No city can be viewed without its constituting elements representing themselves. That the elements which constitute a city may vary is how any given space can be represented in an infinite number of ways, from and to an infinite number of perspectives and viewpoints. These viewpoints, of course, are taken here to be both visual and intellectual.
The view of the city is the object in question in this essay. Or, it is the start of an exploration as to how the view of the city shapes our understanding of it, and more specifically, in turn informs our production of space. That the city represented informs production is not a question in this journey, for this iterative process is paramount and vital to space production. However, just as different cites can to be said to have different characters which obviously derive form cultural variation, economic situations, architectural styles, meteorological differences and geographical differences, the future production of space by society is also bound within the cyclic process explained above – that of the city, the view, of the action of production, the city ……
Therefore, what particular view of the city represented produces the production of the city? What is this particular view? And alternatively, what is the city that is produced? Can the city be understood differently once the mechanisms of its production are highlighted and explored?
Mumbai is chosen as a backdrop to this discourse. It serves as an ideal study into the ebb and flow of a city which is in a state of rapid development. Of rapid reproduction. This is a city where things are possible and things happen. Dreams are made in this city. They may be formed elsewhere, but Mumbai is the place to come and get them made.(1) With the stage scenery of the British Raj, the European Cosmopolitan outlook, the world of Bollywood [where over 300 dreams are played out and sold in theatres each year], and the affluent capitalist society amongst the 3rd world poverty evident in every corner of the city, the production of space in Mumbai evolves with a faster heartbeat than in other cities. Not least because it has 16.4 million inhabitants pumping the blood around the body of Mumbai. Space is produced at pace in a city with a density level higher than all other metropolises.
Mumbai is not just a city of architecture and inhabitants. It is as much as city of cars as it is of people. The Mubaian industrialist J J Tata was the first Indian to own a car(2), and with a total ban of common auto rickshaws, which are found in all other Indian cities, in Mumbai, the car, taxi and walking form the primary modes of transport within the city.
However, Mumbai can never be seem as product of cars as with, for example, Las Vegas or L.A. Whereas in Las Vegas, the city and the car have evolved side by side almost from the inception of the city to its present form, the populous of cars in Mumbai have not formed a city but instead altered it’s structure and fabric. Of course, this has manifested itself in ways which are obvious and expected and common when any city adopts mass automata; firstly, the tarmaccing of roads, then the widening of roads, the introduction of delineated vehicular pedestrian routes, the introduction of signage/traffic lights/billboards etc, though to the construction of highly engineered bridges, flyovers, and underpasses. The city begins to represent itself in a language related to that of the automobile, and with reference to the automobile. These interventions, the cars themselves, produce a further set of interventions which then demand to be experienced through that which inform their very existence.
Of course, this is not always the case. Not always is the object introduced for experience in a particular manner only experienced in that manner, and under those pre-defined conditions. This seems particularly the case in Mumbai, where the mass of population and the lack of formal residential and retail infrastructures results in dual carriage ways, flyovers, and car parking spaces [where available] being invade by slum dwellers, horse and carts, sacred cows, paan merchants and mini temples with mini Hindu idols.
Despite this cross programming of functions, Mumbai remains city with its intentions, deeply embroiled within a car-infested vision of the present and future. The taxi motor drives Mumbai, and this can be seen in a number of ways.
The public transport system is an old a tired collection of buses and rails trams in need of upgrade, but more so, multiplication in size. The numerically dominant but politically insignificant lower and lower middle classes will use this method of transport, along with the simple travel on foot or horse and cart or push cycle, to traverse the city. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the uber rich and the cosmopolitan upper class society, those politicians, CEOs and foreign investors for whom the prefix ‘air conditioned’ must be applied to all environments, experience the city from either the front seat of their foreign car, or the back car of their foreign chauffeured driven car.
