CITY OF WALLS

Wall in Mumbai. Lucas de Abreu, 2015

A few years ago, the richest man in India, Mukesh Ambani, worth $21.5billion, built his mega-mansion in a rich area of Mumbai. “The twenty-seven story, 400,000-square foot skyscraper residence, named after a mythical island in the Atlantic, has six underground levels of parking, three helicopter pads, a ‘health’ level, and reportedly requires about 600 staff to run it. It is the world’s most expensive home far and away with construction costs topping $1 billion.” (Forbes http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mhj45edfjh/antilia-mumbai-india/). Of course, in a developing country where millions of people still live below the poverty line, this was seen as extravagant and an equivalent wall was built to separate the residence from the rest of the city.

Shortly after the completion of the wall, slum-like structures were already built by the wall facing the street. As these new informal dwellings already topped the wall, the owner of the residence then built an even higher wall, but the new residents also continued building upon. The wall created a new surface for this hyper-dense, where every square-meter can house a new program.

Slums-dwellers are now 52.5% of Mumbai’s population (http://www.pkdas.com/published/PK-Das-Slums-Redev-and-Affordable-Housing-Integration.pdf), and as they spread around the city, the wealthiest minority built massive walls to avoid the slums to take over their properties.

This urban condition, however, is neither only contemporary nor restricted to developing countries. For long walls were built to protect palaces, neighborhoods, cities or even entire territories. At the same time, gated communities are a common urban type all over the world, from Mumbai to New York City.

Walls are so common today in contemporary metropolises, they are becoming banal and ignored. The danger of this is that they become less discussed as its negative impact on the city increases.