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.

Chapel Street, Bandra

Walking through the streets of Mumbai is an intense experience with every excursion being an adventure of its own.

For most people in the city, walking is a banal activity, something they hardly think twice about. However, during the last one month with URBZ, taking a walk through various neighbourhoods in the city has made me aware of its many unexpected dimensions.

In the city where I come from – that is Delhi – I’ve hardly ever walked. A pedestrian is considered to be a trifling being. Moreover, public space in general is highly gendered and often a long sojourn from your house to the neighbourhood deli would make you understand the power hierarchies much faster than a two hour class discussing radical feminism.

Thus, often I could not help but feel like a stranger in my own city. What kind of cities are we making? Are big cities killing the pedestrians? How public is “public” space really?

When I read Michel de Certeau’s “The practice of Everyday Life”; I could not help but be riveted by his idea of the city and what makes a city, or what I would like to call the city-fabric. According to him, the practice of walking is one of the most elementary forms of experiencing the city and something, which resonates in my mind every day.

Veronica Street, Bandra

In Mumbai, I walk daily from Sion Circle to the URBZ office in the Transit Camp. I walk in the quiet streets of Bandra where I live, I walk in the parallel universe of Dharavi with narrow streets but warm people, I walk in rush hour at the Dadar station and I also walk along the dimly lit Marine Drive at night.

Once in Bandra, wandering through the narrow lanes which melted into each other, I found myself in Chapel Street. It was a special visual experience to absorb that space in its entirety and at once I heard the city speaking to me and also to many others simultaneously.

This street- the most basic element in urban sociology- was at once static and full of life. It represented the everyday and the spectacular at the same time. I was with my colleague Francesco, and, our search for old Portuguese bungalows in Bandra led us to discover many other interesting aspects about the city. It was like having a conversation with the city-spaces and the age-old heritage- which ultimately lead me to read the “real city”; accessible only to the pedestrian and one which cannot be found in concrete apartments or high rises. It exists in all its ethnographic beauty on the street.

And, that’s when I also realised how spaces are an affect. Reading spaces, streets, neighbourhoods-be it by walking or any other such fundamental impulse – makes you re-discover the larger relationship that exists between the social and the purely geographical.

On another assignment with Shyam, who also works at URBZ, I walked into the labyrinth called Dharavi; knowing little what was to come. We started from our office in the Transit Camp and within the next two hours wehad reached Mahim and crossed almost every street that lay between. The rich texture of the neighbourhoods that we saw, the people we met and the houses we were invited in, created an immediate relationship with the physical spaces we explored that day.

Mary from Dharavi

Amongst the twenty odd people we interviewed that day, we met Mary. She makes chai just around the corner from the URBZ office. I did not even know of her existence during the last two months of my working. Mary makes chai all day long in her little shop which she shares with another lady, Devi. For both of them, the street is their office, home and playground all at once.

The small streets in the big city are one of the most important features of Mumbai’s fabric. And, somewhere down the line- the everyday practice of walking and this raw city-fabric lead you to each other. On both the above mentioned occasions, in some odd way; it seemed like I strengthened my relationship with the city.

I wonder what Michel de Certeau would have said had he walked the streets of Dharavi! More on that in a subsequent post….

We have for long opposed the reality of the city to that of the village. However, my observations in Dharavi, a large unplanned neighbourhood in the centre of Mumbai, which is the most populated city in the world, tell me that they have more in common than is commonly acknowledged. This article describes the curious similarities between the small Italian village I come from and Dharavi.

The village in question is Buscoldo, in the north of Italy close to Mantova. The population is roughly 2500, while the population of Dharavi is estimated at 700,000. In spite of these stark differences in number, the two places share common trajectories of incremental development and organizational patterns.

Moreover, Dharavi is itself a collection of smaller neighbourhoods, which typically fiercely resist being amalgamated into each other.

The oldest part of Dharavi, Koliwada, was founded by a tribal fishing community, the Kolis. They settled there before the Portuguese and British arrived in Mumbai. My village is traditionally connected with agriculture. Historically, it was also a strategic military base.

In Dharavi, people notoriously created their habitat without any specific help or planning from the government. They used their know how to develop the place in response to their needs. This appears clearly when you walk through the neighborhood. Houses are really close to each other, the street is a market place and space for social interactions. Houses typically have a shop or workshop at the ground floor and the neighbourhood feels extremely dense in terms of structures and population.

In my village, we can also observe unplanned areas with the same features where the same kind of dynamics take place every day, or at least on specific days of the week. Unfortunately this reality is dying because of globalization forces (big AC supermarkets) that cuts-off local activities. So the risk, we are going to face, is that any village will become just a dormitory, where the work space and the living space will be totally split and the community and social relations will be cancelled.