For what can be broadly termed as the middle class, those who are employed either in government/small businesses [shopkeepers], the taxi or scooter offers the only reasonable option to avoid the sweltering heat and the mass of Mumbai’s population.(3) Further, the astonishing dearth of any public car parking in the city hardly encourages and ‘park – and – ride’ or private vehicular travel system within the city bounds. The scooter is a popular choice, but within this discourse, it is the taxi ride that I have chosen to analyse as a means to understand how the city is represented under contemplation within this automata. These moments of contemplation, perhaps, would not surface or at least surface to a lesser extent, to the scooter driver who, like the taxi driver, receives and appreciates a representation of the city directly through the act of driving. “The depth of the landscape rises to the surface like an oil spot on the surface of a painting.”(4) This filtered representation gained directly through the instruments which the driver/rider adjust and receives feedback from is not the image of the city which I wish to discuss. It is the representation garnered from contemplation, that which is gained from not driving through the city but riding the city. And the city being ridden by those citizens who have the most direct impact in reforming the complexion of the city – the small businesses or government workers who literally inform the street canvas and its underlying structure on a daily basis.
This strata of society produces, and as stipulated above, one of its prompts for production, the taxi journey, is unavoidably linked and intertwined within the mechanism of the production of space and its subsequent representation. Space “…production cannot be separated from either the productive forces, including technology and knowledge, or from the social division of labour which shapes it, or from the state and the superstructures of society.”(5)
The rider of the city sits in the taxi which traverses the landscape. A view is formed of the city from the taxi. The city reveals itself to the perceiver within the taxi. However, the taxi itself is also city. Not only does it frame, it is also embroiled within the plot, and the city cannot be examined without the taxi. “… the ‘view from the door of the railroad car or the automobile windshield, in combination with the speed, has altered the habitual look of things’”(6)
The framing device, the taxi with its windows, should be described at this point. The taxi obviously tempers the view of the city beyond its physical confines. However, the taxi itself is also the city and therefore its description and impact on the external view is of merit here.
All of the 53,000 taxis in Mumbai are Fiat made yellow and black cars, mostly over 25 years old, and drive like more than double that age. The interior is scented with intense sticks which is overpowering when the taxi is stationary. However, on closer inspection, the customer realises that the sticks employed to ‘purify’ the air are not for the benefit of the passengers or driver, but form part of the small idol arrangement on the front dashboard.
Mumbai is a city of temples where deities are worshiped and are on display on every corner. Religion stratifies space. As Lefebvre suggests, holy spaces force the perceiver to situate themselves within this space; to either recognise themselves, or to lose themselves.(7) The garlanded idols on the front dashboard force the dominated space(8) of the technological taxi to be appropriated by a religio-political space. The taxi is garlanded and the idol worshipped. Movement drives the event(9), but here the belief of the event drives movement! This elevates the status of the Fiat taxi to an object other than a simple vehicle for transport within a ‘typical’ metropolis setting. These taxis may have begun as pure capitalist modes of production, but they do not produce space which can be read and interpreted under a purely consumer/Marxist framework. The customer themselves is being consumed by the religious signification of the mini temple. And the role of the taxi has been elevated to that of an object and respect. The domination of technology over the appropriated land(10) that Lefebvre speaks of is confused by these idols on wheels. The taxi is prayed to and bowed down to in the same way that Indian musicians bow down to their instruments before playing them. It is an outward display of respect and an acknowledgement of a realisation that without the instrument, the instrumentalist is nothing. The artist(11) is nothing without his utensils. Without the taxi, the riding experience is nothing.
This perhaps is an obvious notion to relay, however the importance is stressed in this situation as the common capitalist method of consumption and monetary gain within this example of:
is altered to become:
How does this elevated status of the taxi inform the production of space within Mumbai? Is the concept that the perception of idols on taxis in Mumbai indirectly informing space akin to suggesting that the thousands of taxis in the UK with fragrant ‘trees’ hanging from rear view mirrors also similarly inform space? Perhaps not, however, it is worth noting that although cars as extensions of the driver’s personality/lifestyle is a common concept throughout different cultures, in Mumbai, the taxi is not only this but also an extension of one’s belief system.
