A few weeks ago, our Sunday was spent painting clay pots that we purchased from the nearby Dharavi neighbourhood of Khumbarwada, which is only a five minute walk from the Dharavi Shelter and the Transit Camp.

From some of our small donations that we have received up to this date, we managed to buy some pots, paints, brushes and wire. The children from the Shelter organised themselves into groups and painted the clay pots producing some incredible patterns and designs. A local resident then came in to help us hang the pots in the entrance patio of our Shelter and at the same time we began painting the bricks on the entrance wall in the patio.

This activity was one of a series of activities we are want to carry out to transform the Shelter and develop it into an incredible and beautiful space for art, creativity, exchange and learning.

The following images have some more of our plans to convert the remaining space we have surrounding the existing structure. We have included approximate costs for each of these activities.

Your contributions are most welcome!

Our new friend, James Subudhi, came to visit our Shelter a few weeks back and spent the Sunday volunteering with us.  He spent a memorable day with the children and learnt a lot about richness of Dharavi. What James mentioned the most about his visit was about the happiness of the children and the strong sense of community that he saw in this place. He has written an extract which I have posted below which he calls Of Magnets and Development.

All of us—kids, mothers, teenagers, strangers, and volunteers—huddled in a circle looking down into the sewer drain just outside the door to the shelter. “Paul is going to kill us,” Dipti said. The gravity of tiredness pulled on my face as I looked through the metal grate into the stagnant sewer.  I thought about what might be in there to give the liquid a greenish, purple and black grey thin goo consistency: shit, paint, spit, pan, dirt, the piss of everyman in Mumbai, motor oil, rusted scrap metal, water, diphtheria, typhoid, polio, cholera, and more piss.  A Dharavi sewer drain was as far away from the chilled bottled of water and masala dosa I wanted than Christmas is from July.  The wheels in my head quickly turned toward a destructive and money driven solution… breaking the lock and just buying a new one. Simple.

Out of the corner of my left eye I saw a kid running towards us.  He perched, knees bent, butt hovering above the ground, his arms out stretched over the drain. One of shelter participants pulled and held the gate open, the boy on the ground dropped a magnet on a string in, and another guided it around the drain by pulling the string in different directions.  A minute later my jaw dropped.

“Those keys need to be washed. They are very dirty” a little girl said.

The moral of the story? The kid’s local solution was more efficient than mine. We didn’t have to break the lock. We didn’t have to spend money on a new lock. We didn’t have to wait in line at shop to purchase a new lock.  We didn’t have to feel Paul’s wrath. And I probably got my lunch quicker this way than through my solution.

Contrast this event with how development occurs and how land-use decisions are made in Mumbai. The government and market solution to the locked door with a lost key down the drain would have been to demolish the building for a use that would squeeze the most profit from the property, like finding the right size hand to squeeze all the water out of a sponge.  In the process they definitely would not have listened to anyone in Dharavi, especially youth.

Yet this event is exactly how decisions about development, land-use, and community problems can be made in Dharavi, with youth and residents generating and implementing solutions to problems and a vision for the future they see with some guidance and resources from ngos, government, labor, and business. 

Whatever it is that Dharavi needs or wants, and how those needs/want can be met,  what it’s future can and should be,  what it is, what its problems are, and how they can be solved, should decided by and led by its residents, yet within at least one limit. That limit is of allowing no one, not the government, ngos, businesses, land owners, a resident, or community to have a monopoly on the truth, morality, and what is right and wrong, because we can all be right and wrong.

 On the one hand ngos believe the community and its residents have knowledge that is superior to their own and that of the government, to create an argument that the community deserves a seat at the table when decisions are made or least have those making decisions listen to their voices. While community residents often know things about their neighborhoods better than someone who doesn’t live there, they can be wrong. I’ll mention now that some of the kids from the shelter wanted fish the keys out of the sewer with their hands. Yet it is hard for ngos and activists to accept the fallibility of the community’s knowledge when the government and businesses are so much more powerful than they are, through their monopoly of the truth, law, and implementation of the law. Yet without recognizing their fallibility and that government, business, and other stakeholders besides community residents can be right, the community will be unable to form alliances with stakeholders besides ngos to get the resources and policies they need and want to create the changes they want and expect.

