Great article by Sonia Faleiro in the New York Times India Ink blog, about the work Pankaj Gupta does in Shivaji Nagar, Deonar, Mumbai.

Like Mumbai, the city where he lives, Pankaj Gupta’s success has been incremental.

Mr. Gupta started working at the age of 13, making paper bags out of old newspapers that he’d sell from house to house in his hometown of Saadpur in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. He graduated to running a tea stall before leaving for Mumbai at the age of 14. He wanted to lift himself out of poverty.

Mr. Gupta is now a mustached 30-year-old with a hint of a belly. He dresses modestly considering that he’s a successful building contractor, and owns three houses and two shops.

I heard about him shortly after I arrived in Mumbai from San Francisco for a research project. I‘d wanted to meet migrants who’d found success in the city. I was particularly interested in those who recognized the role the city had played in their success and were, in different ways, repaying the city by changing it.

Rahul Srivastava, a co-founder of URBZ, an organization that researches the development of cities around the world, told me Mr. Gupta is positively changing the lives of families that live in Shivaji Nagar, a vast suburban neighborhood best known for its proximity to a government slaughterhouse.

In less than four years, Mr. Gupta has built more than 200 houses and repaired countless others.

Mumbai is home to an estimated 18 million people. Nearly every vacant piece of land from the pavements to the traffic islands is, at night, occupied by sleeping bodies. Before moving to Shivaji Nagar, many of the people who now live there suffered a similarly precarious life. They had occupied government land that was later claimed for construction projects such as railway tracks. In exchange for moving, each family was given access to a 10-foot by 15-foot plot in Shivaji Nagar.

Some resettlement colonies never become pleasant places. But Shivaji Nagar bustles with life and potential. Small businesses sell everything from shoes to motor parts. Those that cannot own a business, work for others, often at the slaughterhouse. One of Mr. Gupta’s clients belongs to a caste that has traditionally grazed animals for a living. The man offloads hundreds of goats from trucks and herds them toward the slaughterhouse for 150 rupees (about $3) a day. Doing this over many years, he has saved 150,000 rupees. Of the many contractors in Shivaji Nagar, it was Mr. Gupta he entrusted with building what he knows will be his most precious possession: his first home.

The impact of Mr Gupta’s life experience is clear in his work.

After moving to Mumbai, he started working for his uncle, a shopkeeper. A couple of years later, he was forced to leave following a trivial argument. He was 16, and the only job he could find was carrying bricks at a construction site. “There’s nothing my workmen do that I haven’t done,” he says. “So I know the limitations, but also the possibilities of human labor.”

Those experiences lead him to become a contractor – of a particular sort.

Pankaj with workers at one of his sites in Shivaji Nagar.

In Shivaji Nagar, neither lot size nor budget merits an architect. Design is left largely to the ingenuity of the contractor.

Unusually for Mumbai, Mr. Gupta favors uniformity. He’s currently building three adjoining houses and has managed to persuade their owners to make them aesthetically similar. He buys locally produced material, and hires local workers. He says, “They understand the client’s needs, because their needs are the same.” Since he was keen to use new material in his work, URBZ introduced him to a provider of ready-mix concrete. Mr. Gupta is now one of a handful of contractors in Shivaji Nagar to use it.

Most importantly, because his clients cannot afford to live elsewhere for too long, he has to work swiftly. On average, Mr. Gupta builds a house in just two months.

He says falling out with his uncle influenced how he works. “If you want to work,” he says, “Build, don’t break relationships.” When a mosque was built locally and the contract went to someone else, Mr. Gupta still asked to provide some of the material. He did this at no profit. “I’m a Hindu,” he says, “but I wanted my hand in that mosque, because it is place of God.” After a pause he adds: “And consider how many people enter a mosque every day. If 10 people every day see my work, at least one will think of me when he needs something made.”

But the most important way Mr. Gupta is changing Shivaji Nagar is by working ethically.

