Outside a coffee shop in Fort, a man is taking his afternoon nap on a bed of uneven paver blocks, work-in-progress signs are obscuring a Gothic building in the distance and a towing vehicle nearby is gobbling a shiny red motorbike. Inside, a Dutch woman, who is relieved that she didn't get her bike today, tears a samosa and praises the embarrassing scenery. There are important lessons hidden in the organic nature of architecture and planning of this city, she says. Sanne Vanderkaaij-Gandhi is not just being nice. Her view stems from a year's leg work.

The tall, golden-haired Vanderkaaij-Gandhi, a researcher and freelance writer based in Mumbai, recently helped two Dutch architects complete a project titled "Learning From Mumbai". The idea of this project, which aimed to understand the underlying principles of the city's urban planning and architecture, was born when architects Pelle Poiesz and Gert Jan Scholte visited Mumbai in 2010. The city looked drastically different from what it was in the 90s, when they spent two years studying at the JJ school of Art.

As students, while travelling by Bus no 1 or 4 from Mahim to CST, "only Charles Correa's Kanchanjunga apartment tower appeared to dominate its skyline and Andheri felt like real suburbia," says Poiesz. But two decades later, not only did the city boast a new name but also five times as many people as Amsterdam. It had sprouted western brands, shopping malls and other symbols of extreme urban growth that made its inherent contrasts sharper. Young challenges such as providing enough open and public space and infrastructure and also the perennial middle class struggle for an owned roof, now stared at the city.

However, despite the claustrophoby of matchbox houses, illegal parking and open armpits, business thrived. There were many spirited architects in the city that bore intriguing observations on its functioning and inspiring solutions for its future. Both Poiesz and Scholte felt their home country__where buildable land is scarcely available and the economic situation has forced many architects out of a job__could take notes from this shiny, new city's problem-solving ability.

"Also, we wondered why there weren't as many Dutch architects opening shop in Mumbai and realised that negotiating red tape was a major issue," says Vanderkaaij-Gandhi, who chronicled each of the duo's interactions with architects and urban planners from the likes of architect Hafeez Contractor to P K Das in a book.

Titled Learning From Mumbai, the book was launched in The Hague recently. Inthis book, whose first copy was presented to the Indian Minister of Urban Development Kamal Nath during the the recent signing of a new MoU between the Netherlands and India, Vanderkaaij-Gandhi has purposely avoided academic words such as "refitting" for instance. "It is meant not only for foreign architects and architecture students but also anyone with an interest in the city's planning," she says.

In the course of its compilation, the trio stumbled upon many insights. For one, they found that architects in Mumbai were not as obsessed with planning. "In India, architects do not sketch as much. In the Netherlands, everything is overplanned," says Vanderkaaij-Gandhi, adding that this leads to a boring landscape. Every nook ends up looking like BKC. "Besides, there's room for flexibility as craftsmen here are comparatively more open to customisation," she says. Being frugal with resources, working with both the government and private developers and other nuggets from this unplanned city "can help us to look for strategies that can be applied in the Dutch context," says Scholte.

They are optimistic about Mumbai's future and also gives ideas that it could borrow from his own country. "The Netherlands has been able to keep its public areas open by implementing creative solutions like floating housing projects, artificial residential islands in inner lakes and the construction of hotels , office buildings and shopping malls over and underneath rail and road corridors," says Poiesz. Citing the development on the eastern waterfront of Amsterdam that has resulted in six artificial islands being connected to each other by a series of bridges, Scholte adds that Mumbai's very own Eastern waterfront could hold the key to its growth. "The transformation of this zone can go hand in hand with the development of artificial islands within the inner lake to expand on the qualities on this side of the city," says Scholte.

While their book will launch in the country shortly, the team is now concentrating on its next project__'Learning From Delhi'. Poiesz, however, has a confession. "Falling in love with Delhi was not as easy," he says. Perhaps, the capital city too has a lot to learn from Mumbai.

"In India, architects do not sketch as much. In the Netherlands, everything is overplanned"