Free homes spur enclave renovation
MUMBAI, India — Farida Kachwala is vacating her family’s cramped home of 80 years, one of thousands receiving modern apartments through a project that hopes to transform Mumbai’s historic Bhendi Bazaar from a dilapidated ghetto into a slick Singapore-like enclave.
Six hundred million dollars is being spent to demolish hundreds of rundown lowrise buildings in the dirty colonial-era market and replace them with shiny skyscrapers that will house 20,000 Dawoodi Bohras, a sect of Shia Muslims, who have made the area their home for decades.
“We have many problems here. It’s smelly because there’s sewage and garbage everywhere and the wooden stairs are really steep and dangerous. I’m so happy that we’re moving,” says Kachwala.
The rehousing project aims to replace the decrepit structures and mazelike narrow streets, where hawkers sell everything from sunglasses to sweets as goats meander docilely, with gleaming towers and polished shopping arcades.
It is also hoped the scheme will help cleanse the neighborhood of its underworld image. Dawood Ibrahim, who carried out the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, lived in Bhendi Bazaar during the 1980s and Bollywood films often portray the area as a gangster hangout.
Some 250 decrepit three and four-story buildings known as chawls — originally built for single male laborers in the 1800s and where residents often share toilets — are being razed and replaced with 17 high-rise towers across 7 hectares.
Three thousand two hundred families will receive new homes free of charge. Each will be a minimum of 32 square meters in size with private bathrooms and separate sleeping and living spaces.
It will be a significant improvement on the tiny, dark one-room home Kachwala shares with her husband, daughter and father-inlaw, who moved in as a 10year-old in the 1930s.
“I’m attached to this place because I’ve lived here almost my whole life but our children will have a better environment to live and grow in the new home,” says Kachwala, 45.
The demolition and construction is taking place in nine phases. The first started around three years ago and the entire project is expected to be completed by 2025. The only buildings not being torn down are the area’s mosques.
It is budgeted to cost 40 billion rupees ($600 million) and a trust attached to the Bohra community’s governing body is providing the funding through donations. Money will also be raised by selling off four of the new towers.
Rapid development has altered Mumbai’s skyline over the past two decades and conservation architects lament the loss of another historic district.
“The entire fabric is going to get erased, the history, the artifacts. It’s going to have an impact on the social character,” architect Vikram Pawar said, adding that the skyscrapers will be out of keeping with neighboring areas.
But that doesn’t seem to concern the majority of residents, including Shirin Electricwala.
“It will change the way we live. We’ll have more space, hygiene and comfort,” she said.
estimated cost of the project, which will see hundreds of buildings in Bhendi Bazaar destroyed You can destroy in a week what nature has taken centuries to create.” Pierre Kestemont, forest ranger
“This place is unique, the only one like it in Europe, in the world I think,” said Adrien, who is taking 360degree photos of the forest.
Bluebells have been growing in Hallerbos for centuries, experts say. The forest was largely cut down by the German army during World War II but replanted afterward with beech trees and a few Californian sequoias, and the fresh cover has allowed them to really flourish.
But its growing popularity in recent years comes at a cost.
At the weekends, the sheer numbers coming to visit the forest have forced Belgian authorities to set up special parking lots and shuttle buses, with visitors finding themselves among school parties, groups of tourists and photographers lugging their equipment.
More importantly they set up signs asking visitors to keep off the carpet of flowers and stick to the pathways, with especially vulnerable areas being taped off.
“When there’s too much trampling the bluebells disappear and it takes dozens if not hundreds of years for them to grow again,” says Bruno Verhelpen, a guide who organizes nature walks at Hallerbos.
In the next two weeks as the flowers are in full bloom the forest paths will be so busy they will be “like a commercial street in central Brussels”, he said.
One of the biggest risks is from people taking selfies in the woods, said Pierre Kestemont, a forest ranger.
“At the end of each day I can see where they have been walking. You can destroy in a week what nature has taken centuries to create,” said Kestemont, who spends up to 12 hours a day cycling around making sure people keep to the paths.