In essence, a similar ‘road trip’ is explored by Danius when she discusses Proust’s journey as a passenger in a car.(12) However, cracks within the similarities of these two experiences emerge. It is true that the car is both part of the spectacle and its vehicle(13), but the spectacle that Danius describes is with speed at its nucleus, and with no reference to the elevation in status of the ‘meaning’ of the vehicle.
And the view of the spectacle is what Mattisse paints in his Le Pare-brise: Sur la route de Villacoublay [The Windshield]. The windows limit the passenger’s view and the collection of ‘speed-pictures’ is arranged depicting the city in a new representation within the context of a motor car or express train. Yet, in Mumbai ‘pictures of the city are not framed and collated because of the speed of travel. The voyage through Mumbai in the back if a Fiat taxi is not an experience which can be poetically linked to that of a cinematic experience. The representation of the city rushing forth(14) with steeples dancing(15), and the metronomic flicker of sign after sign as with the Las Vegan strip(16) is not that which is true with Mumbai. There is no flicker of lights through velocity of travel within Mumbain space. In Mumbai, one rides the city at a slow speed, not a graceful canter, as frankly there are too many idols on the road.
If the driver’s instruments act as a view of the future(17), the rider’s instruments should act as a view to the future and present, as images surface within the front windshield and then flash up again in the side windows. But this argument, again, is taken to be valid only if the vehicle travels at speed. Mumbain space can only be traversed with stuttering progress, and the static view of the idol and driver’s gaze is not complimented by animated objects(18) within the frame of view, but by a static view within this frame also.
So, within the religio-political framework of the Fiat taxi, a slow speed representation of Mumbai is attained. But before venturing out into space beyond the confines of the taxi, that which is viewed within the taxi [window] frames, we have not yet completed the exploration of the city within the space without the [window]frames. There is no traversing of space without a taxi driver. The driver, from his right had drive position, enjoys a closer relationship with God [the physical idols of God, anyway] but also has the benefit of the technological instruments, as well as the visual instruments, with which to read the city. This discourse is not concerned with the city as represented to the taxi driver, however, one point should be made here with regard to the reflective visual instruments within the taxi, namely the mirrors.
For the Mumbai taxi, progression is the only event. The Mumbai taxi employs no side wing mirrors, it has a limited reverse gear capacity, and the sole remaining instrument to survey the past, the rear mirror, is trained directly onto the passenger, who will typically enter the taxi on its left hand side. The past has no consequence to the taxi. The past has no memory and is not realised in this representation of the city, either by the driver or by the rider. The gaze of the driver rests on the rider. Never is the mirror used to survey traffic, only custom. And so, therefore, the rider is confronted with not only one portent of existence, but two; the religio-political symbol of Vishnu/Shiva/Brahma(19) on the dashboard forcing the rider to position themselves within a religious framework, and the inquisitive gaze of the taxi driver forcing the rider to position them self within a Marxist framework of economic use and consumption.
The rider traversing Mumbain space does so at a slow velocity. Slow moving cars and tempos shuffle for space within a gridlocked situation, with the collective purpose to always move forwards. The lack of forward motion further heightens the intention of forward motion. There is no pursuit and fleeing of the city at the same time(20), but of a representation which arrests the rider at every opportune moment. The traffic jam scenario and the stop-start nature of movement is the dominant experience of movement when riding the city. The city shuffles past the rider in an awkward manner. The sensation of wanting to escape the city’s clutches is ever present.
Compare this to Proust’s journey, or Venturi Scott Brown Isenour’s depiction of driving though Las Vegas, where the city is seen as a sliding veneer which coats the exterior of the car and disappears at pace only to be replaced by another ‘speed picture’. There, the rider tries to grasp onto the imagery and symbology whilst travelling along the device/intervention [the highway], which is designed to allow for such a representation to reveal itself. In Mumbai, the interventions are betrayed by the promise of their perception to be from fast moving objects. It is the city which tries to grasp the society, whilst the society fights against this notion.
