Bijal Vachharajani writes about the URBZ MASHUP Mumbai in this week’s edition of Time Out Mumbai
Politicians and the media have been debating the plan to build a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji off Marine Drive. The municipality has been busy considering proposals for towering hotels across the city. Matias Echanove, Rahul Srivastava and Geeta Mehta, on the other hand, have a different vision for Mumbai. They believe that the city should develop more organically, as a user-generated city. “When you are developing an urban design, you should incorporate systems that allow people to intervene in the planning,” said Echanove , who has started the research outfit urbanology.com with Srivastava. “Residents are the city experts. They are the ones who have the most pertinent and accurate data about their city.”
This fortnight, Echanove, Srivastava and Mehta, who is an associate professor of architecture and urban studies at Temple University, Japan, are organising a workshop that will help city residents put some of their visions down on paper. Urbz Mashup will give artists, designers, architects, activists, writers, photographers and just about anyone interested in cities and urban planning the opportunity to present their ideas about Mumbai in any form they want – music, videos, photo-collages, even short stories. “They can speculate about the future architecture, create a dream scenario or a nightmarish one,” said Echanove. “It could be a vision inspired by any place – a neighbourhood, another city or country.” The work will be exhibited online on the Urbz website, while selected plans will be displayed at an exhibition at the Sir JJ School of Art.
Over four days, the group will cover some of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods, including Crawford Market, Bhuleshwar and Chor Bazaar, documenting their history, archiving the changes taking place and using their imagination and skills to re-interpret the area. “The workshop is an opportunity for urban practitioners to collectively explore localities, streets and neighbourhood,” said Srivastava. “They can bring in their own experiences to produce new ways of looking at, visualising and imagining the city.”
The Mashup idea emerged from the Urban Typhoon workshop that had been organised in Dharavi in 2008. “We felt this time we should focus on the creative element of urban practice,” said Srivastava. “Development laws are going to change the landscape of Mumbai. So we thought we’d have a small exercise that will find new ways of looking at a street.” He explained that the Mashup aims to transform the city in a creative manner “that does not destroy the spirit of the neighbourhood, its residents, their thoughts and feelings” .
Echanove added that the workshop would also concentrate on specific pockets such as the nineteenth-century Khotachiwadi village in Girgaum. “This historic site is threatened by real estate developers,” said Echanove. “There’s a lot of pressure to sell and once these bungalows are sold, they will be destroyed. However, we can use design strategies to preserve the neighbourhood.” He cites fashion designer James Ferreira’s house in Khotachiwadi as an example. Ferreira has restored his family home in a way that the ground floor functions as a living space and the first floor as an office. Another bungalow has rented out the ground floor to a gym. “It’s almost like a village economy operating in an urban space,” Echanove said. “This way, at least the income generated goes towards conserving the locality. At the Mashup we will work with the residents and try to find similar solutions.”
