. These were informal settlers and slum dwellers of the area. The question was then whether to include these “others” within the community or exclude them. While the new information system was able to map opinions and aspirations and convert it into a bargaining tool, it was not able to become the negotiating platform. While it was able to shift power from people outside to the people inside, it remarkably marginalized the “others”. 8.2. CONCLUSIONS FROM THE RESEARCH In the investigative part, the research was able to establish the link between Urban Information Systems and Urban Interventions and conclude that the urban interventions remain inappropriate because of the inadequacies of the information system. While the analysis of the cases clearly articulated the contents of the conventional information system it was able to identify two major problems with it: the fact that it was made by outside interests and that it was not able to conceptualise soft information. In the exploratory part, the research suggests addressing the problems of the conventional information system through making of the new information system which the people of the context would make and which would contain soft information. The key formulations in this part are: 1. The new information system is necessary to have an appropriate intervention 2. This new information system has to be made on the eve of a project and has to be specific to the project. 3. The form of this new information system needs to accommodate soft information and a “website” seems

to be a relevant alternative depending upon the context of usage. 4. The new information system should set several boundaries of information depending upon the

importance of core stakes of core actors and external interests of outside actors. In this manner it would be able to give additional value to the interests of the people in the context rather than outsiders.


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5. The content of this new information system is essentially soft-information, which includes knowledge of the character of the context, interests of its people and linkages to other issues and actors.

6. One of the methods articulated in the thesis to map the soft information is through using informal ways of accessing gossip from the community and then following the links to other interests.

7. After the making of this new information system, it has to necessarily enter the mainstream planning process and this could be done by forcing through by using the media, acquiring support through lobbying or creating a public opinion through public presentations and discussions.

After these formulations, the new information system was tested for a project in the real context of the city. The attempt to make the new information system was successful. The new information system was able to map character, interests and linkages of the community and forcefully enter the mainstream planning process using all three tactics of using the media, acquiring support through lobbying and creating a public opinion. It was successful in transferring power to intervene from the outsiders to the insiders of the context. But on the other hand it had two important problems. The new information system was not able to get a consensus on aspirations and only a certain small group that was active and powerful (in terms of being a representative body) was able to foreground their interest. The other important problem was that while the community became the owners of their context, all other people who also had stakes but outside the formal community were excluded. 8.3. NEW QUESTIONS The experiments showed several limitations of the methodological exploration undertaken to solve the problem of creating a new information system. While the new information system was capable of doing some important things like shifting of power to the people of the context, it created new problems of excluding others who were not powerful at all. But more important to the research, the experiment raised several new questions on the definitions of the community and the agendas of planning. The idea of sharing is fundamental to define communities. Communities are defined through several cultural aspects that they share. But to define community for planning purposes, we would have to use the “resource sharing” aspect. One of the tasks undertaken in the new information system was to map aspirations of the community about the resource. But when we entered into a detailed investigation, it was evident that the community did not have a common aspiration regarding the resource they shared. In the context of the experiment undertaken, every individual and family that was interviewed had different aspirations. The only common thing they shared was the problem that someone else was using the space. The community was defined not through what they liked, but what they did not like. On the other hand, the representatives of the community seemed to have a vision very different from the community itself. This gave us an important insight regarding the communities in the city. The metropolis of Mumbai (and it may be true for most other contexts) has entered into a condition where communities are no longer defined through geographic proximity. Several communities can operate in the same geography fighting with each other for resources. And in this fight there are some losers and some gainers. Planning seems to simply facilitate the gainers. We could define the slum dwellers, the hawkers, the exclusive residents’ association, builders-politicians and many others as smaller communities. While conventional planning and its information system facilitated the builder-politician community, our planning and our new information system facilitated the exclusive residents’ group. The instance in the experiment was a very clear example of participative planning working for a certain group. Moreover, behind the sought legitimacy of participative planning, another group was acquiring power to plan. This brings us to the next question on the agenda of planning. From our experiment, it is clear that in the context of Mumbai, the relevance of participative planning is under severe question. The major question planning has to answer is that if interests are conflicting, whose interests are to be addressed, and on what basis? And if participative planning is under interrogation then we suppose going back to traditional top-down planning with the state planning for everyone. But again in the present context of Mumbai, the state can no longer be considered the trustee of its people. Moreover, we started our research locating the problem in the top-down approach of planning and saying that conventional planners are just instruments of some interests. The above questions seem to attack the fundamental principals of planning. Whereas, post-structural critiques of planning argue against the “nobility” of planning and place the onus on the realm of interest


