Fictional imaginaries help us move towards an important starting point in urban practice - 'recognition'. A way of seeing that transforms our understanding of urban spaces.

The Hôtel-Dieu in Nantes: a fictional process to a citizen-inspired approach
 

We must recognize our collective strength and resources: every locality has human capital (skills), existing constructions (assets) and a rich natural ecosystem. This article is based on a keynote presentation at PlaceMaking Switzerland on the impact of participation on urban form.

urbz has started initiatives in Europe, that combine ethnographic participation with visual storytelling to accompany, facilitate, or initiate urban planning, heritage, and transformation projects.

This article presents the Koliwada in Dharavi through the evolution of its built and natural environment, tracing the Koli's fight for their land, how the community is leading the development of their neighbourhood and our role in it. 

Following up on the biggest news we had in our yearly update, we want to share more about how we got to kickstart our dream project in Dharavi Koliwada. Here we go. 

We take a moment to reflect on urbz's achievements in 2023 and our objectives for 2024. We started in Mumbai in 2008 where we are busier than ever. Over the years we expanded our activities to Goa, Bogota, Geneva and now Paris. For 2024, we make the good resolution of communicating better and more frequently with our friends and followers!

Latin America and India share a common history of experimentation in slum-upgrading and incremental housing strategies. The ideas of John Turner, who was informed by years of work in Lima, in particular have inspired some of the most progressive schemes and projects in Mumbai and other parts of India.

Catalogue essay for the exhibition on street art presented by the Dominican Republic Embassy in India held between April 5th to May 5th 2023, at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. 

This article narrates the entire participatory process organized for the IFRC Park Project through a series of videos. 

Through the series of participatory events with the IFRC staff members, and its neighbours, urbz drafted a conceptual framework for the park which reflects the most common sentiments among its users. 

The participatory events planned for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Geneva, brought out specific concerns, and focus areas to convert the park into a shared space.

Over six months, several events were planned for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Geneva. The process promotes discussion, brainstorming, ideas and aspirations of the IFRC staff members, and their neighbours for the future park. 

urbz is leading a participatory landscaping process for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) through a series of workshops, walks, talks and exhibition. The end result will be a publicly accessible IFRC Park in the center of Geneva. 

On why we should consider Hospitality as a fundamental principle in urban planning and design

Long dismissed as an urban mess, a weird by-product of Japan’s fantastic rise to economic prominence in the postwar period, Tokyo is gaining renewed attention as a model of urban development and management.

There is more to mess than meets the eye. What seems disorderly at first sight is often order in disguise.

This essay discusses urbz' "The Design Comes As We Build" project which recognizes local builders in homegrown settlements by providing them a space to showcase their design imagination. You can access it here. 

urbz is working with the employees, directorate and assembly of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Red Cross/Red Crescent Museum to imagine the future of their HQ

urbz is helping a cultural squat to formalize it's relationship to the city of Geneva

urbz founders Rahul Srivastava and Matias Echanove reflect on community-driven placemaking in the Indian metropolis.

Read on Azure magazine

The waste of a resource that could help India cope

How a public health emergency prompted a man-made disaster

Based on a multi-year research with the Mobile Lives Forum on the linkages between Mumbai and Konkan villages this essay, first published in the magazine FuturArc, describes an Indian model of urbanization.

Local knowledge may be the best response to natural disaster and bureaucratic inefficiency (The Hindu 17.08.2019)

Neighbourhoods such as Paraisópolis in Sao Paulo, Cazuca in Bogota, or Dharavi in Mumbai are generically referred to as slums, even though they represent a more nuanced reality to their inhabitants. (The Hindu 20.07.19)

How design competitions waste time, money and potential. (The Hindu 23.06.19)

Connecting humans to each other and the environment is the 21st century’s biggest challenge. (The Hindu 25.05.2019)
 

India’s most loved profession needs a reality check (The Hindu 27.04.2019)
 

A Swiss city re-imagines public space and experiments with direct democracy in the process (The Hindu 16.03.2019)

Why Fort Kochi is a lesson that urban planners can integrate into a larger vision for India (The Hindu 02.03.2019)

What the world’s largest city can teach us about local development (The Hindu 16.02.2019)

How we locked ourselves in a box (The Hindu 02.02.19)

All habitats are made up of the sounds of water, as they flow in and out of people, kitchens, bathrooms and sewers (The Hindu 20.01.19)

Can collective intelligence save us from self-destruction? (The Hindu 06.01.2019)

A town which has roots in the Neolithic Age struggles with the ups and downs of modernity. (The Hindu 09.12.2018)

This innovative plan for a new neighbourhood in the town of Versoix in Geneva will be presented at

the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel (S AM).

urbz was involved in the design of a new community building in Dharavi.

