Dharavi’s Public Space: The Construction Site

The view of Dharavi as a dreadful slum in Mumbai has been a challenge for government planners, who were charged with designing for other people’s lives without any knowledge of their necessities and their quality of living. The process of designing housing under this model involved construction, which set as a testing point, Dharavi’s public space. Such construction had clear starting and ending points. However, the true nature of Dharavi’s construction on its public space goes far beyond these practices: The construction site is itself the end result; the stage upon which the slum was gradually transforming its purpose and form, driven by foreigners, NonGovernmental Organizations (NGOs), and its residents. The present paper explores Dharavi’s public space as a construction site from both the perspective of government officials and from the perspective of a particular NGO in Mumbai, the team of ‘URBZ’. As the government views it, this site embodies the slum-free vision that satisfies a desire for change: a vision that is encapsulated within the concrete walls of one more building. On the other hand, the slightest familiarity of the team of URBZ with Dharavi’s streets and alleys, its residents, and their activities gives an entirely different picture, in which the public space emerges as a huge construction site of hopes and possibilities. Construction, in this sense, is a work in progress originating not only from residents but also from NGOs. The key question here is how this work could serve as a means of successfully bringing about positive change in a variety of domains. The conclusions of this paper, thus, confirm the significant role of the local NGOs in representing powerful mechanisms for motivating residential participation in positive change, and thus, the key contribution lies in uncovering the creative and innovative possibilities grounded in various experiences on the public space of a slum.