Mumbai's vertical expansion is at stratospheric levels for a city that lacks room. In some rehabilitation housing designs, the floor space index (FSI) is almost unrestricted, allowing developers to build even in densely populated locations.
Construction has started on India's highest residential twin buildings on a two-acre land that had housed the historic Chikalwadi chawls in south Mumbai, along a small road called Javji Dadaji Marg.
In accordance with Development Control Regulation 33 (9) designed for cluster redevelopment, the FSI, or ratio, which determines how much can be erected on a site, is 10, or ten. In the island city, the FSI is typically around 3. A builder can erect 10,000 square metres on a plot measuring 1,000 square metres if the FSI is 10.
When finished, the twin buildings known as Aaradhya Avaan will be 61 habitable floors, 18 podiums, and 312-meters tall.
The Minerva (306 metres) at Mahalaxmi is now the tallest residential structure in Mumbai.
But given its high FSI, can Mumbai support the weight of such large constructions? According to former chief planner of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority and environmental sustainability planner Kedarnath Rao Ghorpade, Mumbai has served as a "urban planning experiment laboratory" in terms of expanding the land potential.