Le 11 juin 2018, urbz présente ses travaux sur la forme du futur quartier Lachenal-Dégallier (dit Delta V) aux habitants de Versoix. Un résumé en texte et image.

Stylistic confusion and the great Mumbai mashup tradition. (The Hindu 08.07.2018)

Cities should understand the value of nightlife. (The Hindu 24.06.2018)

Un projet de quartier participatif à Versoix!
A participatory urban planning project in Geneva, Switzerland!

Articles de journaux sur le projet Delta V
News articles on the Delta V project in Geneva

The Rise of Navi Mumbai viewed from the Konkan (The Hindu 29/04/2018)

Groupthink dominates social networks and participatory projects (The Hindu 18/4/18)

How did we lose the thread of context-driven architecture and planning? (The Hindu 31/3/18)

Two powerful archetypes — the village and the city — are resolved in a third one: the slum (The Hindu 18/3/2018)

The more diversified a neighbourhood, in terms of its uses, its composition and its physical expressions, the more efficient it is in terms of economic and cultural dynamism. (The Hindu 4/3/2018)

A global trend may be more fantasy than substance. (The Hindu 17/02/2018)

From Mumbai to Ratnagiri. (The Hindu 3/2/2018)

The overlooked importance of local construction activity. (The Hindu 21/1/2018)

A traditional drink made from wild flowers can become a strong local economy for tribal India (The Hindu 6/1/2018)

An account of urbz Seoul's strategic planning for the island of Ulleung, in the East Sea

Listening to children could help us plan better cities for all (The Hindu 16.12.2017)

Emerging political boundaries can help us rethink other categories. (The Hindu 3/12/2017)

How one of Sao Paulo’s largest favelas became a nice neighbourhood

How renewed attention to urban-rural linkages may reshape the urbanisation debate. (The Hindu 5/11/2017)

One small indomitable neighbourhood holds out against the planners (and changes the plan). (The Hindu 22.10.2017)

Anyone who has commuted on trains during rush hour knows there’s something deeply tolerant about the Mumbaikar (The Hindu 07.10.2017)

Not all is worthy of the bin! Our latest column in The Hindu explores features of Indian urbanism that could inspire cities around the world. (The Hindu 24.09.2017)

Nature holds something far more precious than wood, coal and minerals — something which industrial practices have been destroying in their crude quest for cheap bucks. (The Hindu, 10.09.17)

A 5 day workshop on the remote Ulleung island generates ideas and discussion for an alternative to the traditional fast paced development in South Korea. 

On how nature and economy share a common destiny (The Hindu, 27.08.17) 

Lessons from a century-old plan for Indore by Scottish planner Patrick Geddes (The Hindu, 14.08.17)

In the urbanisation race, India seems desperate to catch up with China. Yet this highly networked country can build a future where cities do not rule supreme.

Recent research in Dhaka show that accommodation and housing are related but distinct needs. (The Hindu, 30.07.17)

The organisation of the G20 reflects its democratic deficit. Not only did the G20 summit turn parts of Hamburg into a virtual fortress, it also made hostages of thousands of peaceful protesters and residents. (The Hindu, 16.07.17)

India’s financial capital does infantilise its own indigenous history. But it also celebrates the past.

Transcript of interview in the Hindustan Times.

Reviewing Sondgo and its functioning residential and work places, thirteen years after the initial plans were drafted. (The Hindu, 19.06.17)

Privatisation, if seen as an exclusive way to regularise settlements, increases the risk of political manipulation and real-estate speculation. (The Hindu, 29.03.17)

How global cities can reinvent themselves by going local. (The Hindu, 03.05.17)

A community struggling with water and identity finds hope in nature and culture. (The Hindu, 11.04.17)

With one foot in the village and the other in the city, migrants have done more to urbanise India than any development scheme (The Hindu, 12.03.17)

This is the first of our fortnightly column in The Hindu Sunday Magazine. This week we explore how the rapid absorption of smart technologies is transforming how business is done in Dharavi and all over India. (The Hindu, 26.02.17)

Producing clothes in high quantity is one thing, washing them all is another. An insight into Mumbai's famous Dhobi Ghat.

