We have for long opposed the reality of the city to that of the village. However, my observations in Dharavi, a large unplanned neighbourhood in the centre of Mumbai, which is the most populated city in the world, tell me that they have more in common than is commonly acknowledged. This article describes the curious similarities between the small Italian village I come from and Dharavi.

The village in question is Buscoldo, in the north of Italy close to Mantova. The population is roughly 2500, while the population of Dharavi is estimated at 700,000. In spite of these stark differences in number, the two places share common trajectories of incremental development and organizational patterns.

Moreover, Dharavi is itself a collection of smaller neighbourhoods, which typically fiercely resist being amalgamated into each other.

The oldest part of Dharavi, Koliwada, was founded by a tribal fishing community, the Kolis. They settled there before the Portuguese and British arrived in Mumbai. My village is traditionally connected with agriculture. Historically, it was also a strategic military base.

In Dharavi, people notoriously created their habitat without any specific help or planning from the government. They used their know how to develop the place in response to their needs. This appears clearly when you walk through the neighborhood. Houses are really close to each other, the street is a market place and space for social interactions. Houses typically have a shop or workshop at the ground floor and the neighbourhood feels extremely dense in terms of structures and population.

In my village, we can also observe unplanned areas with the same features where the same kind of dynamics take place every day, or at least on specific days of the week. Unfortunately this reality is dying because of globalization forces (big AC supermarkets) that cuts-off local activities. So the risk, we are going to face, is that any village will become just a dormitory, where the work space and the living space will be totally split and the community and social relations will be cancelled.

But if we stop our sight on one of these houses which forms the oldest part of my village, we can notice that some of them are still “tool-houses”, even if they do not hold the same importance as before. According to URBZ (Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava), the“tool-house” is a place where the actions of living and working are not neatly divided, where every single nook and corner becomes an extension of the trade of its inhabitants.

Tool-house in Buscoldo, with the shop in front and living space in the back.

This kind of bottom-up development has been the core of the economic Italian system from 50 years ago, but now is going to disappear in this post-industrial-crisis era. In Dharavi this is not happening, so should we imagine that this kind of vernacular model will take place again and will be able to generate a new development in European society?

POPULATION DENSITY

Unfortunately the population density in my village is not reflected anymore in the density of homes, because the economic system and the needs of society needs have changed. Also if we consider what happened in Dharavi, we can notice that the local economy is still strong.  Besides, the community still remains important. This is unlike what is happening in my village, where this kind of local and “self-supported” economy is losing is strength and in some ways this impacts the sense of community as well.

MILL IN-FORMATION

In my village there was a big mill (photo on the right), which produced flour from grain and maize. It was a big structure, which stopped production during the 80s. The building remained empty for almost 20 years. It was in the beginning of 2000 that it was transformed into an apartment building block. Instead of demolishing this old structure the local contractor decided to keep it safe and re-use it in a different way. This was a small gesture of generating a new shape by an incremental-improvement process. Something that characterizes Dharavi a lot, since it is a neighborhood constantly in-formation, where every family creates and evolves their own house, bit by bit.

Finally it is important to think about the process of urbanization itself that connects Dharavi to my village. In both cases there were not too many regulations and laws and rules, historically that interfered with the ability of Buscoldo or other Italian towns to reinvent and reproduce themselves. In fact, I think this is the main feature which combines these two apparently very different realities. Though of course today this ability to reinvent our town or villages is strictly constrained by urban planning rules.

Trouble in paradise: Iron Ore Mine in Bicholim, North Goa

We have been busy looking at Goa’s complex urban system and networks together with a group of graduate landscape architecture students from Sweden. This studio, taking place from Feb 14th to 25th, is part of a year-long programme organized by Henrietta Palmer and Michael Dudley of the Royal Institute of Arts in Stockholm, and the Institute of Urbanology in Goa. The group was also joined by masters students of the Dr. Bhanuben Nanavati College of Architecture for Women (BNCA) based in Pune.

Goa, which is the smallest state in India, can be conceptualized as an urban system made of a network of villages and a few bigger towns of max 100,000 people. These are interspersed with fields and forests and each settlement is connected to the others through an intricate web of small roads. As is the case in many Indian cities, large infrastructure projects along with savage real estate speculation and corrupt politics are challenging the unique spatial organization of Goa.

Savoi Veren village near Ponda, which predates Portuguese colonization, is now surrounded by mines.

Historically, this spatial logic has been connected to the availability of water sources and river systems which traditionally Goan villages and hamlets were dependent on for their survival. The delicate balance of containing groundwater salinity by blocking rain water flows through intricate water management, of painstaking rain water conservation through dependency on its forests (now being ravaged by mines) and of dependence on wells for water supply are all factors that are miraculously still alive even as one part of Goa gets connected to piped water, roads and bridges.