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driven planning, it is necessary to assume that planning only facilitates execution of certain interests. And it does so under the guise of the “greater common good” and the pretext of honesty and objectivity. It further claims legitimacy through an empirical understanding. All five projects and policies show this tendency of planning being biased even though there was a tremendous pretension of being noble. Each of the five cases created their own marginality and their own gainers. The Slum redevelopment schemes benefited the developers and the other income groups while the slum dwellers themselves seemed marginalized. The mill land policy seemed a political dream executed by the planners and it marginalized the labour. The CESS policy on dilapidated buildings seemed to benefit the developers more than anyone and the locality (including tenants in some cases) was marginalized. The Heritage Policy was an intellectual dream of some NGOs and professionals, and it thoroughly marginalized building owners and occupants. Finally the project of fifty-five flyovers showed itself as being a tremendous political initiative blessed and supported by the city elite, while the normal train commuters were marginalized. The experiment undertaken in the research itself showed that the “other” users of the open space (slum dwellers, hawkers, informal settlers) were completely marginalized. Perhaps we need to reformulate the “noble” agendas of planning itself. 8.4. AGENDA FOR FURTHER RESEARCH: OPPORTUNITY PLANNING The scope of this research is not to delve into the problems of planning. However, at this juncture, I would present a sketch of the problems for two distinct reasons. Firstly, while the research undertaken in this thesis indicates the truth of the hypothesis that there is a relationship between information systems and urban interventions, and this is because soft data is not conceptualised the effort to conceptualise soft data (aspirations and opinions) does not still resolve the problem of certain interests dominating the planning exercise. And hence certain fundamental investigations are required to understand the nature of problem here. Secondly, I see this research, as a continuing part of my work in mapping urbanism and the conclusions formulated here would be taken ahead in the next work that I would undertake. The incompleteness of this research (in not being able to formulate conclusions and recommendations) would be fulfilled with formulation of an agenda for the next work that I intend to undertake. Conventional critiques of planning are primarily based along two fundamental arguments. First is the distrust towards planning’s leanings on empirical scientific standards, and second is the distrust of it being objectively neutral. I would rely on the material from this research to make the point more clear. All the cases in my study (Chapter 4) reveal that while information systems were scientifically scrupulous and authentic and the interventions that they spurred were logical, they still created margins. Critiques of planning have indicated the contextual irrelevance of scientific logic (Shetty, 2003). For example, if heritage conservation and industrial land redevelopment worked in the European contexts that do not mean that they could work in the Indian contexts. Moreover, planning standards developed on the basis of Western notions of living do not become universal standards to plan. This is important because, Indian planning still relies largely on standards (or atleast methods of obtaining these standards) developed in the west; for example to look at the problem of slum in Mumbai as a problem of poor living conditions obviously would mean providing (or facilitating) of houses to the poor and the entire intervention would be to decide on the minimum standard of living required. On the other hand if one decided to look at this as an opportunity for industrial growth where the poverty could be targeted, then perhaps the entire question of housing the poor would not surface. This criticism is not to voice any kind of nationalistic romanticism or argue for notions of original locality, but to make a quick remark on the problems of planning. All the cases in the research also clearly indicate that invariably, certain groups appropriate planning. This is not as accidental as it may seem. All the cases also describe the groups who initiated the process and the groups whose interests were served. Even in the experiment undertaken of creating a new information system (Chapter 7), it is clear that that when the resident’s association got involved in deciding the future of the open space, it made the open space into its own enclave. The planners’ interests and planning seem to have been ruled by either the scientific empiricism, or political will, or any dominant interest group. While the present research intended to address the problem of scientific empiricism and political will dominating planning through the idea of a new information system that would be made by people who get affected, it was unable to resolve the conflicts between the people themselves. Hence power was shifted merely from one group to another, without negotiation. This brings us to an important point that has become a part of many contemporary debates on planning: shift of planning. While planning today recognises the problems of top-down planning processes and the irrelevance of scientific empiricism, it attempts to answer