Shivaji Nagar is constantly being improved upon. As incomes rise, “kachcha” houses, which are made of mud, are converted into “pucca” houses, those made of stone or brick, and “pucca” houses upgraded with fresh paintwork and tiled floors. Demand for construction is huge. Although competition is brisk and the contractors many, Mr. Gupta is never short of work because his clients recommend him to their friends and family.

In Mumbai, many contractors have been known to leave work unfinished or, as hidden expenses emerge, to raise prices as they go along. Not so Mr. Gupta.

Matias Sendoa Echanove, another co-founder of URBZ, describes Mr. Gupta’s work as “exemplary.” He is a man who, when he’s paid to build a house, does just that.

That may not seem like much — to do the job one is paid for — but for the residents of Shivaji Nagar it means the world.

And this is how the boy who was built by the city of Mumbai, is now a man helping to build it.

Sonia Faleiro’s “Beautiful Thing” is a Sunday Times, Guardian, Observer and Economist Book of the Year. She’ll be speaking at the Goa Arts and Literary Festival on Dec. 19 and 21.

Mumbai Contra-CT: 
Techniques and Tactics of Local Affordable Housing Production

@ Sir JJ College of Architecture, Mumbai

SEMINAR & FIELDWORK Dec 5th 2011  Jan 22nd 2012
EXHIBITION & WORKSHOP Jan 23rd, 24th, 25th, 2012
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION March 30th – 31st 2012

Affordable housing is seen as both, a high social priority by the government and NGOs as well as an unprecedented financial opportunity by developers. The result is the large-scale production of low-cost housing blocks which quickly turn into vertical slums. In the meanwhile, local contractors and end-users are building far more numerous housing units of better quality at lower prices in Mumbai’s many unplanned settlements. Often dismissed as slums, locally developed neighbourhoods produce a powerful counter-narrative to the mass production of low-cost housing. This program brings together architects, engineers, contractors and end-users to explore this dynamic sector and innovate in the field of affordable housing.

Curated by URBZ/Urbanology
Faculty: Mustansir Dalvi, Yashwant Pitkar, Ayaz Rajgara, Ashley Fiahlo Supriyo Bhattacharya, Jal Arya, Matias Echanove, Rahul Srivastava, Poonam Mulchandani.
+ Guest Experts TBA

For more info, contact us.

Last week, we followed the trail of incremental development as hard-wired into BV Doshi’s little publicized Aranya project, which was started in the early 1980s in the city of Indore (Madhya Pradesh, India). The Indore Development Authority had commissioned a low-cost housing initiative for economically weaker sections of the city. This “site and services” project was supported by the World Bank, which in those days believed that incremental development and users’ involvement was key to providing shelter to the economically weaker sections of society. Also involved in the study that lead to Doshi’s plan was the very interesting Minimal Cost Housing Group at McGill University. Doshi’s Vastu Shilpa Foundation has published studies that lead to the project along with Aranya’s master plans. These are very important documents for people in the field of affordable housing, as they show an alternative path to urban development.

On the left, one of the 60 model houses designed by Doshi in Aranya. On the right a plot in construction. Construction is ongoing in Aranya propelled as everywhere else in India by the housing market boom.

Locally known as sector 78, the Aranya project has yielded a rich harvest of affordable housing in habitats that continue to evolve and grow thirty years after its launch. Aranya features some really attractive parts shaped by individual footprints of homes that people invested with their savings and passion. These footprints are framed by the street layouts and boundaries originally conceived by Doshi. What families have done individually in them is quite impressive. A small 32 x 12 square foot base has evolved into an impressive 900 square feet house that reaches into the third floor. The economically poorer parts reveal layers of economic activities all along the narrow streets.

Small plot, big house. This house is owned by retired civil servant who finds that Aranya is one of the best place to live in Indore. He likes the calm and local scale of the neighbourhood.

