CSSA Seminar: Vertical Mumbai

The Centre for the Study of South Asia and the Indian Ocean World is pleased to welcome Dr Andrew Harris from UCL's Geography Department, who will be giving the second of its lunchtime seminars of the year, 'Vertical Mumbai: 3D urbanism in twenty-first-century Asia'.

This paper uses a focus on Mumbai to explore upward trajectories in contemporary urbanism. It details unprecedented scales, quantities and innovations of high-rise construction in Mumbai over the last decade, and a growth in forms of vertical urban mobility. It is suggested these vertical trends are a clear signal and component of a new Asian century of inter-referenced urbanisation and 'hyper-building'. However, the paper argues these vertical trends need to be understood as more than simply a response to rapid population growth and space constraints. The recent verticalisation of Mumbai is identified as a central feature of a dramatic fracturing of urban space in the city, and indicative of key social and political disjunctures in the Asian world-class metropolis.