India, Nov. 4 -- On weekday evenings, the Shaheed Bhagat Singh playground in Kalachowkie comes alive with the crack of bat against ball and the shouts of players. On three makeshift cricket pitches, local lads go at it, as neighbours - many of them seniors - gather around to watch and chat about nothing in particular. It's food for the soul. Perhaps not for long. The easy camaraderie of Abhyudaya Nagar, a sprawling enclave of dock and mill workers' families and government employees, will soon surrender to a new way of life. An integrated cluster redevelopment project is converting 48 ageing, low-rise buildings into residential high-rises. The neighbourhood's 3,410 families, living in 220-sq ft homes, will get apartments almost three times their original size. Concerns about redevelopment are cutting across pincodes, about how this unstoppable force sweeping through Mumbai is reshaping entire neighbourhoods. In a city where 30,600 people jostle for space in every square kilometre, redevelopment is changing not just the skyline, but the way people live. Early efforts at redevelopment began after liberalisation in 1991, with the conversion of old mill lands and rent-controlled, cessed buildings. The model gained momentum a few years later, with a landmark amendment to the Development Control Regulations in 1999. Section 33(7) was revised, giving developers the right to build and sell surplus apartments in the open market alongside free homes for existing tenants. In time, these apartments came to be known as the "free-sale component," a phrase now embedded in our lexicon. The second lever driving the redevelopment juggernaut is "slum TDR", another incentive introduced in 1999. For the first time, builders could trade units they constructed to rehouse slum-dwellers for extra FSI they could use in private projects elsewhere in the city. To this day, slum TDR remains one of the most frequently misused developer incentives, allowing builders to construct bigger and taller buildings far more easily. The next inflection point came in 2018 - the year the Development Control and Promotion Regulations 2034 (DCPR 2034) were notified. They set the template for the redevelopment landscape we see today. The focus shifted from rebuilding dilapidated cessed buildings to a process of large-scale urban renewal. The FSI cap was raised significantly - FSI was now linked to road width, and 35% fungible FSI was added to residential projects. Suddenly, the sky was the limit - developers could build grand high-rises, pack more apartments into their projects, and residents could expect larger apartments. The next big push came after the Covid-19 pandemic, which sent Mumbai's redevelopment boom into overdrive. When projects thawed after an 18-month freeze, the Maharashtra government rolled out a raft of incentives for builders. The government is now reaping enormous political and financial dividends from the redevelopment tide engulfing the city. Ironically, builders were hard-pressed for land to utilise these incentives, so they began to look skyward for space. And the government obliged, regularly tweaking the rules to favour developers. A combination of builder-friendly laws and their questionable application is now swiftly transforming low-rise neighbourhoods and old chawls into gravity-defying residential towers and luxury hubs. The scale of the transformation is enormous. According to Knight Frank India, by 2030, redevelopment projects in housing societies currently underway will add 44,277 new homes with a valuation of Rs.1,30,500 crore. Additionally, over 25,000 buildings are eligible for redevelopment across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), with the total estimated project value exceeding Rs.30,000 crore, according to data from industry body CREDAI-MCHI. According to a recent JLL-NAREDCO report, more than 1,000 redevelopment projects, including slum clusters, housing colonies and housing societies, have been launched in Mumbai since 2020. The redevelopment wave is also reshaping the geography of luxury housing beyond south Mumbai enclaves such as Cuffe Parade, Malabar Hill, Altamount Road and parts of Worli. Driven by infrastructure projects, especially the Coastal Road, Atal Setu and Mumbai Metro, the city's premium housing market is shifting from the traditional south-north axis and pushing into the eastern parts of the city. According to the House of Hiranandani, areas near the Eastern Freeway's entry and exit ramps, including Chembur, have seen property prices rise 10-18% due to massive connectivity upgrades. Another infrastructure project impacting real estate prices is the Atal Setu, which has shrunk travel time between Mumbai and Navi Mumbai. According to property consultant Cushman & Wakefield, rates of mid-segment homes in Navi Mumbai have risen 12% year on year, to as much as Rs.23,500 per sq ft. The Mumbai Coastal Road has boosted demand for premium homes in the western suburbs. The over Rs.1 lakh-per-sq ft corridor in Worli, for instance, is projected to appreciate by as much as 25-30% across three years, according to JLL-NAREDCO. Ritesh Mehta, senior director, Residential Advisory Services, India, JLL, claimed that 75-80 premium coastline projects are under redevelopment in the city. Section 33(9) of the DCPR 2024 was another game-changer. Better known as the "cluster policy", it allows housing societies and standalone buildings to be combined into a cluster and treated as a single project for redevelopment purposes. Introduced in the Development Plan of 1991, Section 33(9) has been amended several times, to expand its scope and boost the incentives for developers. For instance, in recent years, the height of buildings under these schemes was raised from 120 metres to 250 metres. Two cluster redevelopment success stories are the SBUT project in Bhendi Bazaar and the BDD Chawls in Worli, Lower Parel and Naigaon, resuscitating ageing neighbourhoods in some of Mumbai's oldest areas. Among the projects in the pipeline are Abhyudaya Nagar at Kalachowkie, Adarsh Nagar in Worli, SVP Nagar in Andheri, Motilal Nagar in Goregaon and Bandra Reclamation. The redevelopment of Mumbai's historic red-light district, Kamathipura, has only just got off the ground and will permanently erase a distinctive piece of the city's history. But the incentives weren't enough. Under pressure from the builder lobby, the state permitted the "clubbing of schemes & plots" model, which widened the scope of projects manifold. It also multiplied the FSI and other benefits bundled with it. Simply put, this regulation allows developers to combine several scattered plots - and even merge different project types such as slum schemes with non-slum projects - into a unified master layout. In 2019, the state government started promoting the "self-redevelopment" model, where housing societies assume the role of a developer, retain saleable area profits, and gain larger apartments. Under this model, the society hires its own architects, contractors and project management consultants. Residents enjoy all the benefits of redevelopment; the society retains the profits and surplus flats, which it can sell in the open market. Incentives include additional FSI, and interest subsidies on loans to initially finance the project. More than 1,600 proposals have been received by the Self-Redevelopment Authority, and 21 projects have been completed in recent years. "Self-redevelopment capped our project at 74 flats, allowing for podium parking. A private builder might have constructed 100 flats under 33(7)(11) or another DCPR clause, thereby compromising on parking," said Sujit Gupte, secretary, Shantaprabha Cooperative Housing Society, Goregaon (East), which has been self-redeveloped. Gupte added that residents received 53% additional area against 25% offered by a private builder. This gave them 820-sq ft and 1,300-sq ft homes, significantly larger than their existing 550-sq ft and 870-sq ft apartments. Once it was clear the redevelopment tide would sweep up every opportunity in its path, residents began to brace for the inevitable. They began to educate themselves on their rights, and negotiations with builders became more competitive. They no longer settled for just an extra bedroom, or other sops. Many housing societies have hired legal firms and chartered accountants to carry out their due diligence, to scrutinise developers' balance sheets, their track record, and their proposals. At the 62-year-old Meher Apartments on Altamount Road, the bidding war began over a year ago, with four major real estate players wooing residents with competitive proposals. Captain Ashok Batra, 85, who was among a handful of dissenting members, said flat owners had raised 80-90 points, mainly legal aspects. They even sought clarity from developers on each flat's view. At Bandra Reclamation, housing societies are vetting development agreements rigorously to safeguard their interests. "We want homes in the same place that we currently live in, good amenities, extra area for our flats, a good maintenance corpus from the developer, and rent as per our location while the building is under redevelopment," said Nitu Bhambri, a resident of Sea Pearl Cooperative Housing Society, which is part of a cluster redevelopment in a Mhada layout. Government officials concerned with the redevelopment process admit that, post-pandemic, Mumbai's redevelopment policy began to encourage vertical and high-density development. Worse, little thought was given to whether civic infrastructure could keep up with this seemingly unbridled growth. Amendment after amendment has turned redevelopment regulations into a maze of fine print, which builders are deftly navigating to squeeze every last square foot of profit out of the rules. "In the last four-five years, decisions have been taken on a case-to-case basis rather than under a uniform policy. FSI is granted based on the project's location and who the developer is. There are many instances where seemingly identical projects are granted different FSI values by applying different parameters under the DCPR," said a state housing department official. Using road width as a key parameter to determine the intensity of development is another example of a flawed policy, he said, citing the example of high-rises in Vikhroli that were approved based on the 18-mt width of the Eastern Express Highway. "As a result, buildings away from the highway did not get the same advantages, while those along the highway have ended up with inadequate parking space," the official said. Defending the government's approach, deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde, who is also the state's housing minister, said amendments to the redevelopment policy are not aimed at maximising construction or creating uncontrolled, high-density development. "Mumbai houses a large stock of old and unsafe buildings, slums, cessed buildings, Mhada colonies and mill workers' housing that require redevelopment. Vertical growth is therefore inevitable in a land-constrained city," Shinde told HT. Municipal commissioner Ashwini Bhide says the civic administration is prepared to support the unprecedented urban renewal currently underway. "We have assessed the demand for water requirements for the next 20-30 years. There are projects such as the Gargai Dam and desalination plants, some of which are already in the pipeline," said Bhide. Many who have signed up for redevelopment, and others planning to take the leap, are asking an uncomfortable question: Is Mumbai building a better city, or simply a more profitable one? Niranjan Hiranandani sums up the builders' perspective - he says Mumbai is experiencing a "redevelopment renaissance". "Mumbai is not just being rebuilt; it is being reimagined," says Hiranandani, founder and chairman of the Hiranandani Group. Not everyone is inspired by this "renaissance". While many Mumbaiites stand to gain something vital - space and an enhanced asset - some residents feel they have lost something no new flat can offer: a sense of belonging. Where shared open spaces, everyday encounters, an easy familiarity and trust once bound neighbours together, walls have replaced warmth and high-rises tower over lives once lived in close quarters. "When there's an emergency, even in the middle of the night, a dozen people rush in to help," says Ravindra Pantparadkar, a long-time resident of Abhyudaya Nagar. With the resignation that comes from knowing things will soon change, he adds, "We can smell what's cooking in our neighbour's kitchen, but we know such things don't happen in the high-rise towers." Captain Batra, one of the dissenting voices in the now imminent redevelopment of Altamount Road's Meher Apartments, says that when his disinclination became obvious, offers started to pour in from his younger neighbours, who view redevelopment as an investment. "'Uncle, can I come see you,' they would ask," laughs Batra. He has since taken a philosophical view. "You learn to live with change. You may not be happy but that's fine. No attachments. Nothing is forever," says the former naval captain. Prominent artist Meera Devidayal, 80, a resident of Jupiter Apartments on Altamount Road, is on Batra's side of the fence. Among the few dissenters in her housing society, she owns two 2BHK apartments, connected by an internal staircase. The lower apartment functions as her studio where her striking art comes to life. The push for redevelopment, she says, was mainly from the 1BHK owners, who wanted larger flats. Unimpressed by the sameness of newer buildings, even if they offer in-built gardens and open spaces, Devidayal says, "I don't respond well to a gated community. I like to stand at my window and look at vendors and cars. Why should we barricade ourselves?"...