Nestled on the hillocks in the eastern suburbs of Mumbai, Amrutnagar, Ghatkopar paints a figurative picture of the city; where affordable housing is scarce but people have tweaked the system and the land to achieve the best possible results in the given circumstances. The airborne traveler gasps at the sight welcoming the landing craft. The favelas of Rio come to mind, associated as they are with images of poverty and violence. They seem to say “welcome to Slumbai!”

The view from the plane doesn’t do justice to the pertinent housing typology devised by the locals. The housing in this hilly terrain embraces the topology. The rocks dug from the hill are used to build the foundation of the houses and the retaining wall that prevents landslides. The natural slope helps with drainage. Porches acting as public corridors are reminiscent of the quintessentially Bombay “chawl” typology. All houses are oriented in the east-west direction for maximum light and wind. Most of them are only ground floor structure, which allows everyone to enjoy one of the best views of the city. From the hilltop one can see planes landing into Mumbai airport. Catherine Boo may have reported what she saw “behind the beautiful forevers”. This is above.

The homes on the hill are said to be illegally constructed, yet occupancy rights in the city are often more a political question than a legal one. The area we visited was a relatively small 13.5 acres hill called Ramnagar, part of the larger settlement Amrutnagar. With a population of 12,000 locals, this Marathi speaking population is the vote bank of the rapidly rising political party ‘Maharastra Navnirman Sena’ (MNS) which promises to be the guardian angel of the Marathi Manoos. It was previously dominated by the Shiv Sena, the original sentinels of the Maharashtrian community. However, there are a good number of people from other communities as well and the residents are quick to point out that people of all denominations and ethnicity reside here. The locals who have no expectation from the governing bodies try their level best to be in the good books of the local political party workers, as they fear demolition on a daily basis. The cost of constructing a house is very high, due to the hilly terrain and residents usually spend their annual income on a basic house with four walls and a roof.

An estimated 4000 houses are built on and around this hillock and almost all of them are ‘pukka’ houses. 2000 are above the drainage line and the remaining 2000 below. Since the settlement emerged before 1995, it is liable for the SRA scheme and several redevelopment projects are an ongoing feature in the area. One graphical representation of the mandatory 269 sq feet redeveloped flat by the local builder shows a flat screen TV, contemporary furniture and modern art on the walls depicting a certain conception of what urban life should be about. The politician-builder nexus is well known. A SRA scheme can be force d upon anyone and residents are aware that the only way for them to get a legitimate house in the near future is their own hard work and destiny.

An interesting feature of this settlement is its road hierarchy. With no vehicles able to go up the steps of the hill, the only mode of transport is human and animal. The hilltop crest has several donkeys grazing, ready for whatever work may come up. Every house has a patio facing the city which acts as internal street whereas the steps winding down the hill act as the main road. Constructing a house uphill demands huge labour charges. A minimum 60 bags of cement, 30 bags of sand and 5000 bricks needs to be carried on foot. The labourer charges Rs 100-150 per bag as transport fee which doubles the cost, and a basic house costs around Rs 1.5 lacs. The cost of construction is higher because of use of relatively expensive materials and one extra floor as loft. The loft is usually rented to outsiders for Rs 2000/- a month. The cost of buying a 10 x15 sq ft house is around Rs 15-20 lacs. The local labourers called mistris who are experienced artisans in this field and usually inhabitants of the neighbourhood, are directly hired on daily wage basis for construction which usually last 15-20 days. The houses downhill are higher, have a larger footprint and are more ornate.

The settlement has several temples, public squares and courts, social mandals and groups on its way up and a bustling commercial street at the foothill. Commercial enterprises thrive mostly downhill, as goods transport is tedious and expensive uphill. However economic activities take place in homes as well. The dominant community which has largely migrated from the Malvan regions around Goa, work outside in the city. Most men do office jobs like data entry, peon, clerk or work in private security agencies. Women are mostly housewives and some of them work as part time maids in the neighbourhood buildings. They mostly wash utensils in various houses. A few homes do economic work like assembling parts for some manufacturing activity or the other or simply providing service at the village level. The average male income is Rs 7000-10000 whereas women earn Rs 2000 per month as maids. The area doesn’t function as intensively as the tool house clusters of some other settlements in Mumbai. They pay a monthly rental of Rs 170-220/- to an NGO for 25 minutes of daily water supply, spend around Rs 200/month on mobile phones, Rs 350/month on cable TV connection and some even spend Rs 200 on monthly internet services.