If modern urban societies are concerned with environmental issues then a good look at Goa’s habitats and how they are embedded in its water system becomes something that everyone can learn a lot from. If the new vision that Goa is looking towards for its own growth and future need an anchoring for its regional development plans, then that vision needs to be anchored in its historical spatial logic, arranged through its water ways and systems.

Two students of the Royal Institute of Arts taking pictures of a barge transporting Iron ore on the Mandovi river.

Right now, Goa’s system of villages, towns, fields and forests are being super imposed by a planning logic connected to mainstream mechanisms of connectivity and mobility, of real estate development and aspirations. The people of Goa are struggling with the balancing out of all these factors and are looking for ways to organize Goa’s growth and future in a manner that does justice to its special cultural and historical distinctiveness that is  intimately tied to its physical, environmental and spatial logic. In a very small way, this group has tried to address some of these issues to the best of its ability.

After more than a week of travel, observations, meetings with experts and activists, the group will make a series of presentations that directly or indirectly connects with the idea of Goa’s complex water system as the base of its spatial logic and open the doors for more research in this broad area. Please come to the students’ presentation at Panjim Inn in Fontainhas, Goa, Friday February 25th at 5PM.

Students interacting with Dean D’Cruz, one of Goa’s most respected architect who is also working on the Goa regional plan.

Click here for more pictures of the studio in Goa.

Read more on Goa as an urban network on airoots.

Khotachiwadi is one of the most charismatic and charming neighborhoods of Mumbai. Situated in Girgaum, South Mumbai; it is a historical hamlet where some of the oldest cottage houses of Mumbai can be seen. Less than 30 of these houses, designed in typical Indo-Portuguese style, still remain. The small streets of Khotachiwadi have preserved its communal and village-like atmosphere up to these days, in spite of the construction of many buildings of varied architectural taste in the wadi since the 1930s. Who better than James Feirerra, a celebrated fashion designer and 5th generation Khotachiwadi resident, to present his neighborhood? This video was produced by URBZ intern Guillaume Folliot:

For more on Khotachiwadi, visit this page.

With settlements dating back at least 400 years, the Kolis were the earliest inhabitants of the archipelago now known as Mumbai. They are thought to be members of the Kul tribe, which migrated from the mainland mass of Aparanta at beginning of Christian era or earlier. Kolis occupied the islands in successive waves and engaged in husbandry and fishing.

Around 38 Koliwadas exist in the region today, having survived periods of Hindu colonization around the end of the 13th century, Muslim rule until the mid-16th century, foreign colonization first by the Portuguese and then by the British, and the explosive expansion of modern Mumbai.

The Kolis’ close connection with the history of Mumbai is evident in the city’s place names. The city’s original name of “Manbai,” “Mambai,” or “Mumbai” by some accounts derives from “Mumbadevi,” the patron deity of the Kolis. The earliest settlements in Mumbai were the koliwadis, which were named after local trees or other natural elements, as Kolis were then nature and tree-worshipers. For example, “Parel” is said to derive from “Padel,” the local name of a trumpet-flower tree. “Colaba,” Mumbai’s primary tourist and historical center, derives from “Kola-bhat,” which means “Koli estates.”

In the 17th century, Queen Elizabeth formally bestowed land tenure to the “Kolis of Dharavi,” an event commemorated in documents and a copper plate currently housed in a Mumbai museum. The Queen also gifted pistols to three Koli residents — Banduk Patil, Bapuram Koli and Kuptun Mangalaya Koli — as security against pirates that used to rob fishing boats.

Khotachiwadi is a small village in south Mumbai that has won the attention of urban heritage conservation initiatives. Architecture students are attracted to its distinctive low-rise, high-density landscape showcasing a variety of individual homes, chawls and apartment buildings that reveal Indo-Portuguese flourishes, port-town styles off the western coast and modernist, deco touches.

For the inhabitants it is a village that is stretched between communitarian nostalgia and the aspirations of its younger residents. The community is passionately involved in its present and future.

khotachiwadi.urbz.net is a space for residents and those interested in Khotachiwadi to interact, communicate and express themselves. The is used as a tool by the residents to build on the existing momentum with regard to saving the distinct personality of this habitat. Archiving activities and documentation projects are punctuated by the organization of events that bring the diverse issues and perspectives on an interactive platform. The site uses existing qualitative data produced or archived by residents as a starting point.

URBZ’s engagement with Khotachiwadi builds on more than three years of work. We see Khotachiwadi beyond its heritage narrative, as part of a larger system of urban villages, hamlets and habitats that characterize Mumbai’s landscape.

Story of Khotachiwadi:

http://www.airoots.org/why-mumbai-slums-are-villages/