1) The Mithi River flows through Mumbai, India's financial center, and has witnessed tremendous changes as the city has urbanized around it. 2) The river has been abused as a dumping ground and saw catastrophic flooding in 2005 when it overflowed. 3) The vision plan proposes restoring the river through reducing pollution, engaging communities, restoring habitat, and making the river a clean resource for future generations. Key goals include sewage treatment, trash removal, education, and river restoration.

1. Cover Image
Mithi River Vision Plan: Changing Mumbai’s paradoxical equation with its river
Planning By Design
Carnegie Mellon University
May 2019
Tiffany Taulton, Ms Public Policy and Management
Wenzheng Wu, Master of Urban Design
Abhinavv Singh, Master of Urban Design

2. Gliding constantly but slowly through the concrete city of Mumbai, is the Mithi River. Being one of the
oldest existing rivers in the city, The Mithi, has seen Mumbai grow from large open barren lands to a concrete
jungle.
The Mithi River has witnesses tremendous physical and experiential changes through the city, almost
every day. It has seen people come and go, it has experienced relationships the people of Mumbai keep with
their city. It does know and has hidden secrets of man’s strive for development in order to create.
The Mithi allowed Man to discard what he destroyed and washed it away, far into the Arabian Sea until
one the day secret was not kept hidden. The Mithi ebbed and flooded the land around the city, it threw back
what man forced upon it, and it might not be long before it again reveals what still lies at its bottom.
-Architect Pushkraj Tambde

3. Mumbai: India’s financial and entertainment capital. An island city of 22million people.
Arabian Sea
Mahim Bay
Thane Creek

4. Do you need a source? Put it here
History: Mumbai was originally 7 islands, linked into a cohesive mass by the Hornby Vellard Project

5. The Mithi River: Mumbai’s abused ecological asset

6. Mithi Delta to Mithi River
Mithi Delta to Mithi River: Reclamation over the years impacting the topography

7. Do you need a source? Put it here
Mithi River to River of Sewage
Mithi River to River of Sewage: Treating the river like a dumping ground

8. Mithi River to River of Sewage: Channeling the river

9. Catastrophic Mumbai Floods 2005: The river gives back

10. Present Situation: Slum encroachments

11. Present Situation: Airport channelizes and diverts the river

12. Present Situation: Depletion of mangrove cover due to construction

13. Government Apathy: Failed rejuvenation plan

14. Sustainable Design Goals: Goals 6,11,13,14 unmet

15. Present Situation: Open waste disposal

16. Present Situation: Open defecation

17. Present Situation: washing clothes in the open

18. VISION
Goal 1: Pollution
Reduction
Build New Sewage
Treatment Plants
Oxygenate River to
Reduce Smell
Dredge the River to
Remove Blockages
Goal 2: Reduce
Runoff from
Slums
Create Trash Remoaval
Service
Create Recycling Plant
Install Public Compost
Toilets
Goal 3:
Community
Engagement
Health and
Sanitation
Importance of using
toilets and trash cans
instead of the river
Environmental
Campaign
Reduce, reuse, recycle
Education about toxic
waste and flooding
Hire Locals for Trash,
Recycling, and River
Cleaning Projects
Goal 4: River
Restoration
Remove concrete walls
in key areas
Plant more mangroves
Add tourism
infrastructure
Bridges and Bike Trails
Benches
Goal 5: A
Clean River
for Future
Generations
Relocate illegal
industries

19. Current Success Policy &
Situation

20. Ganga Action Plan: Saving India’s sacred river
1.effective use of water resources
2.involve stake holders
3.flood management strategy
4.awareness amongst masses

21. Do you need a source? Put it here
Adopt a village
Adopt a village: A government initiative to invite private players to develop villages

22. Current state of projects led by the government: bleak

23. Economic Liberalization of 1991: Upheaval of the Indian Economy

24. New Policy Vision: Adopt a river
Creation of Mithi Sansad, a public private
enterprise

25. Adopt a River Plan: Inviting a private entity to adopt the river

26. Communication and Public
Outreach
Adopt a River Plan: Inviting a private entity to adopt the river

27. What will reliance do
Adopt a River Plan: The Mithi Sansad authority structure

28. How will it do it
Adopt a River Plan: The Mithi Sansad work structure

29. Private
Player
Government
Agence &
Department
Autonomous
Governing
Entities
Regional
Planning
Authorities
Public
Organizations
Non
Profits
Adopt a River Plan: delegation of tasks, who’s responsibility is it?

30. Adopt a River Plan: Co-ordination and sharing of responsibilities

31. Proposed Intervention site:
Changing the image of the river and
looking at the larger picture

32. The river currently cuts the city in two. On the Banks
of the river, historically, large national routes have
been located, which not only divide the city physically
and socially but also in terms of environment.
Then in 2014, Medellín city government launched a
competition to envision a new Medellín River Park.
The winning project is from a local firm with the
concept of “botanical park that recovers connections
to water systems through a revitalized biotic
metropolitan corridor.”The park developers will take
parts of the concrete channel out, bury an adjacent
highway, and create a new green system. It is not only
a “new ecological structure for the region, but also
re-frames people’s relationships with each other and
nature after years of conflict.”
Case Study: Medellin river park, Colombia

33. One important propose is to bury the roads of the river
corridor in some sectors of the city, in order to get the
inhabitants to recover the possibility of approaching
the river. River Parks is the opportunity to create a
hybrid project between infrastructure and nature,
which will restore the quality of habitability to these
abandoned spaces on the banks of the river.
That’s the reason why this case is very suit for our
propose. First, it have a very same situation with the
Mithi river, both river are located in the middle of the
city which cut the city into two parts; and both river
are partly channelized by concrete. And it also intends
to integrate engineering, urbanism, and landscape, to
create a recomposition of the urban, environmental
and social integration of the whole city. In the end, this
project are trying to fix the destroyed balance between
built environment and Eco-environment.
Case Study: Medellin river park, Colombia

34. Intervention: The river as sacred enitity in India

35. Design Suggestions: looking at the larger picture (Studio Pod’s design entry)

36. Design Suggestions: looking at the larger picture (Studio Pod’s design entry)

37. Design Suggestions: looking at the larger picture (Studio Pod’s design entry)

38. Design Suggestions: Reusing existing infrastructure through community input

39. Performance Metrics: Evaluating the success of the policy

40. Future Potential: Creating an ecological loop for the city