Mumbai’s architecture is losing its poetry

Any city, especially in its fabric and arteries, evokes more poetic connections than a singular edifice. Take Mumbai for instance, a metropolis that is the result of both planned and unplanned development. Gestures emerged over time and established the rhythms, or the prosody, if you will, of the city. We recognise these at a subconscious level, they give us comfort and provide us with a backdrop so we can be the sheroes of our own lives.

On city streets, buildings are laid out in a pattern that, along with the spaces between them, form an iamb – a prosodic element of poetry, in which an unaccented syllable is followed by an accented syllable. When stressed features (buildings) and unstressed ones (the in-between spaces) progress harmoniously, the street gets a cadence and we get a sense of relaxed urbanity and aesthetic pleasure. Each building plays its part, never overpowering the other. I have always referred to this as “good manners” in architecture.

The possibility of perceiving rhyme rests on how well the buildings are arrayed, especially where streets end. Corners are particularly significant as buildings located there swing across two, sometimes three, streets. While along the rest of the street, buildings are observed frontally, these...

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