Instead of squeezing oneself in chawls (tiny tenements with shared bathrooms), the idea of a one-bedroom hall kitchen (or two or three) appealed to the city’s upwardly mobile population. 

The idea of waste is probably a misconception. In Dharavi virtually everything is reused. The contribution of the recycling industry to the economy is thus big that words like residue and leftover might be trashed themselves. The recycling business provides three major components of economic activities. First, the processing of waste, secondly the supply of raw materials, and third a lot of labour, thus creating livelihood for very many people.

Local children have produced stunning photographs through the Shelter photography activities.

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. 

Fortunately, not all forces brought about by globalization are synonymous with cultural and economic homogenization.

Can Goa show the way for the rest of the country in a transformation from a rural to an urban economy, thereby offering a convincing urban alternative to the mega-cities?

Challenging all misconceptions, the atmosphere of cultural liberalism in the streets of this neighbourhoud is so much more prevalent than that of any American city and most European cities.

Whether in fantasy – like the sci-fi TV series Battlestar Galactica or in real life – ‘aliens’ who are just like ‘us’ and who become threatening because they are a natural part of the landscape 

An event to preset all the processes and output from our mashup workshop in Istanbul.

A common and expected reoccurrence every year, Dharavi has its own strategies to cope with the relentless monsoon

"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 neighborhood”

Discussion 

When coming into a community for the first time, neighborhoods can be akin to lines drawn in invisible ink.

A poetic introduction to the daily movements and sounds of an incredibly diverse neighbourhood, which is being transformed in fast-forward mode.

The Urban Typhoon workshop invites artists, architects, activists and academics from all over the world to ideate with residents, grassroots groups and other users of Khirkee Village, New Delhi.

A little bit of the Dharavi Shelter goes to Switzerland!

Un evento en donde confluyen Arquitectura, Arte y Performance y que tiene como objetivo repensar Chile de cara al tricentenario.

Urbz has developed a new website for PUKAR, a Mumbai-based urban research and action collective.

Participation can happen anywhere, when people feel the need to get involved with their social and physical environment.

Residents of Khirki Extension want the city to recognize their neighborhood and provide services such as paving their main road to facilitate easier transport and prevent flooding.

The Urban Typhoon is reaching everyone, locally and globally !

Khirkee, being an “unauthorized colony”, the authorities are not taking any responsibility regarding the water system.

In order to achieve a creation in the truest sense of the term, the artist must generate new beginnings or devices that will prevent mere reproduction.

Program of the final day of the workshop. 

From tackling various problems from street structure, to water and many different activities let by theaters groups, cookbook specialists and much more, the Khirkee workshop presentation was in full swing. 

Mr. Lodha and members of the Khotachiwadi Welfare and Heritage Trust delivered a letter to the municipal commissioner calling for a heritage law to be enacted.

It is slightly more expensive but healthier as it doesn't contain asbestos.

For reasons more than one, Khotachiwadi is across various Bombay newspapers. 

“While we don’t want to commercialise the locality, we want to create a cultural space for Mumbaikars, who don’t have many neighborhoods such as this”

The unique protest, titled ‘Requim for  Khotachiwadi’, was initiated by the village residents to protest against the breaking down of the 150-year-old structure, which had been sold to builders.

Galería Sessions is a Talk, discussion and debate Space around latinamerican cities.

The Dharavi Shelter reopened on Sunday with a new roof, new windows and back door, and an exhibition of the kids’ photos.

It is slightly more expensive but healthier as it doesn't contain asbestos.

For reasons more than one, Khotachiwadi is across various Bombay newspapers. 

The Dharavi Shelter reopened on Sunday with a new roof, new windows and back door, and an exhibition of the kids’ photos.

The people of Goa are  looking for ways to organize Goa’s growth and future in a manner that does justice to its special cultural and historical distinctiveness.

Micro homes which integrate spaces of work and are well connected to the street economy seem to be far more viable on the longer run at all levels.

Ahmedabad in the race of developing cities of India where inspite large availability of land the property prices are shooting up.

The coming together of speculation-driven real estate development and the idea of “public space” has produced weird urban species.

While Khotachiwadi is well known for its Konkan-Portuguese-style bungalows, its chawls and their residents have often been left out of the picture.

Some interesting collages from the urbz mashup at Festarch in Italy. 

