Perhaps Bombay/Mumbai is the only city that is so obviously the product of circumstance rather than deliberation. That said, it is also the most reshaped. In its more than 300-year history as a rising littoral to mercantile to global city, there have been as many misses as there have been hits. Architect and civic historian Robert Stephens’ (37) compilation of the unrealised projects that could have shaped Mumbai, Bombay Imagined: An Illustrated History of the Unbuilt City, is the latest addition to the literature on the city’s development, and perhaps one of the most significant.
The American — one of the latest in a long, happy tradition, to come from outside the city (in 2006) and to make it his own — has rigorously and resourcefully prised out more than 200 imaginations of Mumbai from, in his words, “two dozen institutions on three continents”. These include reclamation plans, infrastructural overlays, monumental architecture, airports, and even more airports. All came to naught, but still tell us of the city, of the time they were proposed in, and allow us some wishful speculation. In doing this, the principal architect at RMA Architects has also brought to light some figures from its past who deserve a better place in the canons of historical personages that shaped Mumbai. Edited excerpts from an interview:
