Add Mumbai to the list of cities hoping to model a new commercial center after New York City’s Times Square. Max Bearak, a Times contributing writer, wrote this week about the backlash from locals, who want to preserve the Kala Ghoda district’s heritage, and he writes here about the notion of false equivalencies between cities.
You’re an American, planning a trip to India, and your friend, who has been there and done that, remembers that you are originally from Washington, D.C. “OK,” she says. “Then you’ll surely feel right at home in Delhi, what with its regal, National Mall-esque government center and political milieu. Delhi is India’s D.C., and Mumbai is its New York, complete with Bandra, Mumbai’s very own Williamsburg, and ‘fast-paced’ Dalal Street, which even rhymes with Wall Street.”
Never mind that Delhi skirts the edge of an arid desert, that its version of the Potomac is quite literally a sewer, and that Delhi’s population is around 20 times that of the District of Columbia, 40 times if you include Delhi’s satellite cities. Or that Delhi has been the on-and-off capital of dynasties for millennia, with forts and tombs from each era still standing. Expatriates and travelers have an almost universal tendency to try to liken cities they visit to others they’ve spent time in. Buenos Aires exudes Paris. St. Petersburg is the Venice of the north. For most of us, it’s a knee-jerk reaction, and a way to contextualize a new experience. But when I heard government officials in India repeat the common refrain about Mumbai and New York City, it made me think twice about how seriously the false equivalencies are being taken by some influential movers and shakers.
India’s government announced plans in September to transform Kala Ghoda, one of Mumbai’s oldest and most charming neighborhoods, into India’s “Times Square.” In interviews, tourism officials told me that Mumbai was already similar to New York City, and it should only become more so. Two regurgitated Times Square’s arrogant but apparently alluring gimmick: It’s the crossroads of the world. Like a colossal, luminescent crown atop America, Times Square heralds New York City as the capital of the capitalistic world, and the envy of tourism ministers worldwide. One of them, Anand Gupta, a higher-up at the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, said that New York is “the center of the world” and “Times Square is a model that makes sense in Mumbai. We need an activity hub.”
Kala Ghoda is immensely cramped and doesn’t have the organizational benefit of being on a grid. Nor is there a subway. Its tallest buildings are three or four stories high, except for the lonely stock exchange that shoots up like a lighthouse amid a stormy sea of teashops and law offices. A Times Square would have to be carved out of this intricate neighborhood. Maneck Davar, honorary chairman of the Kala Ghoda Association, which works to preserve heritage sites in the neighborhood, told me he’d much rather his government look to Vienna, or a city in Italy, and adopt its pedestrian, plaza-centric approach, rather than one so overtly loud and commercial.
Valsa Nair Singh, managing director at Mumbai’s state-level tourism body, confided that a plaza and pedestrian-friendly area were core ideas of the plan anyways. “But who in India has ever heard of any square in Europe?” she asked. “Can you even tell me one? If I ask you to name a famous square, immediately anyone will say Times Square. That’s why we chose it.”
My sense is that cities rich in history like Mumbai and New York will never have more than a superficial resemblance to each other. Insta-cities like Dubai and Las Vegas may be more alike than any other pairing. Which begs the question: Why equate cities at all? Why not shed the conformist and imitative impulse and instead create something rooted in the proud and unique culture of Mumbai?