But if we stop our sight on one of these houses which forms the oldest part of my village, we can notice that some of them are still “tool-houses”, even if they do not hold the same importance as before. According to URBZ (Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava), the“tool-house” is a place where the actions of living and working are not neatly divided, where every single nook and corner becomes an extension of the trade of its inhabitants.

Tool-house in Buscoldo, with the shop in front and living space in the back.

This kind of bottom-up development has been the core of the economic Italian system from 50 years ago, but now is going to disappear in this post-industrial-crisis era. In Dharavi this is not happening, so should we imagine that this kind of vernacular model will take place again and will be able to generate a new development in European society?

POPULATION DENSITY

Unfortunately the population density in my village is not reflected anymore in the density of homes, because the economic system and the needs of society needs have changed. Also if we consider what happened in Dharavi, we can notice that the local economy is still strong.  Besides, the community still remains important. This is unlike what is happening in my village, where this kind of local and “self-supported” economy is losing is strength and in some ways this impacts the sense of community as well.

MILL IN-FORMATION

In my village there was a big mill (photo on the right), which produced flour from grain and maize. It was a big structure, which stopped production during the 80s. The building remained empty for almost 20 years. It was in the beginning of 2000 that it was transformed into an apartment building block. Instead of demolishing this old structure the local contractor decided to keep it safe and re-use it in a different way. This was a small gesture of generating a new shape by an incremental-improvement process. Something that characterizes Dharavi a lot, since it is a neighborhood constantly in-formation, where every family creates and evolves their own house, bit by bit.

Finally it is important to think about the process of urbanization itself that connects Dharavi to my village. In both cases there were not too many regulations and laws and rules, historically that interfered with the ability of Buscoldo or other Italian towns to reinvent and reproduce themselves. In fact, I think this is the main feature which combines these two apparently very different realities. Though of course today this ability to reinvent our town or villages is strictly constrained by urban planning rules.

Khushboo chawl, Khotachiwadi

We recently organized a week-long studio on Khotachiwadi, a heritage precinct in Girgaum, Mumbai, with students from the School of Habitat Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). This was part of a course taught by URBZ members Rahul and Matias on the politics of urban space. The studio took place at Studio X near CST, with fieldwork in Khotachiwadi every day. In Khotachiwadi we often met at James Ferreira’s house who generously hosted us.

The studio focused on the chawls of Khotachiwadi. While Khotachiwadi is well known for its Konkan-Portuguese-style bungalows, its chawls and their residents have often been left out of the picture. This is a shame because, as most visitors and residents acknowledge, the diversity of habitats, architectures and cultures is one of the most interesting aspects of this much loved neighbourhood.

TISS-SoHS students brainstorming at Studio X

Throughout the studio, we discussed the history and culture of Khotachiwadi, the meaning of heritage in a rapidly changing city, the importance of having diverse habitats, rent control and how it allowed people across classes to stay in places like Khotachiwadi. We talked about architectural styles and urban typologies and the role of local economic activities in preserving neighbourhood life. We discussed mixed-use patterns in old neighborhoods of Mumbai and how urban plans and zoning codes are typically based on segregating functions. We also talked about urban villages, political identity, East Indians and their origins, the role of the Shiv Sena in local politics and a few other things.

The students visited the chawls, interviewed residents and published their texts and photos on http://khotachiwadi.urbz.net. They asked residents about their personal histories and stories and their current situation; the way they perceive the possibility of edevelopment; their relationship with bungalow residents; their aspirations; the possibility of envisioning a common future with other residents of Khotachiwadi belonging to different castes and histories.

Residents of Khotachiwadi celebrate the Diwali in front of the 150 years old Khanderao chawl. The Diwali Sammelan festival was started over 75 years ago by Mangesh Rane ji who is the oldest resident of Khotachiwadi.

Chawls are a very typical architectural typology in Mumbai, dating from the city’s industrial days, derived from the structure of army barracks, evolving into residential sites for industrial workers and finally being reshaped in use by the in-coming families of migrant workers to eventually become bustling middle-class neighbourhoods The chawls can be anything between 1 to 5 stories high and are typically organized around a large veranda connecting single rooms, with the whole floor sharing a common bathroom. Many of them have been converted or destroyed in the past decade or so. Some of the chawls of Khotachiwadi are more than 150 years old, a few families have roots there going back more than four generations and some have individual toilets in each home.

The neighbourhood of Girgaum, to which Khotachiwadi belongs, is well known for its historical chawls. Thanks to the Maharashtra Rent Act, which has frozen rents in South Mumbai at their 1947 level, many families have been able to stay in this part of the city where rent for a new 50 sq.m flat can easily reach Rs 50,000/month or higher. Often accused to be the root cause of all urban problems in Mumbai because it never allowed owners to maintain their buildings properly, the rent control act has also been instrumental in maintaining people from all socio-economic background in South Mumbai.

