Mumbai: The battle of classic preservation versus modernity is gaining momentum on India’s most famous beach. Described by UNESCO as “Mumbai’s Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles”, Marine Drive was given World Heritage Site status in 2018. Currently, the campus has a height restriction of 24 meters which ensures a symmetrical skyline. However, over the past few years, residents of some of the buildings standing behind the promenade, most of which were constructed in the early 1950s, have been lobbying for redevelopment and the removal of these height restrictions.
Which explains why, amid Mumbai’s celebrations of the 100th year of Art Deco, Atul Kumar, the energetic head of the Art Deco Mumbai Trust, finds himself unable to enjoy the moment. Instead, the old Tata aide, who occupies one of Marine Drive’s sprawling, sea-facing buildings, and Ashok Rao, a chartered accountant, are working with a renewed sense of urgency on a series of cases in various courts – including against removing the height restriction at the 58-metre limit.
Most Art Deco districts around the world, be they in Miami, San Francisco in the US or Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg in South Africa or Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in Brazil, have strict conservation rules and stringent regulation regarding high-rise developments, says Pankaj Joshi, conservation architect and principal director, Urban Center Mumbai. Moreover, he says, removing height restrictions and allowing an asymmetrical skyline on Marine Drive would be contrary to the Indian government’s commitment to UNESCO while applying for the World Heritage tag. Joshi says, “This was the federal authority telling an international agency. It is as good as a treaty. Under that provision, the state government has also promised the central government that it will protect this site. To develop here would require changing a lot of laws. If we lose this World Heritage status we will lose our face as a city.” Conservation architect Abha Narayan Lamba, who prepared the site management plan for the heritage complex proposal sent to UNESCO, agrees with Joshi. “High-rise buildings behind the protected front row of buildings will visually destroy the heritage complex.”
The SMP submitted along with the nomination dossier to UNESCO between 2017–18 states: “…development pressure is a matter of concern for the Marine Drive cluster. However, the Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee has approved the Marine Drive Precinct Heritage Guidelines, which call for maintaining the art deco features of the complex while protecting the height restriction in the area and ensuring their integrity.”
Mumbai’s Art Deco district consists of 94 buildings and is one of the largest and most homogeneous buildings in Asia and the world. “To ensure proper architectural and urban form, development was controlled; special laws governed details such as use, footprint, height, number of floors, structural design, finishes and colour… These rules created a unique massing, delineation and skyline of the complex,” explained a paper from the Art Deco Trust.
The UNESCO World Heritage Site is in the historic center of Mumbai and comprises an urban agglomeration, comprising the two heritage precincts of Fort Precinct and Marine Drive Precinct. The property includes a collection of 19th-century Victorian structures and 20th-century Art Deco buildings. The executive summary provided to UNESCO to explain the “Outstanding Universal Value” of the heritage complex states: “Following the land reclamation of the 1920s, the Backbay Reclamation Scheme created a new canvas for urban renewal to the west of the Oval Maidan. It set the stage for Art Deco in India. With its modern technology of reinforced cement concrete and streamlined architectural forms, it replaced the carved stone of Victorian buildings. Presenting a spectacular view that proclaims India’s embrace of modernity, this new development extends westward to the Arabian Sea, creating a spectacular beach along the coast – Marine Drive.
In October last year, Atul Kumar-led Nariman Point-Churchgate Citizens Association (NPCCA), along with others, had filed a petition in the Bombay High Court against the Mumbai civic body’s 2023 guidelines, which were formalized by the state government in a resolution dated September 4, 2023. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation had approved guidelines to grant special permission to redevelopment projects in the Marine Drive complex, allowing construction beyond the permissible height of 24 meters and up to 58 meters. In the streets behind the beach promenade. The High Court granted an interim stay on the guidelines but the matter is still pending.
There have been three rounds of litigation so far. It started in 2012 with the then Municipal Corporation Commissioner granting special permission to Vasant Sagar Properties, located in the second line of the Marine Drive Heritage Complex, to build up to 58 metres. In a PIL filed by residents’ associations, the high court quashed the commissioner’s permission in 2014 and directed the civic body to frame guidelines to regulate reconstruction of buildings above 24 metres. The appeals filed in the case are pending in the Supreme Court. The associations challenged the draft guidelines for allowing construction above 24 meters in 2017 and approved guidelines in 2024. In October 2024, the High Court put a stay on the approved guidelines.
While the Vasant Sagar case is pending in the apex court, many other residents of the area also want to opt for redevelopment. Keen to live in large flats in modern buildings, they say their buildings, most of which were built 60 years ago, have outlived their time.
On the back of the heritage controversy, seventy-year-old Kawal Shahpuri, a resident of C Road, Churchgate, says the state government needs to reconsider the law to allow redevelopment of buildings that are not part of world heritage structures. “If everything else (in the city) is getting better, why should we lag behind? Look at how places like Parel have changed,” he says. “There is an acute shortage of parking in our area, which has led to double parking on the streets. Our buildings are old, and rusting. For example, the building I live in was constructed in 1958 and was the last building to be built on A, B, C and D Roads in Churchgate. We have had to do several major repairs in recent years. The government needs to reconsider.”
“Many buildings in and around Marine Drive follow the old pagdi system, (under it, tenants enjoy lifetime tenancy rights, a controversial system that has been abandoned in the rest of the city). Redevelopment can resolve landlord-tenant disputes by allowing tenant premises to become tenant-owned, while the landlord also benefits financially,” says Mahendra Hemdev who lives in a building in D Road, Churchgate. Are. He also points to the acute shortage of parking and says a modern high-rise building with podium parking could solve that problem.
There are currently over 10,000 buildings across Mumbai that are under redevelopment and many of them are taking advantage of the relaxation in coastal regulation zone rules and going up in height. The metropolis is now among the top ten cities in the world in terms of density of skyscrapers.
“Every healthy building across the city is being redeveloped not because the building needs it or the residents need it. It’s because people are always having one bedroom less. How can you stop this? Questions of heritage and cultural significance cannot be viewed only through the prism of greed. Of course, a living city cannot be fossilized in a museum, but neither can you have a city with drab skyscrapers. Mumbai is of many layers. The city is and that makes the city prosperous,” says Pankaj Joshi.
Independent real estate commentator Vishal Bhargava claims that the area behind the protected heritage buildings of Marine Drive is suitable for redevelopment. “I appreciate the sentiment behind protecting heritage but in real estate, the last word that prevails is regulation, and what the occupant (of the building) wants.” In a transaction in which buyers, sellers and the government benefit, heritage conservationists are “outsiders”, he added.
For Atul Kumar, such transactional pragmatism smacks of “narrow opportunism”. “Such redevelopment will destroy the city’s identity and erase its cultural heritage.” And Joshi says heritage doesn’t just mean the art deco buildings on the front row. “There is something called the core, the buffer and the perimeter. You can’t build high-rise buildings behind the core and expect people not to notice.”
On his PIL, slated for hearing in the Bombay High Court later this month, Kumar says there is “great concern” that a law could pave the way for such redevelopment in the future.
Living in a heritage area may end up being more valuable than some residents imagine, says Pankaj Joshi. “Living in a listed heritage site will ultimately be most valuable when the rest of the city goes the high-rise way. This has also been done in modern cities like Singapore and Hong Kong. They have retained their heritage sites, some of which date back to the 1920s.” But he says that there is a need to encourage people to preserve the heritage. “Legacy is not an individual responsibility. It is a collective responsibility.”