On the other hand, government and business are so corrupt that they believe they and they alone hold the truth and morality in their minds and hands that they refuse to engage community residents in the land-use and development decisions that impact them. This believe is based on using cost benefit and analysis and the logic that what makes the most profit and costs the least within their standards is right.

Government, business, labor, and ngos often go as far as to think that they are so right that they are objective because they use mathematics to support their arguments. While mathematics is an objective tool (a squared plus b squared equals c squared wherever you are on Earth), its use as a tool in deciding what to measure, how, when, and why is subjective because they are based on the desires, wants, and beliefs of the people making decisions. The government could believe that drinking water with ecoli in it is healthy, and contract out the distribution of water to a company with the requirement that ecoli be in it. This would save money because the company would not have to treat the water for ecoli. And it might even be profitable if people assume the water is safe to drink. But it’s not in the interest of health.

What I believe Dharavi needs to create a healthy and sustainable future are methods of participatory development and land-use decisions that involve a variety of stakeholders, a commitment from NGOS to secure resources to implement the ideas that come out of those processes, and residents who are trained to organize and advocate for resources and policies to implement their shared vision and solutions to problems.   

James is raising money for our Shelter by playing a show on February 19^th  in New York. Do drop by if you are around. I am sure it will be a great show!

The URBZ Team in Mumbai has embarked on a new project in Dharavi’s New Transit Camp nagar, where its office is located. Our landlord Paul Raphael has inherited a 200 m2 plot just down Dharavi’s MG Road. He built a simple structure to host activities for street children and elderly residents and asked us to help organizing activities there. URBZ is not a charity organization, but we believe in connecting deeply with people and neighbourhoods. We also see ourselves as natural connectors between local needs and global capacities.

URBZ teamsters Himanshu and Dipti started giving drawing classes to the kids every Sunday and we would like to expand our activities there. We have started meeting elderly residents and talking with them about the history of the neighbourhood. We want to archive these stories on our www.dharavi.org site. Our current projects for the Shelter include: getting drawing material, tables and chairs; providing lunch for 60 children every days; building a space to host a library and a tea shop on the site; and turning the empty space around the shelter into a clean patio for the children to play.

We have created a new section on the URBZ site dedicated to the activities of the Dharavi Shelter, where we explain what we are doing in more detail and request donations from anyone willing to support the Shelter and New Transit Camp’s residents. We are sending the link to this new page to all our friends and colleagues in the hope to raise enough to sustain the activities of the Shelter. It is amazing how much we can do with very little money. We calculate that with less than $1000 a month we could provide a simple lunch to up to 60 children every day!

Please visit our Dharavi Shelter page and if you are in Mumbai, come to visit the Shelter in person!

[Version française]

The Dharavi Shelter is a space dedicated to children and elderly residents living in New Transit Camp Nagar in Dharavi, Mumbai, India.

Drawing workshop at the Dharavi Shelter. Click here for more photos.

Dharavi’s New Transit Camp is a lively neighbourhood with a diverse population. See more photos.

URBZ Office in Dharavi NewTransit Camp.

URBZ members Dipti (architect) and Himanshu S (artist) with Paul Raphael in the back of the Dharavi Shelter, taking about future plans for a bookstore/library with a tea room on top.

Plan for a simple brick structure next to the Shelter which could host a library/bookstore and a small team room on top.

We are giving art classes to about 50 children every Sunday and would like to expand our activities. In addition to the drawing workshops, we want to screen movies and offer lunch to the children attending the shelter. Subsequently, we would like to offer photography and computer classes. We are looking for support to purchase art material, buy chairs, tables and shelves, offer lunch to 50 to 60 street children every day, hire a part-time animator and build a bookstore/library and a tearoom for all the residents. Even very small amounts can help the shelter a lot. For instance for $2 we can buy a nice crayon box, for $20 we can offer a simple lunch for 60 kids, with $200 we can purchase plastic tables and chairs for the shelter and with $2,000 we can build a new brick structure to host the library!

