If you are in Switzerland in the next two days, don’t miss this presentation of the activities of the Dharavi Shelter. For updates join the Shelter’s fan page on Facebook.

Walking around the streets of Dharavi and Mumbai I have noticed how small things can make a big difference to lives and the image of a neighbourhood.  I am not thinking in terms of the slogans of charities stating that small changes can make a world of difference; of course water, electricity, drainage and other amenities essential to modern living should be seen as basic requirements.   Rather I have been looking at the minute changes or additions to buildings and shop stalls that just make things easier and more pleasant.

Overhangs create an extended and sheltered external space (left) Makeshift canopies line the streets (right)

Such a simple design feature as an overhang or porch roof over the front door can make a huge difference.  You barely see a self built house in Dharavi without an overhang over the ground floor or a small porch roof over the front door, and all along the street are makeshift covers where one has not been incorporated.  It provides protection from the sun and the rain to make a day outside in the elements easier to bear, or simply a sheltered place to sit and watch the world go by.

Metal bars over the windows offer an extension to small living spaces

One of the first things I noticed around Mumbai was the bars on a lot of the windows.  To me these conjure up images of high security against the fearful outside world.  But in fact they offer an extended living space, a place to dry clothes in an apartment lacking outdoor space, or a windowsill to keep plants on to offer a speck of greenery.  A look at a row of houses like this offers a glimpse into the lives of its inhabitants.

An umbrella fixer sits under his makeshift shelter (left). A metal hoop provides tension for the shelter (right)

Another minute addition that allows street sellers shelter from the sun and rain, and to create a defined shop space, are metal hoops hammered into the pavement.  These provide a source of tension to attach rope to which provides the structure of a temporary shelter.  Other street sellers have opted for a brick or heavy piece of rubble to tension the rope, but a small metal hoop is a far more elegant solution, with less potential for a domino effect fall along the crowded streets.

Colourful streets of Dharavi.(left) Street art in Khotachiwadi (right)

Colour can totally change the feel of a street.  Whether the walls of a house have been washed a bright blue or an artist has added to their touch with a mural, it brightens an otherwise dull concrete and metal street and has the added bonus of hiding the dirt!  There is a series of murals along the walls of Khotachiwadi in South Mumbai, left over from an Urbz mashup event a few years ago, and on my first walk through I noticed them and immediately warmed to the area.

A row of trees along New Transit Camp planted by one of the residents.(left) Greenery brightening a street of Dharavi(right)

Adding plants or greenery to an area also lifts it.  Along the main street of New Transit Camp are a row of trees planted by a guy who has lived there for nearly 50 years.  He has watched them grow up and now they contain stories of the past and the development of NTC.  A row of plant pots outside a house shows that someone thinks about their neighbourhood and has put time and a bit of tender loving care into making it look nice.

Finally, a street lamp.  Which, as Nabeel Hamdi has shown, can induce a whole host of changes.

Dharavi footbridge during heavy rains

The monsoon season brings with it a mixture of relief from the hot weather that precedes it and a realisation and frustration with the problems of Mumbai’s infrastructure. Problems which are all exacerbated within and around Dharavi due to the poor drainage and cramped living and working spaces of its inhabitants.

No where to run from the rain

The location of Dharavi causes its first set of problems, as it is situated on what was once low lying marshland and close to the Mithi River, which carries monsoon waters from the whole of Mumbai to the Arabian Sea. There have been numerous and ongoing changes to the path of the Mithi river over the recent years, which at times have made conditions worse. It is the only river connected all the way from Vihar Lake to the Arabian Sea travelling a distance of nearly 17 kilometres, and the Mahim Creek is the only creek which balances the water level of Mumbai during heavy rainfall and during Mumbai monsoon time. Being the biggest drainage channel of Mumbai it discharges not just water but also contaminated substances, industrial and domestic waste. So when it floods, these other dangerous substances also leak into homes and work environments.

During the 1995 floods, when there was continuous rain for 3 days, the city came to a standstill. The size of the problem and the lack of government help was made clear as communities had to work together to solve the problems themselves and help each other to live and survive through the worst of it. With water up their waists in some areas, homes were destroyed and their belongings ruined.

It is not just the inconvenience and loss of livelihood caused by the monsoon that is a worry but also the diseases such as typhoid, malaria and fever which it brings. So the inhabitants develop strategies for coping. I spoke to one family who said that during bad flooding when the water was up to their knees, they had to use a metal cot to sleep all 5 members of their family above the water level. Their belongings were moved to higher levels, and during the day they just had to manage in knee deep water. Neighbours and friends help out as much as possible, and people living on the ground floor can sometimes seek refuge with friends or family living on the upper floors. If they are lucky enough to have another family house in the area which is faring better in the floods then the whole family (usually at least 5) will move in with their relatives to double the number of people living in an already tight space. Of course electrics and gas go out so cooking becomes impossible and at night time they live by torch light.

Upstands and tarpaulins are used to prevent the worst of debris and water entering

You will see walking through Dharavi that many houses are raised up from street level. Where they can afford it families who have done work on their houses will often raise the house by at least half a metre so that it does not flood so badly. Another trick is to build a temporary concrete or metal up stand in the front door, which is knocked down after monsoon season and rebuilt each year. This prevents the majority of flood water and debris flowing in from the street, but water can still seep in through gaps in the walls. Of course windows have no glass, so sack clothes are used to cover them and prevent rain penetrating so much with the winds. Roofs are covered in tarpaulins also to prevent leaks. Although these measures help they are mostly temporary and make-shift measures. What is really required is proper storm drainage and maintenance, along with good waste disposal and cleaner streets, to allow people to live their normal lives throughout the monsoons. They are no surprise after all and relentlessly return each year, so should be properly prepared for.