An interesting learning from Amrutnagar is the way people have organized themselves, developed construction technology and housing typologies without help from outside and how they go out on their own and innovate systems to make their life easier. There is a real sense of vernacular urbanism here. Construction techniques in Amrutnagar are unlike any parts of the city that we have visited. They are suited to meet local needs and means. Even without security of tenure and with very limited servicing by civic authorities, citizens have managed to look after themselves and their sheltering needs fairly well.

Sketches by Shardul Patil @urbz

As we climbed to the summit of the hillock, beyond the settlement, we found the landscape and atmosphere becoming gradually more relaxing. People sitting outside their homes, enjoying the view and the breeze, firmly committed to the quality of life they were living. They claimed there were no mosquitoes, since water slides away leaving no stagnant pools around. They would not want to go anywhere else.

A temple built in 1957 dedicated to Khandoba looms over the hill. The sleepy priest-guru-founder lounges around a charpai. He used to be a mechanical superintendent at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center, turned to spirituality at a young age and built the temple with his hands. A labyrinthine structure with a maze leading to smaller shrines, leads you to the other end of the complex and into a landscape that is anachronistic to everything else we had seen. Lush green grass, pigs and donkeys loitering around. A pathway that seemed to lead to dense foliage, with the promise of a forest adventure.

We land up at the other end, past a hidden cricket field known only to the local kids, the view of a shooting range and a stone quarry, walk through the foliage politely turning away from stray people going to the open-air toilet (no smell – thanks to the pigs) and come to a tarred road and a helipad! Beyond the trees lies a gate and behind that the ‘illegal’ neighbourhood of Hirandanai Gardens can be seen. A city built on subsidized land meant for the poor, with no threat of any demolishing of any kind facing its destiny.

From the point of view of Dinesh, the boy taking a stroll with us, the view from the hill helps him gain perspective on life. Somehow the view, the peace, the trees remind him that a city can potentially provide you with all kinds of habitats. He knows it is a luxury to be able to walk up to a place like this. Right now it instigates him to return to his native village in Benares, so reminiscent is it of a memory he has from there. In minutes though, as he trundles down, he is absorbed into the bustle of the neighbourhood. He points to his father’s tailoring shop and the direction of his college. Back in another world. He is living in a transit camp now. An SRA tower is coming up to relocate his family. Will he stay on? Will he go back? As long as choices remain, all possibilities exist. Somehow one gets the feeling, as the neighbourhood transforms into tall vertical buildings, that the choices which enrich his simple life are diminishing, and diminishing too fast.

Dinesh

More photos and sketches here.

This article was written by Megha Gupta with contributions by Shardul Patil, Rahul Srivastava and Matias Echanove

Chapel Street, Bandra

Walking through the streets of Mumbai is an intense experience with every excursion being an adventure of its own.

For most people in the city, walking is a banal activity, something they hardly think twice about. However, during the last one month with URBZ, taking a walk through various neighbourhoods in the city has made me aware of its many unexpected dimensions.

In the city where I come from – that is Delhi – I’ve hardly ever walked. A pedestrian is considered to be a trifling being. Moreover, public space in general is highly gendered and often a long sojourn from your house to the neighbourhood deli would make you understand the power hierarchies much faster than a two hour class discussing radical feminism.

Thus, often I could not help but feel like a stranger in my own city. What kind of cities are we making? Are big cities killing the pedestrians? How public is “public” space really?

When I read Michel de Certeau’s “The practice of Everyday Life”; I could not help but be riveted by his idea of the city and what makes a city, or what I would like to call the city-fabric. According to him, the practice of walking is one of the most elementary forms of experiencing the city and something, which resonates in my mind every day.

Veronica Street, Bandra

In Mumbai, I walk daily from Sion Circle to the URBZ office in the Transit Camp. I walk in the quiet streets of Bandra where I live, I walk in the parallel universe of Dharavi with narrow streets but warm people, I walk in rush hour at the Dadar station and I also walk along the dimly lit Marine Drive at night.

