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Mumbai is one of the most diversified and vibrant Indian cities. It is a leading contributor to national income. It attracts the highest level of direct foreign investment and generates one third of the country‟s income taxes and 60 per cent of custom duties. It also houses the largest share of bank credits and deposit, and has the most active stock exchange. According to the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects Report 2013, Mumbai has become the fifth largest agglomeration in the world. But these distinctive facts and average educational and income statistics covert extreme inequality that prevails in the city. At least 30 per cent of the city‟s population remains below the poverty line (Vaquier, 2010). These urban poor are dwellers of slums, commonly referred to as jhopadpattis or squatter settlements in the local terminology. Slums have become an integral part of India's urban landscape. As per recent census done in 2011, about 65.4 million people living in Indian slums constituted 17.37 per cent of total urban population.
Dharavi, in the heart of Mumbai, is supposed to represent the quintessential Asian slum. Crowded streets and busy markets; domestic workshops cheek by jowl with sweatshops producing both real and fake Pepe jeans; brick houses rising as high as their microscopic footprints allow; high-rises mushrooming here and there like gigantic shacks; schools in Kannada, Tamil, Hindi, English, Marathi, Urdu and other languages, usually with more than 50 pupils per class; temples of every Buddhist and Hindu denomination; flamboyant mosques so crowded that people have to pray on the streets during namaz; old churches with full congregations – remnants of the region’s seventeenth-century Portuguese history – and new evangelical missions converting low-caste Hindus by the dozen; community toilets that double up as marriage halls; piles of garbage waiting to be picked over by scavengers; open drains running along narrow back streets; thousands of water pipes branching off in every direction. Dharavi invariably confuses those eager to capture its reality in shorthand. Visitors looking for an essence of the place often land on its edges and corners, in spots that most Dharavi residents themselves have seen only on TV. They may be rewarded for their intrepidness by the sight of barefoot children walking on water pipes against the obligatory backdrop of garbage – a cliché that resonates so powerfully with familiar discourses on poverty and inequality that it obliterates the depth and complexity of the place. Dharavi is diverse and rapidly transforming, and it deceives as much as it overwhelms. It is an enigma that cannot be resolved by simply labelling it one thing or the other. From the rooftop of Mohan Kanle’s two-storey house, the neighbourhood seems part of the immutable story of urbanism, recalling medieval Italian towns, Istanbul’s bazaars, the by-lanes of Benares, old Delhi, Guangzhou’s urban villages and even Tokyo’s dense residential suburbs. From this vantage point, it seems embedded in the shadow history of human settlements anywhere in the world where planning and control give way to incremental and small-scale development. In some parts, one sees hundreds of low-rise structures so tightly packed that they appear to share one single cement-sheet roof. No wonder urban designers and architecture students love to imagine bridges connecting all of these houses, with new roofs acting as public spaces and gardens. Mohan’s house was built by his father in the early 1990s. Mumbai’s extreme weather, with monsoon rain for four months and hot, saline air most of the year, has tested the limits of this humble structure. The roof has been leaking for a few years, forcing Mohan to install a shed as protection from the violent rains. About 18 people share seven rooms, which can be accessed from multiple entrances. The structure consists of a maze of connecting doorways and passages, and its uneven proportions are a legacy of its incremental growth. While not abnormally big for Dharavi, the house is larger than most others. There is no rule when it comes to the housing typology of Dharavi. Diversity is the only norm.
JCCS-a Journal of Comparative Cultural Studies in Architecture
Rethinking slums: Sion station neighbourhood in Dharavi, Mumbai Slums neu denken: Die Sion Station-Nachbarschaft in Dharavi, Mumbai2012 •
Dharavi, formerly a fishermen´s village on one of the islands today forming Greater Mumbai, India, is currently Asia´s biggest slum. Approximately 1 mio people live here without proper sanitation, drainage systems, paved roads and in an environment where every inch is occupied with small houses, many covered with plastic tarps or corrugated iron roofs. Particularly the rising middle and lower upper class of Mumbai sees the area as filthy, backwardly and dangerous and thus this slum should be removed to make way for new homes for themselves. However, it is a vibrant place of people with various ethnic backgrounds and ways of living. Besides, the inhabitants of Dharavi fulfil plentiful tasks for and in the legal part of the city, such as garbage collecting, cleaning streets, serving in household of upper and middle class people and the like. Furthermore, there are many small scaled industries based in Dharavi, producing a large variety of products consumed not only in Mumbai, but also abroad. In this article it is aimed to identify Dharavi as a sustainable environment, where people created their spaces according to their needs. Basing on this arguments, some gentle urban regeneration proposals will be presented to enhance the situation in a small neighbourhood close to Sion Station, where the study was accomplished. Although the disadvantages of this informal settlement should not be marginalised, it is aimed to show that the neighbourhood is a vibrant place of people with workshops, schools, mosques, temples, churches, community facilities and water tanks, following indigenous settlement structures of India. Although all is very basic and might appear shabby, it can be concluded that Dharavi is a grass root settlement with its unique indigenous qualities – done by its people for its people with their limited capability. With the findings in mind, some upgrading proposals were designed in respect of the way of life of people in Dharavi. The contribution ends with a discussion about the limits and benefits of these design proposals for