Blue tarpaulins cover the rooftops

The URBZ Mashup crew is in the thick of the Galata-Shishane area of magnificent Istanbul. Everyone is discussing, exploring, drinking beer, chai or turkish coffee and pontificating over the intricacies and nuances of gentrification (old and new), imaginary and real geographies, the fate of the sprawling electric light retail district and the hundreds of artisanal workshops succumbing to the competition of Chinese sweatshops or simply the lure of speculative money. From this ancient tower that looms like a mystical symbol in a neighbourhood that has morphed and transformed itself under its shadow for centuries, ever since it was created in the year 528, the team has spread itself into the narrow – and hilly – streets that surround it to capture its stories, connect to civic arguments in government departments and engage activists who feel passionately about the neighbourhood.

At this moment we are all poised with ideas and arguments, images and stories are about to coalesce and become concrete expressions. The Battle for the future of Galata is on!

Whether in fantasy – like the sci-fi TV series Battlestar Galactica (thank Matias for that great collage!) or in real life – ‘aliens’ who are just like ‘us’ and who become threatening because they are a natural part of the landscape (in history and geography) are constantly written into the political stories that emerge in cities of today everywhere. Waves and waves of Armenians, Genoese, Gypsies and Jews were part of the history of this neighbourhood  in Istanbul, at a time when land masses on the edge of the sea were really an integral part of maritime trading networks and the seas themselves were the center of the world. Like the future of coastal towns everywhere trapped between terra firma and watery identities, such places were eventually absorbed into the larger national imagination anchored in the hinterland.  And yet we continue to remain inspired by the past of such spaces and seek to locate their present within it, because the question of local identity and global cosmopolitan spaces continue to remain interlocked in stubborn ways. We also get attached to the aesthetics and memory of cosmopolitanism that those histories remind us of.

These grand battles are actually played out in streets and alleyways of such cities, through the stories of residents and users, through the processes of transformation, through the way in which passionate citizens feel for the fate of these neighbourhoods, through the debates about the kinds of gentrification that goes on, about the way the corporate world colludes with the state, the way people give in or continue to fight on…

For images of the workshop visit flickr.com/urbzoo and flickr.com/urbantyphoon

The Dukaan Workshop took place in Dharavi, Mumbai on June 13, 2010. The article below was published in the Mumbai Mirror on June 16, 2010

Have you ever looked carefully at the little fruit shop jutting impossibly out of the corner down your street? Or the paan wala perching precariously on a tiny piece of real estate sandwiched between a bus-stop and a compound wall? Or the condensed universe of a cobbler in a tiny crevice in an invisible part of the city seemingly impossible to inhabit? What unifies them all are the most astonishing design elements that have evolved over practice by the concerned artisans or street traders, who have managed to sculpt space for from thin air. As often happens we take these things for granted – unless you are part of the design and architecture world in which learning from these practices makes you watch carefully. However few allow themselves to learn from these moments – because prejudices come in the way. Instead of appreciating the creative modes of survival we dismiss them in a larger story of encroachment. Even though everyone knows that the real culprit are often the extortionists who collect hafta and keep the hawkers on a tight leash of uncertainty.

Once when you are driving down the empty roads (relatively speaking) late at night to the airport or railway station, pay some attention to these spaces – tiny cupboards hanging from walls and trees, tool-boxes tucked away between street corners and buildings and plastic bags containing entire worlds.

When Llorenc Boyer and George Carothers – urban practitioners working in the city – decided to follow up on suggestions about these amazing spaces and learn more from them, one was not quite sure where this would lead. But weeks of conversing with street vendors of all kinds, documenting and networking with them translated into a most unusual workshop series inaugurated last week in Dharavi. Christened the DIY Dukaan –( Do It Yourself) the series saw residents like Shaukat Ali and other traders from the neighbourhood to improvise existing design needs responding to new ideas and suggestions. What followed was a most intriguing day in which steel pallet racks, bamboos, pieces of plywood, wire meshes, nuts and bolts were brought together to morph into the most unexpected models for street vendors to use. What seemed to be in great demand were portable structures that could fold up so they could escape the municipal vans harassing their perfectly legal activity. Or ones they could store their stuff and take home in. Participants got to know that there are legally permitted structures measuring 2 by 3 feet which the BMC allows anyone to use to trade goods, provided the space is proportionate to public use of pavements.

Eventually the very act of taking that little structure seriously opened up many questions about trading on the street, balancing needs of public spaces and the creation of legitimate networks free from state extortion so that the city’s millions of entrepreneurs can do their thing in a way that helps the city at large.

At the end of that hot, humid but exhilarating day two neat little models emerged – one that was a simple foldable table that could be hung on shoulder straps and the other a box that could store material, open up into a structure to sell goods and which could grow into taller spaces allowing for protection from rain and sun.

The sheer explosion of ideas and energy that preceded and followed the creation of these little artisanal wonders convinced all observers that this could well be the start of a new journey to make the city and its special needs the basis for practical and effective interventions. There are certainly many waiting for the next session in the workshop series.

Click here for another article on the Dukaan Workshop by Malvika Tegta published in DNA on Saturday 12, 2010.