https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9634-9754
![Sample our Urban Studies journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110826/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Urban-Studies.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This study offers an often-invisible narrative of Dharavi’s long-term development history, coupled with Bombay / Mumbai’s urbanization. It scrutinizes how diversely originated forms of ‘public space’ and plural ‘publics’ serve as local reproductions of the exogenous notion of ‘public’. Such scrutiny covers three phases of interactions between planning and everyday practices, characterized by periodic crises and radical transformations. Based on the framework of ‘stabilization, change and becoming’, the analysis underlines various dominant and concurrent processes of socio-spatial becoming and charts the dialectic relationship of stabilization and change. Various processes reveal the gradual (trans)formations, encounters, negotiations, mutual connections, and (re)appropriations of plural public spaces and social collectives. They underscore the reconciliation and interchange between structures and practices, survival and politics, as well as becoming and being. It therefore contributes to decolonizing efforts aimed at studying public space within the context of Southern urbanism.
Acknowledgements
This manuscript has undergone significant changes due to previous rejections and has greatly benefited from the comments of many anonymous reviewers, including those from Planning Perspectives. Despite the challenges of publishing an interdisciplinary piece, we want to thank our colleagues and friends for their consistent support. We also want to thank the four thesis students from KU Leuven – Francis Hofmans, Maren Libbrecht, Romeo Nuitten, and Bram Van Droogenbroeck – who worked with us and contributed to the mapping of Dharavi. Please download additional photos for Figures 2-4 under “supplemental material.”
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 Mehta and Palazzo, Companion to Public Space; Cruz, Roskamm, and Charalambous, “Inquiries into Public Space Practices.”
2 Low and Smith, Politics of Public Space; Sorkin, Variations on Theme Park.
3 Sandercock, Making the Invisible Visible.
4 Heynen and Loeckx, “Scenes of Ambivalence.”
5 Hee and Ooi, “Public Space Planning in Singapore;” Madanipour, Whose Public Space.
6 Chhabria, Making the Modern Slum; Davis, “Epidemics, Planning and the City.”
7 Healey and Upton, Crossing Borders, 10.
8 Chhabria, 19; Björkman, “Becoming a Slum,” 41.
9 Sandercock, 2.
10 Myers, “Urban Planning for Zanzibar.”
11 Roy, “Urban Informality;” McFarlane, “Rethinking Informality;” Amin, “Lively Infrastructure;” Bhan, “Southern Urban Practice.”
12 Low and Smith.
13 Warner, “Publics and Counterpublics,” 413.
14 Kidambi, Making of Indian Metropolis.
15 Patel, Parthasarathy, and Jose, Mumbai/Bombay: Majoritarian Neoliberalism.
16 Luger and Lees, “Revisiting Urban Public Space,” 789.
17 Fattal, “Counterpublic.”
18 Corboz, “The Land as Palimpsest;” Pred, “Place as Contingent Process.”
19 Carmona, “Contemporary Public Space.”
20 Healey and Upton, 1.
21 Hernández-García, Public Space in Informal Settlements; Pyati and Kamal, “Public Space from the Margins.”
22 Anderson, Communities Imagined.
23 Bishwapriya, “Similarity or Differences.”
24 Caffentzis and Federici, “Commons against Beyond Capitalism;” Varvarousis and Kallis, “Commoning against the Crisis.”
25 West and Zimmerman, “Doing Gender;” Butler, Performative Theory of Assembly.
26 Gregson and Rose, “Taking Butler Elsewhere,” 437.
27 Heynen and Loeckx.
28 Pred.
29 Glover, “‘Public’in Colonial India;” Kidambi.
30 Blunt and Sheringham, “Home-City Geographies;” Masselos, The City in Action.
31 Chhabria, 84; Rao, House, but No Garden; Chhabria, 69-73.
32 Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities.
33 Ibid., 75.
34 Glover.
35 Singh, People of India.
36 Chatterjee, “Community in the East”.
37 Shaikh, Outcaste Bombay, 79; Patel, Parthasarathy, and Jose.
38 Burte, “Trajectories of Place,” 35.
39 Benjamin, “Occupancy Urbanism;” Burte and Kamath, “Structural Violence of Transformation.”
40 Howell, “Public Space Public Sphere.”
41 Holston, “Insurgent Citizenship;” Thieme, “ ‘Hustle’ Amongst Youth Entrepreneurs.”
42 Roy.
43 Banks, Lombard, and Mitlin, “Urban Informality as Analysis.”
44 Lombard, “Constructing Ordinary Places.”
45 Banks, Lombard, and Mitlin.
46 Ibid.; Caldeira, “Peripheral Urbanization.”
47 Björkman.
48 Banerjee, “Making Home from Below.”
49 Anjaria, The Slow Boil.
50 Bayat, “Politics in the City.”
51 Shaikh. Kidambi.
52 Chatterjee.
53 Hosagrahar, 77. Kidambi.
54 Masquelier, “Boredom and Temporalities;” Thieme.
55 Fortun, Advocacy after Bhopal; Bhan; Appadurai, “Deep Democracy.”
56 Chatterji and Mehta, Living with Violence.
57 Nagaraj, Mehta, and Taylor, Economic and Social Survey.
58 Wood, “What Makes Map Map.”
59 Bandyopadhyay, “Politics of Archiving;” Kidambi, 9.
60 Chhabria, 136. Kidambi, 9.
61 Rao, 38.
62 Chhabria, 84.
63 Chhabria; Rao, “Bombay's Urban Edge.”
64 Nagaraj, Mehta, and Taylor; BIT, Proceedings of Improvement Committee.
65 Cooper, “Recent Electrical Progress;” Rao, “House but No Garden”.
66 Nagaraj, Mehta, and Taylor.
67 Ibid.
68 Clothey, Ritualizing on the Boundaries, 103.
69 Conlon and Breckenridge, “Consuming Modernity.”
70 Nagaraj, Mehta, and Taylor.
71 Patel and Masselos, Bombay and Mumbai.
72 Rao, “Bombay's Urban Edge,” 144.
73 Chatterji and Mehta.
74 Zachariah, “Bombay Migration Study.”
75 Rajendran, “City | Landscape: A Rumination.”
76 Chatterji and Mehta, 139.
77 Lynch, “Potters, Plotters, Prodders.”
78 Shinde, “Political Technologies of Caste.”
79 Chatterji and Mehta, 142-143.
80 Ibid.; Weinstein, The Durable Slum.
81 Heuzé-Brigant, “Cultural Populism,” 242; Chatterji and Mehta.
82 Patel, Parthasarathy, and Jose, 3.
83 Weinstein.
84 Ibid., 154-155.
85 Chatterji and Mehta, 82. Sharma, Rediscovering Dharavi.
86 Fuchs, “Institutionalising Informal Socialities.”
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Min Tang
Min Tang is a research professor at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai, China. She has received a PhD in Architecture from the KU Leuven (Belgium) and a PhD in Geography from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (France). Her research interests in the lived experience within the planning and city-making process. She continuously conducts multi-sited activities in the urban peripheries and fosters dialogue between Asia and Africa experiences. Email: [email protected]
Viviana d’Auria
Viviana d’Auria is an Associate Professor in International Urbanism at the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering Science, KU Leuven, Belgium. Exploring ‘practised’ and ‘lived-in’ architecture is an integral part of her research within a more general interest in the trans-cultural construction of cities and their contested spaces, and this through intersectional and interdisciplinary perspectives. Email: [email protected].