2012
Spécialé Z
The Politics of Number
Debatably considered one of Asia’s and Mumbai’s largest slums, Dharavi has for long been an integral part of the city’s cultural memory and economic history. In recent years it has also become part of the city’s international identity. With population densities and land prices that are some of the highest in the world, Mumbai is essentially an island operating in the absence of a clear, city-wide public housing policy. This makes Dharavi a complex urban condition that brings together land, money and people with several interdependent layers of political, economic, social and communal reality that are difficult to separate or isolate. Since the announcement of a redevelopment plan for Dharavi by the State Government of Maharashtra in 2004,1 Mumbai has received research and design proposals from international and local organizations, academic institutions and architectural practices that span two very extreme reactions: one that wants to preserve the slums and their density as an independent urban condition; and another that wants the slums completely cleared because of their status as illegal occupations of state-owned land.
Within this discourse, all attempts at documenting Dharavi for research and design have brought to the fore its state of flux, a condition that is reflected in its constantly altering geographical limits within the city and its ever-changing population count: oscillating between 600,000 to 1 million.2 This state of flux is largely due to Dharavi’s status as the preferred locus for migrant workers who relocate from all over the country to Mumbai. They often move in with families, living in structures that vary in size, height and building materials. Within the slums are small scale industries that include leather tanning, garment making, potteries and plastic recycling plants. Each of these industries have established spatial typologies that are essentially a response to overbearing social and space regulations. Against this intrinsic state of flux, the documentation of Dharavi is a static process that is repeatedly open to dispute.