Local contractor Amar Madhukar Nirjankar constructs the most affordable house for one of his clients in Bhandup's homegrown neighbourhood.

Happy New Year!

A Paraisopolis-Dharavi Institute of Urbanology to be held next year, where architects and public servants come and learn from residents. 

The so-called slums of the city are in many ways attempts at increasing affordable housing units through a different construction and financial system.

The connections we evoke between our work in Dharavi, Mumbai and Paraisopolis, Sao Paulo seem to have became a distinct new arc in this multi-city story. 

The urbz office located in a building on M.G. Road, Dharavi, demonstrates how the conviviality of the live-work dialectic actualizes itself in this particular case.

An architectural and design practice that works with local builders and residents to create projects embedded in neighbourhoods’ cultural and economic fabric.

Chiplun’s residents today speak of their connections with Mumbai against this history – which reveals a relationship that is really deep. Chiplun became a gateway for us not just into the Konkan region and its tryst with the railways – but a paradoxical gateway into Mumbai’s heart – back again.

The Konkan connection to Mumbai is only part of a larger universe in which the city’s force of gravity pulls together many other such regions.

urbz Chile presents Citycamp (Only proceed if you can read and understand Spanish) 

What began as a regular jostling and tugging of the idea in a brainstorm soon took off as an imaginative exercise that encouraged creative and personal readings of the concept and the making of its visual expressions. 

What does the mutation of colonial Bombay into global Mumbai mean for architectural forms and public life?

Behind the famed Renaissance hotel by the Powai lake is a small, homegrown village called Paspoli which is home to the workforce of the hotel. 

While Warli art has become as gentrified as an art gallery in a heritage urban precinct, the reality it represents is hugely significant.

The new mosque will be built on the site of a 30 years old mosque nestled in the dense middle section of the neighbourhood.

How local, community owned and managed housing co-operatives, can be a vital step towards improving the neighbourhoods, bringing good quality civic infrastructure and making the city genuinely ’slum-free’.

The tool-house as starting point for designers to learn from local skills, practices and aspirations.

In Rio “pacification” is a code word to describe the invasion of neighborhoods by squads of policemen walking around their guns pulled out, ready to shoot. 

While residents may live here and work elsewhere, this neighbourhood also shows a high level of its own economic activities.

The Handstorm workshop brought together various actors from all around the world to build things that could improve the neighbourhood based on discussions with residents and with the help of local artisans

Tracing the history of the BDD chawls and what its location and typology mean for future development of the city. 

After a handstorm workshop to make a variety of user-oriented objects and with a pilot house on its way, a report about the updates of the Homegrown Cities Initiative

urbz' publication on Dharavi published by Strelka Press

Experiments with EPS to build our new office in Shivaji Nagar. 

The official target of producing millions of quality homes for all can be re-imagined, as one in which the process of construction itself becomes a transformative moment.

Conceptualised by designers in collaboration with users and local artisans, the Handstorm workshop takes objects used in everyday life and gives them a spin to be more functional to the users.

A series of collages juxtapose Dharavi's landscape with other international scenarios to question if Dharavi's context is actually omnipresent. 

Many people involved in urban issues in Mumbai (and elsewhere) have tried their hand at making the definitive proposal for Dharavi. Read more about ours in collaboration with sP+a

People who developed their own engineering skills without the help of any formal education to come up with a floating neighbourhood.

An urban village trying to safeguard its heritage value in the sprawling metropolis.

The biggest growth in urbanisation is not taking place in the metropolis but in small towns that are networked with villages.

Many families live in between two households: one in the village and another in the city. 

What do young Mumbaikars have to say about their family's rootedness to villages on the Konkan?

Dry hard data on circulatory migration in India hides vibrant, lively stories. 

New incremental solutions for a house we built earlier. 

Residents keep intervening and changing their homes in the process of living, and this contributes to conservation

Every kaccha house transforming into a pukka house is a story worth telling – one which is extremely significant to residents and the development of the city at large.

What do spray painted cats on walls, masked motorbikes and a pop-up staircase have in common? The Khotachiwadi Imaginaries workshop.

The future in architecture starts with a good hard look at the world as it is.

Handstorming is the alter-ego of its more cerebral version and geared towards a collective hands-on experience that makes and constructs in real time and space. It was the main mode of operation in our workshop with NYU AD students and produced some impressive and practical tools and objects.

Why is there a Bareilly street in Dharavi when Bareilly is infact in Uttar Pradesh?