Dharavi Slum Redevelopment

As we are all probably aware, Mumbai contains a huge amount of ‘slums.’  As their existence become more known to the world, the Indian government became more under pressure to do something about it.  This excerpt is from an article from 2006, and the 2010 timeline is no doubt in responses to India hosting the 2010 Commonwealth Games.  This is the status from 3 years ago, what’s been happening since then? I have no idea.  Will find, stay tuned. 

Salient features of Dharavi Slum Redevelopment Project:

The five year Dharavi Redevelopment Project worth Rs 8,600 crores (1 crore = 10,000,000) was drawn up on February 4, 2004 in view of the dense combination of commercial and residential structures.

The Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) had come up with a Rs 6,380 crore plan for redeveloping Dharavi slums by 2010.

The center, state and HUDCO are to jointly finance the plan. Global tenders to be floated and project to be implemented by private builders.

Original slumdwellers living prior to January 1, 1995 to be relocated in newly built buildings with 225 sq ft free tenement.

Plan envisages plush residential and commercial complexes, hospitals, schools and colleges.

15 percent of the land is to be reserved for open green spaces and playgrounds.

Private builders to get 4 FSI as incentive for commercial exploitation of remaining land.

Spread over 174 hectares of land Dharavi billed as Asia’s largest slum connects the Island city with suburban Mumbai.

Connects East-West Express Highways also Western, Eastern and Harbour lines of the suburban railway network.

Close to 6 lakh people and 71,000 families live in the slum.

Houses about 5,000 small scale units producing intermediary goods, houses leather tanneries. SSI units here generate Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000 crore turnover annually.

Former PM AB Vajpayee had granted Rs 500 crores for developing infrastructure like roads, drainage systems by the BMC.

Research Questions Ed#1

1.  What are reasonable predictions of % of rural / urban population mixes in 10, 20, 40 years?

2.  What affect will it have on housing, food supply and services (energy, water, waste)?

3.  Would a certain city be in the ‘best’ position to take on large amounts of people?  Is there a ‘cut-off’ for population?

4.  How will the housing form change to adapt to larger amounts of people requiring homes?  Will a new form emerge?

5.  Will new methods of development arise in order to build faster / safer?

6.  How have architects / planners in history dealt with this issue? What can we learn from them?

These will no doubt change as I start to research more.  Research questions are always difficult for me to come up with.  I think I basically want these to reflect my interest in figuring out how large cities will get in the future (population wise, not size wise, I think we can ALL concur that larger cities aren’t the answer to our problems), how they will have to adapt to deal with more people, and the change in urban form that will result.  I want to address practical issues like HOW they will get built, but we’ll see if that happens.  It might be difficult to speculate on this.  Although, co-ops might be the wave of the future.  I wonder if I should also think about migrating populations, or a mobile population.  Dubai might be an extreme example of how new city growth is absurd. 

Random Thoughts #3

In order to get past this feeling of being lost, I think I’ll play a little game with myself.  The last workshop we did in Turkey I really, really enjoyed myself.  We were given a neighbourhood in Istanbul, called Yedikule, given the parameters that made it a not so great neighbourhood (which was its isolation from the city and the waterfront, its predominantly residential use, no local economy) and were told to make it ‘better.’  Better is of course pretty subjective.  Once analyzing the site, we went for 1) connecting it to the water 2) creating a variety of uses 3) creating a local destination 4) making it awesome.

So, here’s the “game” - what made me LOVE this project?

First, I think I just love cities.  I will always be biased towards them.  They have so many more people, so many more things to see, and I think its an environment that needs to be improvement in most cases, and an environment in which more people will be living in the future.  70% of people will live in urban cities in 2050.  I wonder what will happen to cities with such an influx of people.  How are current cities will take said people, I’m sure there won’t be ‘new’ cities built to house them, and what kinds of living situations people will have to adapt to in order to live?  ««topic? - too broad for sure. I’m sure the answer is too simple - slums.  They expand quickly, they have the potential to house a lot of people very quickly with very little resources - however they have a multitude of problems that associate with them.  The reality is our way of life - the rural environment supporting our large, ever expanding cities - will disappear.  Probably not North America any time soon, but surely Asian and African cities will completely change.  All those activities supported by a large rural community will probably have to be accommodated in cities….hence: urban agriculture. I think it might be interesting to be speculative about how a city will look, how people will live, what it will mean to live in a city. »>

Secondly, I really enjoy uncoding an existing urban fabric.  When we were walking the streets of Yedikule, the path to the water front, and the potential of what already existed became very apparent.  Looking at an aerial of the area it was also clear.  I think most neighbourhoods, when you experience them and then look at it in plan a sort of ‘hierarchy’ appears.  Like my neighbourhood (I live in Strathearn, in Edmonton, AB), we basically live in an island between 3 major barriers - Connor’s Road (which only lasts for a few kms) to the west, 85 street to the east and then the North Saskatchewan River Valley to the south.  Inside our neighbourhood is a hiearchy, starting with 95 avenue - our busiest road.  It has commercial strips (small, but they do exist), cultural buildings (many many churches), education facilities, higher density housing (low rise apartments) and public transit service - all characteristics of a busier streets.  Behind that street, north and south, lies the single-family dwellings.  Obvious hierarchy for a small neighbourhood.  I had never really thought about it before, but its something easy to see if you just start to decode the basic elements that exist and comparing them to more obvious high density places.  «<No idea how this could be turned into anything.»»

In the end we created a long pathway connecting the neighbourhood to the waterfront - we developed a number of nodes where people would congregate and travel to, and a canopy element that would give the strip identity.  ««Identity?  In our ever global / transnational / nomadic world how can new society obtain an identity?  Might be interesting…»>

Okay, THE END.  I think I’m still fascinated by the idea that soon most, if not all, people on the planet will live in cities.  This will change them drastically.  It might be neat to look for a city (or cities) that have huge influxes of people.  How do they deal with the issue?  Or do they even - do they ignore the fact that people live in squalor in order to gain what can only economically with such a huge / cheap workforce? I think I should continue with this theme (basically what I was doing before), think about it more, fish out a real and workable topic.