Indian Urbanology

Neon sign, Bangalore

Being in Bangalore has served as a reminder that, as a rule, Western backpackers in Asia tend to avoid cities as much as possible. It's understandable, but kind of a shame nonetheless - especially, as I noted before, if you're genuinely looking for the "real" version of wherever you happen to be.

At any rate, I haven't posted about it yet, but when we were in Mumbai, Rachel and I had the opportunity to meet up for drinks and dinner with some wonderful people who are doing cutting-edge work on thinking through urban planning in India. Among their many projects, Rahul Srivastava and Matias Echanove run the websites Urbanology.org and Airoots.org, which feature thoughtful and incisive analysis of urban design and community issues in a number of global cities including New York, but especially Mumbai. They've also constructed a wiki site for residents and allies of of residents in Dharavi, a very well-known slum in the heart of Bombay.

Dharavi has been attracting some attention lately as one of the settings for the film Slumdog Millionaire, but it has also been in the news because its continued existence has been in doubt, thanks to the proposed Dharavi Redevelopment Project. National Geographic recently featured a major article explaining Dharavi and the proposals for its redesign. It's a complicated issue in many respects - residents are in sore need of improved infrastructure and service delivery, yet at the same time many are not eager to leave behind a community that is highly functional in its own fashion.

Land in Mumbai is extraordinarily valuable - the city competes with Hong Kong and Singapore in terms of real estate costs, and it suffers from a serious housing shortage. Dharavi, moreover, is strategically located in the middle of city, very near the high-end commercial and residential district of Banda. The Maharashtra government and private developers have proposed to completely redevelop the area, moving long-term (but not newer) residents into apartment towers. The proposal has changed somewhat in response to criticism, and now may be off the table entirely on account of the financial crisis, but interest in the future of Dharavi will continue.

Rahul and Matias have written about the complexities of how a place like Dharavi is understood, in the course of explaining their own approach to the community as a "user-generated city":

The global media loves to work with the simplistic and highly problematic label of “slum”. City reporters, activists and non-governmental organizations also find the short-cut concept useful. Dharavi has often been pictured by the city’s media as a wasteland with barely standing temporary structures; an immense junkyard crowded with undernourished people hopelessly disconnected from the rest of the world, surviving on charity and pulling the whole city’s economy backward.

It is only recently, and in conjunction with informed local and global opinions that an alternative picture of Dharavi has begun to circulate. Where it appears as a developed urban area composed of distinct neighbourhoods, as a space where artisanship thrives, where commerce and business are the main defining moments of its landscape. Far from being depressed and isolated, the economy of Dharavi appears to be deep-rooted in the city and networked globally, with local goods being exported as far as Italy and Sweden.

Skepticism about the official DRP does not mean rejection of efforts to reimagine Dharavi - but it does mean emphasing continuity where appropriate, preserving that which should be preserved. For instance, in writing about the Dharavi streetscape, Rahul and Matias argue that rather than wiping the slate clean and imposing a new grid, planners should carefully take note of "a rich legacy of user-generated space patterns that are organically connected to the way people live and earn livelihoods."

These patterns are based on the principles of incremental development. In other words, they have evolved over time, over generations and through the absorption of new migration inflows, constant movement within and between neighbourhoods and through continuous class mobility.

It is our contention that these patterns of incremental development are embodied within the streetscapes of such localities. It is in the street that the genetic code of a habitat gets imprinted. They emerge as walking paths connecting markets, homes and nodes of transport hubs. As they evolve, accommodating cars and other forms of local transport, street bazaars, spaces for youngsters to hang-out, for children to play, for neighbours to exchange news and gossip, for people to shop and set-up shop, they follow the needs of the residents very directly. The signature of a neighbourhood is often a streetscape.

Ideally, slum redevelopment schemes should build upon the incremental logic that most slum histories embody. And a pragmatic way to do so would be by recognizing the street layout that has evolved within such habitats.

In the most simplistic analysis, you might say that this is Jane Jacobs applied to slum redevelopment in a modern Indian metropolis. In the larger sense, the analysis provides a snapshot of the complexities confronting those who approach urban planning issues with any degree of concern for what local residents think.

At any rate, as I said - we met Matias and Rahul and a few of their colleagues for a very convivial evening, giving us a chance to talk about Dharavi, Mumbai's Rent Law (worthy of a lengthy discussion in its own right), New York, and urban politics and design in general. We were very lucky to have the opportunity and it was generous of them to meet up with us, a couple of strangers fresh off the plane in a city they know very well.

Here in Bangalore we had another great conversation about urban India - which I'll talk about in another post.