Transdisciplinary Design

Living in Paradox

Posted by Sneha Srinivasan on December 2, 2014

Emergence of  an urban city is a widely noticed phenomena. In this post I would like to take a closer look at a system that has emerged within an urban city forming sub-cities or informal cities- one that is often thought of as an unfortunate side effect or a by product of urbanization – the slum.

When I think of Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay; it was an unintended city . Originally a set of seven islands, it was given by the Portuguese to the British in the form of ‘dowry’ during the union of Catherine Braganza to King Charles I. The city was founded and established as a city of trade and the rail systems were built for internal communication. This led to the formation of infrastructure along these railway lines and thus the city grew. The city expanded and developed not on the basis of planning but on aspirations and dreams. A utopian vision of how this land was capable of materializing every man’s dreams; people were drawn to this no-mans land where everything was possible.

This change began in the 1930’s. ‘Chawls’ or communal housing with common toilets were constructed for immigrant workers and soon, self organized bottom up systems or squatter housing called ‘zopadpattis’ could be seen evolving in different parts of the city. By the 1980’s, you start to see that the landscape has transformed.  If you look at the aerial view of Mumbai, you will see this emergence- like the description of a slime-mold in the forests; emergence of these slums creep into all the interstitial spaces that sort of strings into the vision of Mumbai being the ‘Maximum City’. The slums sprawled around the city as a growing organism that established its own culture or counter culture with no intention of creating one. It grew in ways that were unimaginable and in living conditions and spaces that were considered inhabitable.

I often think, ‘ why would you want to leave your brick house with a backyard and trees in your village and settle in for squatter settlements of 10square m in the city?’  And then I think of my grandfather who told me of the story of him leaving his village in the South of India and moving to Bombay in 1940, with slippers on his feet(which was a luxury during those times) and a hundred rupees in his pocket.  So what draws people to this city? Writer Suketu Mehta opines, “that people here are like the ant colonies who would easily sacrifice their pleasures for the greater good and progress of their families/future generations.” Different visions of the city of it being a financial capital, the place of Bollywood or the ‘New Shanghai’ draws people into this city even today.

The formation of slums may seem dispersed and localized but their behaviour has great influence on the scale of the ‘formal’ city and thus globally. There lies invisible strings that tie them to the functioning of the formal city. About 60 % of Mumbai’s population lives in slums in less than 10% of the total land area of the city. Factory workers, office employees, domestic help all live in these settlements. Many small scale industries are attached to these settlements. Politically, they also form the strongest vote banks during the elections.

So what’s unique about these spaces? To the outsider, they may be an eye-sore but to an insider they are functional communities complete with social hierarchies and economic structures. The question is how many things can happen in a space?– how can we use and re-use the space? and how many things can happen in a place at the same time? Urban researcher, Rahul Mehrotra notes that  ,”it’s not a place for  the poor, but a temporal articulation and occupation of space which not only creates a richer sensibility of spatial occupation but also suggests how spatial limits are expanded to include formerly unimaginable uses in dense urban conditions.”

In the case of ‘Dharavi’ ( shown in the movie Slumdog Millionaire): it is considered to be Asia’s largest slum. Families have been living there for generations. Several organizations and architects have gone in to fix this with rehabilitation housing , to improve the living conditions of these spaces. But everything failed. What people soon realized is that these slums had formed such a complex adaptive system that it was impossible to replicate this adaptability in the modern housing provided by the government. But there is a parallel narrative; Dharavi is also the only centre for plastic recycling and leather tanning in Mumbai.It also holds a huge potters colony.  All this has positioned Dharavi on a global stage, which in turn has led to the evolution of another fascinating industry- slum tourism.

So what is it right approach to these spaces? Should they be cleared out for paving way for ‘modern’ housing blocks or should we learn from the ingeniousness and the creativity of the people living here? And who are we, – just the luckier ones whose grandparents’ sacrifice paid off?

————

Bibliography:

1. Steven Johnson, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants,Brains,Cities and Software (New York: Scribner, 2001).

2.Neelima Risbud, “The Case of Mumbai, India” (School of Planning and Architecture,New Delhi), http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dpu-projects/Global_Report/pdfs/Mumbai.pdf.

3.In the Life of Cities: Parallel Narratives of the Urban/MUMBAI, Last modified on 1 April 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGa_ttzwCGQ.

4.  Nita, February 4 2009 ,The Dharavi Spirit, http://nitawriter.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/the-dharavi-spirit/