A small gully, adjacent to Dharavi Main Road, takes you to Hasmat’s tool-house. She is a friendly businesswoman, with inspiring resolve accompanied by a small smile.

What happens when a home is also a workshop, a storeroom, and the centre of a livelihood? Step inside Bashir Ahmed's tool-house, where stacks of wood and velvet become jewellery boxes, while home and work remain inseparable parts of everyday life.

Anil Chawda, owner of Khushi Tailor, is a friendly, multilingual man, who enjoys his work-life balance, cricket, and the occasional beer!

An old building in Dharavi Koliwada stands at the threshold of change. Through conversations with the residents of Jantu Bai Niwas, this story explores the hopes, concerns, and everyday realities shaping the future of a community in transition.

Dharavi Koliwada is on a mission to re-establish a dwindling connection to its fishing ponds. Along with the crew from Sullivan Carpentry and urbz, they are actively designing and building an amphibious device that helps fishing boats get into the water. 

From a small porch in Koliwada, Laxmi Vaity strings flowers, shares conversations, and nurtures the relationships that shape her everyday life. A glimpse into a community where home extends far beyond four walls.

On a scorching summer afternoon, when the weather greeted us so badly, this sweet family welcomed us, distracting us from the heat with their warmth! That, and the wonderful smell of vadas too...

This compilation of prose and poetry emerges from the most incredible time I spent in Dharavi working with urbz Mumbai.

This week, urbz is at the 13th World Urban Forum, joining over 40,000 urban thinkers, policymakers and practitioners from 182 countries gathered in Baku, Azerbaijan, around a pressing question: how do we house the world?

How Dharavi exposes the Limits of Professionalism with each frame...