Many of Doshi’s initial intentions and ingenious innovations have not survived the implementation of the project, yet Aranya has become a lively neighbourhood, providing an attractive environment to its residents, mixing housing with economic activities. The population initially targeted by the project was a rather tightly audited, flat and abstract notion of the poor and needy. They were in many ways already pushed aside by the government agencies coordinating the project from its very inception and they participated intensely in speculating on the plots. Subsequently, many plots ended-up in the hands of people different than those they were initially intended for, but still, the ease with which Aranya mixes typologies and demographics is striking.

Interestingly, the development was to be cross subsidized by the sale of larger plots, many of which were bought by investors who had no intention of building anything on them, seeing them instead as long-term speculative investments. The town’s center was also left undeveloped as money ran short. Keeping these spaces empty has dragged down the development of the entire neighbourhood. In contrast smaller plots have been very intensively built on. A part of the neighbourhood where Doshi has built model houses has largely been taken over by government servants, who have often entirely rebuilt the original houses. Other parts have developed slowly over time, at the pace at which their owners could save and reinvest. Today, the low income population of Aranya is a minority, partly because they have been short-changed in the earlier phase when the plots were being attributed and partly because many have sold out since they were allocated the plot through a lottery process.

Commercial streets and activities spontaneously emerged in parts of Aranya that were originally intended to be residential.

Aranya is in many ways an affirmation of the ideals of incremental growth in the area of urban development. It is an encouragement to all those involved in the business of affordable housing to work with the possibilities of self-development and infrastructural support rather than the conventions of state (or private sector provided) mass housing projects. We are now going to do a post-occupancy survey of Aranya together with the Vastu Shilpa Foundation. We hope that this will help us understand better the challenges and potential of incremental development schemes.

More photos here.

Our  time spent in Mumbai  is already over… it went so fast! Here is some of the output.

We worked on the URBZ building, measured each floor and drew the entire structure. We have to thank Rahul, Matias, Himanshu, Venkatesh, Bhau who have helped us during these  three weeks.

We produced a simple architectural board to show the initial stages of our work. We have given a print of it to each family living and working in the building and one will be kept in the URBZ Office.

On  Saturday 9th October, we had the chance to present our study in Dharavi in front of 50 architects from White Arkitekter AB who were visiting from Sweden. There was also a great exhibition of pictures taken by children from New Transit Camp (where the URBZ office is located).

On the board we have tried to show, in a very simple way, how the building is structured:

-              Ground floor: two shops and a flat on two levels

-              Second floor: three flats

-              Third floor: one flat and the URBZ office

16 people live here (plus someone who sometimes sleeps in the URBZ Office).

Initially, it was difficult to get people’s trust and visit their homes. Little by little we got to know each other and we started understanding the way people live here. Architecturally, each space is pretty small (8 to 18 m2) and the facilities are basic.

This building is on the main road in the New Transit Camp neighborhood, Mahatma Gandhi Road. This road is intersected by  small lanes. This is the only part of Dharavi which has a gridded layout, since it was once a planned transit camp. The lanes are 1 to 3 meters wide on the ground. The upper floors of the buildings often touch each other as they eat up every available space. Consequently, the lanes often lack  light and ventilation.

The water is usually stored in tanks (from 250 to 500 liters) that people keep over the bathroom space. In the ground floor apartment  the tank is positioned in the small lane next to the house. In that same lane there is a pump, which is hand-operated by the owner once a day for one hour, early in the morning. It fills up the tanks in each flat. Water is included in the rent.

People use this water for drinking, washing, cleaning and cooking. All toilets  are located on the right-hand side of the building in order to get access to the pipes which bring fresh water and evacuate used water.

Water comes from municipal pipes, which run on the side of the streets. One of the main issue in Mumbai (not only in Dharavi!) is that these pipes often run next to the sewer, which is an obvious concern about contamination.

Water tank in the URBZ office (the toilets were built in one day).

Water pump.

Each house has electricity and each blocks on the lane has an electricity meter to which all the cables are connected. This comes from the New Transit Camp initial infrastructure, which was provided along with one story high houses). These were first converted into permanent living spaces and then developed into working spaces. The neighbourhood now has buildings up to four stories high.