These and other themes were explored and discussed by the participants of the studio, the output of which is available on http://khotachiwadi.urbz.net

Image: Fusionopolis, one of the newest indoor entertainment mall of Singapore.

Public spaces are sacrosanct in urban planning rhetoric and embody a range of virtues—from the community to the commons, from equality to inclusive citizenship. What constitutes a public space, however, is often a point of contention

Shopping malls, plazas, sidewalks, parks, museums, pedestrian pathways, flea markets, bazaars, and even transport systems like the metro in Delhi—are all contenders for the label of “public space.”

As cities aspire to “world-class” status—an idea which carries its own set of notions of what public space should be all about—grand urban designs begin to dominate the imagination of planners and developers and reconfigure our cities.

The notion of the word-class city emerged after political and developmental discourse gave up on the first, second and third world distinctions from the Cold War era. The global city, with its high urban standards, linked to other such cities through gleaming new airports, became the capital of the new world order.

In such a city, the coming together of speculation-driven real estate development and the idea of “public space” has produced weird urban species. In New York, for instance, developers are encouraged to create open spaces in front or below their buildings in exchange for additional floor area. More often than not, these “privately owned public spaces” are designed to discourage genuine public use.

In a city like New Delhi, well-protected and spacious historical sites, public parks, plazas and malls stand as a contrast to the action-packed and crowded streets of the anti-thesis of the world class in the very local, Chandni Chowk. In neighborhoods that decidedly don’t fit with the world class vision, such as Dharavi in Mumbai, where any space is currency, designated public space is virtually non-existent but the spirit of the public infuses every nook and corner. Crowded streets become collective spaces during festivals; temples and shrines become either thoroughfares or meeting points; they remain oases of calm or contribute to the general din.

A layer of public-ness settles onto traffic-infested streets when collective prayer has to happen and for that one moment waves of urban chaos freeze, and allow for that incredible flash of community to manifest itself before crashing back into their usual stormy selves a few minutes later. More often than not, leisure, commercial and communication uses share the same space and time: streets are typically used simultaneously as a playground by kids, sales points by a street vendor, pedestrian links to the train station, as well as meeting places for residents, drying spaces for clothes and advertising spaces for movies and recruitment agencies.

These two extreme examples, of designed but underused monumental spaces and the squeezing out of public moments in space-starved neighborhoods indicates that there is much more to urban public space and life than merely how much space is formally accounted for it in physical terms.

However, the idea of a world-class city short-circuits these discussions before we can discuss whether Indian cities should be more like Old or New Delhi—or debate if Dharavi has its own peculiar notion of public space, or if New York’s designed public spaces are passé.

It is a slogan, as if devised by a marketing agency, to sell the latest fashions in cosmetic urbanism—an alluring ready-to-wear one-size vision that promises to fit all. It is a visual narrative made up of bits and pieces taken from distant places that exist primarily as urban fantasies in our imaginations. Now Dubai, now Singapore, sometimes with a hint of the Manhattan skyline, all spiked by grand architectural flourishes, the idea of the world class city pushes us towards the model of the theme park or “special economic zones,” which achieve perfect order by forcefully containing the mess outside their boundaries.

High speed escalator to nowhere: Fusionopolis, Singapore.

This is unfortunately the vision within which the elusive “public space” is, quite literally, trapped today. In the face of the jumble of street life in India, we have now begun to respond, as urban designers did in Shanghai and Singapore (our model cities) by elevating private spaces away from the street and joining them through internal connections. These privately built spaces, whether residential or corporate, are firewalled and sterilized versions of the open commons of the street.

High-tech surveillance and codes of conduct insure a strict filtering of “the public” and tight control of its movements. These spaces are then gradually connected to one another by skywalks, subways, highways, and airways, leaving the “street” and its unruly “public” further behind and below. Interconnected shopping malls in Kuala Lumpur and airport-to-city connections in Dubai are full-fledged examples of these. The tentative plans for the “smart cities” to be built along the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor already show the same tendencies at work, which will favor a certain metropolitan “public” over a regional and local one. Eventually we find ourselves starved of the touch of human interaction that always characterized our streets.

Aspirations to world-class status have sealed the fate of many fast-growing cities today. They have become exclusive zones in which most citizens, unless they have a great deal of economic power, are made invisible. And the veneer of still being a city, all air-conditioned and antiseptic, is maintained through privatized and inside-out architectural gestures made in the name of public space.

At the end of the day, all that remains behind is physical space designed to accommodate an idea of the public that has been stripped of its fundamental property: inclusiveness. No matter how much time, money or skills that go into the design of such a public space, nothing can replace the millions of contributions made by each and every user who carves it out over time.

Article by Matias & Rahul published in the Wall Street Journal blog today.