Once in Bandra, wandering through the narrow lanes which melted into each other, I found myself in Chapel Street. It was a special visual experience to absorb that space in its entirety and at once I heard the city speaking to me and also to many others simultaneously.

This street- the most basic element in urban sociology- was at once static and full of life. It represented the everyday and the spectacular at the same time. I was with my colleague Francesco, and, our search for old Portuguese bungalows in Bandra led us to discover many other interesting aspects about the city. It was like having a conversation with the city-spaces and the age-old heritage- which ultimately lead me to read the “real city”; accessible only to the pedestrian and one which cannot be found in concrete apartments or high rises. It exists in all its ethnographic beauty on the street.

And, that’s when I also realised how spaces are an affect. Reading spaces, streets, neighbourhoods-be it by walking or any other such fundamental impulse – makes you re-discover the larger relationship that exists between the social and the purely geographical.

On another assignment with Shyam, who also works at URBZ, I walked into the labyrinth called Dharavi; knowing little what was to come. We started from our office in the Transit Camp and within the next two hours wehad reached Mahim and crossed almost every street that lay between. The rich texture of the neighbourhoods that we saw, the people we met and the houses we were invited in, created an immediate relationship with the physical spaces we explored that day.

Mary from Dharavi

Amongst the twenty odd people we interviewed that day, we met Mary. She makes chai just around the corner from the URBZ office. I did not even know of her existence during the last two months of my working. Mary makes chai all day long in her little shop which she shares with another lady, Devi. For both of them, the street is their office, home and playground all at once.

The small streets in the big city are one of the most important features of Mumbai’s fabric. And, somewhere down the line- the everyday practice of walking and this raw city-fabric lead you to each other. On both the above mentioned occasions, in some odd way; it seemed like I strengthened my relationship with the city.

I wonder what Michel de Certeau would have said had he walked the streets of Dharavi! More on that in a subsequent post….

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Rahul and Matias were invited to particiapte in a one-day long charette organized by Studio X (Columbia) Mumbai along with Smita Srinivas, Ritu Mohanty-Padora and Gijs Van Den Boomen. Our site was the area starting from the Bandra end of the Sea Link to Bandstand. We explored the village around the Kudeshwari temple which occupies one of most charming Sea Link /Mahim Bay view points in the region.

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The village is the Rio favela style settlement up the hill you see driving through the Sea Link. To reach the village from the end of the bridge, we walk through a brownfield area occupied by a sewage treatment plant, scrapyard of traffic signal lights and the remains of the Sea Link infrastructure-construction sites and workers barracks, most of them owned by the Maharashtra State Road Corporation.

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Sewage water treatment plants

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We found a way through a settlement on the Parish land. It was full of cottage industries producing candle wax artifacts for Mount Mary Church as well wood furniture workshops and other such small scale artisanal productions. We walked along Christian and Jewish cemeteries and even discovered an unexpectedly posh restaurant called Cafe Goa at the entrance of the Village.

We discussed the possibility of design interventions, which service the villagers along with the risks that such interventions represent for those very settlements. We also examined the presence of a multi-storied SRA  (Slum Rehab Authority) building in the middle of the village, which seems to be a point of aspiration for many residents.

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However, there seems to be some obstacle to its completion since the construction appears to be stalled. We talked to a few people who work and live around the building and found that waiting for a flat in that building was a hope shared by many even though there was no official sign that the buildings would actually be constructed for the residents.

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Such a response of hope is quite widespread. Through some previous research in other neighbourhoods we found out that it is often a need for social security and valid citizenship which comes with the flat number. Research has also shown that often moving into a high-rise building destroys livelihoods and local networks that the present form provides them. For us this is the biggest urban design and planning challenge: How do we respond to aspirational needs without jeopardizing the employment structure of the neighbourhood, and giving due respect to an urban typology – that of the urban village- which is widely prevalent in the city.

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Children from the village took us around and knew every route, nook and corner of the entire neighbourhood right up to Taj Lands End.

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The luxury hotel is protected from its surroundings by an aggressively barbed wired wall. From there we walked towards Bandstand and explored settlements which have grown on the rocky beach between the sea and the road.

Our ongoing explorations and discussion will be presented at Studio X and subsequently continue on the blog.

Click here for more videos.