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Embedding as Practice: Lessons from Dharavi

Oct 09 2025

Samidha

Patil

Kareena

Kochery

Embedding as Practice: Lessons from Dharavi

Oct 09 2025

Samidha

Patil

Kareena

Kochery

Instagram

Update on Solar Street Light Project

The solar street lighting for Dharavi Koliwada is an incremental civic infrastructure project. After designing and installing bespoke streetlights, we are now connecting the lights to solar energy.

Making this connection involved months of surveying several terraces in the neighbourhood to find the one with the best combination of space, height and orientation for the solar panels. Next came a round of discussions with the residents and the Dharavi Koli Jamat to negotiate a fair exchange for the use of their terrace. It was decided to produce extra solar energy to subsidise residents’ electricity bills.

The installation of the panels is underway, and the lights will be solar-powered in a matter of
weeks!

Photos:

1. Streetlights in action.

2. Surveying locations with the highest potential to generate solar energy

3. Discussions between Chandrakant Koli, who has a solar installation business, and the
resident, whose terrace was found to be most suitable.

4. The terrace is used to dry fish. The placement of solar panels was carefully planned to accommodate fish drying on the terrace. Drying of fish is an important seasonal activity and ensures that seafood is part of the diet even when outside of the fishing season.

5,6. Inauguration of the installation project
Solar panels being transported and carefully hoisted up to the terrace, each panel
weighs about 30 kgs!

7. Dutta Koli, a local fabricator, puts up the supporting framework for the panels.

8. The team, including friends and neighbours help with the installation

9. Chandrakant Koli and Santosh Salgaonkar of Solar Power Systems and Solutions, the team responsible for execution of the project.

Updates on the Garden of Festivities, Tree Planting Process!

Kolis have been vanguards of climate change and the environmental crisis, constantly responding and adapting to an urbanising landscape in ways that allow them to continue fishing, even in the most critical contexts.

The Kolis of Dharavi are now turning a landfill along the Mithi River into a garden for Dharavi Koliwada. Defending their commons is becoming increasingly difficult, and transforming one that is a landfill demonstrates an extraordinary commitment to place. A commitment nurtured by a shared history and identity that is deeply intertwined with the Mithi Estuary.

For the past two years, we have been working alongside the Kolis of Dharavi to attend to and care for this neglected urban landscape. This week the first trees have been carefully planted - eight young coconut palms that will be part of a coconut orchard. The coconut is integral to coastal communities. On the festival of Naralli Purnima, the Kolis offer coconuts to the waters as a symbol of reciprocity with the environment.

Photo 1,2 - The young palms are carried to the site

Photo 3 - Salt is mixed into the red soil as a source of chlorine

Photo 4, 5- Bricks are crushed as a sub-base before adding the soil.

Photo 6, 7 - The young palm is firmly planted

Photo 8 - Shared vision of the Coconut Orchard

Photo 9 - Offering coconuts to the Mithi Estuary on Naralli Purnima

#gardenoffestivities #landscape #gardenbytheriver #mithi #urbanlandscape #koli #kolicommunity #architecture #urbandesign

Workshop Guadua y Periferia en Siloe. Este taller se enfocó en la consolidación de la segunda etapa de Teatro Verde de la corporación @lomeritos.siloe organización del Siloe que promueve el arte y la cultura en el territorio. Este proceso a contado con la coordinación de @nataliadulceytaller77 y el apoyo de @casagrafo y @urbznet. Gracias a todos los participantes por apoyar la consolidación de este espacio comunitario.

We are thrilled to announce the launch of “The Homegrown City” by Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava, founders of urbz.

Slums, informal settlements, and other unplanned habitats are seen as the antithesis of the metropolis. The book explores how neighbourhoods and their inhabitants have been unfairly dismissed when they should, in fact, be understood as partners in the story of cities and urban development.

The book is being published by Verso Books, London and will be available from 13th January, 2026. You can click the link in our bio to pre-order your copy now!

#thehomegrowncity #urbznet #dharavi #radicalurbanism #design #architecture