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. Implementation, development and issues The planning of Navi Mumbai began in 1971 and involved leading architects and urban planner like Charles Correa (Chief Architect), Shirish Patel, Pravina Mehta