It ’s been almost three decades since Mumbai ’s airport saw a renovation — a retentive time , for a metropolis that ’s seen some of the fastest ontogenesis in the Earth . But on Friday , officials unveiled an $ 890 million terminal , fill with Native American artwork and high - technical school architectural tumbling . Outside , it ’s surround on all sides by poverty - stricken slum .
Terminal 2 was designed by the NYC - basedSkidmore , Owings and Merrill , which also design San Francisco Airport and Changi International Airport — two urban airports that , like Mumbai ’s , were strapped for state . The new terminal has plenty to boast about , including the world ’s farseeing cable system stayed ice paries and the world ’s largest public art program — including a mural of Bollywood wiz :
And a roofline inspired , harmonize to the architects , by peacock :
Image : AP / Rajanish Kakade .
Just outside the wall of the airport sits a Brobdingnagian slum , 300 acres of which were razed to make agency for the airport expansion . Many of its inhabitants are financially dependent on the trash raise by the airdrome , and the luxury hotel and amusement centers that have ricochet up around it .
In a 2009 New Yorker clause , Katherine Booexplains :
The primary industry here is the gathering of airport food waste for recycling — work made a niggling less miserable by expanded global markets and India ’s surging G.D.P. Over the preceding five years , there were enough urine bottles , earbuds , Diet Coke cans , used tampon applicator , batteries , and transcript of IndianVogue to lift the absolute majority of families over the World Bank ’s poverty line , which is currently twenty - two rupee a day in India ’s urban center .
In fact , the new terminal was long - detain because of trouble clearing the slum . “ It ’s an out-and-out microcosm , representing much every challenge facing ontogenesis of Indian infrastructure,”one infrastructure expert told NPR .
Image : AP / Dhiraj Singh .
India ’s economical ontogeny has slowed over the past year , date a 5 percent downswing in 2013 alone . Mumbai - found analytics society CRISILunveiled a new studylast week suggesting that the downswing is trigger off a “ inverse urbanization ” effect , sending newly urbanized laborers back to rural areas in search of work .
So while the novel pole is a bang-up infrastructural addition to the city , it ’s is a mirror for the vast income disparity that runs through the country — a new symbol of old inequality . [ NPR ]
Images : AP / Rajanish Kakade .
Architecture
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