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.

The view of Dharavi as a dreadful slum in Mumbai has been a challenge for government planners, who were charged with designing for other people’s lives without any knowledge of their necessities and their quality of living. The process of designing housing under this model involved construction, which set as a testing point Dharavi’s public space. Such construction had clear starting and ending points. However, the true nature of Dharavi’s construction on its public space goes far beyond these practices: The construction site is itself the end result; the stage upon which the slum was gradually transforming its purpose and form, driven by foreigners, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO), and its residents. The present paper explores Dharavi’s public space as a construction site from both the perspective of government officials, and from the perspective of a particular NGO in Mumbai, the team of URBZ. As the government views it, this site embodies the slum-free vision that satisfies a desire for change: that vision is encapsulated within the concrete walls of one more building. On the other hand, the slightest familiarity of the team of URBZ with Dharavi’s streets and alleys, its residents, and their activities gives an entirely different picture, in which the public space emerges as a huge construction site of hopes and possibilities. Construction in this sense is a work in progress originating not only from residents, but also from NGOs. The key question here is how this work could serve as a means of successfully bringing about positive change in a variety of domains. The conclusions of this paper thus, confirm the significant role of the local NGOs in representing powerful mechanisms for motivating residential participation in positive change and thus, the key contribution lies in uncovering the creative an innovative possibilities grounded in various experiences on the public space of a slum. Keywords: Dharavi; construction site; participation; NGO

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.

This dissertation investigates the highly differentiated ‘slums’ that emerged as part of the ever-changing urban periphery. It reconceptualises the notion of consolidation associated with lived practices of city-making and inhabitation, viewing them as territorial transformation to challenge the linear developmentalism thinking of slum upgrading and regularisation. Building on my multi-sited experiences with longitudinal empirical studies, and inspired by the more radical post-colonial urban studies, urbanism, and migration-mobility studies, the assumption addresses simultaneous processes of consolidation (object becoming more solid and joining with other objects to generate structures) as multi-sited territorialisation. By asking how reading space and time reveals lived practises of territorial transformation and depicts the evolving socio-spatial objects and structures co-produced by institutions and inhabitants, I propose an analytical framework encompassing ‘territorial units, structures, and mobilities’. The framework has contributed to dialogue with different urban debates, reinvents critical mapping of space and time, as well as conducts qualitative ethnography to form five chapters on the leading case study–Dharavi (Mumbai). As a result, they elucidate the highly diverse components, context-dependent practices of territorial transformation, demonstrating a complex web of consolidation processes in motion. The findings from Dharavi raise essential questions and phenomena that could travel elsewhere. The mobile lens is particularly important to reveal the diverse starting points and direction of consolidation, alternative resources, potential conflicts, and the hidden reproduction of inequality. To summarise, the dissertation contributes to future comparative gestures and calls for interdisciplinary knowledge co-production not only about, but from the urban periphery.

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 paper deals with multi-directional transactions between concepts and materialities in contemporary processes of urban renewal. Building upon insights gained from debates about the nature of materialities within urban geography, I treat buildings as complex associations of materials, technologies and human beings that are informed by concepts about social stratification and that simultaneously enact these concepts in the physical-social landscape of the city. Processes of urban renewal therefore need to be understood as both conceptual and material interventions in the setup of the city that restructure the built environment, patterns of cohabitation, experiences of the urban and notions of self and other. I illustrate this approach with recourse to the case of urban renewal in the city centre of Mumbai, arguing that high-rise buildings emerging from urban redevelopment projects translate the heterogeneity of the Indian middle classes into a spatial vocabulary that contributes to the creation of new social categories.