Mumbai's bridge across forever

From the skies, the 21.8-kilometer-long sea-link appears like an umbilical cord that binds the island city of Mumbai to the hinterland which is apt, for if all goes to plan, the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL) or the Atal Setu, to be declared open by Prime Minister Modi on Friday, will help birth a Third Mumbai.

The country's financial capital, home to the largest number of billionaires in India, the creative heart of its soft power, has long been served poorly in terms of infrastructure. For Mumbai's over 21 million residents, the lack of available land- the city's area of 468 sq km translates into a density of 50,000 people per square kilometre - has meant that the only thing Maximum about the City is the pressure it puts people under.

In 1965, two architects, Charles Correa and Pravina Mehta, and Shirish Patel, an engineer by training and an urban planner at heart, wrote a paper in an issue of MARG magazine proposing the idea of a New Bombay, east of the existing one. While New Bombay did eventually come up - the birthing was mired in bureaucratic delays and corruption - their proposal to build a road and rail bridge over the sea from Sewri in the island city to Nhava Sheva where the Jawaharlal Nehru Port would come up, remained on paper. Now, 59 years on, that connector has finally arrived, albeit in a snazzier and different form.

A massive makeover

Mumbai is in the midst of a $30-billion makeover, and if the city appears like a giant construction site it's because of the staggering scale of the reimagining of its colonial infrastructure. MTHL is a key piece of that effort.

There's also the 360-kilometer-long metro being built, as also the coastal road that serves as a parallel artery hugging the coast along the city's north-south axis.

But equally ambitious, given the linear geography of the city, is the plan to create a circular east-west connectivity. In addition to the projects mentioned above, there is a road connector underway between Worli in the southwest of the city to Sewri on the eastern seafront from where MTHL starts. There's also a tunnel being built which will connect Marine Drive to the Eastern Freeway at the point where MTHL begins.