Contested Urbanism in Dharavi. Writings and projects for the resilient city

Editors: Camillo Boano, William Hunter and Caroline Newton.

This publication draws from first-hand experience, research, and critical practices that have sought to investigate a 175 hectares swatch of land in the middle of Mumbai that is home to over 1 million inhabitants.  It is a collection of short and long essays, drawings and diagrams, photography, and visualisations on what is known as Dharavi.

If on one side Dharavi was what some would call a 'live' case study, on the other it was more than that. Dharavi was a place where our different epistemic words of what we called urban design started falling apart. It was also a complex microcosm of practices where our methodological and architectural artillery became somewhat ineffective and sterile. It was a symbol of a multiplicity of urbanisms at play that failed all our philosophical apparatus. Dharavi for us was essentially a space in which we started our process of recalibration of Urban Design - an intellectual, pedagogical and political process at the centre of the MSc Building and Urban Design in Development course at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit.

Related links:

Interview with William Hunter in Polis

ISBN: 978-0-9574823-4-0 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-9574823-5-7 (digital).

Available for download at  https://www.academia.edu/5207461/Contested_Urbanism_in_Dharavi._Writings_and_projects_for_the_resilient_city