Even at a roundabout, an intrusion designed for pause and introspection, of approach and waiting, the approaching rider is the one who advances at speed. The rider does not stop at the junction, and the city does not pause for breath – it is the rider already on the roundabout who stops for the approaching rider. This is a direct reversal of, firstly the western driving tradition and, secondly, some of the intentions of this intervention within the city. The rider receives no pause in thought. There is no anticipated relaxation of the view outside. Only the reverse. Only at the roundabout is the notion of Virilio’s ‘speed-pictures’ actuated. The moment of introspection becomes a moment of heightened perception of the city. The roundabout intensifies perception, and the city is brought closer to the rider within this act, as the rider is given the opportunity to advance into a future with limited resistance. It is at roundabouts, an area with typically no surrounding buildings [as apposed to Delhi], and not at the highways in Mumbai that the future is traversed.(21) And it is only at this point that the city communicates that which is to come.
But what of the highway itself? Already an intervention has been highlighted which raises perception of the city with the sudden acceleration and arrival of speed. But the lack of speed on the highway in Mumbai also heightens awareness and perception. The millimetres between taxis and other automata, which also share the same goal of pure forward motion, again brings forth a relationship which is intimate and physically personal. The single carriageways winding through downtown Mumbai allow for no meditative state to be adopted. This city as represented is no backdrop, something which is yet to be. The city is represented as having no future state, and the taxi is not a seat of foresight(22) from which a future, yet to be traversed, can be encountered and fleetingly glimpsed before it ‘rushes forth’. There is only the present situation, as both the rider and city jostle intimately around each other and vie for position. The goal of the rider is not an imagined representation of the city in the future. Here, that which lies beyond its physical domain invades the territory of the taxi. The city within the frame invades the perception of the city without the frame. Ganesh, commerce and the ‘slow-pictures’(23) are one. The city invades the taxi and the taxi is held down under its weight.
However, it is not only perception which is increased with the iterative stop-start motion of travel, but also the rider’s perception of time. As mentioned above, whereas the future and past is glimpsed in other cities though high speed travel and the use of mirrors, it is the present which is confronted in Mumbai. To complement this, countdown clocks at junctions, which give an accurate ‘to the second’ indication of when the traffic lights will change, draw collective attention and further heighten perception and the anticipation of forward thrust.
One can posit the concept that the forced situation of the rider within such a blatant religio-political space makes them question their own situation within society more so that if they we riding, for example, London or Paris. Through the perception of ‘situating devices’ such as the idol or the driver’s gaze, another device is added to this list to ‘situate’ oneself within the present state. It has already been suggested that Mumbain space suggests a bias towards the present, neglecting the future and the past, and society’s intervention of the timepiece on junctions further highlights this condition.
But what of a ‘typical’ street scene in Mumbai? It is here that our case study is examined in closer context. Shahid Bishan Singh Marg [Shahid Bishan Singh Road] is adopted in this study as a physical canvas for exploration. This marg [road] lies in downtown Mumbai, approximately 0.25km from the heartbeat of Mumbaian society and the very notion of Mumbaian space – the colonial archway of the Gateway of India, the Taj Hotel and the main shopping district for both locals and foreigners are all within close proximity. The marg is a 2-way carriageway with 3/4-storey architecture on either side of the road. Retail and entertainment space is predominantly housed on the ground floor, with housing and office space above.
The first point to make is the proximity and area of signage on the architecture bounding the marg; it is all located at ground floor level with all signs positioned so that they have their maximum impact in the direction perpendicular to that of the direction of travel. They address the rider face on. Here, the signs draw no distinction between the perceptive abilities of the rider in the taxi or pedestrian.
Speed has not driven form to become pure symbolism and signage.(24) In Mumbai, form and signage sit beside each other, or in fact, one sits in front of the other. As argued above, Mumbai is not a city born out of the car and its architecture has not emerged from this phenomena. It therefore has not had the opportunity to dissolve the boundaries of form, space and signage as succinctly as Las Vegas or Tokyo has. The ‘duck’(25) clearly has not yet emerged from within the mechanism of Mumbai.
