Despite its plastic and tin structures and lack of infrastructure (residential infrastructure (roads, housing with individual toilets, public conveniences, etc.), Dharavi is a unique, vibrant, and thriving ‘cottage’ industry complex, the only one of its kind in the world. It is in fact the kind of self-sufficient, self-sustaining ‘village’ community.
Dharavi pulsates with intense economic activity. Its population has achieved a unique informal “self-help” urban development over the years without any external aid. It is a humming economic engine. The residents, though bereft of housing amenities, have been able to lift themselves out of poverty by establishing thousands of successful businesses. A study by Centre for Environmental Planning & Technology indicates that Dharavi currently has close to 5,000 (informally 15,000 one room businesses) industrial units, producing textiles, pottery and leather, and performing services like recycling, printing, and steel fabrication.
A unique characteristic of Dharavi is its very close work-place relationship. Productive activity takes place in nearly every home. As a result, Dharavi’s economic activity is decentralized, human scale, home-based, low-tech and labour-intensive. This has created an organic and incrementally developing urban form that is pedestrianized, community-centric, and network-based, with mixed use, high density low-rise street-scapes. [This is a model many planners have been trying to recreate in cities across the world. A simplistic re-zoning and segregating of these activities - common in the United States - would certainly hurt this very unique urban form].
In fact it is not a residential slum, but a unique self-contained township (in the sense of close work-place relationship so eulogized since the days of Patrick Geddes, but which has never been achieved in any of the new towns). Because of all these community-based successes, Dharavi needs to be replicated (albeit with adequate physical infrastructure). Instead, the state government wants to force the relocation of Dharavi’s population into tiny cubby hole apartments in high rise towers so that the vacated land can be commercially exploited by developers through the Dharavi Redevelopment Plan.
Any plan for Dharavi must explicitly take into consideration the work-place relationship developed over the years so that it does not destroy the existing intricate urban structure that has sustained the local economy. This plan must acknowledge existing economic activities and their spatial organization, and not destroy it in the process of redevelopment.
Case studies all over the world have documented the inappropriateness of high-rise resettlement projects in poor areas. The social and economic networks which the poor rely on for subsistence can hardly be sustained in high-rise structures. These high rise projects are not appropriate for home-based economic activities, which play a major role in Dharavi.
The least that can be done in this redevelopment plan is to refurbish the work places of the existing industries within the residential areas and remodel this project by providing low-rise high-density row housing for existing families engaged in home based occupations. This way, each house will have a ground floor and an additional story , as well as a terrace and a courtyard which can be used for these home-based business activities.
Based on article by Prakash M. Apte.
No comments:
Post a Comment