How a public health emergency prompted a man-made disaster

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

Read on Azure magazine

The Handstorm workshop in Dharavi, with the Engineers for Social Impact from NYU, Abu Dhabi took place for the second time this year in October, 2025. We walked through the lanes of Dharavi Koliwada, observing Water in the diverse and unexpected paths that it took to and from people’s homes. Students diligently followed the water, listening carefully to the stories it had to tell.

Students from SAL worked with urbz and Dharavi residents to understand the connections and interconnections that make up the neighbourhood and its relationship the city.

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’.

Street vendors in Dharavi

Our exhibition Koliwada Charcha was in the news (Asian Age)

Inviting contractors from all over Mumbai to collaborate on designs for homes in Dharavi with residents, architects, and artisans.

In a global context, populations marginalized because of race, class, gender, creed, etc. are those most incessantly stripped of this right to design the city in their own image within formalized constraints. In this way, the “informal” urban process of self-construction is inherently a product of this same marginality that excludes these groups from “formalized” city-making.