Why Mumbai’s ‘sponge city’ plan will amount to pouring Rs 13,000 crore down the drain
· Scroll
After a parched summer was followed by devastating floods in Mumbai in early July, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced a Rs 13,000-crore “integrated flood mitigation plan” to turn the metropolis into a “sponge city”.
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The “sponge city” concept, proposed over a decade ago by the Chinese landscape architect Kongjian Yu, is a metaphor for an urban green landscape’s potential and capacity to soak and store surface water, particularly during heavy rains.
In the case of Mumbai, the new integrated masterplan proposes crores worth of “nature-based” interventions alongside conventional stormwater drainage infrastructure work.
However, many of these proposed interventions are at stark odds with Mumbai’s model of urban development. The integrated masterplan proposes creating and engineering solutions using ecological systems for mitigating floods while the city’s administrators have been actively destroying Mumbai’s these very ecological systems for “development”.
Instead of critically re-examining the city’s development model that prioritises land value over water, the latest “integrated flood mitigation plan” would amount to little more than pouring crores down Mumbai’s drains.
What is in the integrated masterplan?
The latest integrated masterplan is envisioned as a mega project for flood mitigation in Mumbai– one that is even bigger and costlier than the decades-old Brihanmumbai Storm Water Drainage masterplan, also known as BRIMSTOWAD.
Since its inception in 1993, the BRIMSTOWAD...