Dharavi but also elsewhere. Inhalt: Das einstmalige Fisherdorf Dharavi lag früher auf einer der vorgelagerten Inseln, die heute zu Greater Mumbai, Indien, zusammengeschlossen wurden. Heute ist Dharavi Asiens größter Slum, mit geschätzten 1 Million Einwohnern, die ohne ausreichende Wasserversorgung, Kanalisation, Elektrizität oder befestigten Straßen auskommen müssen. Durch den enormen Bevölkerungdruck ist jeder Quadratmeter mit kleinsten Gebäuden verbaut, die oft mit Plastikfolien und Wellblechdächern bedeckt sind. Vor allem die neu aufsteigende Mittelklasse Mumbais sieht die Slumbewohner Dharavis gerne als schmutzig, rückwärtsgewandt und gefährlich, weshalb es die gängige Meinung ist, dass der Slum abgerissen werden sollte, um Raum für dringend benötigte Wohnungen der Mittelklasse zu schaffen. Bei genauerer Betrachtung ist Dharavi jedoch ein lebhafter Wohnort von Bewohnern mit verschiedensten ethnischen Hintergründen und unterschiedlichsten Lebensweisen. Daneben sind die Bewohner Dharavis auch wichtige Arbeitskräfte in Mumbai, denn viele sind mit Müllsammlung, Straßenreinigung beschäftigt, andere sind in den Haushalten der Mittelklasse tätig, und es gibt viele kleinste Handwerksbetriebe, in denen eine Vielzahl an Waren produziert wird, die nicht nur in Mumbai sondern überall auf der Welt verkauft werden. In diesem Artikel wird versucht, Dharavi als Lebensraum zu begreifen, in dem die Bewohner ihre öffentlichen Räume nach ihren eigenen Bedürftnissen kreieren. Auf dieser Grundlage sind Entwürfe zur Verbesserung der Situation entstanden, die hier vorzustellt werden. Die kleinen Maßnahmen wurden für das Projektgebiet in der Nachbarschaft der Sion Station vorgeschlagen, wobei es um den Erhalt und die Stärkung der kulturellen Vielfalt und der Gemeinschaft ging. Auch wenn die Nachteile einer informellen Siedlunge nicht marginalisiert werden sollten, ist es wichtig zu verstehen, dass die Nachbarschaft ein lebhafter Ort von Menschen ist, in die Bewohner selbst Werkstätten, Schulen, Moscheen, Tempel, Kirchen, Wassertanks und Gemeinschaftseinrichtungen errichtet haben. Auch wenn alles sehr einfach ist und von außen betrachtet heruntergekommen wirkt, kann man zusammenfassen, dass Dharavi ein grass root Gebiet ist – errichtet von und für seine Bewohner mit ihren beschränkten Möglichkeiten. Mit diesen Ergebnissen als Hintergrund wurden kleine Eingriffe entworfen, die das Leben der Menschen in Dharavi respektieren und unterstützen. Der Beitrag endet mit einer Diskussion über die Limits und Chancen des Entwurfsansatzes für Dharavi und wie dieses Vorgehen sich auf andere informelle Siedungen anwenden lässt. Schlagworte: Dharavi, Sion Station Nachbarschaft, Slum upgrading, Gestaltung aufbauend auf traditionellen Mustern.
This publication draws from first-hand experience, research, and critical practices that have sought to investigate a 175 hectares swatch of land in the middle of Mumbai that is home to over 1 million inhabitants. It is a collection of short and long essays, drawings and diagrams, pictures and photo-montages, video stills and visualisations on what is known as Dharavi. If on one side Dharavi was what some would call a ‘live’ case study, on the other it was more than that. Dharavi was a place where our different epistemic words of what we called urban design started falling apart. It was also a complex microcosm of practices where our methodological and architectural artillery became somewhat ineffective and sterile. It was a symbol of a multiplicity of urbanisms at play that failed all our philosophical apparatus. Dharavi for us was essentially a space in which we started our process of recalibration of Urban Design - an intellectual, pedagogical and political process at the centre of the MSc Building and Urban Design in Development course at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit.
Spaces of Change
Dharavi: A Construction Site2014 •
The view of Dharavi as a dreadful slum has been a challenge for government planners, who were charged with designing for other people’s lives without any knowledge of their specific necessities and qualities of their way of life. The process of designing housing under this model involved construction that had a clear beginning and end. However, the true nature of Dharavi’s construction goes far beyond these practices: The construction site is itself the end result; the stage upon which the purpose and form of the slum was gradually transformed, a process driven by foreign interests, NGOs, and the residents themselves.
The rapid urbanization processes in the urban global south generates many challenges for metropolises like Mumbai. Economic interests, demographical evolutions and ecological challenges have to be taken into account when trying to overcome them. This paper focuses on the case of Dharavi. An informal settlement in the heart of the metropolis that is in danger of being buried underneath the expanding financial district it neighbours on. By means of a travel journal and literature study this paper tries to establish if there is a place for Dharavi in its encompassing metropolis. And if so, what are its qualities, its challenges in case of further development and can architecture have a role in providing solutions for these challenges. The summary of the paper highlights the potential of Dharavi and pleads for its continued existence. Settlements like Dharavi have the possibility to meet the challenges generated by rapid urbanization processes and can gradually grow to become functional and desirable living environments. They have great value in terms of economic growth and providing affordable housing for the lower income sections of society. The label slum is incorrect and mirrors political motives that inhibit the further development of Dharavi. By researching the potential of these self-created mix-used zones, lessons can be learned which might prove useful in providing answers in terms of limited availability of land in a global context.
Epistemic Studies, De Gruyter
Konstitutive Bedingungen mentaler Repräsentation (Constitutive Conditions of Mental Representation)2024 •
Portrait of the Artist as a Landscape: An Inquiry into Self-Reflexion, Amsterdam: Vossiuspers UvA,
Portrait of the Artist as a Landscape: An Inquiry into Self-Reflexion2002 •
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Primordial odontogenic tumour: clinicopathological analysis of six cases of a previously undescribed entity2014 •
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