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the question through using the politeness of participation (Davidson 1981 and 1996; and Baross, 1991). It seeks to bring about negotiations between players. Our experiment has shown that these players are ready to negotiate only when their interests are not satisfied, (the politicians and developers were not the ones to start negotiations, but the project had to force them to negotiate through the use of media). And such negotiators are not bothered about other interests, no matter how legitimate (the community wanted the informal settlers, hawkers and slum dwellers out of the area). Planning just became a tool to voice opinions of these interests against the powerful politicians or developers, and it was successful. The problem was however two-fold, firstly, the common community interest was forced by the representation of the community (there was no common opinion or aspiration), and secondly, this entire process, while saved the open space as a public space, marginalized the “other” whom the community did not want to be allowed to use the public space. This brings us to the realisation that if we were being asked to make a bargaining instrument by the “others” (slum dwellers, hawkers and informal settlers) then we would have argued for their interests and probably the so-called community would have been an outcaste. Hence we had to decide whom we wanted to support or more generally: the planners had to choose whose interest they wanted to execute. And specifically, since we were a part of the academy, we weren’t compelled to follow anyone’s interests, except for monitory compulsion which the academy would have transferred on itself through use of various capacities41 of the academy itself. The problems of planning seem to point at the relevance of ideological articulations along with methodological articulations. Along with and prior to improvements in methodological explorations like improving the information system, planning perhaps requires an ideological reorientation. I would make three theoretical articulations: the ideas of differences, aligning and affordances Differences: The concept of differences is one of the fundamental conceptualisation of Deleuze’s formulations (Deleuze, 1987). To summarise it, is to simply suggest that there is a risk in conceptualising issues into typological categories. Generalisation is fatal. Deleuze uses this in his work to understand human beings not as generics, but each human being as a unique entity. To adapt the concept of differences for our purposes, we could argue against the attempts of putting all interests into a similar value. The problems of different interest groups are very different and are not comparable. For example, the problem of not having open space for leisure is not similar to the problem of living in perpetual insecurity of livelihood and risk of being evicted. The problem of not being able to make more profit is not similar to loosing a job or changing occupation. There is a difference in these problems. These problems require a valuing. In the negotiation platform, there are never people with similar problems. Some problems are far more acute than other problems. The greatest mistake a planner can do is to consider these problems in equity and try to provide equal voice to all problems. Hence it is not enough to just provide a platform for all interests. Hence here I embark into the second theoretical articulation of aligning. Aligning: If it is not enough to just provide a platform for all interests, then it is necessary to value some interests more than others rather than trying to be neutral. And since the powerful would somehow make their way it would be necessary for a planner to align with those interests at the margins because these are the interests that have acute problems and these are the interests that are in the greatest risk of getting neglected. Affordances: I base this proposition on formulations of Gibson, Deleuze and Delanda. While Gibson (1979) articulates the idea of affordances as a relationship between a system and a subject (or more precisely what the system has to offer that the subject can take advantage of); Deleuze (1987) and Delanda (2003) streamline the theory of affordances into the realm of mapping and planning by suggesting that planner’s essential task is to map, manipulate and create affordances. Having aligned with the margin, then it is necessary to strategise planning specific for this marginal group. Here the planner has to map what the system can afford and what is the capacity of the margin to appropriate these affordances of the system. These affordances need not fall into legitimate planning

41 The advantage of the academic environment is firstly it allows for a reflective fundamental analysis of the issue, secondly, it is able to resolve the problems of interests that is so evident in the formation of information systems and lastly, its ability to enter the social systems is greater due to all the technical reasons of availability of researchers and non technical reasons of it being seen with ample amount of trust among the various interest groups involved with the city. A more detailed analysis on the capacity of the academy and possibility of its participation is undertaken in another work of mine: Shetty, Prasad (2003), Re-claiming Academic Space, Reflections-2003, Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute For Architecture and Environmental Studies, Mumbai


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practices. All illegitimate activity would fall within the realm of manipulating affordances of the system. The main aim however is to provide opportunity for this marginal group the similar resources that other groups enjoy. The three concepts indicate a change in planning, which is specific for the margins and which have been traditionally addressed for solving problems. Planning now needs to create opportunities for these margins. I would finally conclude with the articulation of the idea of opportunity planning. The intention of this section being towards formulating agendas for the next research and since I have arrived at this stage of the research through arguing for a newer agenda for making new urban information systems, I would limit the elaborations on opportunity planning to mere skeleton sketches and primarily focus on changes required in reformulating a relevant urban information system. At the core of opportunity planning is to strategise the planning process towards creating opportunities for the margins. It is not to replace mainstream planning processes, but to address the problems that mainstream planning processes create. Mainstream Planning and its appropriations are inevitable in current contexts. It is targeted towards margins. The ideal position to undertake such an activity in the academy with the help of media. One of the first tasks in opportunity planning is to isolate a context of operation (which might be a project, policy, geographic area or a specific group of people). The second task is to find the margin in this context. Margins could be found through the process that this research undertook in its experiment, through mapping of interests and power. The third is to map opportunities for this margin and fourth is to strategise for the opportunity and plan it. I’ll focus briefly on the third task of “opportunity mapping” to finalise my directions for the newer information system. “Opportunity Mapping” would have two components: 1. Mapping of Affordances: Affordances are all the loopholes, possibilities, and chances that are available

in the context that can be taken advantage of. I list below affordances in the various cases that I have undertaken in this research.

2. Mapping of Abilities: Abilities are the capacity of the margin to take advantage of the affordances in the context.

Affordances and Abilities contribute towards opportunity. This opportunity then needs to be planned. The idea of opportunity planning is still premature and in its infancy and probably would require a full-fledged research with an exploratory objective to develop it finally. But the purpose of introducing it here is to suggest a possibility against the fatalistic, anarchic conclusions of this research. Perhaps it is time to understand that planning, no matter what it claims is not neutral at all. And perhaps it is time to seek for a deceitful planning exercise. And this deceitful planning exercise has to plan for the margins that conventional planning has created rather than pretend to be planning for everybody.


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