Urban development in Mumbai has presented a choice between two concerns, the first being the city’s social policy, that required directing public investment towards the improvement of infrastructure and sanitation, and the provision of adequate housing for most of its inhabitants; the second being the vision of its business and political class of developing a leading commercial and industrial center, or what Gordon (1978) calls its Urbs Prima in Indis policy. While the latter has almost always been pursued
at the expense of the former, the former has been reluctantly conceded only when both have been seen to be interdependent. in the decades after independence, the Urbs Prima in Indis ambition has been pursued under the aspiration of achieving ‘world class’ status by emulating other cities: Paris in the 1950s and 60s, New york in the 70s and 80s, Singapore in the 90s, and Shanghai in the first decade of the new millennium (Mahadevia and Narayanan 2008).