Tree Management in Vashi, Navi Mumbai.

CIDCO lined Vashi's roads and compounds with gulmohar, rain trees and other shade trees when the sectors were laid out, and many now stand taller than the buildings. Rebuilding brings basements, ramps and new foundations right up to them. Any felling or transplanting needs an order from NMMC's Tree Authority, followed by compensatory planting. We count and tag each trunk in the compound, sit with the architect to save those worth saving, and plan the moves and new planting around the finished compound.

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.