MUMBAI: The Kamala Mills fire is another tragic reminder—three months after the Elphinstone Road station stampede killed more than 20 people--that Mumbai’s Lower Parel area is in urgent need of an infrastructure overhaul, said urban planning experts and architects. If the fire had broken out just a few hours earlier during evening peak hours, the likely death and destruction would have been far worse. With traffic crawling through narrow, clogged streets along with thousands of pedestrians crisscrossing Senapati Bapat Marg that’s dotted with commercial complexes, it would have been a mammoth task for fire engines to even enter the Kamala Mills compound.The Lower Parel business and commercial area has taken shape over the past few years without any real planning through a process of uncontrolled gentrification. What was once occupied by textile mills bounded by working class neighbourhoods has seen multi-story office towers sprouting all over with little augmentation of the support infrastructure, some of which dates back to the years of the British Raj.Thursday night’s Kamala Mills rooftop pub fire that took over 14 live points to this haphazard growth and the chaos that has ensued. While solutions to decongest the high-density area--which includes Elphinstone Road, Currey Road, Chinchpokli and Mahalaxmi--are not beyond reach, they need to be devised immediately, said the experts.“We have to think about zoning in more than one layer,” said veteran architect Hafeez Contractor , responsible for many of Mumbai’s high-profile buildings. “Connecting the entire high-density zone like Lower Parel at underground and upper level apart from surface level will help. All large offices in Hong Kong are connected at the upper level. For years, it’s been done in Japan and New York, why can’t we have it done here?”In the 2008-2012 period, Lower Parel witnessed the launch of nine major projects with nearly 8 million square feet of office space, more than all of Nariman Point, long the hub of Indian businesses in the city. The total office space at Nariman Point is 6 million sq ft, which was absorbed and used over 40 years, and till 2005 was enough to sustain the city’s business.Apart from commercial offices, Lower Parel has turned into a hub for nightlife with several fine-dining restaurants, pubs and bars mushrooming across the Todi Mill and Mathuradas Mill compounds that housed industrial units and warehouses until now. The area also encompasses a large retail mall and a five star luxury hotel in the premise of erstwhile Phoenix Mills.Urban planners have been voicing concerns over the overburdened infrastructure for a long time.“Infrastructure in this zone has already collapsed,” said urban planning expert Chandrashekhar Prabhu. “Current carrying capacity and infrastructure level don’t match in Lower Parel. Further urban development in this area can be permitted only after the infrastructure level exceeds carrying capacity… Existing flyovers and their pillars can be augmented for taking more load and build elevated flyovers above them.”Contractor said infrastructure problems need to be approached holistically and “antiquated rules” should be modified quickly.Office space in central Mumbai has now grown to nearly 11 million sq ft providing job opportunities to thousands.This infrastructure was developed mostly during the British colonial era to support the walk-to-work culture in the textile mill area that was dotted with low-rise chawls accommodating employees. While much of the mill land was converted into high rises, the infrastructure remained largely unattended even though the population density increased manifold. Lack of planned urban infrastructure to support the accidental makeover of the central part of the country’s financial capital has started to take its toll on roads, mass transit systems and now human lives.