Prasad Khanolkar studied architecture at Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Insitute for Architecture and Environmental Studies (KRVIA) in Mumbai. After graduation, he worked as an associate architect at Pankaj Joshi Associates in Mumbai and as a project coordinator at the Urban Research and Design Cell at KRVIA. Graduate studies then took him to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he earned a degree in regional planning. After graduation, he worked as an urban planner and urban designer at the Urban Design Studio of the City of Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability in Portland, Oregon. Currently, he is pursuing a doctorate in planning and South Asian studies at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada. His research focuses on contemporary urbanism in India, particularly on the relationship between dwelling practices, politics, and aesthetics in Mumbai.
In 2001, approximately 48 percent of Mumbai’s population was between the ages of fifteen and forty, the most productive working period. At that time, the number of seniors (those above the age of sixty-five) in the city was a mere 4.16 percent. The population of the city since the early 1990s has grown at less than half the rate of the national population, indicating an absence of migration. With improvements in medical facilities and young couples choosing to have fewer children, the city’s death rate as well as its birth rate has decreased. A spindle-shaped age-gender diagram will emerge in the next twenty years, which will slowly widen at the top
Projected age-gender population diagram.
© CRIT
As Mumbai's residents grow older, frequency of travel beyond their immediate neighborhoods decreases tremendously. Neighborhood ties become stronger and more relevant. However, most transportation investment in Mumbai is focused on creating megaprojects that cover long distances. While funds are spent to develop flyovers, bridges, and expressways, spaces at the neighborhood level are grossly neglected. With the drastic increase in the population of seniors, Mumbai will have to find a way to invest and retrofit neighborhood-level infrastructure to support seniors as they navigate the city. To accommodate this growing population, pedestrian infrastructure should take center stage in Mumbai’s planning efforts.
Senior travel radius diagram.
© CRIT
