This is a small presentation on how SRDP as an aesthetic project is problematic in the city of Ahmedabad.

1. Sabarmati Riverfront Development project
Megacities as myths of beauty

2. Geography/demography of conflict:

3. History of the city
 Known for its textile mills, Gandhi Ashram, Muslim
architecture and communal violence
 City‟s history allows a range of vocabulary, elements
one can choose from and mobilize in order to
articulate different imaginations
 Marred by communal conflicts, seen as an economic
hub, abysmal income disparity between west and
east
 Since 2000s focus on development but skewed
 Time period in focus: Narendra Modi govt+ IT boom

4.  Promise of the metropolis: IT boom and the rise of
the megacity
 Megacity= 10 million or above, Ahmedabad=50
million+
 Inside urbanising Asia: Darshini Mahadevia
 Essential to look into: governance, financing
infrastructure and hence a pattern of selective
development. This is background, it will show how
the narrative of development is problematic and
serves only middle class imagination.

5. The ‘Manchester of the East’

6. To the ‘east of Manchester’

7.  50% of dwelling in east Ahmedabad is slums and
chawls
 To get title of Megacity, sudden expansion of AUDA
limits, inclusion of many more areas, reaching
population targets
 80% of the displaced population is Muslims
 State to protect you from yourself: Slum dwellers
identified as living in unhygienic conditions, in low
lying flood prone areas
 Most are hawkers, lower income class, grocers:
obsolete occupations in a modern city

8. East city ecology
 Gurjari Bazar (flea market): 1200 permanent
hawkers and 1000 temporary workers
 Circus in the river valley: old dying tradition of
pitching circus tents in the riverfront area since this
is a seasonal river
 East city preserved as „old heritage‟ (congested,
polluted) and West city fit for modernization

9. SRFD: whose dream?
 Rs 12,000 million budget
 11.5 km long riverfront
 Land reclamation
 FSI (floor space index) rules changed
 30,000 living households on the river banks
 Largest slum displacement in the history of Post
partition Gujarat
 On paper rehabilitation for 4000 people offered so
far
 Performative-festivals to claim land
 Rehabilitated to „downtown Ahmedabad‟

10. Myth of the Megacity:

11. Excerpts of the imagined city:
 “It‟s like a dream that one lives. Waking up by the
river, driving down the riverside; board meeting with
vast blue vista in the background and then a cruise
across the water for a power lunch on the other
bank. And then, a dinner on the gloating restaurant
with family to chill out…In the midst of concrete and
steel that is the dream that city planners are
conjuring for apnu Amdavad.”

12.  On two stretches of 11.5 km, the future of a decaying
city takes shape. It will create a central business
district on the waterfront which will rub shoulders
with world‟s best- Melbourne which has only 800m
and Singapore, 1.2km…the tallest of buildings in
Gujarat…and ghats for religious activities.”

13. State authorized vandalism
 City as an aesthetic object, a site for performative
art: lifetsyle, cultural traditions, rituals,
 Ahmedabad and Sabarmati: the relationship of the
city (as a populated space) and the river, will it be
altered by this?
 Embellishing vandalism: Dario Gamboni
 Logic of e-governance: sacrifice for a greater good