Piles of garbage, homes so dense in their proximity to each other they practically block natural light, and open sewer drains is a sight common on the streets of Dharavi in Mumbai, India and makes up Asia's largest slum.To address these poor living conditions, private sector redevelopment plans have been created for Dharavi. These plans which call for replacing the shanty homes with block towers have met with resistance from the Dharavi Bachao Andolan coalition, formed by leaders within this slum community advocating to have more chawls rather than towers. The "chawl" is more of a traditional style design that sets a few single level units around a central courtyard where residents may interact and work on their stitching, processing or weaving.
These are the benefits that the chawl brings that will now be lost if towers are built in the community argues the coalition but the Indian government counters that the local problem is one of space as a successful chawl community requires sprawl whereas building vertically maximizes space so more of the inhabitants can be housed. Ultimately, the government and private sector developers really just want to reclaim the vast swathe of the city currently taken up by the 60% of Mumbaikars living in slums regardless of the potentially adverse effects on the residents.
Hence, this redevelopment plan for Dharavi has not been thoroughly thought through as they fail to see that packing people into towers does not make for community revitalization. Most of the first ghettos in the United States were towers where people where jammed into squalid conditions and India may be doing nothing more but trading one kind of slum for another. I think it would be smarter if the shortsighted vision of simply reclaiming land is not the one goal to be focused on here but also a way to improve the quality of life of the Mumbai poor.
Image obtained from: www.guardian.co.uk
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