Imagine the world you’d like to live in
Mumbai is facing a variety of challenges: from pollution and traffic chaos to frequent flooding and dwindling natural resources. We asked residents about how their hopes for the future urban environment – while planners are already taking action to make it a more sustainable one.
Mumbai 2025
Shubh Mehta is 23 and was born and raised in Mumbai. He’s scared about the future and wants to live in a cleaner, healthier world. 28-year-old Prachita Kishor Koli has also lived in the city her whole life. She’s worried about environmental pollution getting worse and that there will be fewer local fish available for her to sell. Urban planner Pritika Hingorani says that vital decisions now have to be made for tomorrow’s Mumbai.
Mumbai 2050
Rahul Srivastava is an urban ecologist talking to us from the year 2050 – or, at least, from the Mumbai he envisions for that year: “Nobody imagined that the rivers, the water systems could be cleaned up.” A decisive change was the fishing villages becoming an integral part of the city’s modern image. The entire ecological setup of the city is seen differently, with the water infrastructure playing a major role. Prachita Kishor Koli hopes that 2050 will be much better and cleaner, and that everybody respects nature – and that there’ll be more fish living in the city’s waters. Pritika Hingorani foresees important changes, e.g. Mumbai investing substantially in sewage treatment plants. Nature is highly resilient and has huge capacities of regeneration. Grounds for hope, then – provided there’s the right human intervention.