When it comes to assess urban life and the quality of urban living in India, Mumbai is our baseline. A big part of our experiences that we gathered in this field are from Mumbai. And surely, when we tried to think about how our life in Delhi would be before we came here, we somehow used the Mumbai experience to create this image of the future.
Now we now better. Some days have passed. Some trips are already enough to say if our own creation of the image of Delhi was right or wrong. Here is how we see the differences between Mumbai and Delhi today:
Living
Mumbai: High-rise buildings, skyscrapers, mixed with slums in an extreme urban density. In manY other parts buildings with at least 6 storeys.
Delhi: A pattern of neighborhoods with an average height of 4 to 5 storeys. No high-rise buildings. Slums are seperated from planned residential areas.
Public space
Mumbai: mostly dangerous with extremely narrow pathways and frequent uncovered holes to the drainage system.
Delhi: mostly pedestrian pathways are existent in a good dimension. In the inner city well maintained and pretty spacious!
Parks / Greenery
Mumbai: few parks due to the extreme density. Often in bad condition. Although a lot of big trees and small spontaneous green pocketparksare existent.
Delhi: well planned parks often linked with amazing ancient architecture. Those cliché images about indian temple architecture in the mddle of a jungle produced by Hollywoods "Junglebook" somehow become reality in Delhis public parks.
Architecture and urban planning
Mumbai: density plus modern buildings kill or have already killed a big part of the architectural heritage of the city. The most fascinating piece of urban architecture is the waterfront that gives a lot of power to the whole urban scenery.
Delhi: No waterfront but in big parts well planned patterns of unique urban designs. Some small and narrow, some huge and extremely powerful.
Animals
Same amount of cows, camels, goats, pigs and parrots. Delhi has a lot more urban monkeys!
Photo: Jamal and Georg @ Lodhi gardens