Instead, architecture for consumption for both the pedestrian and the rider is prevalent. However, this is not to say that the taxi riding experience of Mumbai can be completely negated. Apart from the sensation of traversing the city whilst seated, we have discussed that the representation of the city from within the taxi informs perception of it without the taxi. What is of curiosity with regard to the advent of signage in Mumbai is that space has been reformed to cater not for the pedestrian perspective but for the taxi rider’s perspective, even though the taxi rider traverses the city in a manner and at a speed akin to that of a pedestrian. The taxi has directly reformed the city, when the pedestrian could not.
The edge of the road, which serves as the edge of not only its territory but also the pavement’s territory, is clearly demarked both physically and symbolically. It marks not only the boundary of territories, but also act as a separate and distinct element within itself – it aesthetically suggests a ‘fortified’ area.
This is highlighted as the along the marg, the ground surface treatments for both the road and the pavement are identical. They both use identical paving stones and patterns.
Thus the tripartite relationship of pavement, kerb and road is, materially and symbolically at least, merged to become a dual relationship of travelling surface [both the road and the pavement] and edge. As we have extrapolated, there is no viewing difference of the signage for pedestrian or taxi rider, and now also there is no territorial surface difference between the two sets of travellers. They are treated as one entity.
And what was once known as the pavement is no longer a space of pedestrian travel, but in Mumbain space, the pavement is a pure commercial entity. The traditional road services the taxi, whilst stalls and small shops independent of those which are housed in buildings, appropriate the space of the pedestrian. This phenomenon happens to such an extent that the pedestrian is not visible from the road, but is hidden behind another additional layer of commerce.
Examining this condition spatially [see diagram below] the cross section of the road and adjacent buildings shows that ‘a’ is the space of travel [the road], ‘b’ is the space of commerce with the majority of transactions accruing with ‘paper money’, and ‘c’ is also the space of commerce with the majority of transactions accruing with credit/debit cards.
The strange dichotomy with this situation lies when this diagram is adapted to show the physicality of the space. The diagram above suggests that territory ‘b’ be constitutes of a different material, and be seen as a separate entity, than territory [c]. However, this is not the case. In this case study, the physicality of ‘b’ and ‘c’ merge completely to become one. Instead of ‘b’ attaching onto ‘c’, it is ‘c’ that physically extends to encompass ‘b’ and to form it.
From the perspective of the rider, the kerb fortification has evolved to become the rear of the stalls [as the stalls always address the pedestrian and therefore the pavement], with additional signage ‘lopped’ on top. This also has the effect of bringing the already close buildings even closer to the road and the rider, thus completely destroying the physicality of the pavement as a separation between building and automata.
What is of note is that where there is slow speed travel [on the marg], the architecture has seemingly encroached upon the rider, whereas where there is the opportunity for faster travel, [at the approach to the roundabout and junctions], there is open space, or a concerted effort not to build within an area around the junction [see diagram below]. The city is reformed as a consequence to its relationship to the taxi and the rider.
This essay has begun to examine and link together how the perception and reformation of the city can be linked. This process can advance almost indefinitely, linking disparate representations of the city with the actual city fabric, and then studying how society acts around this fabric. However, the intention of this study has not been to sorely carry out a linking exercise, but to use these ‘linkages’ to start to uncover a new interpretation of the city. By adopting this method and its using its findings, one can begin to question the reason for the realisation of the city fabric as it has evolved. Is the countdown clock at junctions just there to allow the driver to know when the lights are about to change? Is the encroachment of architecture towards the highway and away from the junction just a result of market forces and land value? Is the overly decorated kerb in Mumbai just the edge of the pavement, or a needed separating entity?
And also, has the introduction of 53,000 taxis in the city reformed the fabric so that it is best experienced not from the perspective of a [fast moving] taxi, but rather ironically, from the perspective of a pedestrian?