Place:Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Navi Mumbai, is a planned city situated on the west coast of the Indian subcontinent, located in the Konkan division of Maharashtra state, on the mainland of India. Navi Mumbai is part of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). The city is divided into two, North Navi Mumbai and South Navi Mumbai, for the individual development of Panvel Mega City, which includes the area from Kharghar to Uran, including the Taloja node. The Aagri and Koli Communities mainly reside in Navi Mumbai. Navi Mumbai was the host city for the inaugural final of the IPL (2008) at D.Y Patil Stadium. Navi Mumbai has a population of 1,119,477 as per the 2011 provisional census. It has an average city elevation of 14 meters, excluding forest area.

The area was proposed in 1971 as a new urban township of Mumbai by the Government of Maharashtra. A new public sector undertaking, CIDCO, was established for this purpose. Navi Mumbai is situated across two districts, Thane and Raigad. The city has been ranked 3rd among 73 cities surveyed for cleanliness and hygiene by the Union Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) and Quality Council of India (QCI) as a part of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Majority of Infrastructure and buildings are made & owned by Government of India.

Navi Mumbai is home to various educational institutions offering courses in several streams including engineering, medical sciences, interior designing, and hotel management. Various multinational corporations like ACG Group, AGS Transact Technologies, Aplab, Siemens, McDonald's, Morningstar, Inc., Baker Hughes, Bureau Veritas, Bizerba, CRISIL, 1 Defence Security Solutions, Reliance, Mastek, Accenture, Selcore Technology, Hexaware Technologies, firstsource, Hinduja Group, Larsen & Toubro, VENUS Safety and cyber security multinational Velox have their head offices/branches across the city, making it an active business hub. Navi Mumbai also has various recreational facilities such as a Golf Course, Central Park and Pandavkada Water Falls in Kharghar, Parsik Hill near CBD Belapur, Wonders Park and Jewel of Navi Mumbai in Nerul and Seawoods, Mini Seashore Juhu Chowpatty in Juhu Nagar (Juhu Gaon), Sagar Vihar in Vashi, Pirwad, Nagav, and Mankeshwar Beaches in Uran, Belapur Fort in CBD Belapur, Karnala Bird Sanctuary near Panvel, and several other public places like gardens and jogging tracks. Navi Mumbai also has many quality restaurants and luxury hotels for accommodation. There are many shopping malls, such as Seawoods Grand Central Mall in Seawoods, Little World Mall, Glomax Mall and Prime Mall in Kharghar, Orion Mall and K-Mall in Panvel, Centre One Mall, Inorbit Mall, Raghuleela Mall, Citi Centre and Palm Beach Galleria in Vashi. Navi Mumbai is also a host to many best health care centres and hospitals like MITR Hospital in Sector 05, Kharghar, Fortis Hiranandani Hospital near Juhu Village, Juhu Nagar (Vashi), Apollo Hospital in Belapur and SRL diagnostic centres in Kharghar, Panvel, Kamothe, Kalamboli, Kopar Khairane, Juhu Gaon to name a few.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

India experienced a phenomenal rate of urban growth during the 25 years following independence and Mumbai always has had its due share in it. The population of Greater Mumbai rose from 2.966 million in 1951 to 4.152 million in 1961 and to 5.970 million in 1971, registering 40.0 and 43.80 percent growths during the first and second decades respectively. The rapid rate of growth of population, made possible by the increasing industrial and commercial importance of the city, resulted in a fast deterioration in the quality of life for the majority of people living in the city. Development inputs could not keep pace with the rapidly growing population, industry, trade and commerce. Besides, there are physical limitations to the growth of a city built on a long and narrow peninsula, which has very few connections with the mainland.

The Government of Maharashtra has been alive to the emerging problems of this metropolis. Responsible public opinion was equally vigilant and several constructive suggestions appeared from time to time in the press and elsewhere. All this helped in keeping the problems of Bombay in the forefront of public awareness. In 1958, the Govt. of Bombay appointed a study group under the Chairmanship of Shri S. G. Barve, Secretary to Government, Public Works Department, to consider the problems relating to congestion of traffic, deficiency of open spaces and playfields, shortage of housing and over-concentration of industry in the metropolitan and suburban areas of Bombay, and to recommend specific measures to deal with these.

The Barve Group reported in February 1959. One of its major recommendations was that a rail-cum-road bridge is built across the Thane Creek to connect peninsular Mumbai with the mainland. The group felt that the bridge would accelerate development across the Creek, relieve pressure on the city's railways and roadways, and draw away industrial and residential concentrations eastward to the mainland. The Group hoped that the eastward development would be orderly and would take place in a planned manner.

The Government of Maharashtra accepted the Barve Group recommendation. Another Committee under the Chairmanship of Prof. D. R. Gadgil, then Director of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Poona was formed and asked: “to formulate broad principles of regional planning for the metropolitan regions of Mumbai Panvel and Pune and to make recommendations for the establishment of Metropolitan Authorities for preparation and execution of such plans”.

The Gadgil Committee inter-alia made two important recommendations which have influenced the planning for Navi Mumbai. One, a planned decentralisation of industries with severe restrictions on further industrial growth in the Bombay region. Two, development of the mainland area as a multi-nucleated settlement, each settlement smaller in size than 250,000 population. These multi-nucleated settlements are called nodes in the plan, where the entire development is proposed as a series of nodes strung out along the mass transit area. The nodes proposed by us are, however, more closely spaced than the multi-nucleated settlements envisaged by Dr. Gadgil. But the principle remains of individual settlements, self-contained in respect of schools and shopping and other essential services and separated from each other by green spaces.

The Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act was passed in 1966 and brought into force in January 1967. The Bombay Metropolitan Region was notified in June 1967 and a Regional Planning Board constituted under the Chairmanship of Shri L. G. Rajwade, I. C. S. The Draft Regional Plan of the Board was finalised in January 1970. It proposed the development of a twin city across the harbour, on the mainland to the east, as a counter-magnet to the office concentration taking place at the southern tip of Bombay. The alternative growth pole was to siphon off the over-concentration of jobs and population which further growth would cause in the city and reallocate these on the mainland. In making this recommendation, the Board was influenced by various factors such as the existing industrial sites in the Thane-Belapur area and Taloja, the imminent completion of the Thane Creek Bridge and the proposal of the Bombay Port Trust to establish a new port at Nhava Sheva.

The Board recommended that the new metro-centre or Navi Mumbai as it is now called, be developed to accommodate a population of 2.1 million.

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