Between Walls and Water: Technocratic Planning of Stormwater Infrastructure and the Reshaping of Everyday Life in Flood-Prone Mumbai

Abstract

Mumbai has been experiencing an increasing frequency of extreme climate events that result in recurrent monsoon flooding. Challenging the prevailing view of flooding as an infrastructural crisis, this paper argues that flooding is instead an inevitable consequence of systemic failures in the city’s technocratic planning regime. It critically examines the BRIMSTOWAD masterplan in developing the city’s stormwater infrastructure. It attempts to understand how the absence of such infrastructure exacerbates existing spatial vulnerabilities, reshaping the everyday life of marginalised communities living in flood prone areas. Through a case study of the 2019 Malad wall collapse, the paper analyses how stormwater drainage, housing crisis, and regulatory planning practices intersect during a flood event, demonstrating that Mumbai’s flooding crisis is deeply tied to its urban development model.