Environment Clearance in Vashi, Navi Mumbai.

A Vashi redevelopment often merges two or three old CIDCO buildings into one scheme, and with the extra FSI now allowed, the new towers can pass the item 8(a) line of twenty thousand square metres even on plots that look modest. Many societies are surprised their rebuilding needs a state-level clearance at all. We work out built-up area the way SEAC reads it, parking and amenity floors included, say early whether a clearance is due, and run the file in step with NMMC's plan approval instead of trailing it.

Vashi was the first CIDCO node to be settled, at the Navi Mumbai end of the road bridge over Thane Creek, and it is still the city's busiest centre. Its sectors hold low-rise CIDCO housing put up in the seventies and eighties, much of it now due for rebuilding, alongside newer towers, malls, hospitals and the offices clustered around the railway station. The APMC wholesale markets, which moved here from south Mumbai in stages, trade produce, grain, spices and flowers for the whole region every night. Mangroves line the creek on its western side. Half a century on, Vashi is being rebuilt from within.