Debabardhan UPADHYAYA
Researcher, PhD Student
School of Architecture
University of Sheffield
Arts Tower, Western Bank
Sheffield S10 2TN
England
Tel: +44 7771 541 044
Fax: +44 114 268 7021
E-mail: debabardhan@yahoo.com

Eamonn CANNIFFE
Lecturer
School of Architecture
University of Sheffield
Arts Tower, Western Bank
Sheffield S10 2TN
England
Tel: +44 114 222 0321
Fax: +44 114 279 8276
E-mail: eamonn.canniffe@virgin.net

morphology as a camouflaged entity within an urban situation. As a part of an ongoing research we investigate its physical manifestation through a new scale of operation with a focus on the dynamic urban structure of physical urban core, Mumbai, India. The attempt here is to understand the notional versus actual city centre within the vast mosaic of urban settings in a city centre with inherent fragmented analogies. The paper starts with the background for studies of this nature focussing on using urban models for analysis and interpretations. Secondly, it analyses the urban core of Mumbai in scales of operation from a City level to Tissue level. Finally, it summarises the research findings as a pragmatic approach towards future analysis of urban fabric through a proposed hypothesis of abstract generic model for morphological analysis.

Any analysis of urban form or fabric has to be dynamic, which would make it more pragmatic than the usual notation of a single activity/ time based approach. As we are progressively growing into a more inter-dependant world, cities have become places of architectural clutter, a mixed palette

An abstraction on a map is directly imposed on the site based on the belief that the schema is responsive and will transform itself to change. We must ask the question whether it actually does so.

The fabric of towns and cities are expositions of various socio-cultural ethics. Each inhabitant's interaction to the urban structure defines a specific character through crude interpretations of social narratives, spatially manifested from needs and aspirations as identity or visual notation; the ‘genius loci’ of the individual city. For the sake of argument we define the most affluent southern business district of Mumbai i.e. Nariman Point and Ballard Estate as the base of an urban core.

Cities are a crude interpretation of the spatial narratives of individual needs and societal aspirations. A city centre is a microcosm of the greater city, being constituted of various facets of a city, which reflects its contemporary developments. Although many statistical methods have been developed to deliver master plans for evolving city centres, the vision is often lost in the process of detailed exploration, especially with regards to the quality of the public realm.

towards highlighting a part observation on the fractal identities which are inherent throughout in these "changing paradigm of evolving city centres". By definition, a paradigm may be created from a blank slate and brought into existence by its expression. If there is an agreement within a culture, then over a period of time it becomes a custom, part of what we might call a tradition.

relatively rapidly forming a matrix of changing paradigms and hence a city centre is actually an overlay of these shifts or paradigms. In any attempt to project into the future of a city centre, even though for a short duration of ten to twenty years, we must attempt to define the variables that could, in the intervening years affects its course of its development. The real crux in

predicting the future lies in whether we have the choice in determining that future, and who the ‘we’ are who will make the choice? In the process of defining the changing paradigms, it might be possible to simulate and imagine alternative scenarios for variable size, shape and form of future city centre.

The symbiotic relationships between the various urban parameters in any context are a superimposition of this value system, of which each of these has developed over a period of time. We might be able to realise its importance, which would eventually lead to the qualitative interpretation of the quantitative (tangible) and intuitive (intangible) parameters.

The first interpretation of a city centre could be laid as an urban model as Burgess Model (1925), based on the distance in concentric centres of central business district and place of work. Its first criticisms came from the work of Homer Hoyt (1939) in the Sector Model which added a component, direction, along with distance. It was followed up by Multiple Nuclei Theory of Harris Cud Ullman (1945) where he defined it as a patchwork of different discreet areas rather than sectors or zones.

Then there are notable contributions from Murphy and Vance (1954), Central Business Height Index and Harwood and Boyce (1959) about the structure regarding the Internal (CORE) and External (FRAME).But as a definition

quotient, these are basic structural interpretation vis-à-vis the city structure, but do not describe the changes in terms of a wholesome approach including the factors of planning and design.

Jane Jacobs’s ‘Death and Life of Great American Cities’ contained a condemnation of the zoned and formulaic approach to city planning pursued in the North End of Boston (1962). It celebrated urban vitality through the extended metaphor of the ballet in her observations of Hudson Street. Kevin Lynch ‘The Image of City’, Gordon Cullen ‘ Townscape’ and Christopher Alexander ‘ A Pattern Language and A new theory of Urban Design’ could be a source of the theme match between the key words of ‘Vitality and Viability’ (Pratt, 1997) that seems to be the simplistic form of understanding these Paradigms and their shifts.

India and particularly urban India is emerging as a unique pluralistic architectural exposition. The Indian cityscape is characterized by complex sets of modernity and tradition, prosperity and acute poverty, communality and communalism, medieval society and cutting edge information technology to create rich and vibrant cities.