Mumbai experts warn area is a disaster waiting to happen

Mumbai: When a city is expanding without any planning and proper infrastructure, calamities like Friday’s Elphinstone Road-Parel FOB stampede are just waiting to happen, warn town planning experts and architects. They have blamed the government for not learning its lessons in time so to avert such disasters.

Girangaon, which consists of areas like Parel, Lalbaug, Lower Parel, Worli and  Sewree, was once a mill area. But with thousands of acres of mill land opening up for development, it is now buzzing with high-rises and corporate houses. But civic authorities have failed to provide even basic amenities needed to cope with the area’s rapid development, experts said.

Town planner Pankaj Joshi said, “When setting up central business districts, you have to consider four factors – to ensure smooth entry-exit of people, holding area to accommodate them, inter-modal transport and effective public transport. But not much thought has been given to either while developing Girangaon.”

The amenities available in the Parel-Lalbaug area were developed some 100 years ago. The population has increased manifold. You need to design facilities as per the commuter density. Instead of implementing projects like bullet train, AC trains, you need to first provide basic facilities to people,” he said.

Leading architect P.K. Das said that all government authorities are careless and high handed in terms of planning public amenities, services and infrastructure. “There is no scientific understanding or evaluation of problems the city is facing. It is easy to say the weather gods were unkind when the city floods but the reality is we do not plan for any disasters,” he said.