ABSTRACT

Mumbai1 challenges many preconceived ideas about serial mass housing. The city, which is a hotspot of tower block construction in India, provides an insight into the reciprocal relationship between the global concept of modernization and local conditions. The foremost feature here, compared to cities such as Paris or Berlin, is that, with very few exceptions, mass housing is inhabited by the privileged and not the marginalized. In a country where the overwhelming majority lives in utter poverty, privilege is of course relative. Any form of formal housing, much less facilities such as warm water or electricity, is accessible only for a minority. The standards of living enjoyed by the lower classes in Western countries, such as running water or a solidly built and self-contained apartment, are still out of reach for most Indians. The character of mass construction in Mumbai is determined by the fact that not even the cheapest formal house built by the state is affordable for the poor, since they are not even able to pay for the most basic maintenance. The great majority of the city’s residents thus stand outside the housing market by definition, no matter how much it is subsidized. The modernist promise to provide equal housing standards for everyone was as prevalent in India as it was in the Soviet Union, Germany, or France. But unlike these countries, where the housing crisis was solved or at least mitigated as a result of state-driven programs, Mumbai’s shortage is worse than ever. Demography played an important role. Unlike many cities in the north whose populations were stable or even shrinking, Mumbai’s population has multiplied by almost ten since the 1960s.