Postwar & Welfare-Modernist (1945–1975)

Navi Mumbai

1967 · India · South Asia · Postwar reconstruction, welfare-state urbanism, and mass housing · Planned by CIDCO (Correa, Mehta, Patel)
Map of the nodes/wards of Navi Mumbai, the planned twin city of Mumbai begun in 1967.
Map of the nodes/wards of Navi Mumbai, the planned twin city of Mumbai begun in 1967. · CC BY-SA 4.0

Core idea

Polycentric satellite to decongest Bombay

Why it matters

Large-scale counter-magnet strategy

Description

Navi Mumbai (New Bombay), planned from the late 1960s and developed by the state corporation CIDCO, followed a concept advanced by Charles Correa, Shirish Patel and Pravina Mehta to build a counter-magnet city across the harbour from Bombay. The plan proposed a polycentric string of nodes along mass-transit lines on the mainland, each with its own centre and employment, intended to draw population and offices away from the congested island city.

Significance

Navi Mumbai is among the largest planned new cities of the twentieth century and the most ambitious Indian attempt to restructure a metropolis through a twin city rather than incremental expansion. Its node-and-corridor form influenced later Indian urban projects, while the slow migration of jobs across the harbour has made it a standard case in debates about whether counter-magnets can genuinely redirect metropolitan growth.

What shaped it

Plans it influenced

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.