The context:

Dharavi is one of Mumbai’s most celebrated and misunderstood neighbourhoods. The media often wrongly describes it as the largest slum in Asia. Recently, the award winning movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ bestowed lots of global attention on it since several of its defining moments were shot in Dharavi’s dense and labyrinthine streets. Hundreds of thousands of migrants came to Dharavi over four generations ago with little else but a fierce desire to survive and live a life of dignity. Through their enterprise they transformed a piece of marshy land into a highly productive neighbourhood – an economic powerhouse, by all accounts but also a place of cultural hybridization, social emancipation and urbanistic innovation. Unfortunately, the city of Mumbai did not always empathize with Dharavi’s potential. Dharavi still suffers from lack of infra-structural support, continued social prejudices and the exigencies of electoral politics.

URBZ members have been working in Dharavi for a few years, notably organizing participatory workshops and urban design studios, researching and writing about its organic development and its architectural organization, and advocating against the Dharavi Redevelopment Project initiated by the Government of Maharashtra. In February 2008, we launched www.dharavi.org which soon became the most comprehensive source of information on Dharavi and an active social network used by many in Dharavi and from the rest of the world. It was visited 200,000 times since its launch.

In September 2009, we opened an office in New Transit Camp, which is a very dynamic and crowded neighourhood in Dharavi. The population of New Transit Camp is extremely mixed with Christians, Muslims and Hindus, many of whom originally came from the states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra and live side by side. Our landlord, Paul Raphael is an active member of the Communal Harmony movement which started after the 1992-1993 Bombay riots. He is deeply involved in the social life of the neighbourhood. Just as we moved into our new office, Paul inherited a 200 m2 plot of land a few meters down the street. He asked us to help create a social club which would host activities for children and the elderly.

We would like to share this project with more people who could help us realize it. Our dream is to see this little patch evolve into a dynamic and animated space in which children, the elderly and all those concerned, use it create a public sphere within Dharavi which demonstrates the special spirit of this unique part of Mumbai’s history. We would also like this space to become a bridge between residents of Dharavi and visitors from outside. Once the basic needs are covered (material for the classes, lunch for the kids and a salary for an animator), we would like to open a team room open to all elderly, youth, locals and outsiders. It goes without saying that all the contributors to the Shelter’s project will be more than welcome to visit us in Dharavi, when they travel to India!

Paul’s motivation of creating this space is a testimony to the willingness of Dharavi residents to improve their living standards. It is very special to see how children respond with so much electric enthusiasm to the tiniest gestures we can make. It will be as special to actually start documenting the experiences of the several elderly residents who have lived in Dharavi all their lives, once the space starts getting used by them as well.

Do help us in any which way you can and come and see this little space grow through your support. Donations can be made by credit card, via our Paypal account (just click on the link below), by check  or by wire transfer via partner organizations in the US and Japan (see instructions).

Checks can be written to American India Foundation  which has US tax deductable status (501-C3).  On the left it should say that they are for Asia Initiatives URBZ project. A message should be sent to URBZ giving the amount and date the check sent. The address is given below:

Mr. Venkatesh Raghavendra

CFO, American India Foundation

216, E. 45th Street, 7th Floor,

New York, NY 10017

Alternatively, bank transfers can be made in Japan to Asia Initiatives.  A message should be sent to URBZ giving the amount and date the check sent. The bank transfer information is given below:

Bank Name:  Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation

(ミツイスミトモギンコウ)

Branch:  Roppongi Branch #619

(ロッポンギ　シテン)

Account:  Saving

(フツウ)

Account #:  7399351

Account Name:  Tokutei_hieirikatsudo_hojin Asia Initiatives

(トクテイヒエイリカツドウホウジン　アジア　イニシアティブズ)

THANK YOU!

