Rahul Srivastava is a co-founder of urbz and The Institute of Urbanology. He studied social and urban anthropology in Mumbai, Delhi and Cambridge (UK). His previous publications include an ethnography of urbanized nomads around Mumbai, a novel published by Puffin, (Penguin, India) and 'The Slum Outside', a commentary on Dharavi, co-written with Matias Echanove and published by Strelka Press. He continues to write extensively on urban issues with Matias, with their next major publication signed up with Verso, London. He brings his background in anthropology and visual ethnography to urbanology, the practice that energises much of urbz's work in Mumbai and elsewhere.
Articles
The Making of the Koli Jamat Community Hall
urbz was involved in the design of a new community building in Dharavi.
The Mumbai Ensemble
Stylistic confusion and the great Mumbai mashup tradition. (The Hindu 08.07.2018)
Delta V : Introduction
Un projet de quartier participatif à Versoix!
A participatory urban planning project in Geneva, Switzerland!
The limit of collective intelligence
Groupthink dominates social networks and participatory projects (The Hindu 18/4/18)
Weaving an urban fabric
How did we lose the thread of context-driven architecture and planning? (The Hindu 31/3/18)
Where Gandhi meets Ambedkar
Two powerful archetypes — the village and the city — are resolved in a third one: the slum (The Hindu 18/3/2018)
The kind of data we mine will determine the kind of city we live in
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)
Can urban villages ever be planned?
A global trend may be more fantasy than substance. (The Hindu 17/02/2018)