We have also discovered that TV cables and Internet connections (when they exist) are not just flying loose in the intricate web of cables stretching from building to building. They all end up in a control room located on 90 Feet Road. All the cables converge to the top floor of a tower building where they are controlled.

After spending time talking to people and trying to understand the way they live (thanks to our interpreter and friend Venkatesh), we have discovered a complex set of relations that gives lives over here some qualitative aspect that are usually difficult to find in such a big city.

Each person knows their neighbor well, the doors are always open when someone is inside, the outside space is a natural extension of the “private space”, the small lanes and the street are public spaces in which relationship are created, maintained and consolidated over time. A village/community lives in each of these buildings!

Would all this be possible in the 20-25 story building proposed by the Dharavi Redevelopment Project?

People here are asking for innovative solutions that can respond to their basic needs : cheap and good construction materials, minimum living spaces, privacy and spaces that allow relationships to continue to be strengthened.

Are we, trained architects able to design responses to these needs without destroying these neighborhood?

Miriam and Fabio

Pictures of our survey of New Transit Camp:

The Dukaan Workshop took place in Dharavi, Mumbai on June 13, 2010. The article below was published in the Mumbai Mirror on June 16, 2010

Have you ever looked carefully at the little fruit shop jutting impossibly out of the corner down your street? Or the paan wala perching precariously on a tiny piece of real estate sandwiched between a bus-stop and a compound wall? Or the condensed universe of a cobbler in a tiny crevice in an invisible part of the city seemingly impossible to inhabit? What unifies them all are the most astonishing design elements that have evolved over practice by the concerned artisans or street traders, who have managed to sculpt space for from thin air. As often happens we take these things for granted – unless you are part of the design and architecture world in which learning from these practices makes you watch carefully. However few allow themselves to learn from these moments – because prejudices come in the way. Instead of appreciating the creative modes of survival we dismiss them in a larger story of encroachment. Even though everyone knows that the real culprit are often the extortionists who collect hafta and keep the hawkers on a tight leash of uncertainty.

Once when you are driving down the empty roads (relatively speaking) late at night to the airport or railway station, pay some attention to these spaces – tiny cupboards hanging from walls and trees, tool-boxes tucked away between street corners and buildings and plastic bags containing entire worlds.

When Llorenc Boyer and George Carothers – urban practitioners working in the city – decided to follow up on suggestions about these amazing spaces and learn more from them, one was not quite sure where this would lead. But weeks of conversing with street vendors of all kinds, documenting and networking with them translated into a most unusual workshop series inaugurated last week in Dharavi. Christened the DIY Dukaan –( Do It Yourself) the series saw residents like Shaukat Ali and other traders from the neighbourhood to improvise existing design needs responding to new ideas and suggestions. What followed was a most intriguing day in which steel pallet racks, bamboos, pieces of plywood, wire meshes, nuts and bolts were brought together to morph into the most unexpected models for street vendors to use. What seemed to be in great demand were portable structures that could fold up so they could escape the municipal vans harassing their perfectly legal activity. Or ones they could store their stuff and take home in. Participants got to know that there are legally permitted structures measuring 2 by 3 feet which the BMC allows anyone to use to trade goods, provided the space is proportionate to public use of pavements.

Eventually the very act of taking that little structure seriously opened up many questions about trading on the street, balancing needs of public spaces and the creation of legitimate networks free from state extortion so that the city’s millions of entrepreneurs can do their thing in a way that helps the city at large.

At the end of that hot, humid but exhilarating day two neat little models emerged – one that was a simple foldable table that could be hung on shoulder straps and the other a box that could store material, open up into a structure to sell goods and which could grow into taller spaces allowing for protection from rain and sun.

The sheer explosion of ideas and energy that preceded and followed the creation of these little artisanal wonders convinced all observers that this could well be the start of a new journey to make the city and its special needs the basis for practical and effective interventions. There are certainly many waiting for the next session in the workshop series.

Click here for another article on the Dukaan Workshop by Malvika Tegta published in DNA on Saturday 12, 2010.