Degree Type
Honors Capstone Project
Date of Submission
Spring 5-1-2019
Capstone Advisor
Britt Eversole
Honors Reader
Brice Nordquist
Capstone Major
Architecture
Capstone College
Architecture
Audio/Visual Component
no
Capstone Prize Winner
no
Won Capstone Funding
yes
Honors Categories
Creative
Subject Categories
Architecture | Environmental Studies
Abstract
The recycling of plastic is a critical informal economy in Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums located in the heart of Mumbai. Waste from dumping grounds is manually collected, sorted and prepared by recyclers who transform trash into a commodity to be sold back into the city as a substance with value. As part of top-down efforts to redevelop Dharavi’s valuable land with condominium towers, the Mumbai government has tarnished the industry’s image by labelling it as “polluting,” and has increased the cost of utilities such as electricity in an effort to drive it out of the community. As it becomes more expensive for recyclers to operate their businesses, the labor unions that organize the industry have devised a plan to build a recycling industrial park outside of Mumbai on cheaper and more open land. As the community is destabilized by the pressures of development, an important urban and architectural question arises: what happens to Dharavi and its people when one of its most important industries is driven out?
Our research examines the material and human geography of Dharavi’s informal recycling economy. We carried out extensive on-site investigations, documenting in detail the recycling processes: we collected plastic samples, mapped more than 1,200 individual spaces in the community’s fabric, and conducted aerial surveys. Regarding the people and their social and economic system, we explored Dharavi’s complex network by interviewing a cross section of actors who traverse its dense streets: residents, ragpickers, business owners, politicians, police, union leaders, and local academics and researchers. Our study not only revealed their pride in the industries, entrepreneurial spirit and strong community ties that bind Dharavi together; it also uncovered the community’s fear of being misrepresented through social media, poverty tourism, cinema and public perception. Two crucial challenges facing an architect working in an informal community are how to represent a people and how to address their community identity when speculating on new construction in the voids created by inevitable change. Our research grapples with the difficulty of documenting and portraying the Dharavi slum and its people through architectural representation. The goal of our research is to propose a flexible design that allows for an array of bottom-up usages that might stabilize and reinforce Dharavi’s economy amidst increasing pressure from the government and developers.
Recommended Citation
Desai, Anuradha, "Re* Presenting Dharavi" (2019). Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All. 1324.
https://surface.syr.edu/honors_capstone/1324
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
