We began by critiquing large transportation infrastructure investments in Mumbai. The government has several ambitious plans for adding new elevated roads and trains throughout the city. The proposed Sealinks along the western coastline and the Link roads across the city of Mumbai are examples of elevated highway projects which would serve as a connection line for the mass movement travelling from north to south and east to west every day in Mumbai. However, both infrastructures bypass and ignore the existing ground context, thus, creating a parallel world between the ground and the new elevated planes.
In relation to Dharavi, the government has planned to built a new monorail and elevated walkways which would pass through Dharavi and create a new Dharavi station in order to connect the western corridor between Bandra and Malarbar hill.
In the existing plan, the monorail serves the municipal needs for a better connection between the north and the south of Mumbai. But in the case of elevated walkways, it would only function as the supporting pedestrian fast lane which connects people from one station to another.
If the monorail and its walkways have to pass through the dense fabric of Dharavi, we believe that the new elevated infrastructure should not only serve municipal needs but also the local needs. We recognize the monorail proposal as an opportunity and a trigger for local redevelopment through which we will be proposing design strategy that will redefine the new elevated plane with muti-functional purposes that would become an integral part of the existing Dharavi fabric.
Dharavi is made of 85 smaller communities which also come with a complex social structure and hierarchy between different religions and caste systems. This complex system tends to create a pattern where people from one community do not cross into another community and therefore the only place that these people can interact is along the streets. This social pattern is evident through the formation of the commercial realm. These commercial streets are the most precious resource of Dharavi and therefore we are proposing to expand and maximize the street without destroying the current fabric by introducing a new elevated ground and creating a new topography that will not only accommodate more social and productive area but will also integrate the harvesting of rainwater and facilitate the management of both solid and organic waste.
We are proposing to keep the commercial street 1-2 stories high which would allow our new elevated ground to become the new ground for the projected third and fourth floor residential growth. To achieve this new topography we are proposing to build this new ground incrementally. The intervention will be developed by the commercial and residential owners along the periphery. They will come together as a community to finance this new infrastructure that will provide them with permanent access to clean water all year round, while a portion of our infrastructure will provide a base for new residential or commercial units which could generate revenue by renting out these units. The revenue generated will eventually help them to pay back the initial investment. In addition to these private benefits, Dharavi as a whole could gradually benefit from the new porous system of collecting rainwater that would greatly improve the drainage problems existing along the commercial road and at the same time these new surfaces would also become the ground for the expansion of Dharavi’s productive, social and economic activities.
