Mumbai, Dec. 8 -- A classic conservation versus modernity battle is gathering steam at India's most famous sea-front. Marine Drive, described by UNESCO as the "Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles of Mumbai" was tagged a world heritage site in 2018. Currently, the precinct has a height restriction of 24 metres which ensures a symmetrical skyline. In the last few years, however, residents of some of the buildings that stand behind the promenade, most of which were constructed in the early 1950s, have been lobbying for redevelopment, and for lifting of these height restrictions. Which explains why, in the midst of celebrations in Mumbai of Art Deco's 100th year, Atul Kumar, the energetic head of Art Deco Mumbai Trust, finds himself unable to savour the moment. Instead, the old Tata hand, who lives on one of Marine Drive's sprawling, sea-facing buildings, and chartered accountant Ashok Rao, are working with a renewed sense of urgency on a clutch of cases in various courts -- against the lifting of height restrictions in the precinct to 58m. Most art deco districts around the world, be they in Miami, San Francisco in the US or Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg in South Africa or Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo in Brazil, have strict preservation rules and rigid regulation about high rise developments, says conservation architect and principal director, Urban Centre Mumbai, Pankaj Joshi. What's more, he adds, lifting height restrictions and allowing for an asymmetrical skyline on Marine Drive would fly in the face of the government of India's commitment to UNESCO while applying for the world heritage tag. "It was the federal authority telling an international agency. That's as good as a treaty. Under that provision, the state government has also committed to the central government that it will protect the site. To develop here would require changing too many statutes. We will lose face as a city if we lose this world heritage status," adds Joshi. Conservation architect Abha Narain Lambah who prepared the Site Management Plan for the heritage precinct proposal sent to UNESCO agrees with Joshi. "High rises behind the protected front row of buildings would kill the heritage precinct visually." The SMP submitted with the nomination dossier to UNESCO between 2017-18 stated: "...development pressures are of concern to the Marine Drive cluster. The Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee has, however, approved Marine Drive Precinct Heritage Guidelines, which call for protecting the height restriction in the area and retaining the Art Deco features of the precinct to ensure their integrity." Mumbai's Art Deco district comprises 94 buildings and forms one of the largest and most homogenous such assemblages in Asia and the world. "To ensure proper architectural and urban form, the development was controlled; special laws governed details such as use, footprint, height, number of floors, structural design, finish and colour.These rules created a unique massing, delineation of the precinct, and skyline," points out a paper by the Art Deco Trust. The UNESCO world heritage site is at Mumbai's historic core and consists of an urban ensemble, including two heritage precincts of the Fort Precinct and Marine Drive Precinct. The property comprises a 19th century collection of Victorian structures and 20th century Art Deco buildings. The executive summary provided to UNESCO to explain the "outstanding universal value" of the heritage precincts, stated: "Following the 1920s land reclamation, Backbay Reclamation Scheme created a new canvas for urban renewal west of the Oval Maidan. This set the stage for Art Deco in India. With its modern technology of reinforced cement concrete and streamlined architectural forms, it posed a striking visual contrast to the carved stone of the Victorian buildings, announcing India's embrace of modernity. Extending from the Oval Maidan, this new development stretched westwards to the Arabian Sea, creating along the sweep of the coastline, a spectacular sea facing promenade, Marine Drive - the Queen's Necklace." In October last year, the Atul Kumar-led Nariman Point-Churchgate Citizens' Association (NPCCA) along with others petitioned the Bombay high court against the 2023 guidelines of the Mumbai civic body that were formalised by the state government in a resolution of September 4, 2023. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation had sanctioned guidelines for granting special permission to redevelopment projects in the Marine Drive precinct allowing construction beyond the permissible 24 metres and up to 58 metres in the lanes behind the seafront promenade. The high court granted an interim stay on the guidelines but the matter is still pending. There have been three rounds of litigation, so far. It started with the special permission granted in 2012 by the then municipal commissioner to Vasant Sagar Properties, located in the second row of the Marine Drive heritage precinct, to construct up to 58 metres. In a PIL by residents' associations, the high court set aside the commissioner's permission in 2014 and directed the civic body to frame guidelines to regulate the reconstruction of buildings above 24 metres. Appeals filed in the matter are pending in the Supreme Court. The associations challenged the draft guidelines for permitting construction above 24 metres in 2017 and the sanctioned guidelines in 2024. In October, 2024 the high court stayed the sanctioned guidelines. While the Vasant Sagar case is pending in the apex court, several other residents in the area too want to opt for redevelopment. Keen to live in bigger flats in modern buildings, they say their buildings, most of which were built over 60 years ago, have "outlived" their time. Septuagenarian Kawal Shahpuri, a resident of Churchgate's C Road, behind the heritage row, says that the state government will have to rethink the law to allow redevelopment of their buildings that are not part of the world heritage structures. "If everything else is improving (in the city), why should we lag behind? Look at how places like Parel have changed," he says. "Our buildings are old, and corrosion has set in. The one I live in was constructed in 1958 and we have had to carry out several major repairs in recent years." "Several of the buildings in and around Marine Drive follow the old pagdi system, (under this, tenants enjoy lifelong tenancy rights, a contentious system that has since been discarded in the rest of the city). Redevelopment can resolve landlord-tenant disputes while the landlord too gains financially," says Mahendra Hemdev who lives in a building at D Road, Churchgate. At present there are over 10,000 buildings across Mumbai that are under redevelopment with many of them taking advantage of relaxed Coastal Regulation Zone rules and going vertiginously high. The metropolis is now among the top ten cities in the world in skyscraper density. "Every healthy building across the city is being redeveloped not because the building requires it or the residents require it. It's because people are always one bedroom short. How do you stop that? Questions of heritage and cultural significance cannot be looked at only through the lens of greed. Of course, a living city cannot be fossilised into a museum but neither can you have cities with monotonous high-rises. Mumbai is a city of many layers and which is what makes the city richer," says Pankaj Joshi. Independent real estate commentator Vishal Bhargava asserts that the area behind the protected heritage buildings of Marine Drive is ripe for redevelopment. "I appreciate the sentiment behind protecting heritage but in real estate, the eventual word that prevails is that of the regulation, and what the occupant (of the building) wants." In transactions that entail gains for buyers, sellers and the government, heritage conservationists are but "outsiders," he adds. For Atul Kumar such transactional pragmatism reeks of "narrow opportunism". "This kind of redevelopment would lead to the loss of the city's identity and erasure of its cultural heritage." And Joshi adds that heritage cannot be construed to mean only the front row Art Deco buildings. "There is something called the core, the buffer and the periphery. You can't make high-rises behind the core and expect people not to notice it." With their PIL slated for hearing in the Bombay High Court later this month, Kumar says there is "huge concern" that a legislation may pave the way for such redevelopment in the future. To live in a heritage area, says Pankaj Joshi, may eventually be more valuable than what some residents may imagine. "Living in a listed heritage site will eventually be most valuable when the rest of the city goes the high-rise way. It has been done even in modern cities like Singapore and Hong Kong. They have maintained their heritage sites, some dating back to the 1920s." But there is a need, he says, to incentivise people to preserve heritage. "Heritage is not an individual's liability. It's a collective responsibility."...