Buena Vista Tower seen from the Dharavi URBZ office. Click to enlarge.

When we moved to Dharavi, we hoped that some projects would come to us from its residents. There is nothing more exciting than the idea of doing architectural and planning projects in Dharavi and other improvised settlements in Mumbai (and the rest of the world). After all, if Mike Davis is right, this is the new urban condition for an increasing number of people everywhere. We never believed that wholesale clearing and redeveloping was the way ahead for improving the life of people living in so-called slums. Instead incremental development, informed by the way people live and relate to space seemed to be more sensible, less costly, sustainable and respectful of the neighborhoods and their history.

We didn’t have to wait for long before an architectural project came to us from within Dharavi. Paul Zacharia, our landlord and a local leader in New Transit Camp, where the office is located, was given management of a charitable trust which has a plot in need of development. The plot is 30 meters away from our office. He asked us to help with design, construction and financing and added that everything needs to be done really fast because if the land remained empty for too long, some sharks would just take it over. Paul wants to build a social club for street children and elderly residents that will be run by the trust.

The plot with the structure built by Paul in gray.

This happened just as Francesco Strocchio and Alberto Bottero, came to work with us for a month. They are final year architecture students at the Politecnico di Torino, Italy who started a research group called Hindustry. We immediately put them on the project. All construction you see here happened within the space of a week, but a week is a lot of time in Dharavi. Paul had already cleaned up the ground (sort of) and built a sturdy brick structure on it. He told us that if we find money to do better we can destroy it and do whatever we wanted. We thought it would be more practical to incorporate what is there into our design. We are still looking for financing, while the design is going on.

The structure was built by Paul in less than a week.

The building will be a symbol of how Dharavi could be redeveloped in a different way: no high-rise building, no masterplans coming from above our heads, but projects that can improve the quality of life in Dharavi. To us, developing Dharavi means taking into consideration what is already there. This must be done in a way that is economically sustainable. So the basic concept of the project is: 1) Develop don’t destroy, 2) make a small architectural landmark that will act as a statement showing that an alternative model of development in possible, 3) make it work within the economic dynamic of Dharavi.

Base map of the plot. Click here to download a large PDF version.

Dharavi is not a junkyard that can be bulldozed.  The tabula rasa approach is not an option. As we know people live here, they work and play like everywhere in Mumbai. This is a normal neighborhood confronted with special challenges. Several parts of Dharavi don’t look different from so many other areas of Mumbai, which are not referred as slums. Any (re)development project should start by evaluating the strength and the potential of Dharavi and consider the people living there as the main users and stakeholders.

Francesco and Alberto want to call the tower “Buena Vista.” The idea is to let people go up to see the view of Dharavi from above. The tower could also broadcast free wireless Internet for Dharavi residents.

The building we designed should be a new facility for the community. In the initial phase we are considering the use of  pallet racks system, which is a relatively cheap, fast, adaptable and modern way of building inside Dharavi.

The preliminary project proposes two different spaces: a large space on the ground floor for elderly residents (using the structure that has just been built) and  a space for street children on the first floor. A tower provides vertical circulation. It also functions as a landmark for the area.  The top of the tower is used to broadcast free internet wireless to New Transit Camp Nagar (and may be to the whole Dharavi), and diffuse Dharavi’s very own dharavi.organic wiki website.  Two open spaces are planned: a patio on the backside of the plot and an open terrace on the roof.

The pallet racks system allows us to build the tower and the first floor in a flexible and adaptable way. A second floor can be easily added in the future. For the ground floor we are simply keeping the existing brick structure.

The project moves quickly and many things keep changing. These are just preliminary ideas for the buildings. We will continue working on them. We also aim at using inputs from other architects and builders coming to the URBZ office. If you are interested in helping this project in any way, please contact URBZ. What we need the most at the moment is funding. Anything would help. We can already go a long way with $20,000 to 30,000.

Images of the site:

Images of the design: